For the past several weeks, some of the more memorably seedy aspects of Donald Trump’s early presidency have unfurled in a Manhattan courtroom. His hush money trial has amounted to a roll call of the faces and names who shaped what feels like a bygone era of Trump scandal: former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, porn star Stormy Daniels. In the final days of the prosecution’s case, all that was left, really, from this cast of characters was the star, highly compromised, witness.
“The people call Michael Cohen,” assistant district attorney Susan Hoffinger said on Monday morning.
Trump’s former lawyer walked past his old boss’s back and to the witness stand. He was wearing a navy suit and pink tie and looked straight ahead at the prosecutor as he spelled his last name for the record in a firm voice. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges of covering up a payment to Daniels for keeping quiet about her claim that she had sex with the former president, which he denies. He didn’t register a reaction.
Of all the fallings-out associated with Trump and his White House, the dissolution of this relationship has been particularly pronounced. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges that included campaign finance violations connected to the Daniels payment. He testified before Congress, admitted to perjury, remade himself as an oppositional media personality, and published a book called Disloyal. Trump has attacked Cohen as a liar and traitor for the past several years. Now they were sitting within several yards of one another, though their gazes never appeared to cross.
Cohen grew up in the Five Towns in Long Island, he told the jury. His father was a Holocaust survivor. “Actually I didn’t want to be a lawyer,” he said, drawing a few laughs from the gallery. “My grandmother wanted me to be a lawyer.”
He had a lightly shambling approach that he steadied with dashes of formality, repeatedly addressing Hoffinger as “ma’am.” She asked him if he had a threatening manner when he was dealing with news outlets on Trump’s behalf, and he pondered the question for a moment.
“I would say so,” Cohen said. “Not all the time. Often.”
What emerged in the beginning of Cohen’s testimony was a solemn (and familiar) portrait of unblinking fealty to the man he called “boss.” At times, the relationship seemed to involve some level of neediness. “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task,” Cohen said. “To make him happy.”
Hoffinger asked about the descriptor so commonly associated with Cohen: “fixer.”
“It’s fair,” Cohen said.
When Cohen got word that Daniels might come forward with her story in the lead-up to the 2016 election, he went to his boss. Trump and Daniels met at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006, hours before they had sex, according to Daniels. “He told me he was playing golf with [former NFL quarterback] Big Ben Roethlisberger,” Cohen testified, “and they had met Stormy Daniels.”
Trump, Cohen recalled, said that Daniels liked him—evidence that “women prefer Trump even over someone like Big Ben.” According to Cohen, Trump didn’t answer when asked whether he had sex with her, but said, “She’s a beautiful woman.”
Trump arrived at the courthouse with a group of more current affiliates: his son Eric, vice presidential contender J.D. Vance, and the Republican politicians Nicole Malliotakis and Tommy Tuberville. Vance and Tuberville laughed together in the hallway; Vance and Eric yawned in near-unison as Cohen reviewed call logs from 2016.
Cohen’s testimony is expected to last a few days and become far more contentious when Trump’s defense cross-examines him, presumably hammering home his record as a convicted felon and perjurer. Managing the Daniels deal was “incredibly stressful,” Cohen said on Monday. “I was doing everything I could and more to protect my boss, which was something I had done for a long time.”
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