Michael Cohen – the most important witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Donald Trump – will take the stand on Monday for what is expected to be at least two days of testimony against his former boss in the first criminal trial of a former president from the USA.
On the witness stand, Cohen will be sitting just meters from Trump, whom he has repeatedly mocked on social media and in interviews, including since the start of the trial.
Cohen will be cross-examined by veteran prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, who has been preparing Cohen for his testimony for about a year. He will be questioned by Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche.
The road for Cohen to reach this moment was long. He has spoken intermittently with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office over the past five years, and investigators from the district attorney’s office even visited him three times while he was in federal prison in Otisville, New York, in 2019 and 2020.
Your testimony is crucial to the prosecution. Cohen, who at one point worked as Trump’s self-described “fixer,” paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign so that she would not go public with her claim that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. He had previously said he made the payment “at Trump’s direction.”
Trump repaid Cohen in a series of payments in 2017, during the first months of his presidency. Prosecutors accuse Trump of falsifying business records related to these payments, classifying them as legal services under a retainer agreement; the prosecutor says no such agreement existed.
“Cohen was not being paid for legal services. The defendant was repaying an illegal payment to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the election,” said prosecutor Matthew Colangelo in his opening statement.
Daniels testified at the trial last week.
Blanche said in her opening statement that Cohen was in fact being paid for his legal services and “cannot be trusted.”
“You will learn that Mr. Cohen misrepresented conversations in which the only witness present in the conversation was Mr. Cohen and, allegedly, President Trump,” Blanche said.
“He is a convicted felon. And he is also a convicted perjurer. He is a self-confessed liar,” Blanche added, referring in part to Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea to making false statements to Congress about a proposed project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Prosecutors said he lied to downplay Trump’s ties to Russia, which were being scrutinized by Congress and federal investigators at the time.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to a series of other criminal charges, including tax fraud, in what a federal judge called a “veritable hodgepodge” of criminal conduct when he sentenced him to three years in prison.
Blanche also told the jury that Cohen is “obsessed” with Trump and blames him for “virtually all of his problems.”
Cohen has repeatedly mocked Trump on social media and in interviews, including since the start of the trial, prompting the judge presiding over the trial to warn that Cohen could be left out of the joke. order this prevents Trump from attacking witnesses if he continues like this.
In court on Friday, Blanche asked Judge Juan Merchan to impose a separate gag order on Cohen for the remainder of the trial, noting that despite his public assurances that he would stop attacking Trump, Cohen had recently worn a t-shirt featuring Trump behind bars in an orange jumpsuit during a TikTok broadcast.
Merchan did not grant the gag order request, but ordered prosecutors to “communicate to Mr. Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any further statements about this case, about Mr. Cohen.”
Trump has repeatedly criticized Cohen before reporters and on social media since 2018, when his former lawyer began cooperating with authorities against him. These comments and posts — which violate the gag order — resulted in thousands of dollars in court fines against Trump.
Trump has seen Cohen testify against him before. During last year’s civil fraud trial against Trump and his company, Cohen was a key witness for the New York Attorney General’s Office. At one point, Trump stormed out during Cohen’s testimony.
Cohen’s testimony this week comes as the hush money trial approaches the finish line. Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the judge Friday that the prosecutor only had two witnesses remaining and said it was likely the prosecution would rest until the end of this week.
Trial proceedings will be shortened this week — the court will not be in session on Wednesday, nor will there be any activity on Friday so that Trump can attend his son’s high school graduation.
It is unclear whether Trump will testify in his own defense. He is under no obligation to do so.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
