Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer, a former lawyer and one-time political fixer for Donald Trump, is testifying on Monday against his ex-boss in the first-ever criminal trial of a U.S. president.
Cohen, 57, worked for Trump, a New York real estate magnate since the early 2000s, before Trump became a politician.
Cohen once called himself Trump’s “designated thug” and estimated in congressional testimony that over the years he had made 500 threats to people at Trump’s behest.
Trump — as recently as 2017 — in the first year of his presidency, described Cohen as “a very talented lawyer” and “a good lawyer at my firm.”
All that is in the past, however, and now they are facing off in a high-stakes match with considerable consequences, Trump’s personal freedom and Trump’s standing as the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the November election. He is likely to face President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in 2020.
Trump is accused in a 34-count indictment of falsifying his Trump Organization business ledgers to hide reimbursement payments to Cohen for a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to porn film star Stormy Daniels. The payment was to keep her from talking about her claim of a one-night tryst with Trump in 2006 just as voters were headed to the polls to elect Trump president in 2016.
Trump has denied Daniels’ claim of a liaison at a Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tourney in the Western state of Nevada. He said the 2017 reimbursements to Cohen were for his legal work. Trump also has denied all the criminal charges he faces.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation linked to the hush money deal with Daniels and other offenses, including perjury for lying to Congress about a prospective Trump real estate deal in Moscow, served 13½ months in a federal prison and a year and a half in home confinement.
Since his release, he has been on something of a mission to disparage Trump. Despite prosecutors’ efforts to rein in his contempt for Trump, Cohen recently posted a TikTok video of himself wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Trump behind bars.
With Trump making another White House run and at the same time sitting in a courtroom as a criminal defendant, Cohen played off that in another TikTok comment, saying, “Trump 2024? More like Trump 20-24 years."
Trump, if convicted, could be placed on probation or be imprisoned for up to four years.
Cohen’s name has been mentioned almost daily during three weeks of testimony. Prosecution witnesses have often described him as demanding, volatile and profane and always loyal to Trump — until he wasn’t and became the state’s key witness.
Prosecutors have often elicited such a negative portrait of Cohen, their star witness, knowing full well that Trump’s defense lawyers will brand him as a convicted liar not to be believed.
But prosecutors are poised to have Cohen tell the 12-member jury how, just before the election eight years ago, “at the direction of” Trump he made the hush money payment to Daniels. They continue that Cohen then met with Trump in the Oval Office at the White House just weeks after Trump was inaugurated to discuss the reimbursement plan.
Trump’s defense lawyers have suggested the payment to the porn star was an effort by the then-future president to hide Daniels’ sex claim of a liaison with Trump to keep his wife, Melania, from hearing about it and had nothing to do with trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
The former president’s team has also suggested that Cohen, without Trump’s knowledge, made the hush money payment to Daniels out of the kindness of his heart.
But one of Trump’s closest White House aides, Hope Hicks, scoffed at that suggestion, saying that “would be out of character for Michael.”
In a tedious, document-by-document presentation last week, two Trump company payroll officials testified how they handled 11 invoices, 11 vouchers and 12 checks linked to the 2017 reimbursement payments to Cohen and that Trump signed most of the reimbursement checks to Cohen.
On Friday, a paralegal in the prosecutors’ office produced a chart that laid out all 34 documents that encompass the charges Trump is facing.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan the prosecution could wrap up its case this week with testimony from Cohen and one other unnamed witness.
When the prosecution completes its case, Trump’s team will have a chance to present its defense. Trump has often said he plans to testify in his own defense to deny Daniels’ claim of their alleged liaison and the criminal charges he is facing.
It is not yet clear, though, whether Trump will take the witness stand knowing that he would face a vigorous cross-examination by prosecutors.
