A difficult star witness in Donald Trump’s hush cash trial

He as soon as stated he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. Now Michael Cohen is prosecutors’ greatest piece of authorized ammunition within the former president’s hush cash trial.

But when Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is poised to supply jurors this week an insider’s view of the dealings on the coronary heart of prosecutors’ case, he is also as difficult a star witness as they arrive.

There’s his tortured historical past with Trump, for whom he served as private lawyer and problem-zapper till his practices got here below federal investigation. That led to felony convictions and jail for Cohen however no prices in opposition to Trump, by then within the White Home.

Cohen, who is anticipated to take the stand Monday, can deal with the jury as somebody who has reckoned frankly together with his personal misdeeds and paid for them together with his liberty. However jurors doubtless additionally will be taught that the now-disbarred lawyer has not solely pleaded responsible to mendacity to Congress and a financial institution, however just lately asserted, below oath, that he wasn’t truthful even in admitting to a few of these falsehoods.

And there may be Cohen’s new persona — and podcast, books, and social media posts — as a relentless and typically crude Trump critic.

As Trump’s trial opened, prosecutors took pains to painting Cohen as only one piece of their proof in opposition to Trump, telling jurors that corroboration would come by way of different witnesses, paperwork and the ex-president’s personal recorded phrases. However Trump and his attorneys have assailed Cohen as an admitted liar and legal who now makes a residing off tearing down his former boss.

“What the protection goes to need the jury to give attention to is the truth that he is a liar” with a blemished previous and a tetchy streak, stated Richard Serafini, a Florida legal protection lawyer and former federal and Manhattan prosecutor.

“What the prosecution goes to need to give attention to is ‘all the things he says is corroborated — you do not have to love him,'” Serafini added. “And No. 2, that is the man Trump selected.”

Cohen’s early-2000s introduction to Trump was a traditional New York actual property story: Cohen was a condominium board member in a Trump constructing and acquired concerned on Trump’s aspect of a residents versus administration dispute. The mogul quickly introduced Cohen into his firm.

Cohen, who declined to remark for this story, had had an eclectic profession that veered from training private damage legislation to working a taxi fleet together with his father-in-law. He in the end functioned as each a Trump lawyer and shark-toothed loyalist.

He labored on some deal-making efforts but in addition spent a lot of his time threatening lawsuits, berating reporters and in any other case maneuvering to neutralize potential reputational dings for his boss, in response to congressional testimony that Cohen gave after breaking with Trump in 2018. The rupture got here after FBI raided Cohen’s dwelling and workplace and Trump started to distance himself from the lawyer.

Cohen quickly instructed a federal court docket that he had helped candidate Trump wield the Nationwide Enquirer tabloid as a kind of home organ that flattered him, tried to flatten his opponents and bottled up seamy allegations about his private life by shopping for tales or flagging them to Cohen to buy. Trump says all of the tales had been false.

These preparations, which Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg’s workplace portrays as a multipronged scheme to maintain data from voters, at the moment are below a microscope at Trump’s hush cash trial. He has pleaded not responsible to 34 counts of falsifying enterprise information in order to veil reimbursements to Cohen for paying off porn performer Stormy Daniels. She claimed a 2006 sexual encounter with the married Trump, which the previous president has denied.

Different witnesses have testified concerning the hush cash dealings, however Cohen stays key to piecing collectively a case that facilities on how Trump’s firm compensated him for his function within the Daniels payoff.

Trump’s protection maintains that Cohen was paid for authorized work, not a cover-up, and that there was nothing unlawful concerning the agreements he facilitated with Daniels and others.

In legal trials, many witnesses come to the stand with their very own legal information, relationships with defendants, prior contradictory statements or one thing else that would have an effect on their credibility.

Cohen has a selected set of bags.

In testimony, he might want to clarify his prior disavowals of key points of the hush cash preparations and to persuade jurors that this time he’s telling the reality, the entire reality and nothing however the reality.

Nonetheless within the Trump fold when the Daniels deal got here to gentle, he initially instructed The New York Instances that he had not been reimbursed, later acknowledging compensation — as did Trump, who had beforehand stated he didn’t even know concerning the Daniels payout.

Then, in the midst of two federal responsible pleas, Cohen admitted to tax evasion, orchestrating unlawful marketing campaign contributions within the type of hush cash funds, and mendacity to Congress about his work on a attainable Trump actual property venture in Moscow. He additionally pleaded responsible to signing off on a house fairness mortgage software that understated his monetary liabilities.

Whereas many forms of convictions could also be used to query a witness’ credibility, when crimes contain dishonesty, “there is a treasure trove of stuff there for a cross-examiner,” Serafini stated.

Furthermore, Cohen raised new questions on his credibility whereas testifying final fall in Trump’s civil fraud trial. Throughout a testy cross-examination — he answered some questions with a lawyerly “objection” or “requested and answered” — Cohen insisted he was not fairly responsible of tax evasion or the mortgage software falsehood. Finally, he testified that he had lied to the now-deceased federal choose who took his plea.

The fraud trial choose discovered Cohen’s testimony credible, noting that it was corroborated by different proof. However a federal choose prompt that Cohen perjured himself both in his testimony or his responsible plea.

Since splitting with Trump, Cohen has confronted his previous lies head-on. His podcast’s title – “Mea Culpa” – gestures at a reckoning together with his crimes, and he acknowledged within the foreword to his 2020 memoir that some folks see him as “the least dependable narrator on the planet.”

At his 2018 sentencing, he stated his “blind loyalty” to Trump made him really feel it was my responsibility to cowl up his soiled deeds, fairly than to hearken to my very own interior voice and my ethical compass.” Exterior court docket, he has forged himself as an avatar of anti-Trump sentiment. In social media salvos because the trial opened, Cohen used a scatological nickname for Trump, taunted him to “maintain whining, crying and violating the gag order, you petulant defendant!” and commented acerbically on his protection.

The posts may give Trump’s attorneys fodder to color Cohen as an agenda-driven witness out for revenge. In a nod to that vulnerability, Cohen posted two days after opening statements that he would stop commenting on Trump till after testifying, “out of respect” for the choose and prosecutors.

But in a dwell TikTok this previous week, Cohen wore a shirt that includes a determine resembling Trump together with his palms cuffed, behind bars. After Trump’s attorneys complained, Choose Juan M. Merchan exhorted prosecutors Friday to inform Cohen that the court docket was asking him to not make any extra statements concerning the case or Trump.

To Jeremy Saland, a New York legal protection lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, Cohen’s background just isn’t such a hurdle for prosecutors.

“The place Cohen has the issue is: He would not shut his lure,” Saland stated. “He simply always takes pictures at his personal credibility.”

Prosecutors might want to persuade Cohen to be forthright, acknowledge his previous wrongdoing and rein in his freewheeling commentary, Saland stated, or the case can turn into “the Michael Cohen present.”

Certainly, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche used his opening assertion to hammer on Cohen’s “obsession” with Trump and his admitted previous mendacity below oath.

“You can not make a critical determination about President Trump counting on the phrases of Michael Cohen,” Blanche instructed jurors.

However prosecutor Matthew Colangelo characterised Cohen as somebody who made “errors,” telling jurors they may consider him nonetheless.

In the meantime, prosecutors have pointed to remarks Trump has made about Cohen and others to accuse him of a number of violations of a gag order that bars him from commenting on witnesses, jurors and another folks related to the case. The choose has held Trump in contempt, fined him a complete of $10,000 and warned that jail may observe if he breached the order once more.

Prosecutors additionally haven’t shied from testimony about Cohen’s combative persona. A banker testified that Cohen was seen as a “difficult” consumer who insisted all the things was pressing. Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, described his first cellphone name with Cohen as a screaming “barrage of insults and insinuations and allegations.”

Whereas such episodes may not be flattering to Cohen, eliciting them might be a manner for prosecutors subtly to point he isn’t their teammate, however merely an individual with data, stated John Fishwick Jr., a former U.S. lawyer for the Western District of Virginia.

“It is a method to attempt to construct up his credibility whilst you distance your self from him,” he prompt.

When Cohen takes the stand, prosecutors could be clever to deal with his problematic previous earlier than protection attorneys do, stated New York Legislation College professor Anna Cominsky. She taught a course with Bragg earlier than he grew to become district lawyer, however she provided feedback as a authorized observer, not somebody aware about his workplace’s technique.

“I think about of their closing arguments,” Cominsky stated, “that the prosecutor goes to look proper on the jury and say, ‘This isn’t an ideal witness, however none of us are.'”