The New York criminal trial of Donald Trump, the first ever of a U.S. president, is fast nearing its end, with one of his lawyers signaling Monday that Trump wouldn't take the witness stand to defend himself.
The prosecution rested its case in the sixth week of the trial after the 12-member jury heard hours more testimony from its most significant witness, Trump’s onetime political fixer, Michael Cohen.
Cohen acknowledged over four days on the witness stand that he had been a serial liar and had stolen $60,000 from Trump’s real estate conglomerate.
Cohen also implicated Trump in the deal at the center of the allegations against the former president - a $130,000 hush money payment Cohen said he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels at Trump’s behest just before the 2016 election. The objective of the payment, he said, was to hide her claim of a one-night sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier to keep it from voters as they headed to the polls.
A short time after Cohen’s testimony ended, the Trump defense called Robert Costello, a New York lawyer, to the witness stand for testimony buttressing its contention that Cohen is not to be believed.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove said the defense did not expect to call any more witnesses after Costello finishes testifying Tuesday morning.
Closing arguments in the case could occur May 28, with the jury then deciding Trump’s fate.
Trump has long said he would testify but apparently was talked out of it by his lawyers. Trump has denied Daniels’ claim he had a liaison with her and the entirety of the 34-count indictment against him.
Over years in the public eye, both as a real estate magnate and a politician, Trump has waxed and waned in his views about whether criminal defendants should testify, at times saying they look “guilty as hell” if they don’t defend themselves, and at other times saying they should exercise their constitutional right against self-incrimination.
Trump would have faced a tough cross-examination by prosecutors, who have accused him of falsifying business records about his repayment to Cohen for the hush money he paid to Daniels.
The presiding judge, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, had already ruled that prosecutors also would have been allowed to ask Trump about two civil cases he lost in the last few months in which he was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. One involved business fraud at his Trump Organization real estate conglomerate and the other his defamation of a New York writer who had won a sexual assault decision against him.
Meanwhile, as the court session ended Monday, in a routine request by defense attorneys at the end of the prosecution’s case that's seldom granted, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche asked Merchan to dismiss the case altogether because of Cohen’s testimony.
"You want me to take it out of the jury’s hands and decide before it even gets to the jury, that as a matter of law, this person is so not worthy of belief?" Merchan asked Blanche.
"We didn't just catch him in a lie, your honor, he came in here with a history of lying," Blanche responded.
"You said his lies are irrefutable," Merchan said to the attorney. "But you think he’s going to fool 12 New Yorkers?"
The judge said he would rule Tuesday morning.
Evidence in the trial shows that Trump repaid the money to Cohen in 2017 after he became president, personally signing nine of the checks. Trump is accused of falsifying his business records to claim that the repayment to Cohen was for his legal work. But Cohen said that was a fig leaf for the real purpose — paying him back for the hush money to Daniels he paid out of his home equity line of credit.
Cohen alleged that Trump twice approved the arrangement to pay him back, including once at his Trump Tower in New York and a second time in the Oval Office at the White House after he became president.
Blanche never questioned Cohen about the two crucial conversations he claimed to have had with Trump about the reimbursement scheme.
Costello, who advised Cohen in 2018 but was never hired after federal agents raided Cohen's home at the time, a New York hotel room, testified that Cohen was "absolutely manic" about his legal predicament, even suicidal.
He said that Cohen swore to him that Trump was not involved in the hush money payments to Daniels.
"I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,” Cohen said, according to Costello.
"Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about those payments. That he did this on his own. He repeated that numerous times," Costello said.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger objected frequently to the questions posed by Trump’s defense, and Merchan sustained the objections, to Costello’s annoyance. Costello said “ridiculous” after one objection was sustained, said “Jesus!” after another, and rolled his eyes and sighed at a third.
Merchan finally had had enough of Costello’s side comments from the witness stand and sent the jury and news reporters out of the courtroom while he lectured Costello on his lack of decorum.
Earlier in the day, Cohen, under sharp questioning by Blanche, admitted to stealing $60,000 from the future president’s real estate conglomerate as part of the hush money reimbursement because he felt Trump had cheated him on the amount of his year-end bonus in 2016.
In all, Cohen said the reimbursement deal with Trump came to $420,000 — $130,000 for the money he paid Daniels; another $50,000 he was supposed to pay to Red Finch, a technology firm hired to rig a poll to show Trump was a highly rated businessman; a doubling of those amounts to $360,000 to cover his tax obligations; and a $60,000 year-end bonus for 2016.
But Cohen acknowledged to Blanche that he paid only $20,000 to Red Finch — in cash in a brown paper bag — while claiming to a Trump company official he had paid $50,000. That amounted, he conceded, to a $30,000 theft, doubled to $60,000 by the time the company accounted for the taxes he would likely owe.
"So, you stole from the Trump Organization?" Blanche asked.
"Yes, sir,” Cohen said.
Cohen later explained to prosecutor Hoffinger, "I was angered because of the reduction in the [size of his normal] bonus, and so I just felt it was almost like self-help” to stake his claim to the extra money as he worked out the terms of the overall $420,000 reimbursement with Allen Weisselberg, then the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer.
Weisselberg is now serving a five-month perjury sentence for lying in a previous Trump-related civil trial and is not expected to testify at the current criminal trial.
But Cohen also again testified that the $420,000 he was paid had nothing to do with legal services for Trump, the crux of the criminal charges the former president is facing.
Even as news of the hush money payment became public in early 2018, Cohen said he continued to lie it about to media outlets, saying that none of it came from the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign and that Trump did not know about it. The misleading statements were made to shield Trump personally, he said.
The 57-year-old Cohen, however, is a flawed witness for the prosecution. He pleaded guilty to a campaign finance law violation in connection with the hush money payment to Daniels, perjury for lying to a congressional panel and tax offenses. He served 13½ months in a federal prison and another year and a half in home confinement.
Since then, he has often assailed Trump and testified last week he wanted Trump convicted.
If Trump is found guilty, he could be placed on probation or sentenced to up to four years in prison.
