Prosecution seeks to land Trump hush money case as Cohen cross-examination looms

(CNN) — “Just do it.”

With three short words, more famous for selling sports gear than exposing conspiracies, star witness Michael Cohen on Monday depicted Donald Trump’s order of a hush money payoff to an adult film star to allegedly save his 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors will seek to build on his testimony when he returns to the stand Tuesday to nail down their case that the ex-president broke the law by falsifying financial records to hide the pay-off in the culmination of a scheme to mislead voters.

All that will be a curtain raiser for what is looming as a savage cross-examination by the presumptive Republican nominee’s attorney, designed to shatter the reputation of Cohen, expose him as a liar and punish him for turning on his ex-boss.

The biggest question before Monday was whether prosecutors had laid a prior foundation of corroborating evidence to which they could connect Cohen’s testimony and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump acted criminally.

“I think they have it,” Ryan Goodman, a professor at NYU Law, told CNN’s Erin Burnett, citing fulsome evidence – such as logs of calls, including between Trump and Cohen, about the proposed payment and the lawyer’s reimbursement, which prosecutors say led to the falsified financial documents. “As of today, it holds together.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty, and no one can say how a jury will interpret events at trial until the fateful moment when the foreperson delivers a verdict. But former New York prosecutor Bernarda Villalona said on CNN’s “The Lead” that Cohen, from his delivery to his eye contact with the prosecutor, had been “excellent” on the stand and helped the prosecution. “They finally provided that link that Donald Trump authorized these payments and the payments were for the purposes of affecting that campaign,” she said. “Michael Cohen did deliver. … but we have to see how he stands up to cross examination.”

Given Cohen’s past, including a conviction for lying to Congress, and his thwarted hopes of a job in Trump’s administration offering a potential motive for revenge, the cross examination will be critical, said David Schoen, who represented Trump during his second impeachment. “I think that they (the prosecution) feel he is a make-or-break witness. I think in real terms, he probably is,” Schoen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “This case is going to turn in large part on the cross-examination of Mr. Cohen. That ought to be a dream for a half-way competent lawyer.”

A pivotal day

The most critical day of the trial so far saw the presumptive Republican nominee come face to face with Cohen, who says he squashed scandals and cleaned up busted business deals as his boss’ ruthless fixer. It was another unfathomable episode in a 2024 election season that has been ensnared by Trump’s legal quagmire but that could still end with him back in the White House.

And while the courtroom action Monday will play a pivotal role in how the case turns out, there is a wider audience given how Trump’s defense has morphed into a campaign rationale. It’s too early to assess how voters might process a conviction or acquittal or whether damaging new revelations about his conduct will sway an electorate by now numb to scandals that would have doomed a normal candidate years ago. But fresh New York Times/Siena polls showing Trump leading President Joe Biden in multiple swing states underscore his very real hopes of a non-consecutive second term. And Cohen’s descriptions Monday of the ex-president’s way of doing business added to growing evidence that a second Trump administration would likely pose an even greater threat to the rule of law than his first spell in the White House.

Trump is barred from publicly slamming Cohen and what he sees as his treachery because of a gag order imposed by a judge who has threatened jail if he won’t comply following 10 previous violations. But the former president’s tirade outside the courtroom Monday was even more irate than usual, as he lashed out at Judge Juan Merchan and bitterly claimed he was a victim of political victimization. “The whole world is laughing now at the New York, weaponized, legal system,” he claimed.

In a sense, testimony from Cohen – who has written that he was drawn to Trump before he ran for president because of his aura and fame – is a lesson in the contortions and legally questionable choices often faced by those in the ex-president’s orbit. But there is no shortage of Republicans seeking to join him. Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a vice presidential prospect, and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville joined Trump outside the courtroom Monday morning, strutting like a posse behind a sheriff and reflecting his undimmed power in the GOP.

Vance served as Trump’s ungagged mouthpiece, seeking to discredit Cohen and showing his own credentials as a Trump defender as the ex-president mulls a list of running mates. “Does any reasonable, sensible person believe anything that Michael Cohen says?” the Ohio Republican asked. “What’s going on inside that courtroom is a threat to American democracy, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, defending a presumptive GOP nominee who tried to overthrow a free and fair election in 2020.

How the Trump and Cohen double act fractured

During hours of testimony, the former president sat with his eyes often closed as Cohen, now on a journey of redemption after years of service to Trump ended in his own jail term, detailed a scheme to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had a sexual liaison with the then-reality television star and real estate magnate. (Trump denies the affair.)

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger spent a painstaking day slowly taking Cohen through his former role at the Trump Organization and his commitment to protecting his boss, with Cohen even going on television to lie and organizing schemes to silence alleged claims against Trump from other women. Hoffinger sought to establish that the payment to Daniels did take place, that Trump told Cohen to do it, that Cohen made the payment using a home equity line of credit to disguise it from his wife and that he expected to be reimbursed.

Hoffinger also drew Cohen into testifying that the real reason Trump was worried about Daniels’ claims — which emerged shortly after an “Access Hollywood” tape came to light in 2016 in which he boasted about grabbing female genitals — was to protect his campaign rather than, as the defense will argue, to spare his family embarrassment.

Cohen said that Trump told him: “Women are going to hate me. … Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.” He said, “He wasn’t even thinking about Melania,” referring to the former first lady. “This was all about the campaign.” Cohen also testified that Trump said he would not be on the market for long, implying he could get another wife quickly. The ex-president smirked and shook his head after that comment.

Throughout his testimony, Cohen said he always kept Trump up to speed with his activities. “Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” he said, noting the Daniels payment was no exception. “He stated to me that he had spoken to some friends, some individuals, smart people, and ‘That it’s $130,000. You’re a billionaire, just pay it. There’s no reason to keep this thing out there so do it.’ He expressed to me, ‘just do it.’”

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors say this was done to hide monthly reimbursements Cohen received in 2017 — after his boss became president — for the hush money payment he made to Daniels.

In an apparent bid to neutralize an expected effort by the defense to argue that Cohen is lying because he bears a grudge against Trump, the prosecution asked him about his anger when his annual bonus was cut by two-thirds in December 2016. He testified that he was “pissed off.” Shortly afterwards, he went to Trump’s then-chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to discuss the repayment of the $130,000 he had paid Daniels. Cohen also testified that he was disappointed not to be considered for Trump’s first White House chief of staff.

His testimony was quite the reversal for a man who previously wrote that he became a “thug” to carry out Trump’s wishes and who said Monday of the client who spurned him: “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task to make him happy.”

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