In New York, the fifth week of Donald Trump’s criminal trial has come to an end, with lawyer Michael Cohen testifying for the third day about his interactions with the former president of the United States.
But Trump’s defense team again took the opportunity to try to poke holes in Cohen’s testimony on Thursday, criticizing his credibility, his motivations and even his recall of key events in the criminal case.
Cohen, a former member of Trump’s inner circle, is the prosecution’s star witness — and likely the last one they will call before resting the case.
The former lawyer alleged that Trump, the former Republican president and current presidential candidate, orchestrated a scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 race.
Daniels claimed she had an affair with Trump, and prosecutors say she was about to sell her story to the press when Trump, through Cohen, bought her silence for $130,000.
The payment, they allege, was intended to suppress negative coverage during the 2016 presidential election. At the time, Trump was already under scrutiny for an audio recording in which he described grabbing women by the genitals.
Cohen himself has previously pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations related to hush money payments.
But Trump has denied the allegations against him, as well as the case itself. He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case, one of four criminal charges pending against him.
He is the first US president, past or present, to face criminal charges. Here are the highlights from day 18 of the trial:
Defense questions Cohen’s motives
Immediately on Thursday, the defense resumed attacks on Cohen, investigating the disbarred lawyer for evidence that he was motivated by personal animosity toward Trump.
At the start of the day’s proceedings, they confronted Cohen with recordings of his own voice, clipped from a 2020 podcast, showing the former lawyer relishing the prospect of a Trump conviction.
The recording captured Cohen saying he hoped “this man ends up in prison” and “rots inside for what he did to me and my family.”
“This will not bring back the year I lost or the damage done to my family. But revenge is a dish best served cold,” Cohen said in a clip.
At another point, he said, “You better believe I want this man to fall.”
The audio clips contrasted sharply with Cohen’s relatively demure demeanor on the witness stand: In the podcasts, he was animated, speaking at a furious pace, punctuated by profanity.
The defense also sought to highlight why Cohen felt so much hatred for his former boss. Attorney Todd Blanche hinted that Cohen was seeking a White House position as chief of staff — and ended up disappointed.
“The truth is, Mr. Cohen, you really wanted to work in the White House, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen.
“No, sir,” Cohen responded, later saying that Blanche was not “characterizing” his motivations correctly.
Cohen Testifies He Lied Under Oath
Cohen remains a key pillar of the prosecution’s case, as the only witness who can testify in certain private discussions about hush money payments at the center of the trial.
So on Thursday, the defense continued to undermine his credibility, asking him to revisit the moments in which he lied under oath in order to cast doubt on his current testimony.
Blanche, for example, raised the fact that Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress about a failed attempt to build a version of Trump Tower in Moscow.
“You lied under oath, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen, who replied, “Yes, sir.”
Cohen has long maintained that he lied at the time out of loyalty to Trump.
Blanche also pressed Cohen on statements he made indicating he felt pressured to plead guilty when faced with the 2018 charges, which included tax evasion and campaign finance violations.
When defendants plead guilty in court, they must state that they made the confession of their own free will. Blanche seized on this point to ask Cohen: Did he lie under oath when he said he pleaded guilty of his own free will?
“That wasn’t true,” Cohen said.
The defense also highlighted cases in which Cohen used artificial intelligence to generate false legal citations in a court application, once again calling into question the former lawyer’s reliability.
Defense challenges Cohen’s testimony
Having raised questions about Cohen’s reliability, the defense focused on key moments in his testimony for the prosecution.
Cohen, for example, testified earlier this week that he called Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, in October 2016 as a way to contact Trump himself.
The call, Cohen explained, was about the “Stormy Daniels situation” and the secret payment they planned to transfer to her lawyer.
But on Thursday, Trump’s defense questioned whether that was the real reason Cohen was in contact with Schiller at the time. Blanche, the defense attorney, suggested that Cohen was seeking Schiller’s help in dealing with a 14-year-old who was making aggressive calls to his phone.
Blanche showed the jury text messages that Cohen wrote to Schiller the same night as the 2016 conversation, saying, “Who can I talk to about harassing calls to my cell phone and office?”
He asked Cohen if his description of the 2016 phone conversation “was a lie” and if the focus was on the harassing calls rather than hush money.
“Some of it was about the phone calls, but I knew Keith was with Mr. Trump at the time, and it was more than potentially just that,” Cohen responded.
After a break, Blanche questioned Cohen about how he could remember specific details from so long ago.
“These phone calls are things I’ve been talking about for the last six years,” Cohen said in response. “They were and are extremely important and all-consuming.”
Defense argues that contract was “perfectly legal”
The prosecution responded several times to the defense’s statements, punctuating the interrogation with objections and requests for “parallel” conversations with the judge.
But the defense continued to criticize the prosecution’s central narrative, that Trump tried to conceal the hush money payment to Daniels as part of a broader effort to influence the 2016 election, which he ultimately won.
Instead, Blanche tried to frame the actions as ordinary legal maneuvers.
He presented Cohen with a copy of the non-disclosure agreement signed by Daniels and noted that Trump’s signature was nowhere to be found. He then asked Cohen: “In your opinion, then and now, this is a perfectly legal contract, correct?”
Cohen agreed. “Yes sir.”
He also had Cohen confirm that non-disclosure agreements were a regular practice in business law.
Blanche also questioned whether the secret payments had anything to do with the 2016 elections.
He pointed to previous statements Cohen made about a separate payment made to a doorman, saying Trump was “concerned” about the doorman’s story because it “involved people who still worked with him and worked for him.”
The defense also raised comments in which Cohen echoed Trump’s claim that Daniels was extorting him for money to keep quiet.
“In your mind, there were two options: pay or not pay and the story will come out,” Blanche asked Cohen, who responded with his usual, “Yes, sir.”
Cohen’s interrogation is expected to resume on Monday. Trump requested a recess in the trial on Friday to allow him to attend his youngest son Barron’s graduation.
Trump surrogates fill the courtroom
As much as Cohen was in the spotlight during the day’s proceedings, so was the group of Republican lawmakers who accompanied Trump to court.
Trump is famous for demanding loyalty from his fellow Republicans — and so, as the trial drags on, several prominent politicians have made the pilgrimage to Manhattan Criminal Court to show their support.
As of Thursday, that entourage included no fewer than nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Andy Biggs of Arizona.
In fact, so many members of the House Oversight Committee were present that a vote was postponed to allow them to return to Washington, DC from New York.
That vote concerns a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland liable for contempt for failing to turn over audio recordings related to another Trump case, this time concerning his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
However, while in New York, several of the representatives took the opportunity to denounce the myriad of legal problems facing Trump.
Gaetz, for example, described Trump as “Mr. Potato Head of crimes”, a reference to a children’s toy with interchangeable parts.
He explained that prosecutors “had to put together a lot of things that didn’t add up” to piece together a case against the former president.
Gaetz also drew criticism for a social media post he made Thursday morning showing him watching Trump enter the courtroom.
“Standing aside and standing by, Mr. President,” Gaetz wrote.
Critics pointed out that his words echoed a statement Trump made in 2020 when asked in a televised debate about white supremacist groups and far-right militias like the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said at the time. He later denied knowing who the Proud Boys were. Since then, senior members of the group have been arrested for their participation in the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol.
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