Former President Trump’s one-time fixer and attorney Michael Cohen testified this week, offering an inside look at the dealings that sparked his boss’s first criminal trial. During his nearly six-hour testimony, Cohen was questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger about his work.
Once one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, Cohen is now one of Trump’s fiercest critics and the prosecution’s star witness. His $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels on behalf of Trump before the 2016 presidential election to cover their alleged affair is at the center of the case. As for Trump, he has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover it up.
There have already been some testy moments during his testimony — during his cross-examination on Thursday, Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche blew up at Cohen, accusing him of lying when said earlier this week that he finalized the hush money deal with Trump. “That was a lie! You did not talk to President Trump on that night,” he said. Cohen, meanwhile, kept his cool and insisted that he had told the truth.
Cohen’s expected to return to the stand on Monday. While his appearance means that the trial could be entering its final stretch, there are some questions over whether the former president will testify. In the meantime, here’s a closer look at Trump’s ex-lawyer and what he had to say.
Who is Michael Cohen and what is he alleging?
First hired in 2007, Cohen worked as an executive and lawyer for Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, for decades. But his role was far from simple; rather than serving as a traditional corporate lawyer, he reported directly to the former president instead of the company’s general counsel’s office.
During his Monday testimony, Cohen told jurors that it was fair to describe his role as a fixer for Trump, testifying that he took care of “whatever he wanted.” This included threatening to sue people and planting positive stories in the media. Cohen also said he encouraged him to run for president, but Trump told him there would be “a lot of women coming forward” as he prepared to make the announcement.
To address these concerns, the two met with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker at Trump Tower in 2015, asking him to place positive stories about Trump and block any potentially scandalous stories that could hurt his chances for the White House.
Pecker kept his promise soon after by alerting Cohen about a doorman who was peddling a story about Trump having a love child, which turned out to be false. Cohen said he reported what the doorman was claiming to Trump, who “told me to make sure that this story doesn’t get out.” Then in June 2016, Cohen said, he learned from the Enquirer that former Playboy model Karen McDougal was trying to sell a story about her alleged year-long affair with the former president. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen recalled Trump saying.
Prosecutors played an audio recording of Trump directing Cohen to use $150,000 in cash to buy McDougal’s story, which Pecker previously testified that he bought to ensure that it would never be published. “So, what do we got to pay for this? 150?” Trump asked at one point. “Yes, and it’s all the stuff,” Cohen replied.
What did Michael Cohen say about Stormy Daniels?
Cohen and Trump made a similar “catch and kill” scheme to pay off Daniels following her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen told jurors that Trump had been advised by friends to pay off the adult film star because he was a billionaire. “Just do it,” Cohen recounts Trump saying.
After agreeing to front the cost, Cohen hid the payments from his wife by taking out a home equity line of credit, so that the bank would send him updates electronically rather than to his home. “I clearly could not tell her and [it] would’ve been a problem for me [if she found out],” Cohen told jurors. He figured he could easily return the money once Trump paid him back and “nobody would be the wiser.”
While Trump has insisted that Cohen acted alone in this scheme, Cohen testified that he got the then-presidential candidate’s stamp of approval before opening a bank under a fake company account to pay Daniels. “Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign off,” Cohen testified, adding that. “On top of that, I wanted the money back.”
As far as evidence goes, call logs show that Cohen actually called Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller and Cohen said Schiller handed his phone to Trump so the two of them could discuss Daniels’ payment. But Trump’s lawyers pushed back, saying Cohen spoke to Schiller about a teenager who kept prank-calling Cohen’s phone.
Following this conversation, Cohen confirmed under oath that he wired $130,000 to Daniels’ then-lawyer, Keith Davidson, and that it was part of the hush money arrangement.
Trump’s lawyers are using Cohen’s previous jail time as defense
Trump’s team has tried to undermine Cohen’s credibility. During his cross-examination, the defense tried to discredit him by painting him as a serial liar and a vindictive former employee.
In 2018, he pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law by paying off Daniels (and testified that Trump directed him to make the payment), as well as charges of tax evasion and making false statements to a federally insured bank.
He was handed a 3-year prison sentence in December 2018, as well as a fine of $50,000, and was ordered to forfeit $500,000 and pay more than $1.3 million in restitution to the IRS.
This isn’t Cohen’s only run-in with the law — he previously admitted to lying under oath multiple times, including making false statements to Congress about a proposed project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. But he has since admitted to doing this to protect Trump and minimize the former president’s ties to Russia, which were being scrutinized by Congress and federal investigators at that time.
Cohen has also gotten in trouble for repeatedly mocking Trump. At one point, Blanche grilled Cohen about his social media posts, which including him referencing the former president as a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.” Cohen responded by quipping, “Sounds like something I would say.”
The two have exchanged barbs over the years —Trump has trashed Cohen as a liar ever since 2018 when his former attorney began cooperating with officials against him. Cohen wore a T-shirt with Trump behind bars in an orange jumpsuit during a recent TikTok stream.
Though Judge Merchan denied Trump’s team’s request to impose a separate gag order on Cohen, he ordered Cohen to “refrain from making any more statements about this case, about Mr. Trump, or about anything related to this case or the process.”
