Cross-examination of #MichaelCohen resumes, an opportunity for the defense to poke holes in his testimony & perhaps trip up or provoke the state’s key witness. The questioning of Cohen, #Trump’s fmr fixer, is the beginning of the end of Trump’s #criminal trial, which began April 15 & might conclude before Memorial Day weekend at this pace.
The Manhattan DA investigator #MichaelCohen was texting, Jeremy Rosenberg, was reportedly taken off the case after becoming close w/Cohen. #Blanche asks Cohen about the texts, but Prosecutor Susan #Hoffinger asked for a mid-cross #VoirDire, to question Cohen about the #evidence.
When she established that the texts had been taken out of context, she called for a #sidebar. Her objection was sustained, so Blanche is prevented from doing whatever he was trying to do.
There’s laughing when Justice #Merchan shoots down Todd #Blanche, #Trump's lawyer. Blanche asked for a sidebar & got a dismissive “no” from Merchan.
We’ve had 10 objections in <20 mins.
Defense plays a recording of #MichaelCohen celebrating Trump's indictment on his podcast. His voice is loud & enthusiastic to the point of seeming off-putting.
#Blanche plays a 2nd clip of #MichaelCohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes “that this man ends up in prison,” & “revenge is a dish best served cold,” & “you better believe I want this man to go down & rot inside for what he did to me & my family.”
Blanche asks Cohen if he believes his podcasts & media interviews played a role in #Trump's #indictment. “I took some credit, yes,” he says.
#MichaelCohen is asked if he responded to a post on Truth Social in which #Trump attacked Cohen & #StormyDaniels. He responds: “I’m not on Truth Social, sir.” But when asked if he responded elsewhere by calling Trump “dumbass Donald,” he agrees that he did.
#Blanche, referring to Cohen’s many instances of testifying in the past, in courts & in Congress, asks him if he swore an oath when he testified. Trump’s lawyers have accused Cohen of lying under oath.
Over the years, #MichaelCohen has repeatedly admitted to lying to Congress & elsewhere.
#Blanche asks Cohen to recall the lies he told to Congress about how many times he spoke to #Trump about a possible Trump Tower project in #Russia. Blanche’s goal is to show the jury Cohen is opportunistic even under oath. However, these were lies that Cohen has said he told to protect Trump.
#Blanche has yet to ask #MichaelCohen about anything in connection to the actual case that's on trial.
Trump's lawyers have focused on impeaching the credibility of the prosecution's 2 biggest witnesses, #StormyDaniels & Cohen. Though while Susan #Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels was largely focused & had an arc, Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen has been all over the place.
#Blanche's strategy seems to be repeating the word “lie” in every other sentence. If you’re a bored juror right now, you are hearing lie, lie, lie, lie. Even if you’re having trouble following the substance of Cohen's various lies, you are hearing an overall picture of dishonesty.
The risk for the defense here is that the jurors are reminded during closing arguments that #Trump hired this self-acknowledged liar & made him his lawyer, & hold Trump accountable for that.
#Blanche is now asking about the #FBI search of #MichaelCohen’s phones & his hotel room & office in April 2018, & the investigation into taxi medallions that Cohen had. Cohen walks through his partnership w/a man who cooperated w/the investigation, calmly & coherently. Jurors are paying close attention.
Cohen is knowledgeable & articulate about the ins & outs of the NYC taxi industry, even providing the exact number of the medallions allowing taxis to operate.
This tangent is a strange & seems irrelevant. #Blanche asks #MichaelCohen to explain how the taxi medallion business works. Why is this a topic of questioning?
Blanche is hopefully building to some questions about the actual case at hand.
Apparently not, because Blanche moves on to Cohen’s guilty plea in Aug 2018, & gets Cohen to say that he “never denied the underlying facts” of the plea, & that he simply thought he shouldn’t have been charged.
#Blanche notes that #MichaelCohen said under oath that he accepted responsibility & then later undermined that outside of court. (Something #Trump constantly does)
A similar tack tripped Cohen up when he was questioned about his federal guilty pleas at Trump’s #civil#fraud trial. He was led into saying he had lied about one of the pleas itself. But earlier in the trial he clarified that he thought he had not been charged,but was not objecting to the underlying facts
This case largely rests on #MichaelCohen tying #Trump to knowledge of how the false business records at the center of the case were structured. #Blanche is portraying Cohen as an indiscriminate liar who changes his story situationally.
Blanche is trying to show that Cohen has not fully taken responsibility for his #crimes & blames others, for corruption. However, by showing that Cohen lashing out at the judge & prosecutors, Blanche is making him sound a lot like Trump.
#Blanche is using #MichaelCohen’s claims of widespread corruption — in which Cohen has accused not just Manhattan federal prosecutors but the judge in his case of being out to get him — against him. He is also using his previous testimony that he didn’t commit the #crimes to which he pleaded against him.
Blanche finally arrives at the moment that prosecutors sought to prep the jury for: That Cohen said under oath at #Trump's civil #fraud trial he had lied to a federal judge.
That’s the thing about criminals, they work with other criminals.
Duh.
#Blanche is now demonstrating for the jury that #MichaelCohen lied under oath for different reasons. By his own admission, it wasn’t only to demonstrate his #loyalty to #Trump. He lied also, Cohen admits, because the stakes affected him personally.
#Blanche has already shown w/ #MichaelCohen's podcast clips that this case affects Cohen in a deeply personal way & he wants revenge against #Trump. This may cause jurors to wonder whether Cohen might be willing to stretch the truth to get it.
Blanche continues to harp on Cohen’s lies to a federal judge, a prosecutor objects several times. The judge sustains. The objections may have been made because Blanche had already asked a version of the same questions.
#Blanche is showing #MichaelCohen’s lack of remorse. Cohen has talked publicly about wanting to right the wrongs he committed while working for #Trump. Blanche is getting him to say he doesn’t think he should have been charged.
Blanche asks Cohen about blaming a lot of people for the conduct for which he was convicted. Cohen freely acknowledges he has.
#Blanche tries to connect #MichaelCohen having lied in his federal sentencing, when the outcome affected him personally, to his testimony here. “Do you have any doubt in your mind that the outcome of this trial affects you personally?” Blanche asks.
Throughout his cross-examination, Cohen has remained calm. He appeared mildly frustrated once but just shook his head after he answered one of Blanche’s questions.
#Blanche is now going over the financial transactions that allowed #MichaelCohen to pay #HushMoney to #StormyDaniels, perhaps the closest he's gotten to the subject matter of the case.
He notes that Cohen hid those transactions from his wife, apparently seeking to call into question whether Cohen was really as concerned about his family - & his wife — as he suggested when explaining his federal guilty plea.
#Blanche asked #MichaelCohen about a number of different events, including an exchange of public statements w/ Michael #Avenatti, one of #StormyDaniels's lawyers, & conversations w/his wife. He ended by asking Cohen if he had deleted his communications w/his wife around that time, & Cohen seemed genuinely stumped. Then Blanche asks if Cohen, around this time, had taken to deleting his texts more generally.
#Blanche says that #MichaelCohen has explained the distance between the 2 statements in different ways. At one point, under oath, he said that he had not explored a pardon, his lawyers had. At another point, also under oath, he said that that the seeming disparity stemmed from a semantic distinction between past & present tenses.
Blanche presses Cohen on whether he used semantics in his reply regarding whether he sought a pardon from #Trump or not.
#MichaelCohen tries to explain the disparity #Blanche has been harping on involving if he sought a pardon. Cohen says a pardon was dangled, & he asked his lawyers, “Is this really something that they’re talking about? Can you find out?” But Blanche continues to focus on what he says were Cohen’s lies about the episode.
Blanche may have successfully made Cohen come across as dishonest. But he has yet to succeed in the goal of getting under Cohen’s skin.
Jurors will have to determine when — if ever — #MichaelCohen began telling the truth. #Blanche is demonstrating that Cohen told lies, big & small, over a long period of time & for various reasons.
At the same time, prosecutors have & will demonstrate in re-direct & closing arguments that #Trump has told lies, big & small, about a number of people & issues in this & other cases.
In earlier testimony, #MichaelCohen made #RobertCostello (#Giuliani ally & lawyer who offered services to Cohen in 2018 when he was under investigation) sound as if he were an intermediary for #Trump, trying to keep Cohen #loyal. #Blanche is trying to complicate the relationship, asking if Costello told Cohen he had the option to cooperate w/ #law enforcement.
Reporting is #Costello’s role was convoluted, but Cohen did accept some legal advice from him at that time.
After the break, prosecutors are arguing that #Blanche, early in his questioning, asked questions that seemed to suggest that #Trump's #indictment was still sealed on March 30. The indictment was unsealed that evening, after NYT broke the news. The unsealing allowed the DA’s office to confirm that the news was true.
Prosecutors ask Justice #Merchan to explain this sequence to the jury. Merchan agrees that the jury should be advised.
#Merchan decides that #Blanche can do it in his own questioning. But prosecutors, Matthew #Colangelo & Joshua #Steinglass, argue that it it should come from Merchan because the questions were so misleading.
Merchan tells prosecutors that they can draft a version of an order that the judge himself would give if Blanche’s corrections end up being insufficient.
Justice #Merchan announces court will not be in session as usual next Wed, bc jurors won’t be free.
#Blanche, asks #MichaelCohen to clarify that he has met w/several sets of prosecutors & testimony about their conversations can be confusing. “Help the jury understand that,” he says. “There’s 2 separate prosecutors?”
Cohen confirms that he met w/both the #SpecialCounsel’s office in DC, during the #Russia investigation, & Manhattan federal prosecutors, where Blanche used to work.