Here's some of what we knew about Michael Cohen before Thursday's cross-examination: He used to work for Donald Trump, he's been caught lying, repeatedly, and he paid $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election, back when he was still working for the former president.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche spent his first couple hours with Cohen establishing that he now hates his old boss. Blanche would read a mean and usually profane post on social media and Cohen would respond that yeah, it "sounds like" something he would have said. It was, by most observers' accounts, a dubious approach that didn't even touch the specific claims Cohen made on the stand that are relevant to the case: that he made that six-figure payment on Trump's behalf, with Trump's knowledge and with the understanding that he would be paid back in such a way that the hush money would not have to be disclosed on a campaign finance report.
That was the setup, at least. Then Blanche got to Cohen's record of lying, including in court. Trump's former personal attorney admitted to a federal judge that he engaged in tax evasion, a crime he was charged with alongside a campaign finance violation for the Daniels payment. But he later denied that he ever intended to evade taxes, a line he committed to on Thursday, claiming he only pleaded guilty to avoid his wife getting dragged in to his legal problems.
Then Blanche brought up another time Cohen lied: before Congress. From the defense perspective, this case of dishonesty — which Cohen admitted to in 2018 — further undermines his credibility before jurors. Can you trust a man who swore an oath to tell the truth, but then didn't, to tell the truth today?
The problem for the defense in bringing up that episode is that Cohen was lying on Trump's behalf. According to court documents, he had sought to "minimize links" between a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow and his boss, seeking "to give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended before 'the Iowa caucus ... the very first primary,' in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations."
On the stand Thursday, Cohen said his statement to Congress, which minimized Trump's business dealings with Russia, was drafted with input from the president's own legal counsel.
"I worked with a joint defense agreement and we crafted the two-page document in order to stay on message — the message we all knew Mr. Trump wanted, including Mr. Trump’s attorney at the time," Cohen said.
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Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, argued that the exchange backfired. Cohen "had zero interest, personally," in lying about a Trump Tower, Weissmann told MSNBC, and effectively turned the tables on Blanche by revealing — or, at least, claiming to reveal — that his statement was drafted by a "joint defense committee that included the president of the United States' lawyer."
As with the Daniels pay off, Cohen "just directly implicated Donald Trump in that scheme," Weissmann said.
Again, though: Can you believe him? Charles Coleman, a former Brooklyn prosecutor, said that's not necessarily an issue. Before the cross examination, prosecutors themselves established that Cohen has made false statements; that he would do so for Trump, a man who employed him for a decade, may not be a reach for jurors.
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"I think that the prosecution has ample space to make this case not about Michael Cohen's testimony, given everything else that they've presented," Coleman said on MSNBC. For example, other witnesses, such as David Pecker and a pair of Trump Organization accountants, can help prosecutors show that there was a catch-and-kill scheme for negative stories about Trump, that Cohen was involved, and that he was indeed reimbursed for his troubles under the guise of legal retainer for which no corroborating document exists.
"You don't have to take it firsthand from him if you think that he's a scumbag or unbelievable," Coleman said.
Still, Thursday's cross-examination was probably the best day of the trial for Trump so far. For several hours, it was the prosecution's star witness on the defensive. At its most dramatic, Blanche was yelling at Cohen ("That's a lie!") about an October 2016 phone call. Cohen said he "believed" the call to Trump's bodyguard, Keith Schiller, was one where Trump himself explicitly signed off on the Daniels payment; Blanche asserted that it was actually about a series of harassing phone calls Cohen was complaining about earlier in the day.
Norm Eisen, a legal analyst with CNN, wrote in a commentary that the defense's cross examination started out rocky, exchanges such as that were both "powerful and effective." But he doubted it was enough at this point.
"The defense needed a knockout punch," Eisen wrote. They "didn't get one," he continued. "But it is a closer case."
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