Michael Cohen, a former attorney for Donald Trump, gave a disastrous cross-examination of the defendant’s star witness on Thursday that stunned observers in a Manhattan courtroom.
Trump is facing a lawsuit after allegedly falsifying business records in a 2016 non-disclosure agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels ( Stephanie Clifford ). Due to state law’s requirement that offense charges be filed within the statute of limitations, district attorney Alvin Bragg had to find a way to prosecute Trump for a criminal. Despite the fact that the prosecution has not disclosed the offense to the judge, he claimed that Trump falsified information to conceal a federal crime.
Cohen earlier this week in a testimony that Trump had instructed him to falsify information relating to Daniels ‘ bills, which Cohen took out of his personal finances. Cohen claimed that Trump refunded him through a false legal retainer agreement and that he did so to avoid making the payments to the Federal Elections Commission ( FEC ).
Trump has not been charged with any wrongdoing by the FEC or federal prosecutors, which is a result of unsuccessful earlier prosecutions of politicians for comparable payments and the difficulty of demonstrating that non-disclosure payments made to protect one’s personal reputation are generally campaign expenses.
On Thursday, Cohen’s defense attorney Todd Blanche attacked important points of his story while he was on the witness have. He has already been found guilty of lying to Congress. For instance, Cohen testified , for the prosecution on strong investigation Tuesday that he discussed the payment to Daniels in an October 2016 telephone call. However, that state was discredited after Blanche displayed text messages and phone logs that suggested the telephone call was about a different subject.
Even Anderson Cooper and Elie Honig, who are n’t big fans of Trump, thought Cohen’s credibility had been damaged.
Anderson Cooper on Michael Cohen:” I think this guy is making it up as he goes along,” Anderson Cooper said. photograph. twitter.com/4Pfp5MQctG
— MAGA War Room ( @MAGAIncWarRoom ) May 16, 2024
” I do think this guy is making it up as he goes along,” Cooper said.” If I were a jury in this case watching that, I do believe that.”
Cohen was given the opportunity to witness that the non-disclosure arrangement was “private” in nature and that nothing in the agreement itself was unlawful.
They even damaged Cohen’s state that Trump instructed him to create a search to model , Karen McDougal as part of another non- reporting deal. Cohen had testified that Trump’s use of the word” money” referred to writing a check, but Blanche’s mix- examination produced replies that suggested” money” just referred to a transaction made without borrowing money, as in real estate transactions.
Joel B. Pollak is Top Editor- at- Big at Breitbart News and the number of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday night from 7 p. m. to 10 p. m. ET ( 4 p. m. to 7 p. m. Platinum ). He is the creator of the new memoir, Rhoda: ‘ Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the creator of the new electronic- book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U. S. Presidential Election. He is a success of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Following him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
