Prosecutors at Donald Trump's New York criminal trial laid the groundwork Friday for the main event coming on Monday, the expected testimony of the former U.S. president's longtime lawyer and political fixer, Michael Cohen, who now has turned against Trump.
Cohen's name has been mentioned almost daily during three weeks of testimony, often described as demanding, volatile and profane and always loyal to Trump — until he wasn't and became the state's key witness, central to prosecutors' efforts to persuade the 12-member jury to convict Trump of the 34 charges he is facing.
Cohen has continued to target Trump with vitriol on TikTok during the trial, despite prosecutors' request that he stop. But three days in advance of his testimony, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, at the request of Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, on Friday ordered Cohen to halt his acidic commentary about Trump.
Trump is now the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee in the November election, and at the same time a criminal defendant. Cohen played off that in one of his TikTok comments, saying that "Trump 2024? More like Trump 20-24 years."
Cohen, the prosecution and several witnesses say, sent a $130,000 hush money payment to porn film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about her claim that she had a one-night tryst with Trump at a 2006 celebrity golf tourney just as voters were headed to the polls in 2016 to elect Trump to a four-year term in the White House.
Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, is accused of falsifying business records at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate, claiming that the $130,000 paid in monthly segments to Cohen in 2017 was for his legal work, not reimbursement for the money he paid to Daniels out of his personal home equity line of credit.
Cohen asserts the reimbursements to him were falsified at Trump's direction.
Prosecutors are expecting Cohen will tell jurors that he and Trump talked about the reimbursement plan at a February 2017 meeting in the Oval Office at the White House less than three weeks after Trump was inaugurated.
The prosecution is claiming that Trump tried to hide the true purpose of the reimbursement to Cohen, keeping Daniels' sex claim from voters, while Trump's team has suggested the hush money was meant to hide the Daniels' story from his wife Melania and had nothing to do with the election eight years ago.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation linked to the hush money payment and other offenses, including perjury, and served 13½ months in a federal prison and another year and a half of home confinement. Trump's lawyers are sure to brand him a liar when they cross-examine him after he offers testimony for the prosecution.
In a tedious, document-by-document presentation earlier this week, two Trump company payroll officials testified about 11 invoices, 11 vouchers and 12 checks linked to the 2017 payments to Cohen.
On Friday, Jaden Jarmel-Schneider, a paralegal in the prosecutors' office, produced a chart that laid out all 34 documents that encompass the charges Trump is facing. If convicted, Trump could be placed on probation or imprisoned up to four years.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told Merchan the prosecution could wrap up its case next week with testimony from Cohen and one other unnamed witness.
But Justice Merchan suggested prosecutors maybe should call one additional witness, Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer. Testimony showed Weisselberg signed off on the reimbursement payments to Cohen, noting that Trump and his second son, Eric Trump, had authorized them.
Prosecutors had not planned to call Weisselberg, who currently is serving a five-month prison sentence for committing perjury in a recent Trump civil business fraud case, and it was not immediately known whether they will.
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.
Earlier on Friday, Madeleine Westerhout, a former White House aide who worked closely with Trump, testified about setting up his February 2017 meeting with Cohen. She was followed by witnesses who testified about phone logs, text messages and other records that are linked to the case and may turn up again in Cohen's testimony.
Their brief documentary testimony followed hours of heated testimony Tuesday and Thursday from Daniels, who held fast to her claim — despite a withering cross-examination by a Trump defense attorney — that Trump invited her to dinner in his hotel suite in 2006 at a celebrity golf tourney, never brought food in and then undressed to have sex with her.
She told the jury that she hates Trump and wants him sent to prison if he is convicted.
