Trump lawyer takes Aim at Cohen at trial

By; Aysha Bagchi
Sudiksha Kochi
Bart Jansen
and Kinsey Crowley
USA Today

..... Former President Donald Trump's defense attorney continued lashing star witness Micheal Cohen on Thursday [05/16/2024] in Trump's New York hush money case declaring. "that was a lie!"
..... Cohen is the final witness for the prosecution. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's team is trying to show Trump falsified records to cover up unlawfully interfering in the 2016 presidential election through a $130,000 hush money payment he authorized Cohen to send to adult film start Stormy Daniels. Trump pleaded not guilty and said he did not have sex with Daniels.
..... Trump's former personal lawyer and estranged ally delivered crucial testimony for the prosecution earlier this week. [05/14/2024] Cohen said not only that Trump told him to make the payment, but that the president approved a scheme to characterizer the reimbursement as monthly checks for 2017 legal services.
..... The beginning of Trump defense lawyer Todd Blanche's cross-examination of Cohen on Tuesday [05/14/2024] - before an off day in the trial on Wednesday [05/15/2024] - focused on undermining Cohen's credibility by highlighting his animus toward Trump and motivations to help the prosecution, not the actual charges in the case.
..... Blanche pick up Thursday [05/16/2024] where he left off, playing a recording in which Cohen thanked Bragg for indicting Trump. It ""fills with delight," Cohen said on the tape. Now he continued, Trump will get a taste of what Cohen went through: "I promise you, it's not fun."
..... Cohen said he hoped Trump ends up in prison, using an expletive before the word "hope," and will "rot inside for what he did to me and my family."
..... At the same time, Cohen said in the recording, he felt sadness because it was an embarrassment to the office of th presidency.
..... Blanche then began attacking Cohen's past dishonesty. the ex-lawyer pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and the Internal Revenue Service in 2018. But he has said he lied in the plea.
..... Cohen told jurors his lawyer told him he had 48 hours to accept a plea or face a federal indictment that would also target his wife. "I elected to protect my family," he said.
..... Under questing, Cohen said he never denied the underlying facts, but he didn't believe he should have been criminally charged.
..... Along with skewering Cohen's credibility, Blanche appeased to be casting doubt on whether the disbarred lawyer actually violated campaign finance law.

'You can admit it!'

..... Blanche needled Cohen about exploring the potential for a presidential pardon, In 2019, Cohen told Congress, "I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.
..... Cohen confirmed he had, in fact, talked to lawyer Robert Costello about a pardon. "I wanted this nightmare to end," he said.
..... Blanche then suggested that Cohen was disappointed that after all the work he had done for Trump, no one offered him a position in the White House, naming him only personal attorney to the president. There, Cohen disagreed: "That's not accurate," he said. "T Hat's the role that I wanted" - because he could monetize it, "which I did,"
..... And then the accusations and Denials hit a boiling point.
..... Cohen previously testified that eh had a call with Trump's bodyguard where he let Trump know that the Daniels payment was being taken care of: "Always run everything by the boss immediately," he said.
..... "That was a lie!" Blanche exclaimed twice. "You can admit it!" The call was instead, he claimed, to discuss harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old.
..... "No, sir," Cohen responded, eh was "not certain" Blanche was accurate. Cohen said he believed he also spoke to Trump about the Daniels matter in the call.
..... "We are not asking for your belief!" Blanche said heatedly.
..... Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger at that point made an objection, which Judge Juan Merchan sustained.

Support for Trump

..... The presumptive GOP presidential nominee had plenty of support Thursday [05/16/2024] from members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus.
..... Se vernal sat inside and about a dozen assembled outside midmorning to attack people in the trial, which Trump is barred from doing under a gag order.
..... "We here of our own vitiation because there are things that we can say that Trump is unjustly not allowed to say," said Representative Matt Gaetz, R-Florida. "this is a corrupt judge. These are corrupted witnesses. This is a corrupt prosecution that belies any sense of the facts or the law. We're going to keep speaking out against this." In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Gaetz appeared to reference Trump's infamous 2020 debate line to the extremist Proud boys, "Stand back and stand by," positing a photo of himself at the courthouse with the caption, "Standing back and standing by, Mr President."
..... Representative Bob Good R-Virginia, called the judge corrupt because his "daughter is one of the leading fundraisers for the Democrat Party."
..... She works for a digital marketing firm. An ethics panel cleared Merchan to preside at the trial.

Contributing: Reuters

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