The testimony of the former lawyer and trusted man of donald trump until 2018, Michael Cohenmarked this Tuesday the course of the criminal trial for document falsification that the former president faces in a New York court, one month after the process began.
The figure of Cohen as a key piece of this legal battle gained strength this Tuesday after the Prosecutor’s Office – which left the former lawyer as the last to appear among his 19 witnesses, aware of his impact – and the former president’s defense tried to direct the story according to their interests. .
For the former, Cohen was a witness and collaborator of an alleged “plot” that bought the silence of the porn actress Stormy Daniels and that of the Playboy model Karen McDougal in order to vitiate the 2016 electoral campaign; while for the latter he is nothing more than a former worker “obsessed” with Trump who seeks to make a profit.
An unreliable person who “even the Prosecutor’s Office was distrustful” during the investigation in 2021 because any conversation with him “ended up on television”, according to the defense.
And the comings and goings in the testimony of Cohen, sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison for illicit financing and bribery during said campaign, have been a constant in recent years.
He admitted in federal court that he lied during his previous trial and in his statements to the United States Congress, but in Trump’s civil trial for fraud he said he did not consider himself “entirely guilty”.
That was the great trick that Todd Blanche, the former president’s lawyer, played this Tuesday, who demonstrated the alleged “interest” by Cohen for making the case profitable on the internet.
In the words of Cohen: “(I’m looking to) build an audience, create a community, really vent because I’m having trouble sleeping.“, whoever was Trump’s right-hand man tried to shield himself by acknowledging that he mentions the former president in all his podcasts, and that he makes money on TikTok but that the amount is not “significant”.
Likewise, he revealed that during the last four years he has earned US$3.4 million thanks to the publication of his two books, focused exclusively on his relationship with trump.
Regarding the alleged “obsession” With this, which the former president’s team repeatedly alleges, Cohen acknowledged that “I admired him tremendously” until 2018 for his “Business success” and that he read some of his books.
“At the time, he was neck-deep in the cult of Donald Trump“said the former lawyer.
“Don’t worry, I’m the president of the United States.”
Until in April 2018 the FBI raided his home in New York, which would ultimately lead to his imprisonment, and since then his relationship with Trump changed definitively.
“Don’t worry. I am the president of the United States”, the Republican candidate for the November elections then reassured him.
That is what Cohen narrated during the questioning phase of the Prosecutor’s Office, which lasted almost ten hours, and in which he ended up stating that he was “regretful“of having risked the union of his family for his”loyalty” to Trump.
He also regretted having “lied” and “intimidated” to journalists in what meant confirmation of the Prosecutor’s hypothesis about this alleged corrupt plot with claims of “influence” in the 2016 elections.
Asked why Daniels was paid, he explained that it was “to ensure that the story did not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming US president”, as in the case of McDougal.
In addition, he detailed each of the US$35,000 checks signed by trump -and attached by the Prosecutor’s Office- through which he collected a total of US$420,000 in 2017 to cover the advance disbursement to the actress, tax expenses and a bonus.
After the usual Wednesday recess, Cohen’s interrogation by the defense continues on Thursday and on Friday the process will be interrupted again because Trump has authorization to attend the graduation of his youngest son Barron, 18 years old.
Source: Gestion
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