On a pivotal day within the first prison trial of an American president, the courtroom threatened to spin uncontrolled.
The prosecution’s star witness, Michael D. Cohen, admitted on the stand to stealing from former President Donald J. Trump’s firm. Mr. Trump’s courtroom entourage included three supporters charged with felonies of their very own. And the protection’s solely actual witness was so defiant that the choose, after excoriating him, cleared the courtroom.
The trial’s first 5 weeks featured dramatic descriptions of intercourse and scandal, and the ultimate section of testimony on Monday confirmed no indicators of a letup, because the courtroom performed host to a nonstop spectacle.
The stress got here to a head after the prosecution rested its case and the protection referred to as its witness, Robert J. Costello, a lawyer who had as soon as suggested Mr. Cohen. The protection noticed Mr. Costello as a foil to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s onetime private lawyer and longtime henchman.
However the technique might not have paid off: The choose promptly misplaced his endurance with Mr. Costello, a prosecutor turned protection lawyer and a fixture in New York’s authorized world. When Mr. Costello scoffed at one of many choose’s rulings — “jeez,” he stated, earlier than mumbling a retraction — the choose grew irate.
Excusing the jury, the choose, Juan M. Merchan, lectured Mr. Costello: “If you happen to don’t like my ruling, you don’t say ‘jeez,’ and also you don’t say ‘strike it,’ as a result of I’m the one one who can strike testimony in court docket,” he stated, including, “Are you staring me down?”
He ordered the courtroom cleared, briefly ejecting reporters and different onlookers, whereas permitting Mr. Trump’s supporters to stay. When these informed to go away did so, in response to a transcript, he informed Mr. Costello that his conduct was “contemptuous” and stated, “If you happen to attempt to stare me down yet one more time I’ll take away you from the stand,” including, to the protection legal professionals, “I’ll strike his testimony, do you hear me?”
The explosion overshadowed the efficiency from Mr. Cohen, who on his fourth and ultimate day on the stand fended off a fusillade of assaults from the protection.
He was the one witness to supply firsthand proof immediately linking Mr. Trump to the data that underpin the fees towards him. Mr. Trump, he stated, authorised a plan to falsify the data to cowl up a intercourse scandal involving a porn star.
Throughout Monday’s cross-examination, Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer assailed Mr. Cohen’s credibility, portray him as a pathological liar obsessive about taking down the previous president. However Mr. Cohen maintained his composure, whereas some jurors appeared to lose focus as they shifted of their chairs.
And when prosecutors obtained a second alternative to query Mr. Cohen, they sought to blunt a lot of the impression of the cross-examination.
“Are you charged with any crimes on this case?” a prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, requested him. “No, ma’am,” Mr. Cohen replied, explaining that he was there merely as a “subpoenaed witness.”
But Mr. Cohen, the twentieth and ultimate individual to take the stand for the prosecution, was not simply any witness. He illustrated a lot of the prosecution’s case as nobody else may, harmonizing disparate details to painting Mr. Trump as a prison.
Mr. Cohen took the stand Monday amid a uniquely Trumpian show, as an eclectic entourage of the previous president’s supporters — a number of with authorized troubles of their very own — packed the courtroom.
The group of greater than a dozen included not solely Republican lawmakers and Alan Dershowitz, the high-profile lawyer, but additionally a authorized adviser to Mr. Trump who’s underneath indictment in Arizona, Boris Epshteyn, and Bernard Kerik, the previous New York police commissioner whom Mr. Trump pardoned for federal felony costs. And there was Chuck Zito, a former chief of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels motorbike gang, a person with jet-black hair in an Elvis-style swoop who had spent years in jail on drug costs.
They swept into the courtroom to again up Mr. Trump as his face-off along with his former fixer and present nemesis continued.
However that was hardly the top of the fireworks. When Mr. Costello took the stand, he sought to influence the jury that Mr. Cohen was a no-good liar.
He recalled their first assembly in spring 2018, after the F.B.I. had searched Mr. Cohen’s residence and workplace amid an investigation into the hush-money deal. Whereas Mr. Cohen had testified that Mr. Costello was a part of a “strain marketing campaign” by Mr. Trump’s allies, Mr. Costello stated on Monday that Mr. Cohen had been determined for assist.
“My life is shattered,” Mr. Costello recalled the previous fixer telling him earlier than asking, “What’s my escape route?”
Mr. Costello testified that he had informed him he may cooperate with the federal government, however Mr. Cohen stated he had nothing incriminating to supply.
Mr. Costello recalled that Mr. Cohen stated on the spring 2018 assembly, “I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have something on Donald Trump.”
Amid a refrain of objections from Ms. Hoffinger — most of which the choose sustained — Mr. Costello and Mr. Trump each shook their heads in obvious frustration.
Leaving court docket for the day, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Costello, however referred to as Justice Merchan a “tyrant” and the trial a “catastrophe.”
Mr. Costello, who will proceed his testimony Tuesday, was preceded by Mr. Cohen himself, who sat by way of one other fierce spherical of questioning from the protection.
Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, ventured towards the center of the case: Mr. Trump’s reimbursement of Mr. Cohen for his hush-money cost to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. Mr. Cohen’s $130,000 cost on the eve of the 2016 presidential election silenced her account of a sexual rendezvous with Mr. Trump that had threatened to derail his marketing campaign.
In return, Mr. Cohen was paid $420,000 — an quantity that he stated included the hush cash, a bonus, cash for taxes and $50,000 to repay a tech firm in an unrelated matter. However when pressed by Mr. Blanche, Mr. Cohen acknowledged that he had pocketed greater than half of the cash earmarked for the tech firm, RedFinch.
“You stole from the Trump Group, is that proper?” Mr. Blanche requested.
“Sure, sir,” Mr. Cohen replied.
Mr. Blanche additionally emphasised how a lot cash Mr. Cohen has reaped from his assaults on his former boss and mentor, Mr. Trump, suggesting that his testimony was motivated by greed, not truth-telling. Mr. Cohen has written two books and is contemplating a 3rd, and has profited handsomely from a podcast. He has even stated he may run for Congress.
However when Mr. Blanche instructed {that a} conviction would full Mr. Cohen’s revenge plot, Mr. Cohen corrected him, no less than on the economics.
He stated it might be higher if Mr. Trump escaped unscathed, as a result of “it provides me extra to speak about sooner or later.”
Mr. Blanche sought to complete the essential alternate with a flourish, returning to his declare final week that Mr. Cohen had lied on the stand about talking to Mr. Trump in late October 2016 concerning the hush-money deal. However Mr. Cohen compelled him to finish with a whimper, not a bang.
“Little doubt?” Mr. Blanche requested Mr. Cohen about his recollection of talking to Mr. Trump.
“Little doubt,” Mr. Cohen replied, capping his cross-examination.
There is no such thing as a approach of understanding what the jury thinks of Mr. Cohen, whose previous lies and misdeeds had been hardly a secret — prosecutors warned the jury to count on an outsize character with a heavy load of luggage. And their verdict just isn’t imminent. Justice Merchan scheduled closing arguments for Might 28, after which jurors may start deliberations.
On Monday, when Ms. Hoffinger, the prosecutor, had the chance to query Mr. Cohen once more, she sought to easy a few of his testimony’s rougher edges.
To underscore the concept Mr. Trump authorised of Mr. Cohen’s conduct, she produced a textual content message from one in all Mr. Trump’s legal professionals, who expressed appreciation for Mr. Cohen’s telling the media — he now says falsely — that he had paid off Ms. Daniels on his personal initiative.
“Consumer says thanks for what you do,” the textual content message learn, showing to consult with Mr. Trump.
She additionally requested Mr. Cohen whether or not he had been fallacious to steal from the Trump Group when looking for reimbursement for the expertise agency’s work. Mr. Cohen agreed that he had been.
Lastly, Ms. Hoffinger returned to the data that the prosecution says Mr. Trump faked to hide the hush-money deal. 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 doc associated to his reimbursement of Mr. Cohen in 2017: 11 checks to Mr. Cohen (most of which Mr. Trump signed), 11 invoices submitted by Mr. Cohen and 12 entries in Mr. Trump’s ledger.
The paperwork all referred to a “retainer settlement,” implying that Mr. Cohen obtained the cash for bizarre bills. Whereas Mr. Blanche highlighted a wide range of authorized assignments Mr. Cohen carried out for the Trump household round this time, Ms. Hoffinger targeted intently on particular sums and data.
“Did the $420,000 that you just obtained in 2017 have something to do with authorized providers you offered in 2017?” she requested Mr. Cohen. He bluntly replied: “No.”
“While you submitted every of your 11 invoices,” she then requested, “was that true or false?”
“False,” he confirmed.
And the test stubs that mirrored a supposed retainer?
“False,” he informed the jury.
Ms. Hoffinger additionally requested Mr. Cohen to evaluate the impression of his falling-out with Mr. Trump, who had been the main target of his existence for years.
“My whole life has been turned the wrong way up,” he stated.
Kate Christobek, Wesley Parnell, Jesse McKinley and Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
