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The trial resumed in Manhattan with potentially explosive cross-examination of Cohen’s defense, whose credibility could determine the fate of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in the case.
Cohen is prosecutors’ latest witness — at least for now — as they try to prove that Trump planned to cover up a damaging story he feared would derail his 2016 presidential campaign, then falsified business records to to cover it up.
The case is on its 18th day.
The defense is not expected to call many witnesses.
Over two days on the stand, Cohen put Trump squarely at the center of an alleged scheme to stifle negative stories to stave off damage to his bid for the White House.
Cohen told jurors that Trump had promised to repay him the money he had provided and was constantly being updated on efforts to silence women who alleged they had sex with him. Trump denies the women’s claims.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felonies.
The case is the first-ever criminal trial against a former US president and the first of four impeachments against Trump to go to a jury.
Donald Trump’s defense on Thursday brought up another embarrassing episode from Michael Cohen’s past — when he provided his lawyer with non-existent AI-generated court cases to support an application last year to end his post-prison court supervision early.
As he said earlier, Cohen said he was doing research with an AI tool, and it served several cases that sounded useful but turned out to be inventions.
He said he didn’t realize such tools could fix things.
His lawyer ended up citing the fake court rulings in documents that went to a judge.
“These quotes were inaccurate. Not the amount and substance, but essentially the quotes themselves,” Cohen said Thursday, leading to an exchange that illustrated the disbarred attorney’s careful, sometimes testy responses to cross-examination in Trump’s hush money trial.
“When you say the citations are inaccurate, you mean the cases didn’t exist, right?” defense attorney Todd Blanche asked.
“Under that citation, no.”
“The three cases you gave your lawyer weren’t real cases, were they?”
“That’s true,” Cohen admitted.
Court adjourned for lunch shortly thereafter.
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