A challenging star witness in Donald Trump’s hush money trial

He once said he was willing to take a bullet for Donald Trump. Michael Cohen is now prosecutors’ biggest legal tool in the former president’s hush money trial.

But if President Trump’s fixer-turned-adversary is prepared to offer jurors this week an insider’s view of the transactions at the heart of the prosecution’s case, he also has Objections will be raised against the star witness who appears.

She has a troubled past with Trump, serving as his personal lawyer and problem solver until his conduct came under federal investigation. This resulted in Mr. Cohen being convicted of a felony and jailed, but by that time no charges had been brought against Mr. Trump in the White House.

Mr. Cohen, who is scheduled to take the stand Monday, will be able to address the jury as a man who openly regrets his wrongdoings and has paid the price with freedom. But jurors probably didn’t believe it was true that the disbarred lawyer not only pled guilty to lying to Congress and the bank, but even recently admitted under oath to some of those lies. You will also learn that he claimed that there was no such thing.

And Mr. Cohen’s new persona, along with his podcasts, books and social media posts, has emerged as a relentless and sometimes harsh critic of Trump.

At the start of Trump’s trial, prosecutors took pains to present Cohen as just one piece of evidence against Trump, telling jurors that they had corroboration from other witnesses, documents and recordings of the former president himself. I told them that it would be done according to the words that were given to them. But Mr. Trump and his lawyers denounced Mr. Cohen as a self-confessed lying criminal who now makes a living bashing his former boss.

“What the defense wants the jury to focus on is the fact that he’s a liar with a dirty past and a nasty habit,” said Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense attorney and former federal and Manhattan prosecutor. talk.

“What the prosecution wants to focus on is, ‘Everything he says is corroborated. You don’t have to like him,'” Serafini added. “And number two, this is the guy Trump picked.”

Mr. Cohen’s introduction to Mr. Trump in the early 2000s was a typical New York real estate story. Mr. Cohen serves on the board of an apartment complex in Mr. Trump’s building and was involved on Trump’s side in the residents-versus-management dispute. The mogul quickly brought Cohen into his company.

Mr. Cohen, who declined to comment for this article, has had a varied career from practicing personal injury law to running a taxi business with his father-in-law. He ultimately served as Trump’s lawyer and shark-like supporter.

Congressional testimony after Mr. Cohen broke with Mr. Trump in 2018 shows that Mr. Cohen worked to build a consensus, but he also threatened to sue, disparage reporters, and otherwise damage his boss’s reputation. It is said that he spent a lot of time working on ways to neutralize the possibility of it being dropped. The FBI searched Cohen’s home and office, and Trump began to distance himself from Cohen.

Mr. Cohen quickly accused candidate Trump in federal court of trying to flatter and placate his opponents, and by buying articles and making accusations against Mr. Cohen. He said he treated the magazine as a kind of newspaper and helped cover up rumors about his private life. purchase. President Trump claims the entire story was false.

These arrangements, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office describes as a multifaceted scheme to withhold information from voters, are currently under scrutiny in Trump’s hush money trial. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsifying his business records to conceal reimbursement to Cohen for payments to porn performer Stormy Daniels. She claimed in 2006 that she had sexual contact with the married Trump, which the former president denies.

Other witnesses have also testified about hush-money deals, but Mr. Cohen has been instrumental in putting together a case that centers on how Mr. Trump’s company compensated Mr. Trump for his role in paying Mr. Daniels. still holds the key.

Mr. Trump’s defense has argued that Mr. Cohen was paid for legal work, not for cover-up, and that there was nothing illegal about the agreement Mr. Cohen entered into with Mr. Daniels and others.

In a criminal trial, many witnesses take the stand with information about their criminal history, their relationship with the defendant, past contradictory statements, or anything else that could affect their credibility.

Cohen has special baggage.

In his testimony, he explained his previous denials about key aspects of the hush money deal and convinced jurors that this time he was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is necessary to do so.

Mr. Trump, who was still in Mr. Trump’s inner circle when the Daniels deal was revealed, initially told the New York Times that he had not been reimbursed, but later acknowledged that he had been reimbursed — having previously paid Daniels. The same goes for Trump, who said he didn’t even know about it.

In the course of two subsequent federal guilty pleas, Cohen accused Congress of tax evasion, orchestrating illegal campaign contributions in the form of hush money, and his work on President Trump’s real estate project in Moscow. admitted that he had lied. He also pleaded guilty to approving a home equity loan application that understated his own financial obligations.

Different types of convictions are used to question a witness’ credibility, but when the crime involves fraud, “it’s a gold mine for the cross-examiner,” Serafini said.

Mr. Cohen also raised new questions about his credibility when he testified in Mr. Trump’s civil fraud trial last fall. During intense cross-examination, Mr. Cohen answered some questions with lawyerly “objections” or “questions and answers,” but maintained that he was not entirely guilty of tax evasion or lying on loan applications. Ultimately, he testified that he lied to a now-deceased federal judge who accepted his plea.

The fraud trial judge found Cohen’s testimony reliable, noting that it was supported by other evidence. But a federal judge suggested Mr. Cohen committed perjury either in his testimony or in his guilty plea.

Since breaking with Trump, Cohen has faced head-on the lies of his past. The title of his podcast, “Mea Culpa,” suggests remorse for his crimes, and in the preface to his 2020 memoir, he writes that some people see him as “the most unreliable narrator on the planet.” I admitted that there was.

During his 2018 sentencing, he said that his “blind loyalty” to Trump made him feel more comfortable covering up Trump’s dirty deeds than listening to his own inner voice and moral compass. He said he felt it was his duty. As the trial began, Cohen made scathing comments about Trump’s comments in a salvo on social media, telling him to “keep whining and violating the gag order!” defense.

These posts could provide fodder for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to paint Mr. Cohen as a witness driven by an agenda of revenge. In a nod to that vulnerability, Mr. Cohen posted two days after opening his statement that he would stop commenting on Mr. Trump until after his testimony “out of respect” to the judge and prosecutors.

But in a live TikTok last week, Cohen was seen wearing a shirt depicting a figure resembling Trump, his hands handcuffed and behind bars. Following a plea from Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Judge Juan M. Marchand on Friday urged prosecutors to tell Mr. Cohen that the court wants him to say no more about the case or Mr. Trump.

For Jeremy Saland, a New York criminal defense attorney and former Manhattan prosecutor, Cohen’s background is not much of a hurdle for prosecutors.

“The problem with Cohen is that he doesn’t close the trap,” Saland said. “He’s just constantly attacking his own credibility.”

Saland said prosecutors need to convince Cohen to be candid, admit past wrongdoing and tone down his free-wheeling commentary, otherwise the case will become “the Michael Cohen Show.” He said that there is a possibility that the

Indeed, in his opening statement, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche harshly criticized Cohen’s “obsession” with Trump and his admission that he had lied under oath.

“You cannot rely on the words of Michael Cohen to make important decisions about President Trump,” Blanche told jurors.

But prosecutor Matthew Colangelo characterized Cohen as someone who made “mistakes” and told jurors they could still believe him.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have accused Trump of multiple violations of a gag order that prohibits him from commenting on witnesses, jurors, and others involved in the case, citing comments he made about Cohen and others. . The judge fined Trump a total of $10,000 for contempt and warned him that he could face jail time if he violates his orders again.

Prosecutors did not hesitate to testify about Cohen’s combative personality. One banker testified that Mr. Cohen was considered a “challenging” customer who claimed everything was urgent. Mr. Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, described his first phone conversation with Mr. Cohen as a “storm of expletives, innuendoes, and allegations.”

John Fishwick Jr., a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said that while these episodes may not be flattering to Cohen, bringing them out shows prosecutors that Cohen is more than just a teammate. He said it could be a way to subtly show that someone has information. .

“This is a way to try to build his trust while you distance yourself from him,” he suggested.

Anna Kominsky, a professor at New York Law School, said it would be wise for prosecutors to address Cohen’s troubled past before his defense attorneys do when he takes the stand. She taught Mr. Bragg’s courses before he became district attorney, but offered her comments as a legal observer and not as someone familiar with Mr. Bragg’s office’s strategy.

“I imagine that in closing arguments, the prosecutor will look straight at the jury and say, ‘This person is not a perfect witness, but none of us are perfect witnesses,'” Kominsky said. he said.