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Items tagged with: michaelcohen
After #MichaelCohen is off the stand, the defense will have an opportunity to present its own case, calling witnesses & questioning them to try to seed reasonable doubt within the jury. Prosecutors can then put on additional #witnesses to rebut expert witness testimony.
Though from what #Trump’s attys have said, it sounds like they aren’t going to bother calling any witnesses or putting on a #defense — I guess they don’t have one.
#criminal #law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
#MichaelCohen has been called back to the stand. The jury to be brought in.
#Trump atty Todd #Blanche continues cross-examination.
Blanche asks about texts between Cohen & the DA’s office.
Cohen agrees that texts shown w/ DA investigator are from around same time that he told a grand jury he was going to hold Trump accountable.
We are now on our third sidebar today.
#law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics #GagOrder #StochasticTerrorism #NodFarter
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.
#MichaelCohen says that he learned that #Trump was indicted before the #indictment was unsealed in the courtroom, when NYT broke that news in 2023. He says Rosenberg alerted him to that article.
Blanche’s point here seems to be that Rosenberg, the investigator, did something inappropriate, alerting Cohen to the fact that the indictment had been handed up. But NYT broke that news widely before the indictment was unsealed.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
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.
Some jurors seem uncomfortable.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#MichaelCohen seems deflated after hearing that clip. Blanche asks if that was the first time that he had said he wanted #Trump to feel what Cohen himself had felt when he was prosecuted. Cohen says that he had expressed that sentiment before.
Reportedly Cohen’s voice sounded truly odd in the podcast clip. Giddy, high-pitched, & speaking so fast that it sounded as if the tape had been artificially sped up.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
#Trump is paying close attention, as clips play of #MichaelCohen describing how much he hates Trump & wants him to rot in prison.
Prosecution used earlier witnesses to introduce Michael Cohen to the jury as an outsized personality. + Cohen has not been shy on the stand about his hatred of Trump. These clips, while entertaining, might not come as a huge shock to the jury.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#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: “You knew you were lying, correct?”
Cohen: “Yes”
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump
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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump
#Blanche then asks if prosecutors pressured him to plead guilty, & #MichaelCohen says his lawyer conveyed that he had only 48 hrs to decide.
Blanche uses the language of the #law. When Cohen pleaded, he was asked whether anyone had “threatened or induced you to plead guilty.” Blanche links that to Cohen saying his lawyer told him his wife was under threat, & suggests that when Cohen said no to that question, he lied. Cohen agrees that he did.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump
#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.
All #criminal trials involve #testimony from other #criminals.
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.
#law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#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.
#criminal #law #Trump #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
The defense is trying to suggest that #MichaelCohen has a history of manipulating the types of phone records that prosecutors have used here to bolster their case.
Blanche seizes on another lie: Cohen had testified years ago that he had never asked for a pardon, but testifies here today - as he did in a deposition - that he did, in fact, direct his lawyers to explore the possibility of a pardon.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #MobTactics
#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 admits he asked his lawyers to explore the possibility, although he testified before a House panel that he would never have accepted one. Cohen points out — correctly, as NYT broke the story — that Trump was dangling pardons to people connected to the special counsel's investigation into the #Trump campaign's possible ties to #Russia.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
#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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #Trump
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.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics
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.
#TrumpTrial 🧵 Thursday 16 May 2024
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.
#law #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics #NodFarter #StormyDaniels
#Hoffinger, the prosecutor asks #MichaelCohen specific questions about the recording.
Cohen says that when he insisted that David #Pecker be paid, he made reference to Pecker's dossier on #Trump. And he says that while he said "financing," he meant "funding," meaning he was asking how Pecker would be repaid for silencing #KarenMcDougal's story.
#criminal #law #DeadBeat #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics #StormyDaniels
#MichaelCohen says that the recording he made of himself talking to #Trump cuts off because a bank employee called him & he
"must have believed" the call was important.
But Cohen says he continued to speak to Trump about the #HushMoney deal w/ #KarenMcDougal after the recording ended.
This is another piece of #evidence that Trump's lawyers have sought to delve into, questioning why the call ended abruptly suggesting that Cohen may have manipulated evidence.
#MichaelCohen's testimony about #AllenWeisselberg's financial advice on the #KarenMcDougal deal explains why Cohen would go on to pay #StormyDaniels, borrowing against his home. He says Weisselberg told him not to go through the #TrumpOrganization -linking the payment to #Trump's company would defeat the purpose- but to come up w/other more creative ways to pay.
This will help prosecutors explain why Cohen made the #HushMoney payment in such a roundabout way.
#Trump seems to have paid attention to very little of #MichaelCohen's testimony so far. He spent the first hour or so sitting still at the defense table with his eyes closed. After the morning break he's been awake but reading through printouts as he often does - likely news clippings printed by his staff.
#criminal #law #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney #MobTactics #NodFarter #GagOrder #StormyDaniels #KarenMcDougal
Prosecution presents details of the financial transactions that #MichaelCohen originally planned to use to reimburse David #Pecker for the payment to #KarenMcDougal.
Cohen says that Pecker was not the one who was ultimately going to pay to silence the story. It was "Mr. Trump." &, as we look at his call history, he says that a 7-min call placed to Trump on 29 Sept, 2016 -a month before the election — was to inform #Trump that the McDougal matter was “being resolved."
#MichaelCohen says after all that, #Pecker called & told him that #Trump would not have to pay. Cohen said he looked forward to telling Trump this, because it "would make him very happy."
Cohen says Pecker's explanation was that the #KarenMcDougal deal had ended up being good for his co. But the jury heard from Pecker during his testimony, that he had spoken to his general counsel & decided that he did not want to be repaid - because he was worried about committing a #crime.
#MichaelCohen testifies about being in London when the #AccessHollywood tape came out shortly before the #election. He says he got an email from #SteveBannon, who was the CEO of the #Trump campaign at the time.
Prosecution displays an email exchange about the tape that was forwarded to him by Bannon. Top campaign ofcls including the press sec
#HopeHicks, the campaign manager #KellyanneConway & the deputy campaign manager #DavidBossie were also on the email.
Part of Prosecution’s purpose is to make clear that #MichaelCohen is who the campaign staff members went to when they needed to address an issue related to a #woman alleging sexual misconduct by #Trump.
Cohen says Trump described the language heard on the #AccessHollywood tape as "locker room talk," & that Trump suggested that descriptor came from his wife, #Melania.
🤯 if she was in on the spin, the argument trump was concerned about her is BS.
#criminal #law #Trump #TrumpTrial
Before court adjourned on Friday, Justice #Merchan asked prosecutors to tell #MichaelCohen to stop talking shit about #Trump, after a defense lawyer alerted the court to a recent TikTok video in which Cohen wore a shirt w/ a picture of Trump behind bars. We don’t know what, if any, discussions this prompted between prosectors & Cohen, but he appeared to stay off social media this past weekend.
#criminal #law #Trump #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference #HushMoney
In case you need a refresher on #MichaelCohen
Cohen pleaded guilty in Aug 2018 to a variety of federal crimes, including #CampaignFinance #law violations for his role in 2 #HushMoney deals w/ women who said they had sex w/ #Trump. He also pleaded guilty to personal financial #crimes unrelated to Trump, including tax evasion.
#criminal #TrumpTrial #CatchAndKill #conspiracy #ElectionInterference
