Francisco 2.0

If only someone could have seen this coming. https://gizmodo.com/the-big-problem-with-hertzs-used-teslas-1851482836

[Programming note: I'm going away until June 3rd. I've hit up @bolverk to see if he's interested in carrying on. Enjoy the spectacle next week.] Thursday afternoon, Cohen continued: There is no trial tomorrow, giving prosecutors a long weekend to plan their next moves. The defense spent a whole day casting Cohen as a liar and elicited admissions that he had lied under oath during past cases, allowing them to cast some doubt on aspects of the story he’s told at this trial. But prosecutors will have three days to prepare for a crucial re-direct, in which they will seek to build Cohen back up and refocus the jurors on the most important elements of their case. Blanche had until today been the weakest of the three lawyers at Trump’s table on cross-examination. But he elicited testimony from Cohen on the second day of cross-examination portraying him as a liar who engaged in shady practices with people he dealt with across the board. Justice Merchan stops early, as Todd Blanche says he’s moving to another area. Aides to Trump who are sitting two rows behind him, Karoline Leavitt and Boris Epshteyn, exchange knowing glances. Todd Blanche is now getting Michael Cohen to admit he lied to reporters in early 2018 and also secretly recorded conversations with reporters about Trump’s involvement in the hush-money payment. Blanche is emphasizing and underscoring the time period that Cohen recorded reporters — early 2018. Based on his previous lines of questioning, it seems as if he is preparing the jury to catch Cohen in another lie or misleading statement. Todd Blanche is now trying to undermine the close relationship Michael Cohen said he had with Trump himself. He is asking whether Cohen did legal work not only for Trump, but also for his family and the Trump Organization. Then Blanche notes that Cohen did not have a legal retainer to do this work. This is the first time today that I remember Blanche going straight at the prosecution's argument. Prosecutors have said that Trump's reimbursements for the hush money were fraudulently disguised as legal services, even though Cohen had no legal retainer. The point Blanche is seeking to make is: Cohen did legal work for years, and never had a legal retainer. Blanche is also trying to minimize the fact that Cohen had no retainer agreement with Trump, suggesting New York ethics rules don’t require it. We’ll have to wait for redirect to see how prosecutors might counter this. One thing they may do is point out that the invoices said that Cohen was paid pursuant to a legal retainer. Todd Blanche is now showing the hush-money contract that Michael Cohen struck with Stormy Daniels. He gets Cohen to agree it’s a “perfectly legal contract.” He’s raising his voice to emphasize this point — to try to make the jury feel like this arrangement was business as usual. This is a line we’ve heard before from the defense. Blanche hammered it home during his opening statement, where he said that nondisclosure agreements were typical among the wealthy and famous and that they were not illegal. Todd Blanche is questioning Michael Cohen again on his interactions with reporters when he worked for Trump. Blanche is now asking about negotiations he had with the ABC News reporter John Santucci regarding the Stormy Daniels story. Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, is asking Michael Cohen how he can have specific memories of phone calls that he conducted eight years ago. Cohen responds that the reason he remembers them is because he’s been talking about the conversations for six years. Blanche digs in, asking if Cohen has been talking about the specific phone calls he has been testifying about for six years. Blanche is pouring disbelief into his tone, acting as if Cohen's testimony is ridiculous. Cohen is staring at the lawyer, his mouth downturned. Trump has his eyes glued on Cohen this afternoon. This has been rare for Trump throughout this trial. Todd Blanche is drawing out Michael Cohen about his relationships with reporters over the years. Blanche gets Cohen to admit that he serially recorded reporters without their knowledge, including our colleague Maggie Haberman. Blanche also gets Cohen to say that he sent a recording of somebody else to Haberman as she was reporting a story. Todd Blanche is trying to get Michael Cohen to say that while working for Trump, he gave statements to reporters without checking in with his boss. Cohen is refusing to concede this, and says that he would always talk to Trump about every story. Blanche is trying to establish the idea for the jury that Cohen was a rogue agent who did things without consulting with Trump — for example, the hush-money payment. In particular, Blanche noted that Cohen often frustrated campaign officials with statements he made to the press during the 2016 campaign. Cohen parries that by saying Trump had told them that Cohen reported to him. Michael Cohen is now speaking directly to the jury about his longstanding relationship with journalists. Todd Blanche is going back in time, asking Cohen about positive stories he had planted, not just about Trump but also about himself. He says that reporters would often call him or the Trump Organization asking for comment. He said he would immediately go to Trump’s office and they would come up with a crafted response that he would take back to the reporter. Cohen adds that it was his routine to advise Trump about these matters, because if the resulting story was not to his liking, “it would cause him to blow up at me” and “it would probably be the end of my job.” To recap, right before the lunch break, Todd Blanche extracted one of the most helpful bits of testimony from Michael Cohen that he’s gotten from any witness on cross-examination so far. During that exchange, he sought to create reasonable doubt that Cohen had accurately and truthfully recounted a conversation he said he had about Stormy Daniels with Trump on his bodyguard's phone on Oct. 24, 2016. Blanche is now driving home that Cohen threatened to turn the Secret Service on a prank caller who said they were 14 years old. Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, immediately picks up with an earlier line of questioning about the grand jury indictment of Trump becoming public. The prosecution objects to a follow-up, and the judge tells the lawyers to approach. The atmosphere outside as the trial nears its conclusion is increasingly circus-like. Shortly after noon on Thursday, a U-Haul truck stopped in front of the courthouse. A Trump supporter who has been a regular at the courthouse then released dozens of large, pink, phallus-shaped mylar balloons bearing pictures of Justice Merchan, Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump in Washington. But Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case that's on trial here, has supporters outside the courthouse, too. One of them, visiting from Maryland, caught one of the balloons and remarked that it actually resembled Trump. To catch you up during the lunch break: The cross-examination of Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, continued, as Todd Blanche, one of the defense lawyers, sought to highlight his past lies and his 2018 guilty plea to federal charges. The proceedings were interrupted numerous times by legal objections from prosecutors, making it slow-going for spectators and, perhaps, jurors. Trump's high-profile Republican supporters continued their steady march to the courthouse, with Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida among those who appeared in court. Gaetz went so far as to post on X this morning, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President,” referencing Trump’s 2020 shoutout to the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group. So many members of the House traveled to the Manhattan courthouse today that the actual work of Congress in Washington has been stalled. This afternoon’s testimony will be the last for the week before the trial resumes on Monday.

Gametime: Thursday morning Todd Blanche, who is agitated, is seeking to set up a moment in which the jurors will have to choose whether to believe Cohen, who continues to say that during a relatively brief phone call, he both informed Trump's bodyguard of the teenage prankster and discussed the hush-money payment he planned to make to Stormy Daniels. It’s a really interesting moment, and that’s where we leave the trial for now. The jurors are excused for their lunch break. Trump leaves the courtroom, his practiced scowl on his face, and winks at a reporter at the back of the room for no clear reason. Todd Blanche, with a few minutes left to go before the lunch break, is emphasizing his point, raising his pointer finger as his voice hits a higher register. He is suggesting it is ridiculous that Michael Cohen might have simultaneously reported a prankster to Keith Schiller and talked to Trump about the hush-money payment. Blanche is seeking to get Cohen to crack, but Cohen is holding firm. “You can admit,” Blanche says, that you lied. “No sir, I can’t,” Cohen responds, sticking to his story. Blanche seeks to start scolding the witness on behalf of the jurors, saying, “This jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened.” There is an objection and it is sustained. Todd Blanche has initiated a long sequence of questioning about whether Michael Cohen received harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old prankster in October 2016. He appears to be hoping to suggest an alternative reason for Michael Cohen's call to Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard. Cohen had testified he made that call to inform Trump of how he planned to make the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. Blanche seems to want to suggest to jurors that Cohen lied about the call's purpose. Earlier this morning, the jury was asked about scheduling matters for next week, a likely signal to them that the trial would end soon. Now they are hearing about harassing phone calls from a prankster who ended up being 14 years old. I genuinely wonder what they must be thinking right now. As expected, Blanche has now suggested that Cohen was not, in fact, telling Trump about his plans to make the hush money payment to Trump but instead, simply reporting that he was being pranked by a teenager. Todd Blanche has brought up a phone call that Michael Cohen talked about during direct testimony, when he spoke to Trump over Trump’s bodyguard’s cellphone. Cohen said that during this conversation, he told Trump that the payment to Stormy Daniels had been made. Blanche is trying to cast doubt on that account, saying it was the first time that Cohen had discussed this call. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, who has landed successful objections throughout the day, objects again, and asks to approach. The lawyers are now at the bench. Cohen is shaking his head, glancing at jurors. It appears that he began to crack a smile, but then he thought better of it. He accepts a new cup of water from a court officer. After the sidebar conversation with the judge, Emil Bove, one of Trump's lawyers, returns to the defense table, sits down and whispers something to Trump. The former president shakes his head and grimaces. Todd Blanche is now asking about an embarrassing episode for Michael Cohen, who used an artificial intelligence program to generate legal citations for his previous lawyer. The cases listed by the software were not real cases. This made headlines, and was, as Jonah noted, embarrassing. But Cohen just explained what happened calmly, and I think it took some of the sting out of it. And Blanche moves on quickly, barely pausing before moving onto another topic, which runs the risk of not punctuating the point for the jury. Michael Cohen, now five hours into his cross-examination, has yet to lose control, even as Todd Blanche brings up a series of seeming slights and humiliations that Cohen suffered after Trump’s election in 2016. Blanche is making clear that Cohen was less than candid when he said he didn’t want a job, as he walks through all the people to whom Cohen complained about being left behind. But it underscores a theme that’s been true for awhile — one I wrote about first in 2018 and repeatedly since — that Trump went out of his way to abuse Cohen. Todd Blanche seemed briefly to have closed the loop here, as he raised his voice and noted that Michael Cohen had said he wanted to be chief of staff. “That was for my ego, yes,” Cohen admitted, and it appeared as if Blanche had landed a blow. But now Cohen is reiterating that he wanted to be Trump's personal attorney. This is the most direct combat we’ve seen between these two, and it’s not clear who is getting the better of whom. It will be interesting to see how Michael Cohen squares his testimony that he did not want a White House role with the evidence he is responding to, which suggests he did. We saw a bit earlier that when Cohen is under pressure, he can split hairs, playing semantic games about past vs. present. Cohen responds: “I wanted a hybrid position, one where I would have the access to President Trump but not be a White House employee.” It’s a helpful answer for prosecutors, underscoring, as they have said, that Cohen was bent on being close to Trump. Trump, who has had his eyes closed through much of this trial so far, is now glaring at Cohen. The theme of this line of questioning is that Michael Cohen was again rejected, this time for a job, and is seeking payback. And that Cohen lied about this desire under oath. Cohen has been standing firm in his testimony, refusing to give in to Todd Blanche. This appears to be frustrating Blanche, who just moments ago rubbed his forehead after one of Cohen’s answers. Todd Blanche is now asking Michael Cohen if he wanted a job in the Trump White House. Cohen testified to the House in 2019 that he didn’t want one. But other witnesses, like Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels's former lawyer, have testified that Cohen was interested and sad he was being left behind. Blanche will try to frame this as another lie from Cohen. “You really wanted to work in the White House, correct?” Blanche says, turning up the temperature. Cohen denies that he did: “No sir.” Blanche says that Cohen specifically wanted to be White House chief of staff, and Cohen again denies it. Blanche is now asking Cohen about texts in which he discussed the possibility of being White House chief of staff. The texts themselves could be seen as someone merely kibbitzing, though they also undercut something Cohen has testified to previously. Though none of the texts were definitive, there were a lot of them, and they do clearly show that Cohen was at least interested in the idea. When Reince Priebus was finally named chief of staff, Cohen told his daughter he was disappointed, Blanche shows. Cohen admits here that he was disappointed. Todd Blanche, the defense lawyer, just tried a line of questioning that didn’t seem to land, having to do with whether Michael Cohen sought a letter in 2018 requesting leniency from federal prosecutors. Cohen says he told his lawyer that he “wasn’t interested” in such a letter, so “let’s not even talk about it.” It didn’t seem as if Blanche got the answer he expected during that exchange. He moved on. This appears to be a reference to the fact that Cohen didn’t have a formal cooperation agreement with the Southern District of New York's prosecutors when he pleaded guilty in 2018, because he was unwilling to disclose everything he knew about any possible wrongdoing. He would have had to do so in order to get the letter. It seems like Blanche may have wanted to point out that Cohen wanted to keep some things hidden even as he pleaded guilty. Todd Blanche is questioning Michael Cohen about his efforts, which began soon after he went to prison, to have his sentence reduced based on his cooperation with prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Blanche will almost certainly ask Cohen about using his testimony in this trial to seek an end to his current supervised release. It’s not clear that the jury is going to hold it against him that he tried to shorten his prison sentence and supervised release. Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor, prepared the jury for these questions, so they already know that Cohen has sought to use his cooperation to aid his own situation. Todd Blanche, perhaps realizing that Michael Cohen has met with many sets of prosecutors and his testimony about their conversations can become a bit confusing, seeks to have Cohen himself clear it up. “Help the jury understand that,” he says. “There’s two separate prosecutors?” Cohen confirms that he met with both the special counsel’s office in Washington, during the Russia investigation, and Manhattan federal prosecutors, in the office where Blanche once worked. And now, Blanche adds a third set of prosecutors with whom Cohen spoke: those in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the prosecutors here at this trial, who are New York state prosecutors. Justice Merchan begins the post-break session by saying there will be no court next Wednesday after all, because the jurors will not be free to convene then. This suggests the case may stretch past Memorial Day weekend. After a brief break, the prosecutors are arguing that Todd Blanche, early in his questioning, asked questions that seemed to suggest that Trump's indictment was still sealed on March 30. The indictment was unsealed that evening, after The Times broke the news. The unsealing allowed the district attorney’s office to confirm that this news, of incredible public interest, was true. Prosecutors ask Justice Merchan to explain this sequence to the jury. Merchan agrees that the jury should be advised, and that the question is how he should do so. He decides that Blanche can do it in his own questioning. But one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo — urged on by another prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, who is whispering loudly to him — says that it it should come from Merchan because the questions were misleading. Merchan tells prosecutors that they can draft a version of an order that the judge himself would give if Blanche’s corrections end up being insufficient. Earlier in his testimony, Michael Cohen made Robert Costello, a lawyer who approached him in 2018 when Cohen was under investigation, sound as though he were an emissary from the Trump team, seeking to keep Cohen loyal to the president. Blanche just sought to complicate that picture, asking Cohen if Costello told him he had the option to cooperate with law enforcement instead. Cohen's reponse to this was not clear. Our reporting shows that Costello’s role was complex, and that Cohen did accept legal advice from him during that time. We’re coming up on about an hour and 45 minutes of cross-examination this morning. We're near the time that Trump’s surrogates have typically been going outside to speak to the public, slamming the case and trial. A key question the jurors will have to answer for themselves is on what date — if at all — they believe Michael Cohen began telling the truth. Was it this week, when he started testifying in this case? Or before then? Todd Blanche is demonstrating that Cohen told lies, big and small, over a long period of time and for various reasons. At the same time, prosecutors have and will demonstrate in closing arguments that Trump has told lies, big and small, about a number of people and issues in this case. Jurors might also need to consider a more philosophical question: can a liar sometimes tell the truth? Michael Cohen appears less sad now, and he seems to be fighting back a bit. He tries to explain the disparity Todd Blanche has been harping on involving whether he sought a pardon. Cohen says a pardon was dangled, and he asked his lawyers, “Is this really something that they’re talking about? Can you find out?” But Blanche, using a quiet voice, is continuing to focus on what he says were Cohen’s lies about this 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. Todd Blanche seems to have seized on another lie: Michael 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. Trump squinted as Cohen as he answered questions about the pardon and shook his head a bit at Cohen’s response. Blanche says that Cohen has explained the distance between the two 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 apparently under oath, he said that that the seeming disparity stemmed from a semantic distinction between the past and present tenses. Blanche is pushing Cohen on whether he played semantics about whether he sought a pardon from Trump or not. Cohen 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 we 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. Todd Blanche is now going over the complex financial transactions that allowed Michael Cohen to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, perhaps the closest he’s gotten to the subject matter of this particular case all day. 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 — and his wife — as he suggested when explaining his federal guilty plea. Blanche just asked Cohen about a number of different events, including an exchange of public statements with Michael Avenatti, one of Stormy Daniels's lawyers, and conversations with his wife. He ended by asking Cohen if he had deleted his communications with his wife around that time, and Cohen seemed genuinely stumped. Then Blanche asks if Cohen, around this time, had taken to deleting his texts more generally. The defense is trying to suggest that Cohen has a history of manipulating the types of phone records that prosecutors have used here to bolster their case. This line of questioning also has the effect of reinforcing that Cohen has been routinely deceptive and focused on concealment. Throughout his cross-examination today, Michael Cohen has remained even-keeled on the witness stand. He appeared mildly frustrated a few moments ago and just shook his head after he answered one of Todd Blanche’s most recent questions. 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 — and his wife — as he suggested when explaining his federal guilty plea. And as expected, Todd Blanche moves to connect Michael Cohen 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. Todd Blanche is dragging out of Michael Cohen a lack of remorse. Cohen has talked publicly about wanting to right the wrongs he committed while working for Trump. Blanche is getting him to acknowledge 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. Tension was missing from Todd Blanche’s questioning of Cohen on Tuesday. But here, today, the room feels tense to me. This is a compelling question-and-answer session, and the jurors appear to be responding, paying close attention. So many House Republicans have gone to New York to support Trump at his trial that it’s gumming up the works for G.O.P. priorities on Capitol Hill, including some of their most partisan plans. With Representatives Andy Biggs of Arizona and Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Waltz of Florida all at the trial, the House Oversight Committee has been forced to postpone its planned vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Today’s vote has been pushed back from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. to allow members to return to Washington from New York. Todd Blanche is now demonstrating for the jury that Michael Cohen 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. As Blanche continues to hammer home what Cohen says were his lies to a federal judge, a prosecutor objects several times. The judge sustains the objections. The objections may have been made because Blanche had already asked a version of the same questions. That admission could cause some problems for the prosecution. Blanche has already shown vividly through Cohen's podcast clips that this case affects Cohen in a deeply personal way and that he’s desperate for revenge against Trump. This may cause jurors to wonder whether Cohen might be willing to stretch the truth to get it. Todd Blanche continues to press his complicated point, about what Michael Cohen has said about his previous guilty pleas. Blanche notes that Cohen was asked if he lied because the stakes affected him personally. Cohen says yes. Blanche then asks if that is still true. Cohen says yes, again, but his voice breaks a little. He looks tired, and shifts his body briefly on the stand. His voice sounds husky. One — or several — falsehoods under oath can last a lifetime. Blanche is taking what Cohen has said were lies to a federal judge and seeking to impeach the other testimony he has given under oath, including to Congress. And of course, he seems likely to move on to trying to impeach Cohen's testimony at this trial soon. Todd Blanche has now, on a couple of occasions, listened as Michael Cohen has explained, in long form, some of his prior actions, before asking him, sharply, if he was “finished.” Finally, he seems to get annoyed with Cohen, and snaps, “Please don’t make a speech.” Michael Cohen is a disbarred lawyer, and he does not always speak precisely, as lawyers are trained to do. Todd Blanche took advantage of that throughout this most recent line of questioning. Now, he finally arrives at the moment that prosecutors sought to prepare this jury for: That Cohen said under oath at Trump's civil fraud trial that he had lied to a federal judge. It’s unclear whether prosecutors’ attempt will stay in the jurors’ heads, or whether they’ll find this convincing. This could be compelling — or confusing. It's really hard to know how jurors, including the two lawyers on the panel, are taking it. They look engaged, but there are no other obvious signs of the impression Blanche is making right now. Todd Blanche is using Michael Cohen’s sweeping 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. Todd Blanche is seeking to show the jury that Michael Cohen has not fully taken responsibility for his crimes and still blames a range of people, quite implausibly, for being corrupt. The irony is that by showing that Cohen lashing out at the judge and prosecutors, Blanche is making him sound a lot like his former boss, and Blanche’s current client, Donald Trump. This is a delicate moment for Michael Cohen, and the prosecution. This case largely rests on Cohen tying Trump to knowledge of how the false business records at the center of the case were structured. Todd Blanche is creating a portrait of Cohen as an indiscriminate liar who changes his story situationally. Todd Blanche is now focusing on Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in August 2018, and gets Cohen to say that he “never denied the underlying facts” of the plea, and that he simply thought he shouldn’t have been charged. Blanche then asks if prosecutors pressured him to plead guilty, and Cohen says his lawyer conveyed that he had only 48 hours 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, and suggests that when Cohen said no to that question, he lied. Cohen agrees that he did. Blanche is now gaining some steam with his cross-examination, noting that Cohen has said under oath that he accepted responsibility and then later undermined that outside of court. This is very similar to what 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. Ever since, Trump’s lawyers have accused Cohen of perjury in that moment. Todd Blanche is now asking about the F.B.I. search of Michael Cohen’s phones and his apartment, hotel room and office in April 2018, and the investigation into taxi medallions that Cohen had. Cohen walks through his partnership with a man who cooperated with the investigation, coherently. The jurors are paying close attention to Cohen right now. Cohen is coming across as knowledgeable and articulate about the arcane corners of the New York City taxi industry. He even provided what he said was the exact number of the medallions that allow taxis to operate here. This is a strange and seemingly irrelevant cul-de-sac, as Blanche invites Cohen to explain how the taxi medallion business works. The question in my mind listening to this right now is: Why do I care? Blanche is hopefully building to some questions about the actual case at hand. Part of Todd Blanche's strategy seems to be repeating the word “lie” in every other sentence. If you’re a bored juror right now, you are hearing lie, lie, lie, lie. Even if you’re having trouble following the substance of Cohen's various lies, you are hearing an overall picture of dishonesty. The risk for the defense here is that the jurors are reminded during closing arguments that Trump hired this self-acknowledged liar and made him his lawyer, and hold Trump accountable for that. So far today, Todd Blanche has yet to ask Michael Cohen 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 two biggest witnesses, Stormy Daniels and Cohen. Susan Necheles’s cross-examination of Daniels was largely focused and had an arc. Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen has been all over the place. Todd Blanche is now having Michael Cohen recall the lies he told to Congress about how many times he spoke to Trump about a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow. 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. Even though Cohen has said he was lying to protect Trump, that’s not what Blanche is focused on here. “You knew you were lying, correct?” Blanche says. “Yes,” Cohen responds. Todd Blanche, referring to Michael Cohen’s many instances of testifying in the past, in courts and in Congress, asks him if he swore an oath when he testified. It seems as if Blanche is warming up to call Cohen’s past testimony into question, in hopes of casting doubt on his testimony at this trial. Trump’s lawyers have accused Cohen of lying under oath, as recently as in Trump’s civil fraud trial late last year. Prosecutors had done a kind of controlled-burn of this territory on Tuesday, walking Cohen through many of his previous lies. Michael Cohen is asked if he responded to a post on Truth Social, Trump's social media platform, in which Trump attacked Cohen and Stormy Daniels. 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. Keep in mind that the prosecution used earlier witnesses to introduce Michael Cohen to the jury as an outsized personality. And 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. While the clips may not shock the jury, they do underscore why prosecutors repeatedly implored Cohen to stop talking before — and during — the trial. Todd Blanche asks Michael Cohen if he believes his podcasts and media interviews played a role in Trump's indictment. “I took some credit, yes,” he says Unlike on Tuesday, when Trump had his eyes closed and appeared to be dozing through much of Cohen's cross-examination, he is now paying close attention, as clips play of Cohen describing how much he hates Trump and wants him to rot in prison. Todd Blanche plays a second clip of Michael Cohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes “that this man ends up in prison,” and “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 me and my family.” Cohen's New York accent — he is from the Five Towns, on Long Island — is very pronounced in the podcast clips. Michael Cohen’s voice sounded truly bizarre in that podcast clip celebrating Trump's indictment on March 30 last year. Giddy, high-pitched, and he was speaking so fast that if you didn’t know better you’d think the tape had been artificially sped up. It also offered jurors a completely different version of the Cohen they are seeing on the witness stand, where he has remained calm and deliberate with every word. We are now hearing a recording of Michael Cohen celebrating Trump's indictment on his podcast. His voice is loud, over-energized, enthusiastic to the point of seeming off-putting. Some of the jurors peered up at Cohen, almost seeming a little embarrassed. Cohen’s face sinks as he hears that clip of his voice. Blanche asks him 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. In the overflow room, laughter is heard as Justice Merchan shoots down Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer. Blanche asked for a sidebar and got a dismissive “no” from Merchan. We’ve now had 10 objections in less than 20 minutes. Todd Blanche began questioning Michael Cohen about his texts with an investigator with the Manhattan district attorney's office, Jeremy Rosenberg, who was reportedly suspended for his interactions with Cohen. Blanche was going to ask Cohen about those texts, but Susan Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors, stood up and asked for a mid-cross voir dire, so she could question Cohen about the evidence in the middle of his cross-examination. When she established that the texts had been taken out of context, she called for a sidebar. Her objection was sustained, so Blanche may be prevented from doing what he was trying to do with these texts. Now, he’s starting another attempt. Cohen says that he learned that Trump was indicted before the indictment was unsealed in the courtroom, when The New York Times broke that news in 2023. He says Rosenberg alerted him to that article. A team of six reporters broke that story. Five of us are covering the trial for The Times: Kate Christobek, Ben Protess, Willy Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and me. 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 we broke that news widely before the indictment was unsealed; Cohen was certainly not alone in having learned it. For those of you keeping score at home, we’re now on our third sidebar already. The jurors, who have been attending this trial since the week of April 15, are staring ahead or out into the courtroom during the latest sidebar. On Tuesday, as Blanche delivered a fairly meandering cross-examination of Cohen, they started to seem bored. Todd Blanche, leading the cross-examination for the defense, came out of the gate firing on Tuesday, with a furious accusation — involving a profane insult he said Cohen had directed at him online. (The prosecution objected and it was sustained.) Today, in the early going, he is much less intense. We just got a hint as to what the long sidebar may have been about: scheduling issues. The judge just told the jurors that, if they are OK with it, court may be in session next Wednesday, despite the fact that the trial is usually off on Wednesdays. This suggests that the prosecutors and the defense were quibbling over the calendar. The defense sought to delay the trial many times before it started, and Trump has complained that it was going too fast. Michael Cohen has been called back to the stand. He ambles past the defense table, as we wait for the jury to be brought in. A very long sidebar is finally over. We do not know what it was about, but the jurors were summoned almost 18 minutes late this morning. When the transcript is sent later in the day, we'll find out what was discussed. Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, leans over after the sidebar and whispers something to the former president, covering up his mouth so no one can see his lips move. Trump nods once at the end of their short conversation. Outside in the hallway, before entering the courtroom, Trump seemed to potentially violate the gag order that forbids him from talking about prosecutors in the case, other than Alvin Bragg. He made what sounded like a reference to Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors here, saying, “a lead person from the D.O.J. is running the trial,” and baselessly adding, “So Biden’s office is running this trial.” Colangelo used to work at the Department of Justice, and Trump has used similar language to describe him in the past. It’s not clear, given what Trump said, that prosecutors would be able to show that it was a clear violation of his gag order. We will watch to see whether they seek to push the issue. Justice Merchan has warned Trump that he could go to jail if he violates the order again, but he is unlikely to act unless prosecutors press him on the matter. The lawyers and the judge are having one of the longest sidebars that have taken place during this trial, if not the longest. Their voices are louder than usual, though the words they're saying aren't clear. Although Trump has a large group of supporters sitting behind him, he is nearly alone at the defense table as most of his lawyers participate in the sidebar. Susan Necheles, the longest-serving lawyer on his team, is at the table but seated at a distance from him. The overflow courtroom down the hall from the courtroom where the trial is taking place is at capacity, every seat taken. As the trial moves towards its conclusion, interest seems to be peaking. Court officers are currently explaining, yet again, the courtroom's no-cellphone policy to the people here with Trump.

What the fuck. https://jalopnik.com/tesla-s-cyberhammer-makes-sense-if-you-hit-yourself-wit-1851478583 https://shop.tesla.com/product/cyberhammer

Goddamn, just sit this out. Or stick around, so we can all mock you.

Hell, I know that. But Elon can throw out that line and millions will believe it's never been done and he's the only person that can get something "uncrewed" to Mars.

Less than 5 years for uncrewed You know, the US has landed shit on Mars for decades uncrewed. So...yeah.

Looking back to 2015-16, no one knew just how weak the GOP was. Oh, it's been devoid of serious thought and political will for years now, and it put up a good front but.....to allow one person to walk in and completely morph it into something totally at odds of what the party once was is just incredulous.

Bump. https://www.koat.com/article/breaking-bad-director-film-albuquerque-new-mexico/60779885

I had forgotten, but I have a prior engagement this afternoon with some local Special Olympians from 1-3, so I'm not going to be able to do the play by play of the cross on Cohen. @bolverk, are you able to take the wheel?

Tuesday morning, Cohen continued: We’re nearly at the end of Michael Cohen’s direct testimony here and he’s asked to reflect on his time with Trump. “I don’t regret working at the Trump Organization,” Cohen says. But, he says, in order to stay in Trump’s good graces and obey his orders, “I violated my moral compass, and I suffer the penalty.” We're breaking for lunch. Cohen will be cross-examined when we return. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is now detailing a lawsuit that Trump filed against Michael Cohen in Florida, well after the presidency. Ultimately Trump decided not to be deposed and the case was dismissed. But that suit was widely seen as an attempt at intimidation. Trump writes a note and hands it to his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche. Blanche reads the note and smiles. Michael Cohen says that he now works in media and entertainment and started a podcast while he was on home confinement. He says he discusses news of the day as well as Trump and makes money as a result of his podcasts. Susan Hoffinger is speed-walking him through this portion, where he decribes how he has made money from his story of Trump’s betrayal. He continues that he wrote a memoir in prison, called “Disloyal,” about his life and experiences working for the Trump Organization. He says his next book, “Revenge,” was a “forensic dissection” of the corrupt prosecution against him. Cohen then addresses the fact that he invited Stormy Daniels onto his podcast. He said he thought it would be a good time to apologize to her. Again and again, the prosecutor Susan Hoffinger is asking Michael Cohen to explain why he lied to this person or that person. She’s doing it to prepare the jury for what will likely be a brutal cross-examination. But it is a lot of lying for the jury to hear about. The risk for Trump remains that the jury has heard how happy Trump was with Cohen at various points and how he couldn’t have been unaware of who Cohen was and what he was doing. Susan Hoffinger is going through a lengthy list of all that Michael Cohen has lost financially. This is similar to something Stormy Daniels said, when pushed on cross-examination about whether she had money to gain by coming forward. She said that she had also lost a lot. Cohen also acknowledges that he has been disbarred. We are hearing testimony that is confusing, but we understand what it stems from: In 2023, during Michael Cohen’s testimony at Trump’s civil fraud trial, the defense was able to trip him up while asking him about one of his federal guilty pleas. There, he seemed to suggest that he wasn’t actually guilty of one of the crimes he had pleaded guilty to. Ever since, Trump’s lawyers have accused him of perjury. Susan Hoffinger is now seeking to air that out, by asking Cohen about it here today. He says now he did not dispute the underlying facts of the case, but believed — and still does — that he should not have been criminally prosecuted for that specific offense. Susan Hoffinger, preparing for the defense's cross-examination, which feels as if it is right around the corner, is asking Cohen about the cell phones from which much of their evidence was pulled. The defense has sought to raise questions about when those phones were obtained and whether the evidence on them may have been manipulated. Hoffinger appears to be trying to head them off by making the chain of custody as clear as she can. Hoffinger asks if Cohen altered or modified the recording he made of Trump. He responds, as he has so many times: “No, ma’am.” Michael Cohen is now testifying about having met with various law enforcement agencies, including the Manhattan district attorney’s office. His story is coming full circle and becoming a bit meta, as he talks about cooperating with these prosecutors. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, takes him all the way to March 2023, when Cohen testified in the grand jury. Trump was indicted late that month. Hoffinger goes to a slightly surprising place, but again, one seemingly aimed at thwarting Todd Blanche on cross-examination: she asks if Michael Cohen has sought a reduction for his sentence, and if he asked the district attorney’s office for help. The answer to both questions is yes. Hoffinger makes clear that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was willing to provide a letter to help him in 2021, if federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York would accept it as a reason to reduce his sentence. But the federal prosecutors — who deeply dislike Cohen — wouldn’t accept it, so no letter was provided. Hoffinger makes clear that Cohen continued to testify and help the case despite not getting what he wanted. The answer to both questions is yes. Hoffinger makes clear that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was willing to provide a letter to help him, but the Southern District's prosecutors — who deeply dislike Cohen — wouldn’t accept it. Alina Habba, a Trump lawyer who is not working on this case but who is sitting in court nonetheless to lend moral support, passed a note through an intermediary up to Susan Necheles at the defense table. Necheles then passed Habba’s note to Emil Bove, who then passed it on to Todd Blanche. Habba led the cross-examination of Cohen during Trump's civil fraud trial down the street, which prosecutors in this case warily watched. Michael Cohen is being asked, over an objection by the defense, about how he was sent home on furlough from federal prison in 2020, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. He was ultimately thrown back in prison because he was planning to publish a book later that year and refused to sign a letter saying he would decline to publish anything. A judge later called the move “retaliatory” by the federal government, and he was freed. Cohen, for only the second time I can remember on the stand, is getting angry as he remembers what he clearly sees as an injustice. He testified that not only was he sent back to prison, he was put in solitary confinement. Michael Cohen is now discussing his meetings with Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. There is a divide between how Mueller’s office viewed Cohen and how the federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York, who charged him initially, did. Mueller’s office declared him helpful. The S.D.N.Y. team, not so much. Michael Cohen is now talking about his 2019 testimony before the House of Representatives, one hearing of which was televised. It was extremely dramatic. During that hearing, he sealed his split with Trump, calling him a racist and a con man who was unfit for office. Cohen is now recapping his apology to the public during that testimony. His break from Trump was remarkable, and fairly rare. Cohen is one of the only Trump allies or advisers who actually served time in prison. His testimony at that hearing is certain to come up during cross-examination, including his assertion that he didn’t want a job in the White House. As Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asked Michael Cohen about committing federal crimes, she also emphasized the key themes of the prosecution's case, asking him to testify that he committed them on Trump’s behalf. There was no world in which prosecutors would not have asked Cohen to speak about his own crimes — if the defense had brought them up first, it could have looked as if prosecutors had been trying to hide them. But Hoffinger used that portion of the testimony to reassert her own case, seeking not only to inoculate jurors but also remind them of why they’re here today: To assess Trump’s guilt or lack thereof, not Cohen’s. Michael Cohen is now reading aloud the tweets Trump put out when Cohen pleaded guilty, saying that he felt “very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family” and praising Manafort for refusing to “break.” “Such respect for a brave man.” It is absolutely remarkable that the sitting president was tweeting these things. We also see Trump's tweets attacking Cohen. He says that if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, he doesn’t recommend Cohen. He contrasts Cohen with Manafort, a loyal ally, and criticizes Cohen again for “breaking.” Cohen, seeing those tweets, says they “caused a lot of angst and anxiety.” Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, just asked Michael Cohen why he paid the money to Stormy Daniels. Cohen says he did so to influence the election, and that he did so at Trump’s direction. This is a summary of the key themes and may signal that direct examination is coming to an end soon. Trump’s lawyers seem on edge through this part of Cohen’s testimony. Todd Blanche and Emil Bove appear to pass a note. Trump, however, is very much not on edge. His eyes are closed and he appears to be dozing peacefully. As Cohen repeats that he worked with David Pecker and others at his company to do so, he again repeats that he took action at Trump’s direction. The prosecutors use that testimony to lead into Cohen’s guilty pleas in the federal case against him in 2018. Some of the charges against him were related to the hush-money payment. Michael Cohen looks down and takes a beat before turning to the jury and talking about his family. He says he discussed with his family what he should do and they said: “Why are you holding onto this loyalty? What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty.” Cohen looks like he’s struggling to hold it together here as he recalls talking to his family about whether to stay loyal to Trump or to cooperate with investigators. Michael Cohen was in the midst of testimony about weighing whether to retain loyalty to Trump, painting it as a very difficult decision, as he considered whether he would be loyal to his family, his country or Trump. As he was speaking, Vivek Ramaswamy and a number of the other politicians here supporting Trump today walked back in the room. It was a remarkable moment, but Cohen seemed mostly unfazed. He kept testifying. Justice Merchan didn’t take note of what took place, but he might have if Cohen had been disrupted. We have almost never seen a display like that during the proceedings — several officials marching in during testimony — and it was disruptive in the room, if not to the witness. Michael Cohen is testifying, with emails on the screen, that Robert Costello, his new lawyer, was continuing a fierce pressure campaign to keep Cohen loyal to Trump. Cohen says he understood Costello to be telling him not to cooperate with law enforcement in the wake of the F.B.I. raid. As Cohen talks about how the message was “stay in the fold, don’t flip, don’t speak,” it’s easy to forget it’s a former president of the United States on trial. This type of language is more common in the trials of mobsters. It’s striking to me how many of Michael Cohen's interactions had to do with emotions, and more specficially, insecurities. He has testified about trying to please Trump and wanting to make sure he felt “loved” by Trump. Other witnesses have described him as manic, explosive, crude and a “pants-on-fire” individual. Yet, for all of that, he’s shown little to no emotion on the stand, in what has now been about nine hours of testimony. On the one hand, we still haven’t had anything directly tying Trump to the structure of the false business records outside of Michael Cohen’s words on the stand, which the defense will aggressively challenge. But the risk for the defense is that the jury holds Trump accountable for all of the various mucky conduct that is being described here, and has been described throughout the trial. The synchronization of the Trump tweets and Robert Costello's outreach to Michael Cohen was a really interesting touch. It helps to reinforce the idea that prosecutors are selling, that Trump was no longer communicating with Cohen directly, but he was still trying to make sure that his embattled fixer was under his thumb. The Times wrote an article in 2019 about the awkward role Robert Costello served here. He had intended to be Michael Cohen’s lawyer, and spent countless hours on the phone with him, but was never formally retained. These emails we're seeing from Robert Costello go a long way toward supporting Michael Cohen’s description of their meeting. Cohen had said that Costello recommended he hire him as a lawyer because his relationship with Rudy Giuliani would help him maintain access to Trump. In one email, Costello tells Cohen that his relationship with Giuliani could be useful to him. In another, he talks about a “back channel” for communication. And in a third, the not-so-subtle message: “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” Cohen just testified that the Costello emails came in perfect synchrony with Trump tweeting his support for Cohen, tweets the courtroom has already seen. Robert Costello offered to act as a backchannel between Michael Cohen and Trump, Cohen says. In the middle of this channel was Rudy Giuliani. Cohen testifies that Costello told him not to reach out to Trump directly. So while Costello and Giuliani formed a link between Trump and Cohen, they also acted as a buffer, which may have grated on Cohen, particularly given that he used to report to Trump directly — and loved it. We are seeing an email from Costello to Cohen from April 2018, in which Costello informs Cohen that Giuliani has just joined the Trump legal team. Michael Cohen is speaking slowly and deliberately as he describes an emotional crisis in his life. He is sometimes speaking directly to the jury. Michael Cohen is testifying again after the courtroom took a short break. “Distraught, nervous, concerned” are the emotions he describes having felt as he met at the Loews Regency on Park Avenue with a new lawyer, Robert Costello, a criminal defense lawyer who Cohen had been told was very close with Rudy Giuliani. This was immediately after the F.B.I. raided his hotel room there, and so Cohen’s emotions were in tumult. Costello has told us that Cohen appeared suicidal at this meeting. Cohen says he was told Costello had worked for Giuliani at the Southern District of New York. By this time, Giuliani was about to become a lawyer for Trump on the Mueller investigation. Cohen testifies that Costello told him this would be a way to have a “backchannel” to Trump. The testimony prompts Trump to write a note, which he passes to his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, who is expected to cross-examine Cohen.

Here you go: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/05/stormy-daniels-on-stand-trump-trials/678373/?gift=Q78T0P0cUu8jt3BNLSKmM6zi2dg2J70m-Yq25sEdGl4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/14/michael-cohen-trump-testimony-transcript/ Cohen: I said to him: And how’s things going to go with upstairs? Susan Hoffinger, prosecution attorney: Were you concerned about that? Cohen: I was. Hoffinger: And what, if anything, did he say to you about that? Cohen: “Don’t worry,” he goes. He goes: “How long do you think I will be on the market for? Not long.” Hoffinger: What did you understand that to mean? Cohen: He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign.

https://jalopnik.com/a-robotaxi-wont-solve-teslas-mounting-issues-1851473930

[Note: court is on break; I'll start a new post with the rest of the morning testimony from Cohen] Tuesday: Michael Cohen, continued It’s worth returning to the key portions of Michael Cohen’s testimony about Trump’s knowledge of the records at the heart of the case. Prosecutors have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying the records, which pertain to his reimbursement of Cohen for the hush money he paid to Stormy Daniels. Cohen did not say that Trump personally falsified the records, or even that he explicitly instructed someone else to do so. He did, however, testify that Trump knew the records would disguise the reimbursement as ordinary legal expenses. Cohen’s testimony was hardly a smoking gun, but it might not have to be for the prosecution to prove its case. Under New York law, the concept of accessorial liability does a lot of heavy lifting for the prosecutors, who need only show that Trump intentionally aided his employees to falsify the records. It’s become a regular talking point on cable news among Trump's adversaries that the prosecution’s case is going so smoothly that they might not even need Cohen. This is a tribute to the strong documentary evidence that prosecutors have assembled, which helps place Cohen in the room for each of the conversations he says he had with Trump. But there is little evidence as to what was actually said during these conversations, so Cohen remains an essential witness. And the cross-examination of Cohen, which we expect will begin today, will be one of the most important moments of the trial for the defense. Michael Cohen ended the first portion of the morning session by saying that it was his understanding that Trump wanted him to refrain from cooperating with the government and “certainly not to provide information or flip.” At this point in the narrative in 2018, Michael Cohen was looking for reassurance that Trump was going to take care of him. He would soon lose that sense of security, as the Trump Organization started balking at paying some of Cohen’s legal bills. Michael Cohen is now reading tweets from April 2018 in which Trump defended him and attacked reporters, including Maggie Haberman. Trump says in the tweets that he doesn’t see Cohen lying or making up stories, “despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!” These tweets were also among the potential instances of obstruction of justice that were reviewed by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who at the time was investigating the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia. Michael Cohen is now describing the F.B.I.’s raid on his Park Avenue hotel room in April 2018. He says federal agents took his cell phones — including the one with the recording on it that jurors already heard — and many of his documents. He says he was frightened, despondent and angry. This was a major news event at the time, and now Cohen can reflect on his feelings about it in front of a courtroom full of reporters. He says he received a phone call from the president after the raid. Cohen testifies that Trump said: “Don’t worry. I’m the president of the United States. There’s nothing here. Everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK.” He says it was the last time they spoke. Prosecutors can argue that if Trump knew about the false records and did not stop them, as Cohen says, then he aided the crime. I expect they will hammer this point home in their closing arguments. Michael Cohen is now testifying that he continued to deal with Stormy Daniels in early 2018 with Trump’s backing and blessing. He says that the president asked him to get a temporary restraining order against Daniels. And he says that Keith Davidson, who had been Daniels’s lawyer up until that point, told him that he was no longer representing her. Her new lawyer was Michael Avenatti. Michael Cohen says he told David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, that he had been told that the federal investigation Cohen faced would be “taken care of” by Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general. Cohen testifies that it was Trump who told him that. As Michael Cohen continued his denial tour in regard to the hush money, we are seeing he was texted by Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump. The text says “Client says thanks for what you do.” Cohen leaves no doubt in his testimony that “client” in the text refers to Trump, thanking Cohen for the denials. Cohen testified a few minutes before that that he had shared his misleading statement about reimbursements with Sekulow. We are seeing evidence of Cohen texting our own Maggie Haberman — sitting in the courtroom — as he seeks to spread the news that he made the hush-money payment himself, and that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a part of it. He also said that he was not reimbursed for the payment. He says that he had planned to give Haberman the statement first, and that he had received approval from the “big boss.” “I will call you soon,” Cohen’s text to Haberman says. We noted in coverage of Cohen's statement at the time that he wouldn't answer follow-up questions. Now, years later, he is testifying that the statement was misleading. We are now seeing text messages showing that Michael Cohen was trying to get Stormy Daniels booked on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Jan. 18, 2018, to deny that she had an affair with Trump. Cohen and Hannity were longtime friends and Cohen had even offered legal advice to Hannity. These text messages from Cohen to Keith Davidson, Daniels's lawyer — which said things like “please call me” and “c’mon” — demonstrate Cohen’s relentlessness and zeal on behalf of Trump. Cohen is now being asked about the complaint letter he received from the Federal Election Commission about his payment to Stormy Daniels, which was filed by a good-government group after The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing the payment. He says his response to the commission was not false, but it was misleading. As Cohen continues to testify about Daniels’s statements to the press at the time the hush-money payment became public knowledge, he has admitted to lying a number of times — he just said he knew one of the statements was a lie because he helped “craft it.” This could be helpful to the defense once cross-examination starts. But of course, Cohen has long admitted that he was lying for Trump. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, brought up the joint defense agreement that Michael Cohen was part of, which meant the lawyer defending him was aligned with Trump’s lawyers. She makes sure Cohen tells the jurors it was an advantage for Trump, as well as for Cohen. Cohen is now testifying about the statement by Stormy Daniels in which she denied having had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump. Her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, testified that this statement was technically true, because they didn’t have a full affair. Prosecutors have apparently decided not to take that line: They just call Daniels’s statement false. Cohen said that he made sure to tell Trump that he got the denial from Daniels “to get credit that I was continuing to ensure he was protected.” He wanted Trump to know that he had “stayed loyal.” Michael Cohen, in text messages he is reading aloud in court, instructed Keith Davidson, who was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, to “write a strong denial” from Daniels, saying that she had not had an affair with Trump. This is a statement that jurors have seen many times — and that Trump was fined $1,000 for posting on social media about in a violation of his gag order. At this point in the trial, much of this evidence is familiar to jurors. Prosecutors are hoping that Cohen brings it all together for them. He just sighed and shook his head in the direction of the jury box, in seeming disbelief. Michael Cohen has reached the part of his story where news of his payment to Stormy Daniels has broken into the public sphere. This was the beginning of the end for Trump and Cohen. All of Cohen’s previous testimony has concerned a time when they were still allies. I’ll be curious to see if his demeanor changes now that he’s heading toward the break in their relationship. Michael Cohen says that he was under a “tremendous amount of pressure” when he lied to Congress but that he was happy to have a lawyer paid for by the Trump Organization. This is a useful line of questioning for prosecutors, who are dealing with unfriendly witnesses here, some of whom are also still loyal to the Trump Organization. Cohen could help underscore what prosecutors hope the jurors will understand as those witnesses' mixed motivations. Trump’s three lawyers are all furiously taking notes right now as Cohen admits to lying multiple times to protect Trump. Michael Cohen is now being asked about his House testimony in connection with the Russia investigation. This is going to head toward questioning about his lying to Congress about discussions around plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen has said before this trial that he did it to protect Trump, and he’s poised to talk about it here. Cohen notes that the Trump Organization was paying for his lawyer, and that he was part of a joint defense agreement. Cohen testifies he felt he “needed” the protection of the sitting president at the time. Trump looks directly at Cohen on the witness stand as he says that he lied for Trump “out of loyalty and in order to protect him.” Susan Hoffinger is now walking Michael Cohen again through his testimony from yesterday about “monetizing” his role as Trump’s personal lawyer by using it to attract other clients. Cohen confirms he did. Much of this feels like inoculation against what Cohen is going to face during cross-examination. Trump turns and whispers to his lawyer Emil Bove as Cohen talks about how much money he made by monetizing his relationship with him. Trump clearly mouths “four?” And Bove clearly mouths back: “$4 million.” Michael Cohen is being asked about some additional work he did for the Trump Organization, some of it legal work, including for the Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten. Cohen is saying he didn’t expect to be paid for that work and did not send invoices for it. Trump’s lawyers have indicated that they may argue that Cohen was doing real legal work, and was being paid for that. So this may be an example of the prosecution seeking to air an argument before the defense can. Cohen is asked to estimate how many hours of legal (or quasi-legal) work he did for Trump in 2017. His best guess? “Less than 10.” Cohen is now saying he did some legal work for Trump in 2018. It was in response to Stormy Daniels wanting to go public, and Trump wanting an arbitration action filed against her over her nondisclosure agreement. He says he was contacted by Eric Trump, as well as by Trump himself. Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Speaker Mike Johnson just accused prosecutors of advancing a “sham” trial against “one president to provide cover for another.” His comments came a week after Johnson put down an ouster attempt by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who had criticized the speaker of not doing enough to defend Trump. “I came here again today, on my own, to support President Trump, because I am one of hundreds of millions of people — and one citizen — who is deeply concerned about this,” Johnson said. It’s worth noting that Trump, minutes after the vote had actually taken place, had encouraged House Republicans on social media not to oust Johnson — at least not yet. “We’re not in a position of voting on a motion to vacate,” his post said. “At some point, we may very well be, but this is not the time.” We’re continuing to see the series of documents that prosecutors say are false, and continuing to think about yesterday’s testimony. When Cohen was describing the January meeting with Allen Weisselberg, he testified that Trump had heard Weisselberg say that the monthly payments would be a retainer for legal services. It is that single line from a witness — the word “yes” — that most directly attaches Trump to the alleged crimes. Prosecutors are arguing that Trump’s sign-off on the repayment plan, along with his knowledge that Cohen would be falsely reimbursed for “legal services,” indicates that he approved of what they say was a crime. There’s mountains of documentary evidence that Cohen was paid for legal services he didn’t actually provide, and that these were reimbursements. The question of what Trump knew relies mostly on Cohen’s testimony. Michael Cohen is going through check stubs for the first two checks and saying the descriptions of them were “false.” Cohen says both Eric Trump, who is sitting in the courthouse, and Allen Weisselberg signed the first two, from the former president’s revocable trust account. At some point, it switched to Trump’s personal account. Cohen is now testifying about checks Trump started signing himself, from his personal account. The jurors seem to be listening, with some following along with documents shown on screens in front of them. Cohen is being asked about the invoices one by one. “Is that a false record,” he is asked over and over. “Yes ma'am,” he typically responds. One of the prosecutors, Joshua Steinglass, asked prospective jurors during jury selection whether they could believe that a person could be guilty for a crime even if they did not commit the crime themselves: He used the example of a husband hiring a hitman to murder his wife, and asked jurors whether they believed the husband would be just as guilty as the hitman. So what prosecutors are asking jurors to believe is that Trump, by signing off on the repayment plan and showing some knowledge of it, is the person who ultimately commissioned the crime, even if he did not execute it. And this is why Cohen is so important. This all relies on his word. The defense is likely to attack his credibility and call into question whether he can be believed about what happened in these two conversations.ed with their questioning. Michael Cohen is now explicitly testifying that the invoices he was sending, which he has sought to tie to Trump, were false documents. He is going over the monthly invoices he created, which described him as having been paid for “services rendered,” and testifying that they were false records. He stresses they weren’t valid legal fees, but “reimbursements.” Michael Cohen confirms that in response to the false invoices, he received 11 checks in 2017 totaling $420,000. Prosecutors have now moved on to questioning Michael Cohen about how Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, responded after the repayment plan was created. Cohen has tied Trump to authorizing the plan, but what we'll hear about the two meetings in which he purportedly did so will come entirely from Cohen’s testimony. We’ve seen documentary evidence that shows he had those meetings. But we can’t know, other than by trusting Michael Cohen, what was said. Cohen is now explicitly testifying that the invoices he was sending, which he has sought to tie to Trump, were false documents. That was a really key piece of testimony — as we said before, in prosecutors’ own statement of facts, this is the only time that Trump is actually said to have confirmed the repayment plan, which prosecutors say involved the payments being illegally disguised. But that meeting slid right by during the testimony, with Trump only explicitly acknowledging to Cohen, it sounded to me, like he knew about the two checks that Cohen would receive in January and February. Michael Cohen is now describing meeting with Trump in the Oval Office in February 2017. He says that Trump asked him if he needed money, and that he said no, he did not need any extra. He then said Trump asked him to “deal with Allen,” meaning Weisselberg, who had arranged the repayment plan for the hush money. Trump also said, Cohen testified, that he’d receive a check for both January and February. Now, prosecutors have posted a picture of Cohen visiting the White House at the time. Jurors have already seen the picture — but now they know its import. At the meeting, Trump showed direct knowledge of the repayment plan, per Cohen’s testimony just now. Susan Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors, has returned to questioning Michael Cohen, asking him about meeting with Trump in January 2017 and discussing getting reimbursed for his payment to Stormy Daniels. Cohen is being shown an email sent a month later by Jeffrey McConney, the Trump organization's controller, about the “invoices.” These invoices were shown in court as part of McConney’s testimony. They were for $35,000 a month, over 12 months, totaling the $420,000 that Trump allegedly paid back to Cohen after Cohen paid off Stormy Daniels. The sum included a bonus and tax-related gross ups, plus $50,000 for tech services. The judge is on the bench and we are set to begin. As we await the judge, it’s a good time to offer a preview of this morning’s testimony. We don’t know exactly what Michael Cohen is going to say. But we know the contours of the prosecution’s case: the former fixer is expected to testify that he met with Trump in the Oval Office in February 2017, and that Trump signed off on what prosecutors say was a crime: the plan to disguise the reimbursements to Cohen as payments for legal services. While anything is possible when Cohen is on the stand, I’m expecting him to drill down on that Oval Office meeting, and the importance of that testimony cannot be overstated. He is the only witness expected to offer direct evidence that Trump was involved in falsifying the records. Cohen’s testimony, if the jury finds it credible, could give prosecutors exactly what they need to tie Trump to the records he is accused of falsifying. The case could hinge on today’s testimony. The other party to that meeting — Allen Weisselberg, who was the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization — is unlikely to appear at the trial for either the defense or prosecution to corroborate or deny any details. That’s because Weisselberg is currently serving a jail term on perjury charges from a separate legal case related to Trump. And it seems at this point as if the jurors will not get much of an explanation for why they won’t hear from Weisselberg. Trump is seated at the defense table and has been whispering back and forth with his lead lawyer Todd Blanche, who is expected to begin cross-examining Michael Cohen as soon as today. Blanche is in the chair closest to the lectern, which signifies that he will be the one to cross-examine Cohen. It’s a really big moment for Blanche, who has fashioned his current career around representing Trump, but who has never been a defense lawyer in a trial like this. Trump walks into the courtroom, trailed by Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Eric and Lara Trump, in addition to two advisers, Boris Epshteyn and Alina Habba, and the actual lawyers on the case. Speaker Mike Johnson, who’s set to speak outside the courthouse in less than an hour, doesn’t appear to be here. Word has gone out to Trump allies over the past few days that Trump wants to see a bigger show of support inside the courtroom. The cavalry has arrived, led by J.D. Vance yesterday. Vance’s appearance in court has generated an incentive for others who hope to be Trump's running mate to get to Manhattan fast. Trump's entourage is big enough today that they are having trouble arranging themselves in the two rows of seats set aside for supporters of the defense's side. The prosecutors walk in, laden down with just one box today, as well as bags and folders filled with documents. One of them, Susan Hoffinger, is expected to resume her questioning of Michael Cohen this morning. Trump has been rolling heavy with support from Republican elected officials this week, which we expected for Michael Cohen’s testimony. Today, Trump will be joined by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, as well as North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, a contender to be Trump's running mate. Also present will be Representatives Byron Donalds and Cory Mills of Florida, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who was one of Trump's primary rivals this year. Both Donalds and Ramaswamy are longshot hopefuls to be Trump's running mate. This show of force is significant given that the cross-examination of Cohen by Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche is expected to start today, and the Trump team hopes that Cohen will unravel on the stand. The lines to get into court today were crazy long, and tensions were running high in the public line. People started queuing Monday night, hoping to get one of the coveted spots in the courtroom. One woman outside said she paid $750 for a line sitter. “It’s better than a Broadway show,” she told me. Trouble started early though, when a few people butted into line, sparking some tense exchanges. Then a man at the front of the line sold his spot to two people, purportedly for $2,000, causing further consternation. The members of the public who were jostling for prime spots in line outside just started filing into the overflow room at the courthouse. Some have sleeping bags and pillows, which are now tucked under the wooden benches. Good morning from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where today Michael Cohen is expected to return to the stand. On Monday, he testified that in 2016, while a candidate for president, Trump had directed Cohen to pay hush money to a porn star to bury her story of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier. After he was elected president, Trump signed off on a repayment plan, Cohen said. Today, he is expected to testify about what prosecutors say is the actual crime: the falsification of business records that were used for the repayment. And then, the defense lawyers may start cross-examining Cohen, and they will likely seek to make him look like a liar who is out for revenge. Here's an illustration of the courthouse layout (spoilered to make the post shorter)

And we are done for the day. Cohen's Monday afternoon testimony, Part 2: We are finished with a day that matched expectations: Michael Cohen has testified that Trump directed him to make the hush-money payment and signed off on Allen Weisselberg’s plan to repay Cohen. Cohen will return to the stand on Tuesday, so prosecutors can conclude their examination. After that, it will be the defense’s turn to cross-examine him. Cohen exits the stand, taking his empty water bottle and plastic cup with him. Michael Cohen testifies that Trump, as president-elect, was busy with meetings around time. Yet he and Allen Weisselberg went into Trump’s 26th floor office to discuss the reimbursement plan, he says. This is an important piece of testimony. It not only paints a pretty wild split-screen image of Trump dealing with the fallout from his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels while putting together his administration. It also drives home the fact that Trump knew about the scheme to reimburse Cohen for making that payment on his behalf. Michael Cohen is explaining why he was owed $180,000, instead of simply $130,000 for the hush money. He says that he was owed $50,000 — an amount he admits was exaggerated — to pay a firm called Red Finch for “tech services.” He tells this story in his book “Disloyal.” At least in part, the services were Cohen getting a computer programmer to buy IP addresses in order to rig an online CNBC poll to make sure Trump ranked among the most influential business leaders alive. Allen Weisselberg then doubled the $180,000 to $360,000. Weisselberg, Cohen says, expected that he would lose half of that money because it would be taxed as income, and was making him whole, even after taxes. The irony of the “grossed-up” description, which Cohen says was Weisselberg’s idea so Cohen could take the money as income instead of reimbursement, is it cost Trump double what it would have otherwise. Michael Cohen is now at the beginning of the portion of his testimony that focuses on false business records. He’s describing his notes with Allen Weisselberg working out what he was being paid for another matter, and how he would be reimbursed for it. We are now, again, looking at Weisselberg’s handwritten notes on the reimbursement to Cohen. We have seen these at least once before, while Jeffrey McConney, an underling of Weisselberg’s, testified. But now, Cohen is testifying that he was in the room as Weisselberg made these notations on how to repay him for the hush money, as well as his shrunken bonus, and other things he was owed. This document, prosecutors say, leads straight to the repayments to Cohen, and the false documents used to disguise them. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each of those documents: 11 checks, 11 invoices and 12 ledger entries. Michael Cohen says that he went on vacation and that Trump called him while he was away to say hello. But Trump also said to him then: “Don’t worry about that other thing, I’m going to take care of it when you get back.” Cohen says he understood Trump to be referring to his bonus. But later, he says, he met with Allen Weisselberg, who told him that Trump would reimburse him for the hush-money payment. Trump, who has rarely looked at the witness stand today, was looking in Cohen’s direction as he recounted this conversation. It’s impossible to discern how the jury is processing Cohen, to restate a recurring theme. These jurors have been here for several weeks now of testimony that has overlapped at times. By eliciting a detailed account of Michael Cohen’s feelings of betrayal here, prosecutors seem to be anticipating the defense’s plan on cross-examination to paint him as an embittered ex-employee with a grudge against Trump. They would rather get the story out themselves now to lessen its sting. After Michael Cohen describes having wanted a position as a personal lawyer to the new president, which he didn’t get, he begins to describe not having received a significant bonus. What prosecutors are leading into, in short, is that Cohen was very angry and disgruntled in late 2016. Jurors know that like David Pecker before him, Cohen was an ally who had the ability to hurt Trump. So as the prosecution leads us toward the reimbursement of Cohen, it helps to show how angry he was at the time. “Angry,” he said, asked how he felt about the minimal bonus. “Very angry.” Cohen, describing his anger at seeing his bonus cut by two-thirds, almost sounds angry all over again. “I didn’t expect more,” he says of his bonus that year, 2016. “But I certainly didn’t expect less.” Cohen says he took his fury out on Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, and that Weisselberg told him that he’d be taken care of after the holidays. Trump’s eyes had been closed for quite a while, but a brief expression of what appeared to be pleasure crossed over his face as Cohen describes Trump stiffing him on his end-of-year bonus payment in 2016. Michael Cohen also says he preferred being Trump's personal lawyer and remaining in New York, doing consulting work. And this is important: he is describing how being Trump's lawyer opened “doors” for other clients. This is also something that Trump’s lawyers are going to home in on, that Cohen was benefiting personally from his association to Trump. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asks: “Did you think you could monetize” being Trump’s personal lawyer? “Absolutely,” Cohen responds. Cohen is delivering this testimony — in which he speaks candidly about making money off Trump’s name, something that Trump despises when anyone who isn't him does — while looking directly at the jurors. Few are looking back at him. Most are taking notes or otherwise looking down. Trump’s eyes are closed and he appears to be sleeping, as he has through most of today. We’ve moved on in testimony to Trump winning the presidential election. SUsan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, asks Michael Cohen if he still had a role at the Trump Organization after Trump won. Cohen says no, “because my service was no longer necessary.” He says he turned down the role of “assistant general counsel” in the White House. Hoffinger asks Cohen if he was disappointed that the job of chief of staff wasn't offered to him. Cohen says he didn’t want it, but wanted his name to have been included in the conversation. This is meant to inoculate him on cross-examination, when Trump’s lawyer inevitably says that Cohen was simply disgruntled about not getting a job. Cohen goes on. “I would have liked to have been considered.” He says it was “solely for his ego.” When Cohen says he was offered the role of assistant general counsel, Trump looks at his lawyer and shakes his head. This bit about Cohen being discussed for a White House counsel job is accurate, for what it’s worth. Michael Cohen is talking about discussing with Hope Hicks the article revealing Karen McDougal's hush-money deal, which came out days before the election. When Hicks testified, she acknowledged that it was ironic to be testifying about this exchange she had with Cohen, which focused on whether or not the McDougal story was being picked up by other news outlets, at a literal criminal trial that stemmed from the publication of this story and the one about Stormy Daniels. Trump is back after the break with some of the members of his entourage. Senator J.D. Vance seems to have broken off from their group. Trump is examining a piece of paper he is holding close to his face and doesn’t glance over at Michael Cohen as he walks to the witness stand.

[Note: I'll start a new post for the remainder of Cohen's Monday afternoon testimony. Also, the prosecution stated they would still be questioning Cohen on Tuesday] And, it's time for the afternoon session: We are taking an afternoon break in the courtroom. The jurors have been excused, and Michael Cohen watched them all carefully as they left. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, just told Justice Merchan that the direct questioning of Cohen would stretch into tomorrow. We are now seeing one of Michael Cohen’s telephonic rampages in documentary evidence that shows he spoke to Keith Davidson, who was the lawyer for Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, after the story about McDougal being paid off was published. Cohen says that he suspected Davidson or people in his camp of leaking and that he was very angry. He also says that Trump himself was angry. The defense objected to the question that prompted that testimony as leading, but too slowly, and the jury heard what Cohen had to say about Trump before the judge sustained the objection. We are getting such a vivid picture — backed by frantic and numerous text messages and calls — of what was happening inside the Trump campaign in the final two weeks of the 2016 campaign. Trump's inner circle was spending a significant amount of its time not thinking about an advertising strategy for swing states but instead how to maintain the silence of a Playboy Playmate (Karen McDougal) and a porn star (Stormy Daniels). We are now seeing voluminous records of phone calls between Michael Cohen and Hope Hicks after the article about Karen McDougal came out. If anything, these records make Hicks look as if she underplayed the amount that she was speaking to Cohen and his involvement in the campaign. The Wall Street Journal article about Karen McDougal from right before the election just flashed on the screens in the courtroom. Michael Cohen says he was upset and contacted Hope Hicks and Pecker. Cohen says he spoke to Hicks about how the campaign planned to respond. He says she shared a draft of the statement she planned to send, which is now being shown onscreen. We are now seeing that Michael Cohen had a five-minute call with Trump on Oct. 28, 2016. Cohen says that on that call, having signed the non-disclosure agreement, he told Trump that the Stormy Daniels “matter is completely under control and locked down.” Even testifying at this trial, Cohen still speaks cryptically when recounting his conversations with Trump. He didn’t say Daniels, just called it the matter. This testimony underscores how much of this case is actually about documentary evidence. On many of the most disputed points — how frequently Trump and Cohen spoke, for instance — the facts can be seen in phone records. Homing in for a moment on the charges in this case, Michael Cohen has bolstered the prosecution's claims on two key points from the witness stand today: He has linked Trump directly to the scheme to reimburse him for the Stormy Daniels hush money payment, which forms the basis for the falsification of business records charges. And he has said that Trump was personally concerned that Daniels’s story, if it got out, could affect his chances with female voters, which speaks directly to the underlying election conspiracy statute that elevates those charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Michael Cohen says he told Trump “immediately” once he’d resolved the Stormy Daniels hush-money deal. He returns to a common refrain from the day's testimony and says that he told Trump right away because he wanted to get “credit” for resolving the task. Prosecutors are dotting the t’s and crossing the i’s as Cohen describes arranging every last detail of the payment to Daniels. They did not do this when Keith Davidson, the lawyer who received the funds, testified. But they’re doing it here, as if to use the incredible amount of documentary evidence they have to corroborate Cohen, whose credibility the defense has attacked at every turn. This is by no means a comment on the prosecution’s case, but there is a member of public sleeping at the back of the courtroom, and occasionally letting out a snore. We are inching toward the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. We just saw an email Michael Cohen sent her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, showing that he had acquired the necessary funds. I remember from Davidson’s testimony that he had barely heard from Cohen since the Yom Kippur exchange, if at all. But Cohen’s testimony has filled in the gap, and now we get to the next Davidson-Cohen exchange. For jurors following closely, this type of recognition is its own sort of reward: a trial callback. Cohen says that he laid out the Daniels deal for Trump because “everything required Mr. Trump’s sign off.” Several times last week, prosecutors painted Trump as a micromanager. They used custodial witnesses to read passages of his books that depicted him as a boss who distrusted his employees for a fear they will “rob you blind.” They are continuing that theme here. Testimony has slowed down as Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is lingering on the back-and-forth between Cohen and Davidson ensuring that the wire transfer of Daniels’s money and the non-disclosure agreement were in place. Hoffinger has a fairly gentle manner with Cohen, and it seems to be part of why Cohen has stayed relatively even during this testimony. Trump shakes his head and smirks when Michael Cohen says he didn’t mention Trump when setting up the bank account because he wanted to “protect him” from the transaction. This is moving quickly. Most of Hoffinger’s questions are intended to illicit "yes" or "no" responses, and she is largely limiting Michael Cohen’s testimony to corroborating that of others and establishing his direct conversations with Trump. After Michael Cohen decided to pay Stormy Daniels himself, we are seeing, he launched into a blitz of phone calls with both Keith Davidson and David Pecker. Prosecutors must feel grateful to have this documentary evidence: It suggests, with amazing nuance for what is simply metadata, the frenzy that Cohen was experiencing as he sought to suppress the Daniels story and pay her the hush money. Prosecutors have done a painstaking job of using hard evidence like phone records, text messages and emails to corroborate the testimonial narrative Cohen is laying out, knowing in advance that his credibility would come under assault on cross-examination. One of the most important things Hoffinger did today is explain, through Cohen, why there are no emails with Trump: because Trump didn’t believe in email or, at that time, texting. Explaining the absence of something is crucial for prosecutors here. Recall that Michael Cohen said early today that he reported directly to Trump. Now we are seeing the importance of that testimony. Previously, Trump had been cut off from much of the narrative that prosecutors were spinning. But now, with Cohen’s testimony, they are connecting the defendant more closely to their case. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, and Michael Cohen have established a rhythm in their questions and answers that often makes the direct examination seem more like a conversation. Their rapport is likely a sign of the preparation that went into Cohen’s testimony today. Michael Cohen is discussing a call between himself and two representatives of The National Enquirer, David Pecker and Dyan Howard. They discussed Daniels's plans to go to The Daily Mail with her story, and Cohen says that it would be “catastrophic” for the campaign, further turning women against the candidate. But, he says, Pecker refused to pay for her story. So Cohen said he would take care of it himself. The jury sees a text message from Howard to Cohen on Oct. 25, 2016, in which Howard says they need to get the deal done with Daniels or it would look “awfully bad” for everyone. Cohen testifies that they all understood the effect her story would have on Trump's presidential campaign if it came out so close to the election and on the heels of the "Access Hollywood" tape. This is important contextual evidence. The Trump defense team is arguing that Trump’s motivation was to protect his family. But these text messages — combined with Cohen’s testimony — indicate that the motivations for the hush money deal were to protect Trump politically. Pecker told jurors he refused to pay. He remembered telling Cohen “I am not a bank.” Michael Cohen is speaking directly to the jury right now, about using a home equity line of credit to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000. Cohen’s testimony has been relatively calm, and that continues this afternoon. But these details are really key to prosecutors’ case and the tension has risen in here. Michael Cohen says he then decided that he would pay the money, and that Allen Weisselberg said, “I’ll make sure you get paid back.” Cohen says he alerted Trump to that decision and that Trump was appreciative, saying “good, good.” And he says that Trump, too, told him he’d be repaid. “I was doing everything that I could and more in order to protect my boss, which was something I had done for a long time,” Cohen says. But he adds that he would not, of his own volition, lay out $130,000 for a hush-money payment on someone else’s behalf, suggesting, again, that he was expecting to be repaid. The charges against Trump concern the repayment to Cohen. This testimony echoes Hope Hicks's remarks that she didn’t think Cohen would have done this on his own. This piece of testimony is critical because it links Trump not only to the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, but also to the scheme to reimburse Cohen for fronting the money. And that is what forms the basis of the falsification of business records charges. And now, Michael Cohen is recalling a portion of the story that’s been out before: he and Allen Weisselberg, then the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, talking about possibly generating the $130,000 through a membership request or an event being held at a club. Cohen is directly tying Trump to the hush-money payment right now, corroborating the testimony of others, including Keith Davidson and Hope Hicks, who both suggested that Cohen would never had made the payment without Trump’s authorization. Cohen is now talking about Weisselberg helping him to think through how to make the payment. Trump, who had been sleeping, wakes up, leans over, taps his lawyer Todd Blanche and whispers something in his ear. I have to again wonder what the jurors make of Trump alternately sleeping or just sitting with eyes closed through this testimony. Michael Cohen is now describing Trump telling him that his friends had advised him to just pay Stormy Daniels the hush money, and reminded him that he was a billionaire. “Just do it,” Cohen recounts Trump saying. Michael Cohen is now being shown a text message Melania Trump sent him on Oct. 18, 2016: “Good morning Michael, can u pls call DT on his cell. Thanks.” He replied: “Of course.” The prosecutors are showing how attentive Cohen was to the desires of the Trumps. The timestamps on the text messages show that he responded to Melania Trump’s message within 30 seconds. Michael Cohen says he spoke with Trump after this request from his wife. He says he called Trump using his Trump Organization landline. That evening, Cohen says, he made an appearance on Wolf Blitzer’s show, in order to “respond to a series of topics that affected Mr. Trump and the campaign.” He says he told Trump he was going on CNN as a “surrogate” of the campaign to discuss Trump’s priorities. This was just a couple of days after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out. It seems as if prosecutors are seeking to tie Cohen to the campaign in hopes of addressing the argument that Cohen was “freelancing,” working on his own behalf. Cohen says that he regularly received talking points from the campaign, including before the CNN appearance he is describing. Michael Cohen says that he believed that at this point in the narrative, just weeks before the 2016 election, he could no longer delay making the payment to Stormy Daniels. Trump is leaning back with his eyes closed. Michael Cohen, reading emails he exchanged in 2016 with Keith Davidson, then Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, says that the correspondence represented that “we were losing control over the settlement of this agreement in order to prevent” Daniels’s story from coming out. He says that loss of control was a “direct result of my failure to wire funds.” You can hear anxiety in Cohen’s voice about that “failure,” nearly eight years later. The jury has already seen many of the emails that Cohen has been asked to comment on today. They’ve already heard Davidson explain what he thought about these emails — he thought that Cohen was slow-walking — and now we’re hearing Cohen’s side of the exchange. Cohen says he was delaying Davidson and he was very concerned when Davidson told him that his refusal to pay had resulted in Stormy Daniels backing out of the deal. Cohen is being asked about phone records showing he called Trump amid this anxiety. He looks weary in his second outing on the stand today. Michael Cohen is now bringing up another early trial witness, Gary Farro, who gave jurors an unflattering impression of Cohen, whom he described as a difficult client. If the prosecution’s questioning here adheres to this morning’s pattern, they won’t ask Cohen whether he liked Farro, and the jurors will be left with the knowledge that Farro disliked Cohen without knowing what Cohen thought in return. Prosecutors are showing Cohen the same emails and bank paperwork they showed to Farro on the witness stand. Farro previously testified about Cohen’s urgency to open up an account for Essential Consultants L.L.C., which was ultimately used to pay the hush money to Stormy Daniels. As we switch gears to the paperwork, it feels like we are heading into the part of Cohen’s testimony that is focused on the alleged falsification of business records. Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, picks up where she left off, with Michael Cohen on the verge of describing having made the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. She shows him a series of emails with Keith Davidson, who was Daniels’s lawyer in 2016. Davidson, who has already testified he was frustrated by a delay in receiving the payment, says in the email that it wasn't necessary for him to speak to Cohen, and that he just wanted to be paid. Cohen responded that it was the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, a holiday Davidson stumbled over when he was on the stand. “I used the holiday of Yom Kippur as a way of just once again trying to delay” the payment, Cohen says. Yom Kippur, the day of repentance, is often considered the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Davidson testified earlier in the trial that he thought Cohen was using the Jewish holiday as an excuse to avoid making the hush money payment — to try to push the issue to beyond the election when the story would no longer matter. Cohen confirms Davidson's impression here. We're back in court after the lunch break. Trump walked in with most of the same entourage he had with him this morning, including his son Eric. Prosecutors are here, and Justice Merchan is on the bench. Michael Cohen is being called back for more direct questioning from prosecutors.+

So, after court was dismissed for lunch: At the end of a tense court day in his criminal trial in Manhattan, former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday sent an email to his followers with a dramatic subject line: “I stormed out of court!” The reality was far more muted. When the day ended, Mr. Trump calmly left the courtroom, as is typical of many criminal defendants. He strode toward reporters and a camera stationed in the hallway and gave a minute-long statement attacking the case, the judge and the proceedings. Then he exited the building and went home. Still, in his message to followers, Mr. Trump depicted himself as a firebrand who angrily fled the proceedings over perceived injustice. “I’m DONE with the election interference,” he wrote. “Joe Biden & the LIARS in the media can spread LIES LIES LIES — all while I’m stuck in court and GAGGED!” Such exaggerated portrayals have become typical for Mr. Trump and his presidential campaign in the weeks since the start of the trial in which he is accused of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to a former porn star. As Mr. Trump sits in New York for the first criminal trial of a former president, he and his campaign have sent a blitz of emails and text messages to his supporters that depict a highly dramatized account of his actions inside the courtroom, where proceedings are far more prosaic than he describes. The Trump campaign’s emails often contain kernels of truth. The former president is, for example, under a gag order that keeps him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others. But the messages often elide details or nuances in order to support Mr. Trump’s broad assertions that his trial is a politically motivated “witch hunt.” Despite his claims of forced silence, the gag order has not prevented Mr. Trump from sharing his perception of the case. And the fund-raising emails frequently insist that the charges he faces are part of a larger “election interference” effort orchestrated by President Biden, a baseless claim that lacks evidence. The New York case is being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who operates outside the Justice Department’s purview. Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, defended the fund-raising emails and said that “more and more Americans are chipping in every day to support President Trump as they watch him get politically persecuted by Joe Biden and the corrupt Democrats in this sham show trial.” In the campaign’s telling, Mr. Trump is so aggrieved by the case against him, the conduct of the prosecutors and the decisions of the judge, Justice Juan M. Merchan, that he can barely keep himself from bursting out of his seat as each day concludes. But the kinds of outbursts he describes would be violations of expected decorum. During court proceedings, Mr. Trump’s demeanor has been relatively restrained, even if he sometimes appears irked by testimony. Mr. Trump has on occasion conferenced with his lawyers, once making comments that were audible enough to draw an admonition from Justice Merchan. But he has generally kept still and quiet, even appearing to nod off or close his eyes. At least five fund-raising messages have claimed that Mr. Trump has “stormed” in or out of the courtroom. Reporters covering the trial have said that his movements are more subdued. On at least six occasions, Mr. Trump has emailed his supporters to announce an imminent “emergency press conference.” In one message this month, he explained, “I’m bypassing the lying FAKE NEWS media and delivering a message directly to THE PEOPLE.” But those “emergency” news conferences refer to the remarks that Mr. Trump has habitually made as he enters court in the morning and leaves in the afternoon. His comments differ little from what he has said in interviews on the campaign trail. And they are delivered to reporters, in front of a camera that has been stationed outside the courtroom for the duration of the trial. Still, such exaggerations are consistent with the larger strategy that Mr. Trump and his team have used as they face the unprecedented reality of a major presidential candidate contending with four separate criminal cases. Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, said the Trump campaign’s emails about the trial reflected the need for it to contend with a constant stream of headlines about the former president’s legal troubles. “Most campaigns are trying to get themselves in the news; the Trump campaign is sort of uniquely the news,” Mr. Wilson said. “And so they’re in a lot of ways making lemonades out of lemons.” Central to that effort, he said, was a level of dramatizing certain events. The campaign’s messaging, Mr. Wilson said, “is not the court stenographer — it’s not the New York Times coverage of what’s happening in the courtroom.” The Trump team has for more than a year tried to use the investigations into Mr. Trump to boost political support among his conservative base. After Mr. Trump was indicted last spring in Manhattan, polls showed a bump of support for him among Republicans. The former president frequently claims on the stump that each indictment has made him only more popular. And his campaign reported raising millions of dollars after his fourth indictment, in Georgia, when it sent out solicitations using a mug shot that the authorities took there. A Trump campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss data that was not yet public, said the campaign was raising approximately $1 million each day of the Manhattan trial. Such numbers cannot be independently verified until campaign finance reports are filed, weeks after the trial ends. Mr. Trump’s emails during the Manhattan trial contend little with the facts of the case or the daily details of the courtroom. But his campaign has been aggressively sending fund-raising solicitations that revolve around the gag order in the case. Last month, before a hearing on whether he had violated the gag order, he wrote what he told supporters was his “farewell message,” claiming that “if things don’t go our way, I could be thrown in jail.” But at the time, prosecutors had asked the judge only to fine Mr. Trump $1,000 for each violation. Justice Merchan ultimately found Mr. Trump in contempt of court and fined him $9,000 for nine violations of the gag order. Then, last week, he held Mr. Trump in contempt of court again over another violation, warning Mr. Trump that he might face jail time if he continued to violate the order. The judge made clear he viewed that penalty as a last resort. “The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Justice Merchan told Mr. Trump. Hours later, the Trump campaign sent an “emergency” fund-raising bulletin. The subject line: “They want me in HANDCUFFS.”

Absolutely; after checking out the boy from school and taking him to his favorite mexican place for lunch, I got back into my office about 10 minutes ago and was catching up on what has transpired.

[Note: I have to slip away to a middle school awards assembly; our son is receiving some awards, so...I'll be away for a few hours] Michael Cohen, come on down! Every seat in the courtroom is taken, except those in the jury box and the judge’s chair. Palpable tension, and anticipation, as the fifth week of the trial is set to begin. Trump has entered the room, wearing a blue-and-white striped tie, and Senator J.D. Vance and Eric Trump trailing him, among others. Also with him are Boris Ephsteyn, his legal adviser; Alina Habba, one of the lawyers from his civil fraud trial; and Representative Nicole Malliotakis. This is the biggest entourage we’ve seen him with so far. The prosecutors are in the courtroom, laden down with boxes, bags, and binders filled with documents. This is arguably the biggest day of their case so far. They look — pretty much the same as they do every day. Today is easily the most crowded day of the trial. Some members of the public told me they started queuing at 3 a.m. Unlike other days, where the witness lineup wasn’t announced in advance, it was widely reported that Michael Cohen would be on the stand today, prompting hundreds of people to come down with the hope of getting a seat in the courtroom, or the nearby overflow room. Before court adjourned on Friday, Justice Merchan asked prosecutors to tell Michael Cohen to stop talking about Trump, after a defense lawyer alerted the court to a recent TikTok video in which Cohen wore a shirt with a picture of Trump behind bars. We don’t know what, if any, discussions this prompted between prosectors and Cohen, but he appeared to stay off social media this past weekend. Trump is expected to be traveling with a heavier entourage this week than he has previously. His advisers, concerned about having Republicans present to buoy him up, have been trying to line up people to show their support for him at court. One expected visitor to court today: Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio. Vance is on the shortlist to be Trump’s running mate in his current presidential campaign. He will be the first of the V.P. contenders to support Trump in the courtroom, and the move will likely bolster Vance's already-strong chances. Over the past two weeks, Trump has been scanning the courtroom, clocking which allies are — and are not — showing up for him. Last week Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, came to court, but besides that we’ve seen very little support for Trump here in Manhattan from elected Republicans. Good morning from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where in less than an hour, the final week of the prosecution’s case against Donald Trump is set to start. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and current nemesis, is expected to take the stand today and to testify that Trump himself was the hidden hand behind the hush money payment Cohen made in 2016 to a porn star, Stormy Daniels. The witness will also likely say that Trump personally approved reimbursements for the payment, which prosecutors say were illegally disguised as payments for legal services. It’s expected to be a tense and exciting day as the two New Yorkers face off in the courtroom.

Tesla (and other EV manufacturers) use the coolant for the battery packs