NEW YORK — In 2011, Stormy Daniels’ manager called a lawyer to complain that “some idiot” had called her and threatened to sue her over a blog post alleging that the porn star slept with Donald Trump.
“I hate to ask it this way,” Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said Tuesday while questioning the lawyer, “but who was that idiot?”
Keith Davidson, who testified in Trump’s first criminal trial, frequently paused before answering Steinglass’ questions. But not this one.
“Michael Cohen,” Davidson replied without hesitation.
A former personal lawyer and Trump fixer, Cohen is expected to be a star witness in the district attorney’s office’s case against the former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to money-hiding deals. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Cohen’s conduct is at the heart of the case. Prosecutors hope to convince a jury of 12 New Yorkers who will determine Trump’s fate that Cohen, now working against his former boss, can be trusted.
But the image of Cohen portrayed to jurors at this point is hardly of value.
Some prosecutors’ witnesses attacked him, calling Cohen difficult to work with, to the point that they actively wanted to avoid him.
At one point, Davidson compared Cohen to the dog in the Disney movie “Up” who is repeatedly distracted by squirrels.
“He was highly excitable, the kind of guy who catches fire. He had a lot of things going on,” Davidson said. “I would often talk on the phone with him, he would take another call, talk with both ears.”
Cohen paid Daniels hush money that prosecutors say Trump illegally hid and helped set up two other so-called “catch and kill” deals to keep negative stories about Trump silent before the 2016 election.
Davidson, who represented Daniels and another woman paid, told jurors that Cohen “created the drama,” describing how he made excuses and contradicted himself.
Daniels and her manager, Gina Rodriguez, also repeatedly expressed frustration during negotiations. In addition to calling Trump’s former fixer an “idiot,” Rodriguez on one occasion referred to him as “that idiot Cohen,” according to Davidson.
Even Cohen’s former banker, Gary Farro, who testified earlier in the day, said Cohen was given to him as a client because he was skilled at working with people “who can be a little challenging.”
That has made Trump’s fixer-turned-foe an easy punching bag for defense lawyers, who seek to portray him as untrustworthy and selfish.
“I maintain that he cannot be trusted,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said during his opening statement.
The prosecutor’s office warned New Yorkers who will decide Trump’s fate that Cohen has “some baggage,” but prosecutors hope to convince the jury that their star witness is still credible. During jury selection, Steinglass and other prosecutors sought to eliminate people who would turn a blind eye to Cohen.
“The evidence will also show why you can credit Michael Cohen’s testimony despite past mistakes,” Steinglass said during his opening statement.
Cohen’s former legal counsel, Lanny Davis, told The Hill that the negative characterizations attributed to Cohen by witnesses are a thing of the past.
“All the characterizations and personal accusations, and everything else about Michael Cohen, is in the past,” he said. “Since he raised his hand in front of the American people and the entire world, in public, under oath, he has owned up to all his crimes in the name of Donald Trump.”
Cohen once said he would take a bullet for Trump, defending his former client so fiercely that he earned the nickname the former president’s personal “pit bull.”
“That means if someone does something that Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I will do everything in my power to resolve the issue for Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen told ABC News of the nickname in 2011. “If you do something wrong , I will attack you, grab you by the neck and I won’t let you go until I’m done.
Cohen first came out against Trump in 2018, months after the FBI raided his office, his hotel room and his Park Avenue home as part of a federal investigation led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Millions of electronic files, including emails and bank records, as well as eight boxes of documents, were seized.
It was then that he decided to “tell the truth” to his “family and country” — and “accept the punishment,” Davis said.
“He apologized for what he did for Donald Trump,” he said.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to federal campaign finance and other charges, although he was released early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, he has become one of Trump’s most vocal critics, hurling insults online or in the media while testifying against his former client in multiple venues.
During Trump’s civil fraud trial earlier this year, Cohen testified that he “reverse engineered” Trump’s net worth to reach a number the former president liked. But under cross-examination, past contradictions led him to back down — an exchange that served as lasting fodder for Trump and his lawyers.
The New York judge in that case ultimately ruled that Cohen’s testimony was credible, which Davis cited as a reason to believe Cohen now.
In recent weeks, Cohen has published a series of online attacks against Trump, calling the former president derogatory names and taunting him over a gag order that the judge in the case, Juan Merchan, imposed on his speech.
But Cohen recently withdrew from publishing comments about Trump until after testifying at the former president’s trial “out of respect for Judge Merchan and the prosecutors.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
