(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Cohen's testimony is damning to Trump [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-05-13 David Pecker was big. So was Hope Hicks. Stormy Daniels was even bigger. But the real star witness in the Manhattan criminal trial of former President Donald Trump is his longtime personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen. In dramatic testimony Monday, Cohen’s recollections under direct examination aligned perfectly with the voluminous documents entered into evidence by the prosecution to prove Trump falsified business records to hide hush money payments to Daniels (a porn star who testified she had sex with Trump) on the eve of the 2016 election. As Alan Feuer writes in the New York Times trial live feed: Cohen has bolstered the prosecution's claims on two key points from the witness stand today: He has linked Trump directly to the scheme to reimburse him for the Stormy Daniels hush money payment, which forms the basis for the falsification of business records charges. And he has said that Trump was personally concerned that Daniels’s story, if it got out, could affect his chances with female voters, which speaks directly to the underlying election conspiracy statute that elevates those charges from misdemeanors to felonies. Cohen was dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, people. His testimony, which will spill into tomorrow, is damning to Trump, who spent much of the day with his eyes closed, except when his attorneys gave him some coloring books and Play-Doh so he’d be distracted from the bad man’s bad words. It seemed to work because Trump was more contained than I expected was possible. Trump entered the courtroom with an entourage that included his son, Eric, Sen. J.D. Vance, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Rudy would have been the icing on the asshole cake, but he’s busy fighting his own legal battles and recent banishment from a MAGA radio station gig he lost by continuing to spout Big Lie lunacy. (Rudy’s son, Andrew Giuliani, was in the courtroom, hate-posting on X about “serial liar” Cohen, happily oblivious to the irony.) I know I wrote recently that Trump doesn’t really even want a running mate, but that’s not stopping many craven Republicans from auditioning through performative acts of loyalty and subserviance. Vance’s appearance Monday in court may vault the Ohio senator to the top of Trump’s VP list, though only because Trump recently was informed Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character. First Frederick Douglass is unavailable, and now this. The live feeds I’ve been reading today portray Cohen as generally relaxed on the witness stand, even though he was getting the tough-guy scowl treatment from at least one attendee: Eric Trump, who is sitting two rows behind his father, is glaring at Michael Cohen. Trump’s oldest children, who worked with Cohen at the Trump Organization, despise him as much as their father does. Let’s briefly review why Eric and his equally repellent siblings “despise” Cohen as much as their deranged dad: After Cohen’s home and offices were raided by the FBI in 2018 (which Trump, then president, condemned at the time), Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, including making an unlawful campaign contribution through a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election. Remember, this was to help Trump bury the news before the November election, and at Trump’s direction. Now Cohen was looking at a prison sentence. He had a wife and family. So, as Slate writes, “In order to gain more lenient terms, Cohen implicates Trump for the first time during his plea hearing, telling a judge the hush money payments were made ‘in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.’” There you go. Being unwilling to take the full rap for Donald Trump’s crimes and misbehavior makes you not just disloyal to the former president, but someone who is actively trying to hurt him. That’s what we’re talking about here, and it’s twisted mob shit. (OK, in one of his books Cohen called Trump a “cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man,” but c’mon, that’s an hour on Truth Social for the Slanderer-in-chief.) Cohen on Monday linked Trump to the hush money scheme. He testified that Trump directed him to make the payment to Daniels and approved chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s plan to reimburse Cohen. This is the moment the prosecution has been leading up to. We are getting such a vivid picture — backed by frantic and numerous text messages and calls — of what was happening inside the Trump campaign in the final two weeks of the 2016 campaign. Trump's inner circle was spending a significant amount of its time not thinking about an advertising strategy for swing states but instead how to maintain the silence of a Playboy Playmate (Karen McDougal) and a porn star (Stormy Daniels). There’s sure to be a tough cross-examination of Cohen on Tuesday, per Trump’s orders. Unfortunately for Trump lawyer's, they can't cross-examine the many documents and records supporting Michael Cohen's detailed testimony. Or take them to Fifth Avenue to be shot. Finally, some classic Trump: Trump’s eyes had been closed for quite a while, but a brief expression of what appeared to be pleasure crossed over his face as Cohen describes Trump stiffing him on his end-of-year bonus payment in 2016. (From Project Orange: Saving Democracy From the Trump-MAGA Cult) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/13/2240530/-Cohen-s-testimony-is-damning-to-Trump?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/