Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen expected on stand next week in hush money trial – PBS NewsHour
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The third week of testimony in former president Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial came to a close Friday in New York with prosecutors saying they may be able to rest their case next week. William Brangham was in the courtroom and reports on what he saw and what comes next.
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
Amna Nawaz:
The third week of testimony in former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial came to a close today in New York City, with prosecutors saying they may be able to rest their case next week.
William Brangham was in court today. He joins us now to tell us what he saw and what comes next.
So, William, five witnesses took the stand today. What did jurors hear?
William Brangham:
Jurors heard a procession of witnesses talking about some very granular bits of evidence, like how checks were sent from the Trump Organization in New York City down to the White House and how they got signed by President Trump and then sent back to New York, how cell phone calls and text messages are recorded and authenticated, both by prosecutors and by cell phone companies.
And while some people have been arguing that these are kind of dry, dull, technical pieces of evidence, I mean, especially compared to Stormy Daniels over the last couple of days, that’s true, but this is also — these granular details are, in essence, the core of this case. This is a case about falsifying business records.
And so those quotidian details are important, and they will be in some way what this case lives and dies on.
Amna Nawaz:
Still, in many ways, there’s a lot of anticipation looking towards next week, when Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, is expected to testify. He’s considered the prosecution’s star witness.
So, what are we expecting to hear from him?
William Brangham:
Michael Cohen is at the absolute center of this case. He’s the one that negotiated the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. He’s the one that paid that payment, that $130,000, to her out of his own home equity line of credit, at Donald Trump’s direction, he argues.
He’s the one that complained that it took forever for Donald Trump to pay him back. And, most centrally, he is the one that argues that Trump and a few of his associates were central to this scheme of masking those repayments as more mundane legal fees. So he is right at the core. So, his testimony will be huge.
Amna Nawaz:
At the same time, William, I think it’s fair to say he’s not considered an ideal witness by any stretch. He does bring a lot of baggage with him. How could that impact the case?
William Brangham:
No, he is as problematic a witness for the prosecution as you can imagine.
Just to recap, he has pled guilty to tax fraud, to bank fraud, to lying to Congress. He’s pled guilty to campaign finance violations, which are a central part of this case. His credibility has been attacked and will continue to be.
He’s also been incredibly inconsistent in terms of what Donald Trump’s role was in this scheme. If you remember, before he turned on Trump, he said that Donald Trump had nothing to do with these payments whatsoever. And he’s also made it very, very clear that he absolutely hates the former president and would love to see him go to jail.
So that makes it very hard for the prosecution to put him forward. The challenge for them, for the prosecutors, is, hopefully, to their case, they have built enough evidence from witnesses, documents, other records that supports the story that Michael Cohen is telling, so that, even if jurors think Michael Cohen can’t be trusted, he is at least supported by this architecture of all this other evidence that they have been laying out over the last few weeks, and that that will be central to their case.
Whether that works or not, that’s still to be determined, and we will start to see that on Monday.
Amna Nawaz:
All right, it will be another week to watch in that trial.
William Brangham reporting from New York.
William, thank you.
William Brangham:
Thanks, Amna.
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William Brangham William Brangham
William Brangham is an award-winning correspondent, producer, and substitute anchor for the PBS NewsHour.
Ali Schmitz Ali Schmitz
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