Donald Trump comes face to face with former fixer Michael Cohen

This is The Guardian.

Last week, Donald Trump had to sit and listen to the woman at the centre of his hush money trial in New York, Stormy Daniels.

She also gave details, maybe too many details, about their alleged sexual encounter.

This week, it was Donald Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen's, turn to take the stand.

Detailing what he says were his efforts to cover up alleged Trump affairs. Cohen claims it was tied to the 2016 presidential campaign.

The prosecution is relying on the jury believing Cohen's story over that of Donald Trump. The defence team painted Cohen as nothing more than a liar. So which side came out on top? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.

So there has been this collection of political supporters who have been showing up every day and actually sort of an increasing number of them and increasingly prominent.

Ankush Kardori is a senior writer for Politico magazine and a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Helpfully for our purposes. in this episode, he specialised in financial fraud and white collar crime.

So I guess the most notable ones by now are House Speaker Mike Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was once Trump's primary competitor, Doug Burgum, who is a governor here in the US. Same thing. He was Trump's primary competitor and now he's on board. And Ken Paxton, who is the attorney general in Texas, who has always been on Trump's side politically and has been a pretty ardent supporter, but he showed up as well.

Yeah. I mean, not to be too trivial about this, but I have to say my eye was caught by the dress code that seems to be enforced. I don't know if you notice the picture of Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy and others dressed like Trump. Blue suit, red tie, as if they were the sort of mini-me army for Donald Trump. But let's focus on Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.

Well, look, you're exactly right that his history cannot be really reconciled with his current position on Donald Trump.

President Trump is a friend and I wanted to be here to support him. I'm here speaking with you outside because the court won't allow us to speak inside the building. That's just one of the many things that are wrong here. This is the fifth week that President Trump has been in court for this sham of a trial. They are doing this intentionally to keep him here and keep him off of the campaign trail.

I think the only explanation I can come up with is the obvious explanation, which is political power. It's very sad. It's sort of cynical. But you know, Mike Johnson has a pretty precarious hold on his Republican members in the House. He, you know, is constantly under threat of being sort of ousted through this sort of procedural mechanism that can be triggered by a small number of far-right members.

Yeah, no, I suspect you're right. It's a phenomenon we've noticed, really, in the way the last three, four years, which is. Republicans are fearful of the MAGA base, the Donald Trump base, and will do what they have to do to keep in with them, even if it means speaking up in a case like this, or even if you have to dress like Donald Trump to do it. Now, Angus, we are more than halfway through this genuinely unprecedented court case. We've not had a former or sitting president face criminal trial before.

That's right. So this week, they've really now tried to shift their focus pretty much exclusively to the core of the case, which is the falsification of records in connection with Trump's reimbursement to Michael Cohen, his attorney at the time, for the payment to Daniels. And so we're now onto that last part, at least from the prosecutor's perspective, to try to sew up as much evidence as they can on that front through testimony of Michael Cohen and that sort of thing.

And even though it was more fun for the sort of late night talk show hosts and so on last week, the evidence people are hearing this week is much more significant for the case. Explain to us why that is.

Yeah, because if all the prosecutors established was simply that this hush money scheme occurred and that it was intended to affect the election, which I think they have persuasively established, that would not be sufficient to get a conviction of Trump on the charges that have been brought. The charges that have been brought allege that Trump falsified his company's business records in connection with the repayment to Cohen and that Trump participated in falsifying those records, both with the intent to defraud and also with the intent to conceal another crime.

Michael Cohen is the witness for the prosecution, with intimate knowledge of these hush money payments. On the stand today, he detailed a scheme that he says was meant to hide unfavorable stories to help former President Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

So, you know, it's that last piece of this that I think is actually going to be the most hotly disputed, or at least should be if you're the defense attorneys, because it's the, it's the element where I think offers them the most opportunity to persuade one or more jurors that there's some reasonable doubt here.

And why does that key element, which you set out extremely clearly, why does that key element turn on the testimony of Michael Cohen and the role of Michael?

Because, you know, in order to establish Trump's intent to conceal another crime, you can do that a few different ways. So one way would be to have someone testify contemporaneously about what was in that person's head. Right. And so that is what Michael Cohen is attempting to do, or has attempted to do by now. He's already provided his direct testimony.

So that brings us to what, in a way, is the question at the heart of what's been going on in the trial this week, which is the credibility or otherwise of Michael Cohen. I mean, he has not concealed what kind of guy he is. He described himself as an attack dog with a law license. He was, you know, a political and legal fixer and in some ways enforcer for Donald Trump. You know, he wasn't Mr.

One major challenge for prosecutors is getting the jury to believe Michael Cohen. He's a convicted felon who spent time in prison and admitted lying to Congress.

Alan Kush, Michael Cohen has served jail time.

He did go to jail after pleading guilty to a bunch of crimes, including crimes emanating from this underlying episode.

Well, former President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has been formally released from his three year prison sentence. He has served the last year of that sentence on home confinement at his Manhattan.

apartment. He pled guilty to tax charges, campaign finance charges, to fraud charges and eventually to lying to Congress.

Now, he lied to Congress about something else that was to do with work he did during the election on a eventually aborted Trump Tower project in Moscow. And that was all part of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation into Trump's links with Russia, not the Stormy Daniels case. But here's the question. Is it good for the prosecution that Michael Cohen went to jail for campaign finance crimes associated with this case? Is that good for them in a weird way, because it shows that something criminal did happen here and that this man has already paid a price for it?

You know, generally speaking, it's the former, meaning it is generally helpful to have a, if you're the government, to have a cooperating witness who is, you know, a co-conspirator in the case, who has served time and is now testifying and has sort of seen the light. That is a very common technique that prosecutors use, and it is a sound kind of way to go about it.

And it will be familiar to people from, for example, mafia trials, that kind of thing.

Exactly. Or financial fraud trials. But, you know, the Cohen's problem is not so much that he serves time, because, like I said, I mean, that can be spun to the prosecutor's benefit. The problem is not so much that. It's that he has this history of lying that has nothing to do with Donald Trump and his history of lies that he told just to advance his own self-interest, including lying to the Justice Department, lying to the IRS, which resulted in a conviction for him on tax fraud, and lying to his bank.

So let's get to his testimony, then. I know that the prosecution wanted to build up a picture of just how much dodgy stuff Cohen had done over the years for Donald Trump, you know, as his kind of fixer. What exactly did Michael Cohen say in his testimony this week?

Well, he basically said that he would serve as Trump's fixer, which is not really what lawyers normally do, that he would sort of serve as his tack dog. And he worked in the press very often and very aggressively on Trump's behalf to try to sort of strong-arm reporters into not running certain stories or discrediting certain stories.

Cohen implicated Trump in a 2015 effort to kill a false negative story. a Trump Tower doorman had been shopping. Cohen testified that Trump told him, quote, make sure that this story doesn't get out. You handle it.

And he did things like what he did with the Stormy Daniels payment. And he did also with another woman who had a story about an extramarital sexual encounter with Donald Trump. that's come up in the course of the trial, a woman named Karen McDougal.

Jurors also heard Trump and Cohen allegedly talking together in 2016 about a separate hush money payment made to former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, a recording Cohen made without telling Trump.

And so he had this sort of role, which isn't really the role of a traditional lawyer at all, which is this sort of sort of free roaming, sort of problem solver in this, I don't know, I would say, sort of scummy environment, if I'm being honest, an area of like American life that most of us will never see transacting on this sort of stuff.

I mean, you say it's not what a lawyer normally does. I think it's what Donald Trump thinks lawyers do or should do. And I'm particularly thinking of his legendary association with the ultimate kind of fixer like this. And that is Roy Cohn, who is a figure, goes right back to the 50s and McCarthy, ism and so on. I think it would.

Yes, you're exactly right. And in fact, a colleague of mine, Michael Cruz, over at Politico, has a great piece on this. And it's funny because a couple of times in the last week, I've sort of alluded to Cohen, maybe that sort of not being as right as he thinks he is. And some people have sort of taken that as an insult. And I understand that.

for Trump. That is completely fascinating. So what else did we hear Michael Cohen say this week?

Well, I think the key points he testified for the prosecution was that he executed this hush payment scheme. I think that was largely established by other witnesses. But it is very helpful to the government to have Michael Cohen up on the stand saying.

in his own words. He testified that when Stormy Daniels started shopping her story, Donald Trump told him just take care of it. Cohen set the scene. The 2016 election was just weeks away. And, according to Cohen's testimony, Trump said it's a total disaster.

He also testified to keeping Trump abreast of that scheme in real time before finalizing.

the one hundred and thirty thousand dollar payment to Daniels. Cohen said he called Trump to tell him because everything required Mr. Trump's sign off. On top of that, I wanted the money back, saying that Trump knew what.

was happening, was aware of what was going on and was aware of how the payment was being structured. And he also said, of course, that Trump participated in approving the payments to Cohen as reimbursement for Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels on Trump's behalf. That is sort of the key takeaway from Michael Cohen's testimony. That he basically puts Trump at the center of this story at every single point.

This is a detail I just love. But why did the two men fall out? What was the beginning of the souring of their relationship?

The beginning of the souring of the relationship occurs after Trump takes office and Cohen had expected that he would get a prominent position in the Trump administration, potentially as like a White House counsel or chief of staff. And he was effectively iced out. Trump did not give him a position in the administration. And Cohen took that very poorly. And eventually that was the start of sort of his sort of turn.

Tonight, a dramatic FBI raid at the New York office and hotel room of Michael Cohen.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained a search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller, which sort of accelerates that process of turning. But in terms of like, as a personal matter, so far as I can tell, it is Trump's unwillingness to bring Michael Cohen to the White House. That really sort of is the start of him turning on Trump.

Yeah, I think I think that's right. And then also we got this detail that he was. his feelings were hurt when his bonus in 2016 was cut. He didn't get his usual payoff and obviously was disenchanted. with that.

In its Trumpian way, it is a little ambiguous and perhaps by design on Trump's part. But I will say that you're absolutely right that it is damaging for Trump, because that is a pretty good explanation for why Cohen did stay on side with Trump. Right. And why he did continue to tell lies on Trump's behalf, because he felt like Trump was protecting him or intended to protect him. So I do think you're right.

Just standing back from all of it, what the prosecution would have wanted is for Michael Cohen to have established that the false entries were on the accounts and the Trump organization's books were a violation of election law. That's crucial to the case. And also that he would be a witness that the jury could trust. Do you think the prosecution will feel that job has been done?

As a juror, I would say I think this is a tricky record for them to render a verdict on. I would say that there is sufficient evidence at the moment for a jury to convict Donald Trump, meaning I could see a reasonable juror looking at the extent of the evidence, assuming that the closing arguments don't dramatically alter how we see this case or how the jurors might see this case. I could see a reasonable juror saying, under the constructs that I laid out earlier, there's sufficient evidence for me to convict Trump. I could also see a reasonable juror say, you know what, like. maybe the government is asking me to rely too much on Michael Cohen's word.

Yeah. And as I understand it, it will only take one or two jurors to hold out to feel there is a reasonable doubt. And that could mean the. it ends up with a hung jury and no conviction, which we know Donald Trump will hail as a great exoneration if that happens.

That's correct. It only takes one. It only takes one to refuse to convict and hang the jury. Whether that happens remains to be seen. I do not think he will be acquitted.

All right. So the defense, Donald Trump's team got their chance to question Michael Cohen, judging how that went. And the lawyer, Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, was pretty punchy right from the very start in his cross-examination of Michael Cohen, bringing up things that Michael Cohen had said even about him, and also mentioning that both, you know, on TikTok and on social media, and on his podcast, Michael Cohen had made it very clear that he wanted to see Donald Trump go to jail. And that presumably would be what could could play very badly with the jury, because it suggests that somebody is not just telling the truth as they see it, but rather is running an agenda.

You know, that's exactly right, because, you know, of course, if you can, if you're the defense lawyers and you can say, OK, he has this history of lying to advance his own interests, and you say, well, what he has a motive here to to lie, in particular against this particular defendant, both because of their history of having a falling out, because Michael Cohen has built himself a very lucrative media career off the back of this turn. And he has a financial interest, arguably, in continuing to antagonize Trump and see him in prison. And frankly, I mean, in probably a fairly significant segment of the American electorate, at least on the left, he would probably end up emerging as some sort of weird national hero. I will never sign on to that for the record. But I do think that that is in his head, probably a hope that he has, depending on how this unfolds.

The last question left in a way, is about the man at the center of it. We've had Stormy Daniels on the stand. We've had and are having Michael Cohen there. Do you think Donald Trump himself will appear as a witness in his own defense?

I do not think so. As a general matter, it is a bad idea for criminal defendants in the US to testify in their own defense. They usually don't. Their lawyers usually advise them not to. Second, Trump actually has an unusual amount of baggage if he testifies in his own defense in the form of his own history of lying, including lies that have been established in multiple legal proceedings over the course of the last year, including his business fraud case in New York and the case that Agent Carroll brought, alleging that he sexually abused and defamed her, which juries agreed with her on.

stand. Yeah, you should keep his mouth shut. As you know, we always do like to ask our guests a what else question? Something completely different. We've.

U.

The United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, on stage at Kiev's barman diktat nightclub with the group 19.

You know, I think any time, you know, you have a public figure who can sort of authentically convey an interest. And in this format, perhaps even use that interest or hobby to merge with sort of the administration's political goals. I think it comes off well, sort of like authentic, but it's no substitute for the actual policymaking agenda. So, you know, as in the U.S., I'm sure the Ukrainians have the same view, which is, we'd like to see the substance, and the guitar playing is nice, but not enough.

Yeah, I'm sure Blinken himself would agree with you. But he somehow does manage to look the part. And we'll have a link to that in the show notes for this week's episode, too. People can judge for themselves the secretary of state's musical prowess. Ankush Kardori, thank you so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.

Thank you for having me.

And that is all from me for this week. Now, to keep us up to date on a very busy year in UK politics, our sister podcast, Politics Weekly UK, have launched extra episodes, which will come out every Monday, bringing you all the insight you need from Westminster to kick off your week. Hosted by The Guardian's political editor, Pippa Crerar, and political correspondent Kieran Stacey, it's one you won't want to miss. So do make sure to search for and subscribe to Politics Weekly UK, wherever you get your podcasts. But for now, it's goodbye.

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