Highlights from day 17 of the Trump hush money trial: Cohen’s cross-examination

Judge Juan M. Merchan was unnerved by the blistering start to Cohen’s cross-examination, chiding Trump lawyer Todd Blanche at a sidebar for quizzing the witness about recent social media posts he’d made about the former president’s legal team.

“Why are you making this about yourself?” Merchan asked, according to a transcript, after Blanche confronted Cohen about an April 23 TikTok post in which he referred to the attorney as a “crying little [expletive].”

“I’m not making it about myself, your honor,” Blanche said at the sidebar, which was held at the judge’s bench out of earshot of jurors and reporters.

“I have a right to show this witness’s bias, and he has expressed bias about the lawyers just because of who he represents,” Blanche continued.

Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger countered that Cohen’s comments about Trump’s lawyers were irrelevant and inadmissible to showing bias — that only remarks about Trump himself could be used for that purpose.

“It doesn’t matter if he has bias towards you. it doesn’t matter,” Merchan told Blanche. “The issue is whether he has bias towards the defendant. Don’t make it about myself.”

For his part, Cohen had answered Blanche’s question before Hoffinger interrupted with an objection and Merchan, moments later, summoned the lawyers to the bench. His response: “Sounds like something I would say.”

According to a transcript of discussions between the judge and lawyers, prosecutor Steinglass told Judge Merchan that it’s “highly likely” the defense will be able to start calling witnesses on Thursday.

But Trump lawyer Blanche he expects the defense’s cross-examination of Cohen to continue until the end of the day Thursday and that they won’t start calling witnesses until next week —if they do at all. In addition, the prosecution could still call rebuttal witnesses once the defense case is finished.

The trial does not take place on Wednesdays and is also off this Friday so Trump can attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.

Trump walked out of court Tuesday afternoon saying he thinks he had a “very, very good day.”

“The trial is going very well,” Trump told reporters, flanked by a large group that included his attorneys and aides.

Trump pointed to recent polling as well as his massive rally in New Jersey over the weekend as evidence that the hearing was doing little to blunt his standing in the race.

“Voters are getting it,” he said, adding: “I think we’re exposing this scam for what it is.”

Trump once again relied on the words of others to lace into the case, reading off quotes from supporters, including several who joined him at the courthouse Tuesday.

He also continued to complain about the gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others.

“I am not allowed to talk about big portions of my case,” he railed.

Cohen conceded that after reconnecting with the Manhattan district attorney’s office in early 2021, he wanted the prosecutors’ office to publicly acknowledge that he was cooperating — again in hopes of getting part of his sentence reduced.

But, as has been his approach throughout the early stages of cross-examination, Cohen wasn’t direct in his response. Asked by Trump lawyer Todd Blanche if that was his desire, Cohen said: “I would say so, yes.”

“I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. You wanted that?” Blanche responded.

“Yes,” Cohen said.

Cohen explained that he was looking for a reduction of the home confinement portion of his sentence, which ran until November 2021. He said he wanted the reduction not only as a reward for his cooperation but also because he thought he was entitled to a year off from credits he racked up for working and completing programs in federal prison.

Cohen suggested the federal Bureau of Prisons may have miscalculated his sentence. He remains under court supervision until November.

Trump’s lawyers sought to spotlight how Cohen, who was once a pugilistic defender of Trump, then turned his over-the-top style against his former boss.

Blanche asked Cohen if he recalled referring to Trump as a “boorish cartoon misogynist” and “a Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.”

“Sounds like something I said,” Cohen replied to each statement, a frequent refrain during the cross-examination.

Blanche asked him if he also said, “I truly (expletive) hope that this man ends up in prison.”

Cohen responded that it sounded like something he said on his “Mea Culpa” podcast.

Cohen was asked to listen through headphones to a snippet of his podcast, as was Trump while sitting at the defense table. He was asked by Blanche if he recalled saying in an October 2020 podcast episode that Trump needs to wear handcuffs and that “people will not be satisfied until this man is sitting inside a cell.”

Cohen said he didn’t recall saying that, “but I wouldn’t put it past me.”

The line of questioning was designed to persuade jurors that the prosecution’s star witness is driven by personal animus and motivated through his participation in the case to hold Trump accountable.

“Is it fair to say you’re motivated by fame?” Blanche asked.

“No sir, I don’t think that’s fair to say,” Cohen said, later adding in response to a question about whether he was motivated by publicity that: “I’m motivated by many things.”

Blanche is attempting to portray Cohen as a Trump-obsessed loyalist who, spurned by his ex-boss, turned on him and attempted to parlay his insider knowledge into a reduced prison sentence for his own crimes.

Blanche pressed Cohen about discussions he had with Manhattan district attorney’s prosecutors in August 2019 when they visited him at a federal prison camp in Otisville, New York, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) from New York City.

Early in the conversation, about three months into his prison stint, Cohen asked the prosecutors how he would benefit from cooperating with them, Blanche told the witness.

“You told them you had been screwed over by the system,” the defense lawyer added.

“I don’t know if that’s the language that I used, but sounds correct,” Cohen responded.

Blanche also noted that when Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, visited him in prison in October 2019, Cohen expressed a desire to have his sentence reduced.

Blanche seemed to be preparing to cast doubt on Cohen’s motivations and asked him if, when he began speaking to prosecutors, he queried them on how long it would take to bring charges against Trump.

“Did it matter to you how long it would take charges to be brought in this case?” Blanche said.

“I didn’t consider it, no sir,” he replied, later saying he didn’t recall asking about their timeline.

Blanche also asked Cohen if his lawyer asked a judge to give him a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation with the special counsel’s office investigating Trump and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and Cohen said yes.

Cohen’s application for a reduced sentence was denied, but he was eventually released to home confinement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier Tuesday, Judge Merchan asked Blanche, Trump’s defense lawyer, if there was any indication whether his client would testify, to which Blanche responded: “No.”

“No determination yet?” Merchan clarified, according to a transcript of the sidebar discussion, which was held out of reporters’ earshot.

“No,” Blanche said.

Before the break, Cohen and Blanche tussled over basic definitional concepts, prompting the exasperated defense lawyer at one point to proclaim, “I’m just trying to ask questions, Mr. Cohen.”

A central dispute was whether there was a meaningful distinction between “a lie” and an inaccurate statement, a discussion brought in the context of false information that Cohen provided years ago about the Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow.

“Yes, the info I gave was not accurate,” Cohen said.

“Is not accurate information a lie?” Blanche asked.

“Sure,” Cohen said. “It was inaccurate, yes.”

“Was it a lie?” Blanche asked.

“I don’t know if I would characterize it as a lie,” Cohen said.

“In your mind, if something’s inaccurate but it’s not a lie, how are you distinguishing that in your head?” Blanche asked.

Cohen appeared to concede the point, or at least try to foreclose further bickering, by saying, “Sure, I’ll say it’s a lie.”

Blanche focused his questions on the lavish praise Cohen had for Trump when he served as his personal fixer.

The defense lawyer asked if he admired Trump and his wealth, and Cohen said yes. Cohen was asked about having read twice Trump’s 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal.”

“I viewed it as an excellent book, yes.”

“You actually called it a masterpiece,” Blanche said, to which Cohen agreed.

Blanche asked Cohen if he had admired Trump and saw himself in him — whether he saw the businessman as an ambitious, hardworking and innovative man, which Cohen affirmed.

Blanche then asked Cohen if he had said in his 2020 Memoir, “Disloyal,” that he was “obsessed” with Trump. Cohen said he couldn’t recall having said that.

The defense attorney tried to get Cohen to square his over-the-top praise for his former boss with his stance now. As he continued to press, Cohen appeared at times to get irritated with an edge in his voice, saying several times of his past comments: “That’s how I felt.”

“At the time I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump,” Cohen said at one point.

In a clear indication of Cohen’s centrality to both the prosecution and the defense, defense lawyer Todd Blanche’s questions over the first half hour focused entirely on the witness’s prior statements and behavior, without any reference to the hush money payments that form the basis of the trial or the sexual encounters the former president is alleged to have had.

The questioning seems designed to plant early and repeated doubt in jurors’ minds about Cohen’s general credibility before even arriving at the substantive allegations in the case.

In almost a decade of working for Trump up until 2017, Cohen said he at times represented Trump’s wife, Melania, and son Don Jr.

Asked by Blanche when his views on Trump changed, Cohen said it was around the time he gave an interview to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos in July 2018 — a little less than two months before he pleaded guilty to federal charges.

In the interview, which was conducted off-camera, Cohen suggested his loyalty to Trump had waned. He told Stephanapolous: “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first.”

Cohen struck a similar sentiment earlier Tuesday, testifying that his family spoke to him after the FBI raided his property in April 2018 and told him to reconsider his loyalty to Trump.

Cohen says he came away from the conversation thinking “that it was about time to listen to them” and show loyalty “to my wife, my son, my daughter and my country.”

Blanche continues to drill into Cohen’s commentary on social media and his podcasts and asked Cohen about his posts on TikTok, which he said he started six weeks ago.

People can subscribe to his posts for $5.99 a month, Cohen testified.

Cohen said the goal of his TikTok livestreams is “to build an audience, to create community — really to vent. I’ve had trouble sleeping, so I found an outlet.”

Asked how many of his nightly TikToks involve talking about Trump, Cohen said: “I only do it six days a week. I would say six days a week.”

Cohen, under questioning from Blanche, testified that he mentioned Trump on every episode of his podcast.

Cohen has carefully hedged many of his answers, equivocating in ways that marked a contrast from his more voluble testimony under questioning from a prosecutor.

When Blanche asked whether Cohen had said on his podcast that he wanted to see Trump convicted, Cohen answered, “Yes, probably.”

Blanche asked him why, if he wants Trump convicted, would he answer with the word “probably.” Cohen said it was because he wasn’t exactly sure of the words he used.

On another occasion when Blanche again asked if he wanted to see Trump convicted, Cohen hedged again: “I would like to see accountability. It’s not for me. It’s for the jury and this court.”

Blanche pressed him: “I’m just asking you, yes or no: Do you want to see President Trump get convicted in this case?”

“Sure,” Cohen replied.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche portrayed Cohen as a media hound, intimating that he has leaked self-serving information about himself for a variety of stories, including a 2021 Associated Press report that Cohen had been interviewed by New York prosecutors and a CNN report that he had turned over his phones to investigators.

Cohen repeatedly answered, “I don’t recall,” prompting Blanche to note that one day earlier he was able under a prosecutor’s questioning to recall with great specificity phone calls from years earlier.

He did acknowledge repeated and more direct admonitions from prosecutors after the indictment was returned to not talk about the case.

“What have they said to you?” Blanche asked.

“Please don’t talk about the case,” Cohen said.

Blanche said Cohen has, nonetheless, gone on television more than 20 times in the last year.

Amid rapid-fire objections from Hoffinger, Blanche continued probing Cohen’s hyperfocus on Trump, quizzing him about various social media posts and comments he’s made about Trump and the trial as it was unfolding.

“Mr. Cohen, you have been following what is happening in this trial?” Blanche asked, giving voice to the kinds of gripes Trump can’t lob because of his gag order.

“To some extent, yes,” Cohen answered.

Blanche then pressed Cohen about an April 23 TikTok post he made — after the start of the trial — in which he stated that the prosecution’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker is corroborating what “I’ve been saying for six years.”

Cohen explained that someone had called him and told him about Pecker’s testimony.

Then Blanche launched back into some of Cohen’s more vulgar posts.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche looked to make good on his opening statement’s depiction of Cohen as an “obsessed” witness, getting him to acknowledge that he is personally vested in the case and has talked about it on TV for years. Some of that publicity, Blanche said, came despite prosecutors’ frustration “that you would not stop talking to the press.”

“Yes, sir,” Cohen said.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche noted that though he and Cohen had never met before, that didn’t stop Cohen from going on TikTok last month after the trial had begun and referring to him as a “crying little (expletive).”

Cohen responded: “Sounds like something I would say,” prompting laughter in the courtroom.

After a prosecutor’s objection, the judge summoned the attorneys to the bench and the entire question was stricken.

The cross-examination of Cohen is proceeding in stop-and-start fashion thanks in part to frequent objections from the prosecution team.

Cohen is set to face questions from Trump’s attorneys.

Before court resumed for the day, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the judge that Cohen would be the prosecution’s last witness. The disclosure occurred during a sidebar conversation that was out of earshot of reporters but recorded in the official court transcript.

As she finished questioning Cohen, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger forced him to confront the many faults that Trump’s lawyers are likely to seize on during cross-examination — including his 2018 guilty plea and concerns that he may have lied on the witness stand at the former president’s civil fraud trial last year.

It’s common for prosecutors to get their witnesses to address negative information before defense attorneys have a chance to grill them about it on cross-examination. Hoffinger skillfully navigated the potential landmines and Cohen, poised and showing contrition, carefully and thoughtfully addressed each of them.

At the fraud trial, Cohen insisted that he wasn’t actually guilty of tax evasion even though he pleaded guilty to the charge in 2018. Asked if he had lied to the federal judge who took his plea, Cohen said, “Yes.”

A federal judge who subsequently denied Cohen’s request for early release from court supervision wrote that his testimony “gives rise to two possibilities: one, Cohen committed perjury when he pleaded guilty before Judge Pauley or, two, Cohen committed perjury” at the fraud trial.

Asked to clarify Tuesday, Cohen said he did not dispute the facts of his guilty plea to the tax evasion charge, but that he didn’t think he should’ve been charged with a crime “as a first-time offender who always paid his taxes on the due date.” Cohen similarly argued that he shouldn’t have been charged with making false statements to a bank, even though he acknowledged that he had omitted information from a home equity loan application.

Nevertheless, Cohen said, he took responsibility, paid the taxes and fines he owed and spent nearly a year in prison. “In fact, I remain even today still on supervised release,” Cohen said.

Cohen, still discontented with the way his plea went down, testified that federal prosecutors had given him only 48 hours to decide and threatened to charge his wife, who’d also signed the tax returns in question, if he didn’t agree to plead guilty.

While Trump complains about being stuck in the city for the trial, he is also taking advantage of its donors to raise money for his campaign.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum will be joining Trump at a fundraiser in New York Tuesday evening, according to people familiar with their plans.

He’ll also be attending fundraisers in Ohio and Kentucky Wednesday when court is not in session.

Between the three events and their small-dollar fundraising operation, Trump’s campaign expects to raise at least $25 million this week.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door event.

Before he concluded his initial testimony prior to the break, Cohen shared how he makes money now that he’s served prison time and been disbarred as a lawyer. Cohen said he’s working now predominantly in “media and entertainment” — specifically on two podcasts where he’s frequently critical of Trump.

Cohen tried to downplay his shows’ outsized focus on Trump, testifying that “Mea Culpa” and another one he hosts on the liberal MeidasTouch network talked about the “news of the day.”

“Among other topics, do you frequently discuss Mr. Trump?” prosecutor Hoffinger asked.

“I do,” he said, his eyes shifting around.

Hoffinger also asked Cohen about two books he wrote: “Disloyal,” which he described as a memoir he wrote in prison, and “Revenge,” which he said was about the “weaponization” of the Justice Department against a critic of the president, referring to himself.

She also asked him about merchandise he sells; while most are about him, but said, “There is one that is reflective of Mr. Trump.”

Cohen also testified having Stormy Daniels on his podcast at one point.

“I thought it would be a good time to speak to her and to ‘Mea Culpa,’ and to apologize,” he testified.

Cohen said that was the first time he spoke with Daniels. He invited her on his podcast a second time later on.

Trump’s lawyers will get a chance to question Cohen on cross-examination following a lunch break. Court is scheduled to resume at 2:15 p.m. ET.

Mr. Cohen, do you have any regrets about your past work for Donald Trump?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked in her final question.

“I do,” Cohen said. “I regret doing things for him that I should not have. Lying. Bullying people to effectuate a goal. I don’t regret working for the Trump Organization. As I expressed before, I had some very interesting, great times.”

“But to keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, it violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family.”

Hoffinger asked Cohen to describe his 2019 testimony to Congress before he reported to prison. Cohen said that in his congressional testimony, he apologized to the country and his family, to Congress for having lied in his prior appearance before congressional committees in 2017 and to the American public.

Hoffinger asked him what he apologized to the American public for.

“For lying to them for acting in a way that suppressed information, that the citizenry had a right to know in order to make a determination on the individual who was seeking the highest office in the land,” Cohen said.

Elsewhere Tuesday, a New York appeals court denied and dismissed Trump’s appeal of the gag order in the trial, finding that Judge Merchan properly determined the former president’s public statements “posed a significant threat to the integrity of the testimony of witnesses and potential witnesses.”

Trump had asked the state’s intermediate appeals court to lift or modify the gag order, which bars him from commenting publicly about jurors, witnesses and others connected to the case, including the judge’s family and prosecutors other than District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Specifically, according to the ruling, Trump challenged restrictions on his ability to comment about Matthew Colangelo, a former Justice Department official who is a part of the prosecution team, and Merchan’s daughter, the head of a political consulting firm that has worked for Trump’s rival Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates.

The appeals court ruled that Merchan “properly weighed” Trump’s free speech rights against the “historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases, and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm.”

Trump bashed his former lawyer on Twitter, writing: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Cohen testified that the tweet, and another noting that “unlike Michael Cohen” former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “refused to ‘break,’” when fighting his own federal charges, left him feeling like he was out of the fold — abandoned by Trump and his associates.

“It caused a lot of angst, anxiety,” Cohen testified.

Cohen’s tone shifted — more deliberate and emotional — as he described how his family convinced him to finally turn on Trump after the FBI raided his office, apartment and hotel room in April 2018.

Amid conversations with lawyers, including one connected to Trump loyalist Rudy Giuliani, Cohen said his wife and two children broke through to his sensibilities and made him see how sticking by Trump was detrimental.

“My family, my wife, my daughter, my son, all said to me, ‘Why are you holding onto this loyalty? What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen says he came away from the conversation thinking “that it was about time to listen to them” and show loyalty “to my wife, my son, my daughter and my country.”

Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to federal charges involving the hush money payment, Stormy Daniels and other unrelated crimes — he served time in federal prison.

As the attorneys had a sidebar with the judge, Trump whispered to his attorney, Emil Bove.

Cohen sat and stared straight ahead while he waited, occasionally scanning the courtroom or looking down. Trump did not appear to be looking at Cohen at all.

Cohen described a backchannel that was set up for him to communicate with Trump via Costello, who would communicate with Giuliani, who would then relay information to Trump. As they made use of the backchannel, some of the emails between Cohen and Costello contain a barely disguised reference to Giuliani and Trump, with a wink and a nod to men as “my friend” and “his client.”

“Since you jumped off the phone rather abruptly, I did not get a chance to tell you that my friend has communicated to me that he is meeting with his client this evening and he added that if there was anything you wanted to convey you should tell me and my friend will bring it up for discussion this evening,” Costello said in an June 2018 email.

“It’s all back channel, sort of I-Spy-ish,” Cohen said of the covert references. “Never mentioning President Trump, just using code word.”

Cohen recounted in detail outreach he received from a New York attorney named Robert Costello under questioning from prosecutors that appeared designed to show jurors the lengths the Trump orbit went to to try to keep Cohen from cooperating with prosecutors and to lay the groundwork for a potential pardon.

Costello identified himself as a close friend and former coworker of Giuliani, a “relationship that could be very beneficial to you,” Cohen recalled him saying. He presented a retainer agreement to Cohen at their first meeting, something Cohen said he found odd, and asked him to consider hiring him as his lawyer.

Jurors saw an April 2018 email in which Costello said he had spoken with Giuliani. “You are ‘loved,’” Costello wrote. “lf you want to call me I will give you the details. I told him everything you asked me to and he said they knew that. There was never a doubt and they are in our corner.”

He told him that he should “sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

Judge Merchan is back on the bench. Cohen is being summoned back into the courtroom.

In April 2018, federal agents raided Cohen’s law firm, a hotel room where he’d been temporarily staying and a bank where he’d stashed valuables.

Asked how he felt, he responded: “How to describe your life being turned upside down? Concerned. Despondent. Angry.”

“Were you frightened?” Hoffinger asked. Cohen replied: “Yes, ma’am.”

But he said he was heartened by a phone call from Trump that he said gave him reassurance and convinced him to remain “in the camp.”

“He said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I’m the president of the United States. There’s nothing here. Everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough — you’re going to be OK,’” Cohen quoted Trump as saying.

Trump subsequently posted a series of social media posts praising Cohen, which the lawyer says further encouraged him to remain loyal. The tweets defend Cohen as “a fine person with a wonderful family” and said, “Most people will flip if the government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that.”

Trump’s lawyers were also continuing to pay his legal fees and he remained part of a joint-defense agreement with Trump and his attorneys.

Cohen summed up the message he felt Trump was sending him in the tweets: “Don’t flip.”

Cohen ran through the flurry of legal action that ensued as Daniels appeared poised to go public with her story in 2018, culminating in a decision to release her from a nondisclosure agreement — which he says was done to avoid Trump having to answer questions under oath at a deposition.

In an answer that was stricken from the record after a defense objection, Cohen testified that Trump decided to release Daniels from the agreement before he would have been required to appear for a deposition in her lawsuit against him, which had sought to nullify the nondisclosure deal.

“Prior to that date that he was required to sit, the decision was made to terminate the nondisclosure agreement,” Cohen testified.

Daniels had filed the lawsuit through her then-new lawyer Michael Avenatti after Trump had previously sought to enforce the nondisclosure agreement with a temporary restraining order, Cohen testified.

Cohen said Trump and his son Eric Trump had tasked him with seeking the restraining order amid concerns that Daniels would go public with her story, possibly in a “60 Minutes” interview, which she eventually did.

Cohen said he worked with another lawyer to obtain the restraining order but was never able to serve Daniels. When he contacted the lawyer who negotiated the deal for her, Keith Davidson, he said Davidson told him he no longer represented Daniels.

Jurors saw a public statement from Cohen to The New York Times in 2018 in which he asserted, falsely, that he had “used my own personal funds” to pay Daniels and that he had not been reimbursed for that expenditure, either directly or indirectly. He ended the statement by asserting that the payment to Daniels was “lawful, and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.”

Cohen said the statement, issued in response to a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging possible campaign finance violations, was misleading.

Hoffinger asked him about that last line: “Was that a false statement?”

“It was my drawing a legal conclusion, which was inaccurate,” Cohen said.

He said that when he sent the statement to Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, Jay Sekulow, the response was, “Client says thanks for what you do.”

Cohen testified that a Feb. 8, 2018, statement he released that declared, “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford,” was “a true statement but it’s deceptive. It’s misleading.”

Hoffinger asked why it was misleading.

Cohen said it was because it was neither the Trump Organization nor the campaign that was a part of the transaction, but the revocable trust.

“It was Mr. Donald J. Trump himself,” Cohen said.

He said he made the misleading statement “in order to protect Mr. Trump, to stay on message.”

Throughout Cohen’s testimony Tuesday, Trump has reclined back in his chair with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the side.

He has shifted it from time to time, occasionally leaning forward and opening his eyes, making a comment to Bove, his attorney, before returning to his recline.

Even as some of the topics that have animated him the most as he campaigns — such as the Russia investigation in Congress — do not appear to stir his attention.

After The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 12, 2018, that Cohen had arranged the $130,000 payment to Daniels, Cohen said he felt a second, official statement from Daniels would put an end to the story once and for all.

Cohen testified that he’d heard Daniels was planning to go on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show at the end of the month and again contacted Davidson about issuing a statement.

The day of Daniels’ appearance, she issued a statement again denying that she had a sexual encounter with Trump and reiterated that she had not been paid “hush money” to deny the claim.

Cohen testified that he knew the statement was false because he had helped craft it, and he knew the payment had been made because he had paid it.

“Was that false?” prosecutor Hoffinger asked of the payment.

“Yes,” Cohen said.

“How do you know?” Hoffinger asked.

“Because I paid it,” Cohen said.

Cohen testified that he spoke with Trump before making a statement to The Wall Street Journal in January 2018 in which he claimed that he — Cohen — had made the $130,000 payment to Daniels on his own, without Trump knowing about it.

Cohen said he told Trump that he planned to tell the newspaper that he’d “paid the money on his behalf without his knowledge” and that “just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.”

Cohen said Trump responded: “Oh, that’s good. Good.”

Cohen testified that he continued to lie about the Stormy Daniels payment into 2018 “in order to protect Mr. Trump.”

Cohen said he also contacted Keith Davidson, the lawyer who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, and asked him to issue a statement denying Trump’s involvement.

“I was angry and I was concerned,” Cohen testified, adding that he was skeptical of how the story had gotten out.

In a text message shown in court, Davidson told Cohen: “WSJ called stormy. She didn’t answer. They say they are running story & have a deadline of tonight for her to comment.”

“Write a strong denial comment for her like you did before,” Cohen replied.

Cohen later sent a statement to The Wall Street Journal signed by Daniels denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Trump.

Under questioning from prosecutor Hoffinger, Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress during an investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Cohen pleaded guilty as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, admitting that he lied, among other things, about the number of times he spoke with Trump about a real estate project in Moscow.

Asked why he lied, Cohen said, “Because I was staying on Mr. Trump’s message that there was no Russia, Russia, Russia.”

Cohen also explained that at the time he was part of what’s known as a joint defense agreement, in which attorneys for multiple subjects in an investigation work together toward a common purpose and communicate during the course of that probe on strategy.

While Hoffinger appears to be trying to take the sting out of the upcoming cross-examination, likely to delve into Cohen’s past lies, she is also painting him to the jury as someone who’d been a devoted Trump loyalist, whose crimes were committed on the former president’s behalf.

As personal attorney to the president, Cohen said he continued to look out for Trump and lie for him, saying he did so “out of loyalty and in order to protect him.”

At the same time, Cohen testified, he sought to profit from his title by attracting clients and collecting fees from companies looking for insights into Trump’s leadership and politics.

Cohen said he also signed a lucrative agreement with a major law firm to perform legal work.

Cohen said he did only “minimal” work for Trump in 2017 but didn’t send an invoice because it was so limited that it didn’t require payment.

The work concerned a lawsuit against Trump from Summer Zervos, a former contestant on the TV show, “The Apprentice,” who alleged that she’d been defamed by Trump.

The defamation lawsuit was eventually dropped in 2021.

But in 2018, work for Trump picked up.

“As a result of the Stormy Daniels matter and her electing to go public, Mr. Trump wanted an action to be filed, an arbitration action,” for breach of the nondisclosure agreement.

Cohen said he was contacted by Trump and his son Eric Trump about how to go forward with the arbitration. Eric Trump was running day-to-day operations at the Trump Organization while his father was in the White House.

Again, he said he did not bill for the work.

“The people are losing faith right now in this country, they’re losing faith in our system of justice,” he charged, putting the weight of his powerful office behind the indicted former president and denouncing the criminal proceedings as “not about justice” but rather “all about politics.”

With Trump barred by gag order from attacking witnesses and the judge’s family, Johnson did the dirty work for him. Decrying Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other court officials as partisans, he honed in on Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, slamming him as “a man who is clearly on a mission for personal revenge” and “has trouble with the truth.”

“No one should believe a word he says today,” Johnson said.

Standing outside the courthouse, the House speaker showed just how far Trump’s Republican allies are willing to go in their support for the former president as seeks to retake the White House.

“I came here again today on my own to support President Trump because I am one of hundreds of millions of people and one citizen who is deeply concerned about this,” he said.

As Cohen testifies, Trump is leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed sitting extremely still. Behind him, Bergum and Donalds appear to be paying attention. Though Ramaswamy is seated in the front row, his view is completely obstructed by the backside of a court security officer standing directly in front of him, blocking his view.