The 14th day of former President Donald J. Trump‘s Manhattan-based trial was exclusively dedicated to the defense’s cross-examination of the disbarred serial perjurer Michael Cohen. On Wednesday, Cohen’s former criminal defense attorney, Robert Costello, testified before Congress that his old client had repeatedly claimed to him that he had no evidence against Donald Trump. With most of his Tuesday testimony now in question, Trump’s lead counsel, Todd Blanche, zeroed in on more of Cohen’s lies and hammered the prosecution’s star witness over the shifting details of the disgraced lawyer’s testimony.
COHEN GETS MEIDAS TOUCHED.
The morning started with a muddled exchange about when Cohen found out about Bragg’s indictment against former President Trump. Judge Juan Merchan later sidelined much of the questioning and testimony surrounding this as attorneys on both sides struggled to clarify the timeline of events.
Next, however, Blanche entered into the evidence record a recording of the serial perjurer’s Mea Culpa podcast hosted by the far-left website MeidasTouch. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger objected to the move but was overruled by Judge Merchan.
Cohen can be heard on the podcast recording congratulating Bragg on the Trump indictment. Additionally, Cohen states that he spent countless hours with Bragg. “You never met Alvin Bragg, right?” Blanche asked Cohen.
“Correct,” responded the disgraced lawyer. Again, Blanche, with tightly controlled questioning, elicits another instance where Cohen lied—in this case, to his audience regarding his interactions with the Manhattan District Attorney.
MOTIVATED BY REVENGE.
The next stage of the Trump defense team’s cross-examination of Michael Cohen focused on the serial perjurer’s possible motivations for testifying against his former boss. Blanche hammered Cohen on the latter’s public statements, celebrating the chance Trump could be sent to prison.
“I truly f**king hope that this man ends up in prison,” Cohen could be heard on a podcast recording played for the jury. The disgraced attorney went on to say: “But revenge is a dish best served cold, and you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to my family.”
Blanche asked Cohen if he had ever said his work with prosecutors had helped get the former President indicted. “I took some credit, yes,” he replied. Trump‘s lead counsel repeated his question. “Yes, that’s what I believe,” responded Cohen.
COHEN CAN’T HELP HIMSELF.
“You continued to call President Trump various names on your podcasts and when you’re even doing CNN interviews, correct?” Blanche asked next, and Cohen admitted he did. Cohen was then presented with his April 21, 2024, TikTok post just before the trial began. In the video, Cohen states he has “mental excitement about the fact that this trial was starting.”
Blanche asked Cohen if he knew a paralegal was monitoring his social media. “That didn’t stop you, did it?” Blanche pressed Cohen. “No, sir,” he replied.
Trump’s defense team hit Cohen hard on both Tuesday and Thursday for his lack of self-control and inability to follow instructions. Blanche’s strategy appears to be to illustrate to jurors that Cohen is motivated only by his own self-perception and selfish desires. Beyond his simply profiting from the trial, Blanche is underscoring that Cohen often acts on his own with disregard for how his actions affect others.
LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES.
Again taking aim at Cohen’s credibility, Blanche walked the disbarred attorney through multiple past instances where he was proven to have lied before courts, lawyers, and Congress. “Was that oath that you took every single time, so going back to all the depositions, the same oath that you took Monday morning in this courtroom?” Blanche asked, with Cohen responding: “Yes, sir.”
“And each time you met with a federal agent you were told that if you made a false statement that that was a felony, a federal crime, correct?” Blanche continued. Again, Cohen responded: “Yes, sir.”
Blanche next focused on Cohen’s lies before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017. “There were a couple of different lies?” he asked Cohen, the latter responding: “That’s correct.”
Cohen admitted to Blanche that he had lied under oath to the Congressional committee and lied again when he met with the special counsel in April 2018.
WHOSE FAULT IS IT?
Trump’s lead defense counsel pressed further, again trapping Cohen into admitting that he lied because of what he perceived he should do. “You said you were accepting responsibility for those lies, for lying to Congress. But in fact, you repeatedly said — and even said this morning, and even this week — that the reason why you lied was because of your loyalty to President Trump,” Blanche asked.
“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 replied. Blanche followed up, asking the disgraced attorney: “So are you saying you’re accepting responsibility or blaming the joint defense agreement?”
Cohen begrudgingly admitted on the stand, “I accepted responsibility, I read it, and I submitted it to the committee.”
UNTRUE VERSUS A LIE.
Blanche grilled Cohen about whether federal prosecutors threatened him or tried to induce him to plead guilty to a series of 2018 tax evasion charges. “Nobody induced you or threatened you to plead guilty, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen.
“As I stated previously, I was provided 48 hours within which to accept the plea, or the Southern District of New York was going to file an 80-page indictment that included my wife. And I elected to protect my family,” the disgraced lawyer responded. Blanche pressed Cohen again about his characterization of interactions with federal prosecutors.
Cohen responded the second time, “I never denied the underlying facts; I just did not believe that I should have been criminally charged for either of those six offenses.”
Blanche pushed back, asking Cohen if there was a difference between him saying something untrue and stating a lie. “I was using just different terminology,” Cohen replied.
“So it was a lie?” Blanche asked. Cohen responded: “Correct.”
WHAT ABOUT BOB?
Much of Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen seems to be setting up Robert Costello as — possibly — the singular defense witness. Costello is Cohen’s former criminal defense attorney who has, in recent days, told both Congress and several media outlets that his former client is lying on the stand.
The questioning regarding Cohen’s interactions with federal prosecutors is especially pertinent as Costello testified before Congress directly on conversations he had with his client about the federal tax charges. On Wednesday, The National Pulse reported that Costello said: “I explained that if Cohen had truthful information that would implicate Donald Trump, I could get him out of his legal troubles by the end of the week.” He added: “I emphasized that any information Cohen could give would have to be truthful, otherwise it was useless.”
“Each time Cohen said to me: ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,’” Costello recalled. He continued: “Cohen must have said this at least ten times because I kept coming back to it from different approaches.”
LYING TO A FEDERAL JUDGE.
Trump’s lead defense counsel next addressed Cohen and the fact that the disbarred lawyer had lied to a federal judge. “You testified under oath at a different trial that you did not commit the crimes that you pled guilty to before Judge Pauley, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen, referring to the latter’s perjury before the late U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III.
“Correct,” answered Cohen.
Blanche, citing Cohen’s own words, asked the serial perjurer if it was true that he lied to Judge Pauley because “the stakes affected you personally?” Cohen confirmed to Blanche this was true. Pushing further, Blanche pressed Cohen as to why—during his 2019 testimony before Congress—the disgraced lawyer didn’t tell lawmakers he had lied to the federal judge.
“By not telling Congress or the Senate that you had lied under oath, do you believe that you were omitting important information?” Trump’s lead counsel asked Cohen, and Judge Merchan again overruled the prosecution‘s objection.
“I don’t believe I was asked the question,” Cohen said.
BLAME GAME.
As the morning’s cross-examination began its final stretch, Blanche focused on Cohen‘s refusal to take responsibility for his actions. “You blame a lot of people over the years for the conduct that you were convicted of,” Blanche told Cohen. The disgraced lawyer responded: “I blame people, yes.”
Blanche proceeded to rattle off a list of people and institutions that Cohen has pointed the finger at for his crimes over the years. These included Cohen’s accountant, bank, federal prosecutors, federal judges, and Donald Trump. Cohen admitted he had blamed each one.
Observers in the courtroom described Cohen as appearing angry and annoyed as Blanche pressed him on every person he’s blamed and his prior convictions for tax evasion and perjury.
A JILTED LAWYER.
Blanche shifted gears again, focusing on the 2016 presidential transition and Cohen’s disappointment at being left behind in New York City. Blanche asked Cohen if it was true that he wanted to serve as the White House chief of staff. “I would have liked to have been considered for ego purpose,” Cohen responded.
After former President Trump tapped Reince Priebus to serve as his chief of staff, Cohen admitted to Blanche that he was disappointed. Blanche then presented Cohen with texts between the latter and his daughter. In the text, Cohen told his daughter that he was with Trump at that very moment and that “he wants me to go, just not sure the position,” insinuating that he’d be joining the President in Washington, D.C.
This line of question is important because, as others have testified, Cohen was not seriously considered for any role in the White House or approached about a role. Blanche likely intended this inquiry to reinforce Cohen’s penchant for lying, even to his own daughter. Additionally, the moment further proved that Cohen has an almost delusional opinion of himself and his actions.
“Did you express disappointment to Pastor Scott repeatedly that President Trump hadn’t brought you into the administration?” Trump’s lead counsel asked Cohen. The prosecution’s witness responded annoyedly: “Not into the administration — I knew the role I wanted… I may have expressed frustration.”
When Blanche pressed Cohen as to why he needed someone to put in a good word for a role in the White House when Cohen claimed he talked to Trump almost every day, the disgraced lawyer said, “It’s always good to have somebody else advocate.”
PRANKED BY A TEENAGER.
Just before the lunch break, Trump‘s defense team took aim at one of the prosecution and Cohen’s key claims. Blanche presented Cohen with a series of text and call logs that Cohen had claimed were him reaching out to Trump regarding the resolution of the Stormy Daniels hush money payment. Trump’s lead counsel contended that rather than reaching out to Trump, Cohen was actually calling Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, for help dealing with a series of harassing phone calls he was receiving from a 14-year-old prankster. The texts between Cohen and Schiller appear to indicate that the latter was indeed the case.
However, Cohen insisted to Blanche that the prankster wasn’t all that he discussed on the calls, stating: “I know that Keith was with Mr. Trump at the time and there was more potentially than this.” A skeptical Blanche, noting the short amount of time over which the texts and calls took place, asked Cohen if he really “had enough time to update Schiller about all the [harassment] problems you were having and also update President Trump about the status of the Stormy Daniels situation because you had to keep him informed?”
“I always ran everything by the boss immediately, and in this case, it would have been saying, ‘Everything has been taken care of — it’s been resolved,'” Cohen responded.
LAWYER OR PR GUY?
The post-lunch cross-examination continued with Blanche pressing Cohen on whether he frequently worked to drive positive stories for Donald Trump. Cohen testified that he would often work place positive stories and that Trump would “blow up” if he failed. At this point, former President Trump visibly shook his head “no” as Cohen spoke.
“It was my routine to always advise Mr. Trump because the story that I was going to put out is not the way he would want it. One, it would cause him to blow up at me, and two, it would probably be the end of my job,” Cohen told Blanche. Again, it appears Blanche’s strategy was to portray Cohen as someone who viewed their role as something more ‘connected‘ than it was.
A CAMPAIGN SURROGATE?
In the next series of questions, Cohen was pressed on whether he ever had a role in the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Former Trump campaign aide Hope Hicks testified earlier in the trial that Cohen was not a part of the campaign but would often try and interfere with the campaign staff.
Cohen testified that while he wasn’t a campaign staff member, he was a “surrogate.” The serial perjurer, however, has not produced any documentation or evidence of this role being in any official capacity.
“Your testimony is the frustration toward you that didn’t come from President Trump; it came from the campaign staffers?” Blanche asked Cohen. He replied, “Correct.”
COHEN FALLS APART.
As the fourteenth day of trial testimony neared its end, Cohen inadvertently may have crushed District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s case. Prosecutors have maintained that the hush money payments were campaign expenditures and not legal fees, as Trump’s only concern was about the Stormy Daniels story’s impact on the 2016 election.
However, when discussing the 2011 blog post marking the first public allegations regarding an affair with Stormy Daniels, Cohen admitted Trump was worried about the impact the story would have on his family. “Fair to say that the first time you heard about that and the story by Ms. Daniels, when you talked to President Trump about it, he said he was worried about what his family would think, correct?” Blanche asked.
“Yes, as well as, of course, for the brand,” Cohen admitted. Blanched continued to press Cohen, addressing his 2021 conversation with law enforcement: “The first thing that President Trump said to you was that his family wouldn’t like that very much?”
“That’s true,” Cohen replied.
After Blanche rehashed additional details of conversations Cohen allegedly had with Trump and other associates, the court adjourned at 4PM with Cohen’s cross-examination set to continue on Monday.
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