For the first two weeks of this trial, we’ve heard one constant theme: a play on Ray Romano’s old TV show Everybody Hates Michael. It wasn’t just Donald Trump’s defense team that trashed Michael Cohen at every opportunity. The prosecution encouraged a few witnesses to take shots at the former Trump Organization attorney and fixer so that the blistering cross-examination everyone knows is coming would raise fewer blisters. For instance, on direct last week, Keith Davidson, once the lawyer for Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, made it sound like Cohen was a bad guy he wanted to avoid. Hope Hicks also slammed him.
Even Judge Juan Merchan got into the act. After Cohen’s now-famous tweet that Trump was “Baron von Shitzinpants” generated Democratic tee-shirts (but also a lot of blowback), Cohen announced that he was getting off social media until the trial ended. Then, last week, the 57-year-old man-child was back on TikTok with a graphic showing Trump in an orange jumpsuit. By last Thursday, the judge’s patience with Cohen, a prosecution witness, was wearing thin. When prosecutors insisted to Merchan that they had “repeatedly, reportedly” told their witness to STFU, the soft-spoken Colombian-born jurist decided on something more forceful. He directed Trump’s lawyers to tell Cohen that the judge was telling him to STFU, though not in so many words.
The first order of business on Monday, May 13—Day 16 of the Trump Trial—was the judge’s ruling in favor of the defense. Because Merchan is an eminently fair man, he sometimes does so. This time, the judge gave the Trump team a break by not allowing Allen Weiselberg’s $750,000 severance package from the Trump Organization to be entered into evidence. Prosecutors had wanted to use the chief financial officer’s golden parachute to show there was a reason he was not being summoned from Rikers Island (where he’s doing time on perjury) to testify. They fear he might risk another perjury charge by lying on Trump’s behalf, which he has done almost as often as Cohen over the years. The defense, meanwhile, doesn’t want Weisselberg to testify because if the 76-year-old accountant pleads the Fifth, it would make it seem as if a crime had been committed, even though jurors are always told not to hold the Fifth against witnesses and defendants.
So, at the trial’s end, when the jurors are sent to deliberate, they’ll wonder: “Where’s Weisselberg?” My bet is that jurors in the habit of reading the news before being selected (perhaps the two lawyers on the jury) will know the answer: Rikers.
When Cohen took the stand, thinner than he was a decade ago but still in the Trump Organization Paul Stewart uniform, he almost sat down before taking the oath. But after he raised his hand and pledged to tell “the truth,” he seemed to do so. Whether it was “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” remained to be seen. My guess was that, even now, he would lie on a few small things but not flagrantly enough to wreck the prosecution’s case.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger led Cohen through a by-the-book, uninspired but competent enough direct examination. He grew up in Lawrence, Long Island, one of the Five Towns, long an area of striving middle-class Jewish families. Cohen’s father was a Holocaust survivor who became a doctor in a family of doctors and lawyers. Cohen hoped to work on Wall Street, but his grandmother wanted him to become a lawyer, and after attending American University, he took her advice.
As a young attorney in private practice, Cohen bought a 50 percent interest in a taxi medallion company that will figure later in the story, and he made real estate investments. After helping the Trump family oust a condo board, he came into contact with the man himself. In 2007, Cohen did some legal work for Trump on a resort project and sent him a bill. Trump summoned him to Trump Tower, where he offered him a job. When Cohen inquired about the bill, “he asked me if I wanted to get fired on the first day.” (We heard a similar story from another witness, Jeff McConney.) The bill was never paid, of course, but Cohen loved working for Trump for most of the ten years he spent at the company. He was executive VP and special counsel, reporting directly to Trump from an office just down the hall. With a bonus, he made $525,000.
Cohen recounted how happy he was to win Trump’s praise by paying the vendors of the failed Trump University 20 cents on the dollar. He said his job was to help Trump with “whatever concerned him, whatever he wanted,” from arbitration at the Miss Universe pageant to dealing with insurers when the fresco in Trump’s bathroom was damaged in a flood.
He and Trump talked several times a day, either in person or on the phone, in part because Trump didn’t use email. “Too many people have gone down as a direct result of having emails,” he quoted Trump as saying. It reminded me that Trump has always operated like a mob boss and Cohen, by extension, like a hitman.
“When he would task you with something, he would say, ‘Keep me informed about what’s going on,’” which meant “you would report straight back.” Trump needed constant “updates,” a word heard in court all day. “If you didn’t immediately provide him with information and he learned it in another matter, that wouldn’t go over well for you.”
Cohen admitted to being a bully for Trump. “The only thing on my mind was to accomplish the task, to make him happy.” These self-abasing portions of his testimony made Cohen seem like a pathetic, needy stooge. Still, they were necessary to convey the dynamics of the relationship at the heart of this case.
Even now, Cohen is proud of his brownie points. Trump put him on the board of the Miss Universe pageant with just himself and Weisselberg and appointed him treasurer of the board of four or five properties.
Cohen explained a mystery: Why did he have over 30,000 contacts on his phone? This is partly because his phone’s contact list was synced with Trump’s so that he could call people on Trump’s behalf.
In 2011, Cohen told Trump that he was the choice of 6 percent of Americans for president and should consider running. He created a site, TrumpShouldRun.com, as ”further proof of name recognition.” But Trump had several large real estate projects underway and a contract for another season of The Apprentice. “You don’t leave Hollywood, Hollywood leaves you,” he explained. I wish he had run in 2012. Barack Obama would have beaten him. I think. I’m not so certain of anything anymore.
In 2015, Cohen helped with the down-the-escalator announcement of his presidential candidacy at Trump Tower and was part of the inner circle, though never officially on the campaign staff. “Just be prepared,” Trump told him before the announcement.“There’s gonna be a lot of women coming forward.”
The jury heard before from David Pecker about the August 2015 meeting at Trump Tower, where the head of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, told Trump he would help boost him and hurt his Democratic and Republican rivals with outlandish stories about Hillary Clinton’s brain injury (complete with a super-unflattering photo), Ted Cruz’s father conspiring with Lee Harvey Oswald, Marco Rubio hanging out in a pool with buff men on a supposed drug binge, and more. When Cohen would see an AMI cover trashing one of his boss’s opponents, he “immediately showed it to Mr. Trump so he knew David [Pecker] was loyal, on board, and doing what he said he would do.” Trump’s reaction: “That’s fantastic. That’s unbelievable!”
After “Dino the Doorman” began shopping a story (that turned out to be phony) about a Trump love child, “He told me to make sure this didn’t get out. ‘You handle it,’” Cohen testified. This became, Cohen recounted, the MO. With the deal pending, Cohen made sure AMI put in a clause saying the doorman couldn’t talk “in perpetuity” or he would face a ruinous penalty.
Cohen said he told Trump about this deal “so he knows David is going to do exactly what he said he would. And for credit.” Always the “credit” from the boss for the bully bootlicker.
When Cohen told Trump that Karen McDougal was shopping a dangerous story, his first response wasn’t concern but braggadocio, “She’s really beautiful.”
Here, the trial descended into further authentication of documents we have mostly seen, all establishing constant communication between Cohen and Dylan Howard, Pecker’s number two at AMI, and, later, with Davidson, the lawyer representing both McDougal and Daniels. Cohen’s texts with Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, are important because they show Schiller connecting him to Trump to report “the updates I received on the Karen McDougal matter.” With this slower, more precise explanation, the puzzle pieces of the prosecution’s case began fitting together.
In August 2016, AMI’s hush money deal with McDougal was complete, but Pecker was upset he had not been reimbursed the $125,000 Trump owed him. Cohen testified that at lunch at an Italian restaurant, “David asked me when he should anticipate being paid back the $150,000” he was owed. You can expect the defense to zero in on the fact that by that time, the amount had been lowered to $125,000.
All the texts and other back-and-forth about McDougal didn’t interest me much. After all, this was the preface to the crime, not the crime itself. What caught my attention was the timing: The Republican nominee for president was still knee-deep in tabloid muck. And he would be as president-elect, president, and former president. There’s a reason this is called the Trumpiest of the Trump trials.
But the silencing of McDougal is important in this trial because of the tape, which Cohen says he recorded on the Voice Memo app on his iPhone in his pocket. I didn’t really buy that this tape of a conversation in Trump’s office is the only tape Cohen ever made. Given that he would later testify about taping another call in an unrelated matter, this was a mistake on Cohen’s part. And I’m not convinced by Cohen’s story that he hit “Record” to prove to Pecker that Trump would eventually pay him back. But the tape is nonetheless incriminating.
The first voice you hear is Cohen saying, “I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David [Pecker]” and “I’ve spoken to [Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.” The jury had already heard the tape, but this time, Cohen unpacked every line. The tape showed that Trump knew all about catch-and-kill. We hear Trump say, “So what do we got to pay for this? 150?” If that wasn’t harmful enough, the man who would soon be elected the 45th President of the United States added: “Pay with cash.” Then, we hear Cohen quickly explain the need to use a company (instead of cash) for the payments.
“Pay with cash” reminds me of Richard Nixon saying on the White House tapes, “No problem, we could get the money” to pay Watergate burglars for their silence.
The defense has wasted huge amounts of time trying to raise suspicions about how the tape cuts out at the end—and will do so again on cross. In earlier testimony, the prosecution used extensive phone records to show that this was no big deal, hardly evidence of the recording being doctored. It happened because another call came in on Cohen’s phone. On the stand, backed by phone records, Cohen convincingly testified that the incoming call was from the branch manager of one of the banks he used for unrelated purposes.
After the secretly taped meeting, Cohen and Weisselberg met in Weissleberg’s office to discuss how to launder the money. Weisselberg said it could not be sent to McDougal through a Trump Organization entity. That’s when they came up with creating a shell corporation, eventually renamed “Essential Consulting” because Cohen found out that he had inadvertently—he testified—borrowed the original name (“Resolution Consultants LLC”) from a friend.
On September 29, 2016, with the presidential election weeks away, Cohen called Trump “In order to let him know it [the McDougal contract] was being taken care of.” Here, Cohen’s story diverges from Pecker’s—a subject that will be explored in cross.
Cohen testified that Pecker had given up on recouping his $125,000. “Because the Karen McDougal front cover [of a beauty magazine] had sold more copies than they had ever sold…He [Pecker] felt for even the $150,000, it was an excellent deal.” When he heard this, Cohen said Trump responded, “That’s great,” happy because he no longer needed to pay $125,000.
Cohen was in London on vacation with his family when the Access Hollywood story broke. He quickly jumped into damage control. We learned for the first time that Trump said it was Melania Trump who came up with the brilliant spin that Trump’s banter with the show’s Billy Bush about grabbing “women by the pussy” was “just locker room talk.” Whether or not Melania is a political genius, this—and the press’s willingness to let the debate shift back to Hillary’s emails—essentially saved the Trump campaign.
Oh, another thing did that, too: Making sure Stormy Daniels’ story did not come out before the election. When Dylan Howard of AMI told Cohen that Daniels was again peddling her story, Cohen understood this would be “catastrophic—horrible for the campaign.”
“I immediately went to see Trump,” he testified. “I asked him if he knew who she was. He said he did.”
Cohen reminded his boss that in 2011, he had worked with Daniels’ lawyer to suppress the story when it appeared on dirty.com. He could bury it again. “Absolutely. Do it, take care of it,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “He said he was playing golf with “Big Ben” Roethlisberger, a famous football player, and they had met Stormy Daniels and others.” Apparently referring to himself in the third person, Trump said Daniels “liked Trump, and women prefer Trump over Big Ben.” He denied having sex with her.
On October 10, 2016, just three days after the Access Hollywood story broke, Cohen spoke to Davidson about purchasing Daniels’ life rights and told Trump about it. “That’s what I always did—keep him abreast of everything.”
“Trump was really angry with me,” Cohen said.
“I thought you had this under control,” Trump raged. “I thought you took care of this!” After all, he had handled the dirty.com problem in 2011. “Just take of it!”
Trump went on, in a line that goes directly to his motive: “This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women will hate me. Guys, they think it’s cool [sex with a porn star], but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”
At the time, Cohen said, Trump was polling very poorly with women. This, coupled with Access Hollywood, spelled what the Republican presidential nominee called “a disaster.” He told Cohen again, “Get control over it.”
Trump instructed him to work with Pecker to secure Daniels’ life rights. “Just get past the election. If I win, it’ll have no relevance when I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t really care.”
Cohen brought up Melania, wondering, ”How’s this gonna go upstairs?” (In the Trump Tower apartment). “He goes, ‘Don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.” Cohen, like Pecker and even Hope Hicks, confirmed, “He wasn’t thinking about Melania. It was all about the campaign.”
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania” was a critical prosecution point in a case about election interference. But Trump was thinking ahead to possibly ditching wife number three for someone better the fourth time around, soon to be available “on the market.” This is Trump in a nutshell and something far beyond Cohen’s powers of imagination to make up.
For the first time in the trial, jurors shed their poker faces in favor of some movement in their chairs and maybe even a little emotion. They were, at least metaphorically, on the edges of their seats.
Hoffinger moved on to the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Daniels and the frenzied negotiations around it. She produced documents with the key figure in the case—$130,000—and the staggering $1 million Daniels would owe Trump for every time she mentioned their fling. It was Cohen’s idea to have punitive damages in the deal, and, once again, Cohen told Trump to get credit.
As we learned from earlier testimony, Cohen and Davidson used pseudonyms for Daniels and Trump to avoid disclosure. “Peggy Peterson” was Stephanie Clifford, and “David Dennison” was Donald Trump. On the side agreement, copied only for Davidson and Cohen, Stephanie Clifford signed on behalf of Peggy Peterson, and Cohen initialed “DD” on behalf of David Dennison. Davidson filled in Trump’s real name in his copy.
Davidson set a deadline of October 14 for completing the deal, but Cohen blew right through it, bending to Trump’s desire to get past Election Day (November 8), after which Trump would no longer care whether the story came out. That way, Trump could save $130,000. Thanks to exhibits of books authored by Trump with chapter headings like “Penny-Pincher,” the jury needed no convincing that the self-described billionaire would do what he could to save $130,000.
That’s when Davidson, representing an antsy Daniels, turned the screws on Cohen and basically said: Show Me the Money. According to Cohen’s testimony, Davidson didn’t mention the looming Slate article, but he did hint that the Daily Mail—which often pays for stories—was interested.
Right before lunch, Hoffinger missed an opportunity. “I tried to push it past the upcoming election,” Cohen testified. “I was following directions.”
My row of courtroom spectators was dismayed that Hoffinger didn’t immediately ask, “Whose directions?” Cohen has done a good job tying on the stand everything to Trump, but the more examples of direct contact on the hush money, the better. We all hoped she would return to this question in the afternoon, but she didn’t.
She did, though, return to one of the scenes of the crime. After lunch, Cohen again testified about going to Weisselberg’s office to figure out how to pay for and hide the transaction. Cash, Trump’s suggestion, was much too risky. Weisselberg said he had grandchildren and bills and fobbed the whole thing off on Cohen, who said he’d pay for it.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cohen quoted Weisselberg. “I’ll make sure you get paid back.” I thought I saw a juror give a “Where’s Weisselberg?” look.
I was sitting with my new friend, Norm Eisen, the brilliant and ebullient legal analyst and former ambassador to the Czech Republic, and Julie Blackman, a top jury consultant and friend and neighbor of mine in Montclair, New Jersey. Julie later said she thought one juror looked “beleaguered”—overwhelmed by the evidence—but based on a few hours in the courtroom and 40 years of experience, she didn’t spot any “rogue jurors,” including one that Norm and I had suspected. And she comforted me that in the hundreds of cases she has been involved in, Senator Bob Menendez’s trial in 2017 was one of the only ones that ended in a hung jury. “They are actually rare,” she said, as are sequestered juries, which have gone out of fashion in most parts of the country, including New York.
Cohen testified that on October 14, 2016, he told Trump he was moving forward to fund the deal. What he didn’t say was that he was doing it by tapping his home equity line of credit (HELOC). He couldn’t just take it out of the bank because his wife, “the CEO of the household, would ask me, and I clearly could not tell her. So I elected to use the HELOC.” He figured, “When I got money back from Mr. Trump, I would deposit it, and nobody would be the wiser.” I took a mental note that Cohen was still married.
The next day, Davidson told Cohen, “We gotta get this done. She’s going to the Daily Mail. So Cohen asked Pecker to make the payment. Pecker’s response: “Not a chance.” He had never been reimbursed the $125,000 Trump owed him. This was consistent with Pecker’s testimony, but we were hearing for the first time that Pecker’s excuse was that he worried about getting in trouble with his boss. “I cannot do it again,” Cohen quoted Pecker saying. “It could cost me my job.” Jurors had heard nothing about Pecker’s boss when he testified; in truth, Pecker didn’t really have one at AMI. But he also testified that counsel told him that he would violate campaign laws if he paid the money. This had been powerful Pecker testimony that Cohen–for evidentiary reasons I did not fully understand–was not allowed to bolster.
Cohen testified that he called Trump again before he wired the money to Davidson: “I wanted to make sure that once again, he approved it.” Trump wanted to ensure it was done “to assure it didn’t appear in the Daily Mail or somewhere else.” Cohen testified: “Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off. On top of that, I wanted the money back.”
Cohen repeated his “taking credit” point several times because he knew it was necessary to establish a constant connection to Trump–especially on the money for Daniels—which is essential to a conviction.
The jury will have to consider whether Trump said, “Take care of it!” and then whether hearing updates is enough to convict. To me, it’s like the hitman who tells the mafia don, “We know what street he lives on.” Then later: “Don Vito Corleone, we know his route to work.” When the hitman completes his assignment, is the mob boss liable? That’s why during voir dire and its opening argument, the prosecution team told the jury it would introduce the concept of “accessory liability,” which we will no doubt hear again in its closing argument.
On October 18, Cohen said he reported to Trump that “this matter is now completely locked down and under control.” He told Trump that the documents had all been finalized, though not yet signed.
On November 4, four days before the election, The Wall Street Journal ran a story with the headline, “National Enquirer Shielded Donald Trump From Playboy Model’s Affair Allegation.” For the first time, the story described how an arrangement with celebrities called catch-and-kill worked. The affair with McDougal was not confirmed, and Daniels was mentioned only in passing.
Cohen called Davidson to ensure McDougal and Daniels “didn’t go rogue.” He was angry at Davidson. ”I expected he would have this under control,” Cohen testified. “I wanted to make sure that Mr. Trump was safe.”
Davidson and Daniels sent a denial to the Journal to “appease me” and “more important, Mr. Trump.” Cohen then called Trump, which, like all calls between them, is confirmed by phone records, though the content is not. “I told him exactly who I had spoken to,” Cohen testified, “I had Dylan Howard on board and [said] we will do anything in our power to protect” him.
Cohen testified that “Trump was angry…It was another story that could impact the campaign in terms of women.” But after Cohen and Hicks worked overtime refuting it, they were pleased to learn that only six news organizations had picked up on The Wall Street Journal story.
When he sought credit from Trump for his great spinning, Cohen clearly didn’t understand that most news outlets are wary of late hits in a campaign, although the one that week about reopening the investigation into Hillary’s emails from FBI Director James Comey is obviously a huge exception.
When the trial resumed after a break, we heard about Cohen and Trump in the days following the election. Davidson testified that during the first weeks after Trump won, Cohen was bitterly disappointed at not getting a big job like chief of staff or attorney general. On the stand, he said Trump had offered him the job of assistant general counsel in the White House, a position that doesn’t exist. The actual position, which Cohen had no understanding of, is Deputy White House Counsel, an important and powerful job.
Cohen said he was disappointed he didn’t get the chief of staff job but admitted that he wasn’t qualified for it and “didn’t believe the role was right for me,” though he wanted to be considered. He said, “It was more about my ego.” With his new, low-key style on the stand, it was almost—almost—possible to believe his ego was in a little better check.
Cohen pitched another role for himself—“Personal Attorney to the President,” and Trump took it.
“I thought that way I could continue to protect him,” Cohen testified. “I also had another role in mind—consultant.” The new role had the added benefit of allowing Cohen to stay in New York with his family, which had no interest in moving to Washington.
Cohen described his plan to “monetize” his connection to Trump. Selling access is a big business, and word of Cohen’s close ties to Trump got around. ”You’ve been here ten minutes; he’s been here ten years,” Cohen claimed Trump said to his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, about Cohen. Priebus, in fact, lasted only about ten minutes longer at his job.
Cohen said he didn’t discuss pay with Trump because “I didn’t expect to be compensated.” This sounded strange but became clear the next day when he explained how much money he was making selling access.
In the meantime, Cohen expected a big bonus for taking care of Trump’s dicey personal situations. He didn’t get one. When Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime assistant, distributed bonus checks in Christmas cards, Cohen said he did a double take. His bonus had been cut by two-thirds. We later learned it was from $150,000 to $50,000.
Jurors shed no tears for this injustice, and the prosecution didn’t ask why Cohen thought he was slighted. We will likely hear more about it on cross.
Cohen described himself as “beyond angry” about the bonus. “I was truly insulted. Hurt. It made no sense after all I had gone through.”
Cohen expressed to Weisselberg “how truly pissed off and angry I was.” Cohen noted that “I used quite a few expletives.” He told Weisselberg, “You didn’t lay out money. I did.”
Now, we were getting even closer to the crime and the cover-up.
“Take it easy,” Cohen said Weisselberg told him. “You know that Mr. Trump loves you. Go enjoy vacation. Relax.”
Cohen thought his anger had an impact “given all the things I’d resolved.”
Trump called him right after New Year’s from Florida. “Don’t worry about that other thing,” he told him in his usual mobster code, which has helped keep him out of trouble over the years. Trump said he had spoken to Weisselberg and “I’m gonna take care of you when I get back.”
The smoking gun scheme that Weisselberg, with Trump’s approval, developed is right there in his handwriting, as we have seen since early in the trial. The bank statement from First Republic, which Cohen used to set up the shell company, went up on the video screen again. On the left side of the page, jurors can see, in Weisselberg’s hand, $130,035, the $35 covering the wire transfer fee. Then he writes “grossed up” to $260,000 to save Cohen on taxes and ends with $420,000, which included restoring some of Cohen’s bonus and $50,000 to be paid to a company called Red Finch that ginned up bogus polls showing phony support for Trump early in the campaign. Even as the Trump Organization was paying some of what it owed Red Finch, Cohen was greedily taking a cut for himself, which will undoubtedly come up on cross-examination.
Cohen thought he would get the $420,000 in one lump sum but would soon learn otherwise. He testified that at a three-way meeting in Trump’s office shortly before he left for his inauguration, Weisselberg told Cohen that he would be paid in monthly installments of $35,000 so that it looked like legal services rendered. Cohen said he later made up fake invoices to make the ”retainer agreement” that never existed on paper look legit.
According to Cohen, Trump approved the arrangement at the meeting and said of his impending move to Washington, “This is gonna be one heck of a ride.”
Tomorrow: More Cohen on direct, plus the start of cross-examination.
