Over the course of a monthlong prison trial, the proof towards Donald J. Trump has piled up.
A recording of his voice directing a fixer to pay in money. Telephone calls, textual content messages, emails and {a photograph} that illustrate the case towards him. And a parade of 18 witnesses who collectively instructed the prosecution’s story: that Mr. Trump orchestrated a conspiracy to suppress intercourse scandals throughout the 2016 election, and after profitable, sought to bury a porn star’s story for good.
However the nineteenth and last witness of their case — the one one to immediately hyperlink Mr. Trump to the 34 enterprise data he’s charged with falsifying — is Michael D. Cohen. And for prosecutors, he was all the time high-reward, high-risk. Although Mr. Cohen received off to a robust begin, Mr. Trump’s lawyer ultimately hammered his credibility, highlighting his prison document and portray him as a serial liar bent on taking down the previous president.
It was essentially the most vital momentum swing of the primary prison trial of an American president — and with Mr. Cohen’s star activate the stand poised to conclude on Monday, the prosecution’s case would appear to hold within the stability. Mr. Trump’s authorized crew argues that it’s preposterous to have constructed a case that might hinge on Mr. Cohen’s credibility.
However because the trial enters its last stage and the main focus shifts from the legal professionals on the lectern to the 12 silent New Yorkers who will decide Mr. Trump’s destiny, a number of authorized consultants say the case stays the prosecution’s to lose. Between the reams of circumstantial proof and a few very favorable legal guidelines underpinning the fees, the Manhattan district legal professional, Alvin L. Bragg, has retained inherent benefits.
And so, regardless of the jurors consider Mr. Cohen — truth-teller, fabulist or one thing in between — the prosecution didn’t want them to consider his each phrase.
Marc F. Scholl, who served within the district legal professional’s workplace for almost 4 many years and labored on dozens of circumstances that included the false data cost, mentioned prosecutors have checked all of the authorized containers.
“If the jury chooses to consider the federal government’s proof, then a conviction is warranted,” he mentioned, although he famous Mr. Cohen, with all his baggage, “stays the linchpin” of the case. “The jury doesn’t must consider all of what Cohen has to say, however they must consider sufficient of it.”
A felon who self-identified as Mr. Trump’s former “thug,” Mr. Cohen led jurors on a guided tour of the shady dealings which can be the crux of the case. He instructed jurors that, at his boss’s behest, he paid off the porn star, Stormy Daniels, on the eve of the election, silencing her story of a sexual liaison with Mr. Trump. As soon as Mr. Trump was elected, he agreed to repay Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 hush-money deal and extra.
To maintain the cover-up alive, Mr. Cohen mentioned, Mr. Trump’s firm disguised the reimbursement as bizarre authorized bills that arose from a retainer settlement. And at a gathering in Trump Tower simply weeks earlier than he was sworn in, Mr. Trump signed off on the fakery, Mr. Cohen recounted from the stand.
“What, if something, did Mr. Trump say at the moment?” a prosecutor requested Mr. Cohen.
“He accredited it,” Mr. Cohen replied, noting that Mr. Trump then added: “That is going to be one heck of a trip in D.C.”
Mr. Trump, who faces probation or as much as 4 years in jail, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data, one for every purportedly bogus doc: 11 checks to Mr. Cohen, 11 invoices submitted by Mr. Cohen and 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s ledger.
Mr. Cohen’s testimony that Mr. Trump “accredited” the plan may give prosecutors what they want. It won’t matter that he didn’t accuse Mr. Trump of personally falsifying the data or explicitly instructing anybody to take action. Beneath the New York legislation that Mr. Trump is charged with violating, prosecutors want solely present that he “induced” his firm to file false data.
The prosecution has one other authorized card to play: The legislation holds a defendant accountable even when he doesn’t perform the crime himself, as long as he “deliberately aids” it. The problem was highlighted throughout jury choice, when a prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, requested potential jurors whether or not they may settle for the concept a husband who employed a hitman to kill his spouse was responsible of her homicide. Many agreed they may.
And as a last method to buttress their case, prosecutors would possibly invoke a 2016 appeals courtroom choice upholding a conviction of a defendant who didn’t deal with or approve the false data in query, ruling that it was “moderately foreseeable” that his actions would have resulted within the submitting of false data.
The case may hold on Justice Juan M. Merchan’s interpretation of those points, the authorized consultants mentioned. Within the coming days, Justice Merchan — the decide overseeing the case — will distill the legalities into directions for jurors that he’ll ship after closing arguments as quickly as this week. The directions, the consultants mentioned, may help the prosecution’s view of the case.
“The decide’s directions present a street map to the jurors,” mentioned Mr. Scholl, the previous prosecutor, noting that “Trump doesn’t must be the one who says, ‘Make that document false.’”
However some jurors may arrive on the identical conclusion that Mr. Trump’s supporters have pushed: that the roundabout nature of the fees don’t justify the primary felony conviction of a former president.
Felony counts of falsifying enterprise data require prosecutors to point out {that a} defendant sought to hide a second crime. And on this case, the prosecutors have laid out that second crime in graphic element, arguing that in 2015, Mr. Trump entered right into a conspiracy with Mr. Cohen and the writer of The Nationwide Enquirer, David Pecker, to hide the intercourse scandals.
Mr. Pecker, the trial’s first witness, testified that he had agreed to suppress a number of damaging tales on Mr. Trump’s behalf as he ran for president, together with a former Playboy mannequin’s story of an affair.
Mr. Pecker instructed the jury that for $150,000, he purchased and buried the mannequin’s story. And on a surreptitious recording Mr. Cohen made on his telephone, jurors heard Mr. Trump directing that they repay Mr. Pecker.
Different witnesses — together with Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s former spokeswoman — underscored the menace that the tales posed to the marketing campaign. She additionally testified that the candidate was in contact with each Mr. Pecker and Mr. Cohen because the marketing campaign sought to comprise the scandals, a recollection corroborated by telephone data.
In closing arguments, the protection will doubtless solid these machinations as typical presidential political techniques. They’re additionally anticipated to argue that Mr. Trump had nothing to do with the data on the coronary heart of the case, which they’ve already characterised because the form of again workplace paperwork {that a} president would by no means trouble touching.
But jurors discovered that Mr. Trump signed 9 of the 11 checks himself. And prosecutors launched quite a lot of different circumstantial proof relating to the documentation: Mr. Trump’s former staff portrayed him as a micromanager who was detail-obsessed when it got here to his personal cash and paid shut consideration to checks that got here out and in of his workplace.
His personal books emphasised that time. “Penny pinching?” he wrote in certainly one of them. “You guess. I’m all for it.”
To immediately hyperlink Mr. Trump to the false data, although, prosecutors known as Mr. Cohen to the stand.
His story started a decade earlier than the paperwork even existed. Composed and regular on the stand, he recounted his skilled life as a New York tragedy in miniature: a person who met after which served his idol, solely to be betrayed and imprisoned after the porn star payoff in October 2016, which may have been his proudest second.
Three months after putting the take care of Ms. Daniels, Mr. Cohen mentioned, he had an important assembly at Trump Tower. There, he mentioned, Mr. Trump’s chief monetary officer, Allen Weisselberg, defined how Mr. Trump would reimburse Mr. Cohen for the payoff. Mr. Weisselberg took notes, which prosecutors confirmed to the jury, and Mr. Cohen testified that Mr. Trump signed off on the specifics.
In a single phrase of all-important testimony — a easy “sure” — Mr. Cohen confirmed that his former boss had recognized the data would falsely describe the repayments as authorized bills arising from a fictional authorized “retainer.”
Mr. Cohen, who pleaded responsible in 2018 to quite a lot of federal crimes, together with some associated to the hush cash, asserted that there was no retainer settlement and that he had not accrued any authorized bills.
“Was this bill a false document?” a prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, requested Mr. Cohen on Tuesday.
“Sure, ma’am,” he confirmed, and added that the test stubs have been false as effectively. Requested the aim of the checks, he defined that partly they represented “the reimbursement to me for the hush-money charge.”
It was precisely what prosecutors hoped jurors would hear. However now, after two days of cross-examination, and extra to come back on Monday, they have to maintain on and hope the jury will consider it.
Beneath cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Todd Blanche, did all he may to name Mr. Cohen’s credibility into doubt. He highlighted lies the previous fixer had instructed whereas below oath previously, insisting that he had lied once more when answering questions from prosecutors within the present trial.
In a very tense line of questioning, Mr. Blanche sought to question Mr. Cohen’s earlier testimony that he had spoken to Mr. Trump in October 2016 concerning the cost to Ms. Daniels. To achieve Mr. Trump, Mr. Cohen testified, he known as the candidate’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller.
However Mr. Blanche, noting that Mr. Cohen had been the goal of a harassment marketing campaign from a young person across the identical time, proposed an alternate principle. He described textual content messages that recommended the fixer was calling Mr. Schiller to complain that he was being bullied by a 14-year-old prank caller — and to not communicate to Mr. Trump concerning the cost.
“You didn’t speak to President Trump on that night time, you talked to Keith Schiller,” Mr. Blanche mentioned, elevating his voice and his index finger. “You possibly can admit it.”
However Mr. Cohen remained composed and held agency.
“No, sir, I can’t,” he responded.
William Ok. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
