Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty

[Js1 85355]

Cult 

[dcbc 14487]

8 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

and Nunes, and Jordan, and....ending with every Republican Congressional douchebag that let him off from being impeached.  

 

10 minutes ago, Pancho said:

And more

 

 

It's bad enough to get thrown under the bus, but can you imagine waiting line for the mere opportunity to get thrown under the bus?

 

"Oh, please, sir.  Pick me.  I'm ever so pathetic."

Edited May 14 by dcbc

[South Austin 52515]

10 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

I think they are going to call Melania.  She is going to lie and say Trump admitted doing it all to protect her from the news and he’s so sorry and he bought her something.  

Trump's lawyers would have to advise him that calling Melania risks her testifying under oath during cross that her husband does indeed have a very small penis.  

[SmokeyTheBear 5562]

18 minutes ago, dcbc said:

 

 

It's bad enough to get thrown under the bus, but can you imagine waiting line for the mere opportunity to get thrown under the bus?

 

"Oh, please, sir.  Pick me.  I'm ever so pathetic."

A party of cucks

 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

[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)

 

Spoiler

 

Edited May 14 by Francisco 2.0

[jimmyjazz 45963]

31 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Trump's lawyers would have to advise him that calling Melania risks her testifying under oath during cross that her husband does indeed have a very small penis.  

As if she would know.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

 

[South Austin 52515]

Mike Johnson: "Let he who is without sin bang the first porn star."

[Red Five 40859]

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

[dcbc 14487]

4 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

"He's just like us."

[WhatTheBuck 28785]

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Cult 

Reich

[jimmyjazz 45963]

7 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

Yeah, but he and his teenaged son use an app that tracks each other's porn viewing, so it's all good.

[The Dog 44060]

These are "emotional support politicians."

“‘People close to Mr. Trump have worried about whether long days in the courtroom have had an effect on his mental state.’ The care and feeding of a narcissistic sociopath and keeping him on a relatively even emotional keel is difficult—and sometimes impossible—even on a good day, and so Trump’s team has resorted to extraordinary measures to soothe him during this trial.”

I would post the article but it's paywalled. 

[DigglerontheHoof 21202]

22 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

It's the Christian way.  

[Red Five 40859]

I like the part where Cohen asks about Melanie, and Dotard responded with basically “Who gives a shit? I’ll just go buy another wife.”

I wonder if Mike Johnson liked that part too.

[jimmyjazz 45963]

20 minutes ago, The Dog said:

I would post the article but it's paywalled. 

Spoiler

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The Trump Trials

The New York Trump Case Is Kind of Perfect

I thought this trial was a sideshow; I now think I was wrong.

By George T. Conway III

[Image: Picture of Stormy Daniels]

Louis Lanzno / AP

May 13, 2024, 4:43 PM ET

This is The Trump Trials by George T. Conway III, a newsletter that chronicles the former president’s legal troubles. Sign up here.

Not all that long ago, I thought that the trial currently being held in The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump would be the last one I’d want to see as the first one tried against the former president. It seemed the least serious of the cases against him. Here’s a man who tried to overthrow American democracy by launching a coup to stay in power. A man who allegedly stole dozens of boxes of classified national-security documents from the White House, some containing secrets about other countries’ nuclear-weapons capabilities, then lied about the documents, concealed them, and obstructed a federal investigation about them.

I thought I would have strongly preferred the cases about those matters to have gone first, particularly the secret-documents case, which substantively would be a lock, were it not for the judge overseeing it. But I feel the need to admit error. The truth is, I’ve come around to the view that People v. Trump is, in at least some ways, the perfect case to put Trump in the dock for the first time, and—I hope, but we’ll see—perhaps prison.

Because this case really captures Donald Trump. The legal commentariat have been engaged in an odd debate about what to call it. “The Stormy Daniels case.” “The hush-money case.” “The porn-star-hush-money case.” (Personally, that’s always been my favorite, and I think it sounds even better in German—Pornostarschweigegeldrechtsfall.) The more legally precise would like it to be known as “the New York business-records-falsification case,” because that’s what the New York penal code says it is. Some high-minded people I know prefer “the New York election-interference prosecution,” because it involves the concealment of a matter that might well have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.

All these locutions work, but what the case is really about is Trump’s modus operandi—lying. He’s a matryoshka doll of mendacity. He lies, usually lies some more, and then often lies about the lies he’s previously told. He told at least 30,573 lies while president, by The Washington Post’s count. He lies almost whenever he opens his mouth, even when truth would better serve him. To be sure, his other criminal cases involve lies—lies about the 2016 election, lies about the military secrets he stole. But the alleged lies in People v. Trump strike at the core of his moral putrescence—and Trump knows it. They are lies allegedly meant to cover up a tawdry man’s tawdry behavior. The case truly embodies Donald Trump. And for that reason, I think, it deeply disturbs him.

That’s what stood out to me last Thursday as I sat in court watching the second day of the cross-examination of the prosecution’s witness, Stormy Daniels, who had taken the stand to testify that she’d met the defendant at a celebrity golf tournament on the south shore of Lake Tahoe in 2006, that he invited her to his room at Harrah’s hotel and casino there (ostensibly as a prelude to dinner), that she (rather unenthusiastically) acceded to his advance, that they then (rather briefly) had sex, and then that, 10 years later, days before the defendant won the 2016 presidential election, she was paid off by the defendant’s fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, to keep her mouth shut about it all. (Trump denies having had sex with Daniels, and he also denies having falsified records in an effort to suppress reports of the liaison.)

Strictly speaking, Daniels’s testimony wasn’t necessary—particularly the details about the sex. The case is about whether Trump caused the falsification of business records at his business, and whether that falsification was intended to cover up another crime (among other offenses, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act). Daniels has absolutely nothing to say about the Trump Organization’s business records, and the fact that she was ultimately paid the hush money isn’t in dispute. The sex strictly doesn’t matter: If Daniels and Trump didn’t have sex—as Trump maintains—but the facts alleged by the New York County District Attorney’s Office were otherwise the same and proved, Trump could still be found guilty of a Class E felony under the New York penal law.

But as we have so often seen over the past nine years, Trump’s instinctive, narcissistic mendacity came into self-defeating play once again—this time by making Daniels’s testimony more significant than it had to be. It’s hard to imagine that many sentient, honest human beings could believe Trump’s denials of having congressed with Daniels. Yet Trump continues to insist on denying it—not only in public, but in court. And not only is sex not an element of the crime, but his strongest defense—the one he could actually skate on—will be to argue that there is insufficient evidence that he knew his people were falsifying business records. This defense faces many problems—including that Trump personally signed (on the Resolute desk!) some checks (made out to Cohen) in packets with false backup attached. Still, Trump would have been best off having his lawyers focus their efforts on the question of his knowledge and intent regarding the payments.

As usual, though, this defendant just couldn’t help himself. The prosecution was entitled to put on evidence of the sex to establish Trump’s motive for the payoff and cover-up. The defendant could have had his lawyers not dispute the point, even stipulate to it. What’s the harm? His political supporters stand by him even though he’s already a civilly adjudicated sex offender, so why would they care one whit about what he did consensually for a couple of minutes with an adult-film actor once upon a time in Stateline, Nevada? Had he not insisted on contesting the point, Daniels might not have had to testify, or at least she might have been on and off the stand in a flash. Because, again, what ultimately matters in the case happened mostly in New York City in 2016.

Trump’s insistence on pointlessly contesting Daniels’s veracity entitled the prosecution to draw her account out even more than it otherwise could have—not only to establish a record on why Trump would have been motivated to hush Daniels up (because sex), but to bolster her credibility with detail of her recollection (about sex). As Justice Juan Merchan later told the defense counsel in denying their motion for a mistrial:

Your denial [of a sexual encounter] puts the jury in a position of having to choose who they believe: Donald Trump, who denies there was an encounter, or Stormy Daniels, who claims there was.

Although the People do not have to prove that a sexual encounter actually did occur, they do have the right to rehabilitate Ms. Daniels’ credibility and to corroborate her story, which was immediately attacked [by the defense] on opening statements.

The more specificity Ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can weigh to determine whether the encounter did occur and, if so, whether they choose to credit Ms. Daniels’ story.

The result, thanks to the defendant, was the introduction of more evidence that made him look like a duplicitous clod. There were limits, to be sure. Merchan warned the prosecutors before Daniels took the stand that “we don’t need to know the details of the intercourse.” (The universe thanks you, Your Honor.) Accordingly, and in contrast with how some characterized it, Daniels’s testimony wound up not being very “graphic.” As the prosecution later pointed out to the court, “there was not a lot of detail elicited” about “the actual sexual encounter,” which was the subject of only a handful of questions put to the witness. Not just that, but the judge also sustained objections or struck testimony on what position Daniels and the defendant were in, whether she touched his skin, and how Daniels, as they coupled, “was staring at the ceiling … trying to think about anything other than what was happening there.”

In the end, the only somewhat lurid detail about the sex that actually got into the record was that the former president (in contrast with performers at her prophylactic-mandatory then-employer, Wicked Pictures), didn’t wear a condom, which concerned her. And that small factoid got in solely because the defense counsel inexplicably failed to object. (The judge later observed, “For the life of me, I don’t know why [the defense counsel Susan] Necheles didn’t object. She had just made about 10 objections, most of which were sustained. Why on earth she wouldn’t object to the mention of a condom, I don’t understand.”)

So the testimony wasn’t all that sexy, in the literal sense. Still, because of the defendant’s denial of what happened that night at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, the testimony ended up being deeply embarrassing to Trump. To bolster Daniels’s credibility, the prosecution’s questioning went into great detail about what led up to the fleeting fornication—essentially, her conversations with Trump beforehand. And that brought out some memorable, and highly believable, testimonial gems that perfectly capture the lowbrow, hyper-self-absorbed 45th president of the United States. There’s Trump telling Daniels, “You remind me of my daughter because she is smart and blond and beautiful.” And him admitting that he and his wife, Melania, “actually don’t even sleep in the same room.”

And there’s him repeatedly interrupting Daniels to talk about—whom else?—himself: “He would ask me questions and then not let me finish the answer. He kept cutting me off, and it was almost like he wanted to one-up me, which was just really hilarious when you think about it.” And there’s how, when the self-consumed future defendant asked, “Have you seen my new magazine?” and pulled out an issue with his face on it, Daniels called him “rude, arrogant, and pompous,” and said, “Someone should spank you with that. That’s the only interest I have in that magazine. Otherwise, I am leaving.” And there’s how, when finally faced with the prospect of Daniels walking out, Trump rolled the magazine up and gave it to her.

In that Nevada hotel room that night, Daniels said, she rose to the challenge:

“I took it from him and said, turn around. And I swatted him.”

Where?

“Right on the butt.”

The alleged spanking hardly could have rent Trump’s rump in 2006. But given his extreme vulnerability to narcissistic injury, the story surely had to have inflicted acute trauma upon his most delicate ego when Daniels told it 18 years later.

We need not speculate. The day before, Merchan had ruled on the district attorney’s third motion to hold Trump in contempt for violations of the court’s gag order, which restricts the defendant’s ability to make public statements attacking witnesses. And for the tenth time, Merchan held Trump in contempt. But more important, Merchan gave the defendant a warning. The legal maximum of a $1,000 fine for each count of contempt, the judge observed, had failed to deter Trump from violating the gag order; “therefore, going forward, this Court will have to consider a jail sanction if recommended.” He addressed the defendant directly, in open court: “The last thing I want to do is to put you in jail … But, at the end of the day, I have a job to do, and part of that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system and compel respect … So, as much as I do not want to impose a jail sanction … I want you to understand that I will, if necessary and appropriate.”

That was where matters stood the next morning, when Daniels testified about the spanking: Trump was so very close to—perhaps just one more contumacious act away from—incarceration. And yet when he heard Daniels say she had spanked him, he almost landed himself in lockup. Not long after that testimony, the court took its regular midmorning break. The jury was excused, and Merchan immediately called the lawyers to the bench. He told the defense counsel that their obviously “upset” client had been “cursing audibly” and “shaking his head.”

Trump had done that, in particular, the judge said, “when Ms. Daniels was testifying about rolling up the magazine, and … smacking your client.” Quelle surprise.

“That’s contemptuous,” said an angry Merchan. “It has the potential to intimidate the witness.” Even without a gag order, and 10 prior violations of it, swearing at a prosecution witness is the kind of conduct that, before some judges, could quickly land a defendant in jail. Merchan commanded: “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.” And so the lawyers remonstrated with their client during the break. It was all a bit reminiscent of a moment in the second E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, when, within earshot of the jury, Trump had muttered that the trial was a “witch hunt” and a “con job.” The presiding federal district judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, threatened to eject Trump from the courtroom. “I would love it. I would love it,” Trump responded. To which Judge Kaplan replied, “You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently.”

In Merchan’s courtroom last week, whether Trump could control himself had once again become the question; and once again a judge gave him a break. But the struggle continues, and it’s being waged behind the scenes—largely by Trump’s legal and political teams. Another person battling to maintain his freedom would probably remain focused on that battle, but Trump remains distracted by his petty obsessions and resentments, including of some of the faces he sees in the gallery. A couple of weeks ago, he glared at me. I had smiled at him. He didn’t like that. He also seems to have a particular distaste for the MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell.

Trump’s many grievances pose a problem for him. As Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported last week, “People close to Mr. Trump have worried about whether long days in the courtroom have had an effect on his mental state.” The care and feeding of a narcissistic sociopath (see my exposition on that subject five years ago here in The Atlantic) and keeping him on a relatively even emotional keel is difficult—and sometimes impossible—even on a good day, and so Trump’s team has resorted to extraordinary measures to soothe him during this trial.

A key player in the current effort is apparently a young aide named Natalie Harp. Her job—no joke, this was in the Times—is to schlep around a portable printer “so she can quickly provide Mr. Trump with hard copies of mood-boosting news articles and social media posts by people praising him.” Last Thursday, after Daniels’s testimony, team Trump apparently found another use for this device. During the lunch break, Trump posted on his Truth Social account pictures of … me … from Election Night 2016. Alas, in one of the shots, I was, confessedly, rather inebriated. I had tears of joy in my eyes, was wearing a “Make America great again” hat, and was hugging my then-wife, the campaign manager whose remarkable talents had astoundingly just elected a buffoon. “Mr. Kellyanne Conway celebrating my Victory in 2016!” Trump’s post read. (Yes, Donald, supporting you was indeed a low moment in my life. Damn, you sure know how to hurt a guy.)

Now, I mention this not (just) because it is insane, hilarious, and involves me, but because it also makes my point about Trump being his own worst enemy. His uncontrollable pique at his plight, a plight caused by his own poor choices, leads him to make even more poor choices—and here, to impose those choices upon not just his political aides but his lawyers to boot.

Which brings us back to Daniels on the stand.

When prosecutors completed their direct examination of her on Tuesday afternoon, the cross-examination by Trump’s most competent lawyer, Susan Necheles, began. A Yale Law School graduate, she’s the one member of Trump’s current legal team who appears to be universally respected, and with good reason. By all accounts, and from my own limited observation, she’s extremely smart, highly experienced—and an excellent cross-examiner. As a woman, moreover, she was the obvious choice to be the one who cross-examined Daniels before a jury. Necheles started doing a disciplined and seemingly effective job of that on Tuesday afternoon. But she didn’t finish the examination, because it was too late in the day. Court adjourned.

The next day was Wednesday, a day off from the trial—the day each week that Merchan handles his other cases. Normally, when even a small hiatus like that occurs during a witness’s cross-examination, that’s a very good thing for the cross-examining side, and a very bad thing for the witness. The cross-examiner gets the chance to go back through the transcript of the witness’s direct testimony, tighten her lines of cross, focus them on the most important points elicited by the other side, and otherwise sharpen her knives.

But that didn’t happen here. When Thursday’s proceedings began, but before the witness returned to the stand, you could see the dynamic: Trump, sitting at counsel table next to poor Necheles, was talking animatedly into her ear, at length. Watching this, I imagined that the defendant had spent the day off stewing about the spanking. It couldn’t have been much fun for his lawyers.

And the result wasn’t good for the defense. Necheles’s resumed cross-examination was bad, not because Necheles was a bad examiner, but because the examination, for a reason we can all take an educated guess about, became overlong, and overdone. It became too argumentative, too focused on badgering the witness and on attacking trivial aspects of her account. At one point, Necheles absurdly engaged in cross-examining Daniels on the geography of the Stateline, Nevada–South Lake Tahoe, California conurbation, the idea apparently being to challenge Daniels on whether she had actually taken a cab around town instead of walking in her high heels.

The cross also forayed into archaic, even nonsensical, slut-shaming. Sure, the witness made a living engaging in sex on camera for money. But does that really mean she shouldn’t have been horrified to see Donald Trump suddenly take off his clothes? And was there any logic at all in seemingly trying to show that the sex the defense said didn’t occur was consensual because Daniels wanted it? The defense’s cross-examination made Daniels appear more sympathetic than any prosecutor’s direct questioning ever could.

Worse yet, it emboldened Daniels. She’s a smart woman—and she’s clearly strong-willed, with a sharp, quick-witted tongue. Normally it’s not a good idea for witnesses, even smart and tough ones—perhaps especially smart and tough ones—to fence with lawyers too much on cross-examination; witnesses tend to lose credibility when they do. But the belabored and argumentative nature of this cross-examination gave Daniels some running room. And she took every inch of it.

At one point, for example, Necheles asked a question about Daniels’s history of writing porn scripts containing “phony stories about sex [that] appear to be real”—obviously implying that Daniels’s story about Trump in the hotel room was fake, like the scripts. Daniels’s devastating retort: “The sex in the films, it’s very much real. Just like what happened in that room.”

At another point, Necheles attacked Daniels for selling merchandise about Trump’s indictment.

Necheles: Again, you’re celebrating the indictment by selling things from your store, right?

Daniels: Not unlike Mr. Trump.

And then, this jewel of an exchange, in which Necheles got zinged once again, and, by unsuccessfully moving to strike the zinger, drew more attention to it:

Necheles: Okay. Even though you tweeted and celebrated about him being indicted, you have no knowledge of what he was indicted for?

Daniels: There was a lot of indictments.

Necheles: Your Honor, I move to strike that.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger: It is responsive, Your Honor.

The court: It’s responsive. Overruled.

I’m pretty sure I saw some of the jurors struggling at times to suppress laughter, as I was. Simply put, Daniels wiped the floor with Necheles. But I don’t blame Necheles. If I had to guess—and I admit I’m speculating here—I’d say that a lot of what Necheles did on Thursday was against her better judgment. To my mind, the cross-examination would have been orders of magnitude better had it been confined mostly to two of the questions Necheles asked toward the end of it: “You know nothing about the business records, right?” “You know nothing about what [the defendant] does or does not know about the business records, right?” At the end of the day, those were the questions that most mattered, to which Daniels’s answers had to be, and were, no, and no. But that testimony got lost in the mix with everything else—thanks to Trump’s easily bruised ego.

 

George T. Conway III is an attorney and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

 

[YGIFS 19450]

16 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I like the part where Cohen asks about Melanie, and Dotard responded with basically “Who gives a shit? I’ll just go buy another wife.”

I wonder if Mike Johnson liked that part too.

Wait, that actually happened? 

[locodos 5387]

Is Mike Johnson sitting on a stack of bibles or a phone book?  I'm conflicted about which option a godly manlet would choose.

[atomheartbevo 89686]

2 hours ago, dcbc said:

It's bad enough to get thrown under the bus, but can you imagine waiting line for the mere opportunity to get thrown under the bus?

"Oh, please, sir.  Pick me.  I'm ever so pathetic."

All these Republicans are either hoping to be his VP pick, or hoping he’ll send them a few bucks from the RNC coffers (he won’t).  

[HenryJames 66081]

You can't shame right wing evangelicals. 

[TDunk 590]

7 minutes ago, locodos said:

Is Mike Johnson sitting on a stack of bibles or a phone book?  I'm conflicted about which option a godly manlet would choose.

It's a portfolio of all the porn stars they can't watch. And it's all females. 

[locodos 5387]

1 minute ago, TDunk said:

It's a portfolio of all the porn stars they can't watch. And it's all females. 

[GenXer 2881]

14 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Also…”yes and know?” Was I typing phonetically?

[WhatTheBuck 28785]

1 hour ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

Maybe he’s only attending so he can explain to his son that he was only checking out Stormy’s movies as part of his job. 

['stache 21817]

Dang, I was about to make a porn app joke too, beat me too it. Just more proof that "religion" for conservatives is just a farce. They don't actually believe any of it.

[Dahobbs 17585]

Cohen wrote Stormy's denial letter. Interesting. 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

41 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Wait, that actually happened? 

 

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.

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

1 hour ago, The Dog said:

I would post the article but it's paywalled. 

 

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

[Mdhorn 5968]

1 hour ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

1 hour ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

It's the Christian way.  

I may have been the last to hear of the word "conspirituality." It's a cult, but you have to believe that the government deep stated dotard's penis, and that it could happen to any of us.  Dotard's mushroom penis is taking the hit so that ours won't have to.  

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19103]

Last week, I saw Trump returning from court.  They blocked 57th street to allow it.  Thankfully, I was just dropping off dry cleaning, so was just across the street from my house.  Also, flipped off Trump tower on my way to work this AM.  Will be glad when this shitstain is gone from the mortal coil. 

[YGIFS 19450]

18 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

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.

Wow.  Is it wrong I'm kind of enjoying the notion that his family is going to put a smile on after this is over, but right now they are just brutally dying inside hearing/reading this stuff.  Fuck Melania for empowering this guy, but whoo--------this one has got to sting.  If she has a shred of decency left in her, she'll do the one thing that literally nobody else on this planet can do.  Get to her husband.  

[jimmyjazz 45963]

MAGA: "Cohen is lying, DT loves Melania and would never stray."

[Blotto 23525]

On 5/13/2024 at 9:32 AM, jimmyjazz said:

That guy always looks like he just sharted, and he's happy about it.

We need to get Eric posting in the shart thread. Having an actual shart provide subject matter expertise would be useful as the Surly demographic ages towards an uncertain future. It would be like having the Ricktator posting in the RIck Barnes thread. 

[Chuckie Finster 22694]

Remarkable how the pattern keeps continuing: when there's nothing to gain, these fuckers want nothing to do with Trump.  When it became apparent that showing support for Trump in court was smart politically, they ALL crawl out of the woodwork.  Pathetic

[Longhorn94 2448]

2 hours ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

I mean you cant be a sinner seeking forgiveness if you don't sin first, amirite?

[Mdhorn 5968]

5 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

MAGA: "Cohen is lying, DT loves Melania and would never stray."

What's Melania doing these days?  Hope she gets her appearance payments up front.  

['stache 21817]

5 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Remarkable how the pattern keeps continuing: when there's nothing to gain, these fuckers want nothing to do with Trump.  When it became apparent that showing support for Trump in court was smart politically, they ALL crawl out of the woodwork.  Pathetic

What's their to gain now? Vance wants VP and will probably get it I suppose. Johnson is likely just trying to head off the MTG cabal with an "I love trump more"-off to save his position. Otherwise, what does he offer?

[YGIFS 19450]

2 minutes ago, Longhorn94 said:

I mean you cant be a sinner seeking forgiveness if you don't sin first, amirite?

So the guy who got elected Speaker of the House because of his high virtue best displayed by his pornographic-monitoring agreement with his son and virginity contract signing ceremony with his daughter, dropped his leadership responsibilities to the nation this week and showed up in  person to support a guy on trial for stealing money to bribe a pornstar to not talk about their sexual encounter during his wife's postpartum recovery while the defendant's son was watching a video starring said porn star and totally not talking to his dad about it?  

And we don't live inside a simulation?  Got it.  

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

 

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.

Edited May 14 by Francisco 2.0

[Brisketexan 105153]

2 hours ago, Red Five said:

Super religious conservative Mike Johnson supports cheating on your wife with a porn star and paying her to shut up and then covering it up and lying about all of it.

 

1 hour ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

It's the Christian way.  

When you understand that for modern American "Christians," the list of the holiest of sacraments just has one item on it -- "be a complete fucking hypocrite" -- it all clicks and falls into place.

Modern American Christians have managed to be, literally, everything the ACTUAL Christ warned and spoke against.  It's amazing to watch.  Up is down, black is white, lies are truth.....all of it.  One of the most fascinating sociological phenomena I've ever seen.

[atomheartbevo 89686]

13 minutes ago, 'stache said:

What's their to gain now? Vance wants VP and will probably get it I suppose. Johnson is likely just trying to head off the MTG cabal with an "I love trump more"-off to save his position. Otherwise, what does he offer?

Vance is nutty (Christian) enough to help drive away voters, so good for him.

I think Johnson is doing this because of the RNC issue.  He has put MTG and her group in their place.  Johnson needs to try and get some money from Trump’s RNC for down-ballot races.

[YGIFS 19450]

3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Vance is nutty (Christian) enough to help drive away voters, so good for him.

I think Johnson is doing this because of the RNC issue.  He has put MTG and her group in their place.  Johnson needs to try and get some money from Trump’s RNC for down-ballot races.

Yeah, I think he's finally wising up and taking a page from the McCarthy playbook.  Whatever you think of former speaking Kevin, he was as good a fundraiser as almost any other Speaker in U.S. history.  And Mike's a fucking weirdo, but he's smart enough to realize his ability to control the House and keep his job come the end of the year, is wildly dependent on money.  Kevin laid out the blueprint, and Mike has been fumbling around.  But to be fair to Mike, Kevin didn't have to deal with what's happening right now and that is that so much more RNC/PAC money is being siphoned off to the Trump family.  Kevin could tactically raise and allocate it as he knew best.  But Mike is stuck juggling the batshit crazy wing of his party/MAGA nation, the Trump Family's massive skim, and then actually trying to do his job and keep some toss-up seats Red.  It's enough to make a man wanna watch some porn to relax, but alas...that damn monitoring app.  

[Jive Turkey 12613]

It should be worth noting that Moscow Marge has not been summoned to comfort Trump in the courtroom.  Yet Big Mike is there bending the knee. 

 

[Underdog 28704]

2 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

It's the Christian way.  

 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

24 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

It should be worth noting that Moscow Marge has not been summoned to comfort Trump in the courtroom.  Yet Big Mike is there bending the knee. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MrBig 5414]

37 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

It should be worth noting that Moscow Marge has not been summoned to comfort Trump in the courtroom.  Yet Big Mike is there bending the knee. 

 

The prosecutor needs to do some reverse psychology and make Cohen state how much he think Biden sucks so MAGA can stop pushing the line that we shouldn’t “believe a word he says.”

[Pancho 44846]

 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

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?

 

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21202]

37 minutes ago, Underdog said:

 

That's the old Christian way.  They no longer bother with confession or shame, and repentance left the building a long time ago.  Deny, deflect, accuse, and then move on.  

Infuriating. 

[Dahobbs 17585]

14 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

That's just amazing.