CNN
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Jurors in Donald Trump’s first criminal trial now have revenge on his ex-fixer Michael Cohen for profane social media trolling, with dreams of seeing his once-admired boss in prison No wonder they consider him a liar with a burning heart.
But jurors don’t have to like Cohen. They just have to believe in him.
President Trump’s self-proclaimed former “thug” faced continued challenges from defense attorney Todd Branch on Tuesday during cross-examination aimed at shattering his credibility as the star witness in the former president’s alleged criminal activities. I was attacked. But importantly, he remained calm in the stands. So far, he has avoided traps that fatally undermined the case.
Cohen will have time to assess the situation on Wednesday, a regular day off from the trial, and it will also give the Trump campaign an opportunity to tighten its approach. Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican nominee plans to use the opportunity to launch fundraising efforts in Ohio and Kentucky before the court resumes Thursday.
Cohen has already been directly implicated in President Trump’s payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair, a scheme intended to influence the 2016 election. There is evidence from the prosecution that clearly supports this. (Mr. Trump denies having an affair and maintains his innocence).
Therefore, the defense’s task in cross-examination was to significantly undermine Cohen’s credibility and to sow reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about the broader case.
Blanche highlighted Cohen’s penchant for serial lies, highlighting the long list of insults he has hurled at Trump since his estrangement with the former leader. He drew jurors’ attention to social media posts in which Cohen weaved a tale of bigotry and obsession by wearing a T-shirt depicting Trump in prison. Mr. Blanche also told witnesses he had built a lucrative business, especially in his book that focused on his criticism of the former president. He asked if Cohen had called Trump a “vile comic misogynist.” Mr. Cohen replied, “That sounds like something I would say.” Trump’s lawyers then asked whether Trump had derided the former president as a “cheat-filled cartoon villain.”
Blanche also brought out Cohen’s resentment toward Trump by questioning him about an April TikTok post in which he said Trump was “in a cage like an animal,” and in closing arguments, the jury He tried to emphasize his resentment to the members. And he asked for confirmation that he also called the alleged Republican nominee a “dictator idiot.”
Michael Moore, a former U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, said the defense has made some progress in impeaching Cohen’s credibility. “I’m really convinced that the jury probably now thinks that Mr. Cohen is a fraud and a kook,” said CNN legal analyst Moore. “He’s obviously making money off of this, and he’s clearly someone who has taken it upon himself to sell books.”
But what is notable about Blanche is that Cohen is less concerned with the core issue of the case, whether President Trump falsified business records as part of a cover-up intended to mislead voters in an earlier incident in 2016. They were primarily focused on efforts to undermine his character, motives, and credibility. Election interference.
As always, when Trump’s subordinates perform before their superiors, there was a sense that Blanche’s performance was as much for the client’s benefit as the case. And in a bizarre debut on cross-examination, Blanche was reprimanded by Judge Juan Marchand for talking about herself, pointing out that Cohen had called her a “crying son of a bitch” on TikTok. I got it.
As the courtroom went dark on Wednesday, questions surrounding the case began with how badly Blanche’s frontal assault damaged Cohen’s testimony and the prosecution.
All eyes are on what approach the defense will take, given that prosecutors have already indicated that they do not plan to call further witnesses after Cohen’s testimony. Will Trump’s lawyers bring in numerous witnesses? Or could they adopt the bold strategy of simply claiming that the prosecution is woefully inadequate in proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt, and dramatically resting?
Then there are the first signs that Trump wants to testify in his own defense. The former president loves the stage, and he considers himself his own best advocate, even though history often shows the opposite. But many lawyers believe that having him on the stand would be a potential disaster for the defense, given his volatile temperament and difficulty telling the truth.
A key legal question is whether prosecutors have so far succeeded in testing the legal theory behind the case. “I think the misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt,” former U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. “The felony charge is a little tougher because you have to say that Mr. Trump knowingly and knowingly intended to violate New York election law by illegal means. That illegal means violated federal campaign finance law. Scheindlin added, “Cohen has come a long way to make that case.”
As the prosecution case draws to a close, there is also a growing sense that the fateful moment is nearing, when President Trump will have to wait for a jury to decide whether he will become the first president to be convicted of a crime. That feeling was compounded by new Trump supporters in court Tuesday, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. The Louisiana Republican apparently tried to delegitimize the trial, bolstering Trump’s claims that he was a victim of weaponized justice and threatening a possible conviction with early political developments. The president threw his full symbolic weight into what was clearly an attempt to avoid this. “These are politically motivated trials and they are a disgrace,” Mr Johnson said outside court on Tuesday. “It’s election interference,” he said.
It’s impossible to know how the jury will interpret the testimony until a verdict is reached, but even so, in high-profile cases like this one, jurors often don’t elaborate on their verdicts in media interviews. I often choose.
Some legal experts on Tuesday questioned the tone and tactics Blanche used in court. Mr. Cohen’s reluctance to answer “yes” or “no” could have been perceived as frivolous or confrontational, but he did not say or do anything that would disrupt the prosecution’s case. Apparently not. Despite his lawyer’s constant reprimands and attempts to get him off his game by jumping erratically from topic to topic, he does not explode against Blanche. “We haven’t seen a major disaster yet,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN.
But CNN legal analyst Moore defended Blanche’s approach to confusing the timeline of evidence to undermine Cohen’s pretrial preparations. “We want to let people tell the story on their own terms rather than following a script,” Moore said.
Prosecutors knew Blanche’s attack was coming and worked all Tuesday morning to unravel the story of the payments to Daniels and their purpose. Manhattan prosecutor Susan Hoffinger sought to undermine the defense’s argument that Mr. Trump’s reimbursement to Mr. Cohen was part of a fee for legal services and not repaid as hush money to Mr. Daniels. did.
In a key moment in the trial that had repercussions outside the courtroom, given the duties President Trump has placed on many of his aides and subordinates, Cohen described the moment he broke with his former boss.
“My family, my wife, my daughter, my son, they all said, ‘Why do you stay loyal? What are you doing?'” Cohen said, adding that it’s time to listen. “I will no longer lie for President Trump.”
