The Daily - The Make-or-Break Testimony of Michael Cohen

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

This episode contains explicit language.Michael Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, took the stand in the former president’s hush-money trial. Jonah E. Bromwich, a criminal justice reporter, discusses how Mr. Cohen could cause problems for Mr. Trump himself. Guest: Jonah E. Bromwich, one of the lead reporters covering the Manhattan criminal trial of Donald J. Trump for The New York Times.Background reading: Michael Cohen is the central witness in the first criminal trial of an American president.Mr. Cohen’s account of an arrangement struck in the White House was the only personal testimony tying Donald J. Trump to falsified documents.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

First floor. I'm just leaving my apartment again. 6.14 a.m. Monday, May 13th. Recording one of my little voice memos again. I do feel like a goofball doing it. But they keep publishing them. almost again. I do feel like a goofball doing it. But they keep publishing them.

Today is, well, it's the climax of the prosecution's case today. We're expecting to see Michael Cohen. He's Trump's former fixer. Cohen worked for years for Trump, fixing his problems, cleaning up his messes.

So, funny that Cohen has become that mess. He's going to face his old boss in court today and make a giant problem for him, if prosecutors have their way. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, what happened when Donald Trump's most loyal lieutenant took the stand against him in the most important testimony of the hush money trial?

As always, Jonah Bromwich was in the room. It's Thursday, May 16th. Hey, friend. How are you? I'm all right. Hey, friend. How are you? I'm all right. That's good. You rested? Oh, yeah. You know how rested I am.

Not at all. Woke up at 4.20 this morning. Discuss? Yeah, I'm having trouble. I'm sleeping much later than that. I mean, I wake up at 4.45 every morning on trial days. I know, it's insane. It's really crazy. Okay.

Are you ready? Yes. Jonah, the last time we dropped in on this case with you was when Stormy Daniels was on the stand last week. Today, we're talking to you because it's Michael Cohen now on the stand. And you had always explained to us from the beginning of this trial, Cohen was the prosecution's biggest weapon and potentially its biggest liability. He's the linchpin of their case, you told us,

because as Trump's former right-hand man, he made the hush money payment at the center of this trial, without which there would be no case. But Cohen is also a proven liar with an ax to grind against Trump. So he's just an incredibly complicated figure. That's exactly right. So Cohen is the line that connects all the dots of this trial. He knows most of the witnesses.

And not only did he make the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels that's at issue here, he is also the person who was reimbursed for that payment by Trump. And the only person who can link Trump to what prosecutors say was the criminal disguise of those records used to pay him. Trump is charged with 34 felonies. Every single one of those felonies is attached to a document that was involved in the repayment of Michael Cohen for the hush money to Stormy Daniels. Right. for the hush money to Stormy Daniels. Right.

I mean, can't be overstated how much the criminality alleged in this trial entirely revolves around Michael Cohen's role in it. Yes. Okay. So he takes the stand. Walk us through that. When a witness takes the stand in this trial and many other trials, they begin talking about their educational history and their professional background. It's usually the most boring part of their testimony, frankly. You need

to know where these people came from and the jury needs to know more importantly. But sometimes we zone out a little bit during that part because we want to, quote unquote, get to the good stuff. With Cohen, the quote unquote good stuff, meaning the relevant part of his testimony, With Cohen, the quote-unquote good stuff, meaning the relevant part of his testimony, begins almost immediately. What do you mean? Michael Cohen begins to explain from the stand how he came into Trump's orbit. And it starts from afar. This is a guy who idolized Donald Trump, who saw him as the symbol of wealth and power and kind of this place where aggression and money-making meet in the kind of go-go 80s. And so Cohen likes that. He's attracted to that. He wanted to be a Wall Street

guy himself. And so he even fashions himself to some extent in the Trump mold. He begins buying property in Trump's buildings. Soon he catches Trump's eye. And before you know it, Michael Cohen is being asked by Trump he testifies if he wants to leave his sleepy old law firm and come work for Trump at the Trump organization he's going to report directly to him and soon enough Michael Cohen is going to be calling Donald Trump either the boss or just boss. And where things would be anything but sleepy. That's right. So Cohen moves into Trump's world and immediately he's doing this nasty, shady-ish work for Donald J. Trump. This involves negotiating down Trump's bills.

He uses Cohen to say, Mr. Trump isn't going to owe you that much. He's actually going to owe you this much. Right. And it also involves yelling at reporters. Trump cares a lot about what's said about him in the media. And so he asked Cohen to call reporters who have written stories that Trump doesn't like and yell at them and tell them that they're going to be sued if they don't change or take down what they've written. Right. And here I have to confess, I am one of the journalists who endured

these screaming sessions with Michael Cohen when I was writing about Trump's university and its alleged scandals. When I was writing about Trump's real estate problems, I ended up on the phone with Michael Cohen. And man, he was relentless. He was bullying. And you kind of left the phone call traumatized. Yeah, there's an elite group of you. I've heard from many of you, and you all described something of a similar experience. Well, Jonah, what is the prosecution doing here by having Michael Cohen so openly embrace this role as basically Trump's number one jerk? This general role that Michael Cohen is describing will become the specific role he played in what prosecutors say is the crime here. So they're laying a couple of things down.

One is that Cohen reported directly to Trump, no one else, and that it was extremely important to Michael Cohen to make sure that Trump knew every little thing he did on Trump's behalf, not only because Trump actually asked to be kept in the loop in that way, which he did, Cohen says, but also because Michael Cohen himself wanted credit from Trump. I mean, it's hard to exaggerate the way that Cohen saw Trump in these days. He idolized him. He wanted his praise, his adoration. As he was on the stand describing those days, almost as his glory days, he was quoting Trump saying Trump would say this was fantastic. This was great. Nice job, Michael. Hmm. And that is important. Why exactly? about interactions only he had with Trump. And those interactions are going to be, prosecutors say,

the beginning of a criminal conspiracy that led to criminally false documents. And so if jurors can understand why Cohen was motivated to check in with Trump, not just Trump with Cohen, but Cohen with Trump, and it's this innocent, almost embarrassing reason that he wanted this praise,

it may be that they're more liable to find Cohen credible. Got it. They're establishing a track record, a dynamic, and a motivation in which Cohen doesn't do anything without telling Trump because Cohen is so desperate for his idol to love him back and praise him for every little thing he does. Exactly. I started to think of this as a modus operandi argument or an MO argument. Yes, we'll get to the specifics, but we're talking about how Cohen works with Trump. That's his MO. And the reason that prosecutors need that is to show

this is what they did all the time. This was their habit. And so when it came to forming a conspiracy to suppress negative news about Trump during the 2016 election, that wasn't so far off what Cohen had always done for Donald Trump. Okay, so with all that in mind, Jonah, take us to the testimony from Cohen that prosecutors hope will, in the eyes of the jury, prove that Trump committed a crime here. Prosecutors say that the impetus for the Stormy Daniels payoff was the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Right, this tape in which Trump is recorded

saying that he can do pretty much anything he wants to women. Washington Post breaks the story. It's considered a turning point in the campaign because it is so utterly damning with women and anybody else who thinks that this behavior is completely unbecoming a precedent. Right. And Cohen, sitting on the stand, actually takes us into that moment and attributes a reaction to Trump to the Access Hollywood tape. And what's Trump's reaction? Cohen, from the stand, recalls Trump's reaction, saying, this is a disaster, total disaster.

Women are going to hate me. And he says the words disaster, and he says women will hate him, according to Cohen's testimony. And that, prosecutors say, that reaction from Trump and from the campaign is what provides the impetus for Cohen to go ahead and make that hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. But first, he has to wait for Trump's approval. So he strings Daniels and her team along, as we've already seen in this trial from Daniels. But first, he has to wait for Trump's approval. So he strings Daniels and her team along, as we've already seen in this trial from Daniels' team. Now Cohen is testifying about

intentionally trying to delay, even using the Yom Kippur holiday, the Jewish holiday, as an excuse for not getting back to Daniels' team. And Trump, Cohen says from the stand, has this conversation with some of his advisors, Trump's advisors. And they say, in essence, what are you doing, man? You're a billionaire. This is $130,000. This right here could be the election. Just do it.

Just pay her. Right. that amid all this fallout in the final days of the campaign from the Access Hollywood video, that Stormy Daniels is going to go tell the world that you had an extramarital affair with her, allegedly. Like, that is not a tolerable risk. Right. And the way Cohen tells it, this affects Trump and he's influenced. And so what Trump was told, just do it, becomes the directive to Michael Cohen. Just do it. Just pay her. We'll pay you back, but just pay her and make this go away. So Cohen does it. He does what he's told. He makes the payment to Stormy Daniels.

And he does it in this really almost humiliating way. He uses his home. He takes out a line of credit on his house. He gets the $130,000 he needs for the Daniels payment that way. And so he's putting something really personal on the line here. And this actually relates, obviously, to his testimony earlier. Right. His unbelievable loyalty to Trump. They're almost fusion together that he would do something like this, do something that concerns his home and his family and take one hundred and thirty thousand dollars out of that for Trump to suppress this story of having had sex with a porn star. So Daniels gets paid $130,000. And then, as everyone knows, Trump wins the election. So if this was a scheme to suppress that story,

it seems to have worked. I mean, she doesn't tell the story. He wins the election. We can't know the counterfactual. We can't know what would have happened if the story came out. But we do know that it didn't. And we do know that he wins. Right. So everything worked. You would think Trump would be very happy about this. But he and his chief financial officer at the time, Alan Weisselberg, and the other people at Trump Organization have a little bit of a problem here because they have to deal with a very grouchy, increasingly kind of salty, unreimbursed Michael Cohen, who knows this story about Trump, who actually paid to have this story removed, but is getting upset both because he knows he's not getting a job in the administration, which he says he had wanted, and he got a very small bonus that

year. It's the little things. To some extent, yes, but also Cohen has paid $130,000 out of his own pocket, not being reimbursed. You're going to give this guy a small bonus this year of all years. So at this point, we're in January 2017. So this all is happening not only while Trump is president elect, but while he's about to be inaugurated, he's about to be the president of the United States. And then once he is president, once he's in the White House, who should come for a visit but Michael Cohen? And he goes to the Oval Office and he and Trump have this similar conversation, according to Cohen on the witness stand, where again, Trump affirms that he has knowledge of the reimbursement plan. And in fact, even tells Cohen, the president of the United States in the

Oval Office tells Michael Cohen, you're going to be receiving checks. And prosecutors say that those checks are some of the first of the false documents for which Trump is eventually charged. So this is good for the prosecution, right? This is their case. This is what they want to happen. These are the all-important conversations for them. And now they have them. Cohen has said them. The jury has heard them. But at the same time, this is exactly the risk too, because yes, there's a lot to back up that Cohen was in the room with Trump, but only Cohen can tell you what was said. Right. There's no recordings. There's no recordings of these particular conversations. It's just Cohen. It's just

his memory. Right. You have to believe him. You have to believe him. And as the defense has said, and has even the prosecution has acknowledged, Cohen is a liar. Cohen is a felon. Cohen's a bully. Cohen is a bully. And he's a guy who really has an ax to grind against Trump, who once would do anything for Trump. And now almost prosecutors and defense have acknowledged would do anything against Trump, who is Trump's kind of sworn enemy here. And so the prosecutors know that while they're still questioning Michael Cohen, they need to deal with his motivations, with his liabilities,

with all that mess before the defense can try to use them to undermine everything that Michael Cohen has just said. We'll be right back. Jonah, what's the story that the prosecution has Michael Cohen tell proactively about how he becomes Trump's sworn enemy, about their falling out? You had said that Cohen was increasingly disillusioned with Trump even before Trump became president because of the small bonus and not getting a job in the White House. But in Cohen's telling on the stand, when does the true breakdown actually come? Yeah, so Cohen takes the jury blow by blow through this, but I won't do that here. We'll go straight to 2018. The news of the Stormy Daniels payment breaks. Cohen is in big trouble here because a lot of law enforcement agencies are like, hey, this looks a hell of a lot like a crime. Soon enough, Cohen is in a hotel room being raided by the FBI. His legal fees are up in the air. This often comes back to money. And he loses his direct connection to Donald Trump. Instead,

Trump hires Rudy Giuliani. And this new guy, Robert Costello, starts coming up to Cohen and offering him legal advice and offering him this back channel to the White House. Cohen to Costello to Giuliani to Trump. That's very different from only having one boss in the whole world. And that's a direct line to Donald Trump. That's exactly right. That must have been very painful for Cohen. There's so many motivations going on here.

There's that closeness that we know that he treasured. There's the money issue that keeps coming up. And so long story short, as this pressure continues to build on Cohen, and he continues to feel as if he does not have the loyalty of his former boss, that he's unsupported by his former boss, he breaks and he flips. by his former boss. He breaks, and he flips. I am done with the lying. I am done being loyal to President Trump. And not only does he start cooperating with law enforcement,

but he starts speaking out publicly. Mr. Trump is a con man. He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair and to lie about it to his wife, which I did. Telling the same story beginning in 2018 and going on to 2019 and for years now. I am sorry for actively working to hide from you the truth about Mr. Trump when you needed it most. That he is telling in the courtroom right now, I lied for Donald Trump. I bullied for Donald Trump. I committed crimes for Donald Trump, I bullied for Donald Trump,

I committed crimes for Donald Trump, and now I'm not going to anymore. Well, how does the prosecution confront the obvious question, which is, is Michael Cohen so angry and so betrayed by Trump that what's really going on here is not necessarily a vivid recollection of truth, but an effort to just destroy Trump. So trials are an exercise in kind of competitive storytelling, prosecution story versus defense story. And the prosecution has a reasonable story about Michael Cohen, and that's what they're

going to use here. Cohen is an emotional person. We've heard that in the context of his anger, but there's all kinds of different emotions going on there, including just this real vulnerability. And so at the end of their questioning, prosecutors ask him about his emotional state toward the Trump organization and Donald Trump himself now. And Cohen says that he doesn't regret having worked for Trump at the organization. He says, I had some interesting, great times. But he does say that he regrets having done the things for Trump that he did, lying and bullying people on Trump's behalf. And what he says, and prosecutors are hoping to answer your question that this is kind of mega compelling, that in order to keep the loyalty of Trump and express his own loyalty,

that in order to keep the loyalty of Trump and express his own loyalty, Cohen violated his moral compass and he suffered the penalty for doing so. And so did his family. But at the same time, this is all in the eye of the beholder. Even when he's telling this big emotional story and prosecutors are asking him to do it, who knows what these jurors are making of Michael Cohen. Either they believe him, they find this sympathetic. They think, oh, yes, this sounds exactly like how Trump works based on everything else I've seen at this trial. Or they're saying, once a liar, always a liar. How can I believe this guy? I don't care about his emotions, frankly, because he's a thug and a bully, as I've

heard not only from him himself, but from other people. I'm going to ignore this. I don't believe it. Okay, so let's turn to what happens once the prosecution ends its questioning of Michael Cohen, hopes to God in their minds that the jury does find him credible, and Trump's defense lawyers start taking a whack at him and obviously seeking to ensure that the jury does not find him credible. So I should just start by explaining that I'm talking to you on Wednesday. The cross-examination has only lasted about a half day and we've still got a full day of cross

to go. Got it. So there's a lot of Michael Cohen being grilled by Donald Trump's defense lawyers. That hasn't happened yet. That we have not yet seen. Okay. So we're only covering a small amount. What ends up happening? So Todd Blanche is Trump's lead trial lawyer here. And he walks to the lectern. And Cohen has just given this emotional testimony about vulnerability and loyalty and this and that. And Todd Blanche asks Michael Cohen about a TikTok he made. A video on TikTok. A video on TikTok.

A video on TikTok. A video on TikTok. And what he says is, after the trial started in this case, you went on TikTok and called me a crying little shit, didn't you? Huh. And the jurors sit up in their chairs, as you might imagine, and the entire mood in the courtroom changes. Mr. Emotional over here, Mr. Michael Cohen, is now being called what he says he was for Trump, a bully, a person who slings insults, someone who maybe his behavior hasn't changed quite so much as he said it had. This was a really interesting decision by Blanche.

This is a remarkable moment. And Blanche does it one more time. He brings up another insult actually slung at Blanche and his co-counsel, Susan Nicholas. And then something happens to interrupt them, which is that the judge calls them to the bench. Now, we didn't know in the moment what the judge had said, but we get transcripts afterwards so we can hear things that the jury doesn't hear. And what we saw in the transcript is that the judge in this moment, after Blanche asked these two explosive questions, turns to Todd Blanche in private and says, why are you making this about yourself? A question that is asked of me constantly. But the answer is what? Well, Blanche doesn't really have that much of an answer.

And this is a bit of a momentum killer, I think. Blanche goes back to the lectern, but now he's trying to balance between angry judge, angry client, Michael Cohen, jurors. There's a lot of elements to keep in your mind. His stride has been broken. It has, and he seems a little less sure of himself. The questions are a little less sure-handed, and he seems to lose momentum right at the top of cross. And then suddenly it gets very confusing what he's trying to do. He's throwing a lot at the wall. He seems to be arguing that Cohen is a liar.

Cohen is a bully. Cohen is trying to make money off Trump. And these are all salient points, and they could make for a coherent story. But that story isn't really being told. Instead, we're getting bits of pieces of it, and it's all over the map. I think what Blanche was trying to do was tell a story that wasn't so dissimilar to the one that prosecutors told. He was saying that Cohen, yes, had been very loyal to Trump and yes, had broken with Trump, but did not have this kind of change of heart and change of personality. And in fact, was still a liar and still a bully and was lying and manipulating the evidence and doing everything he could to get back at this man who he used to love and who he felt betrayed by. And that sounds like a pretty

good story, but he wasn't telling it clearly enough to my ear to really land in the room. He was confusing. He got into these kind of petty back and forths with Cohen, who, by the way, we had expected to be really out of control during Cross, but in fact stayed composed and kind of gave the same answers over and over again saying, yes, sir. Or when Blanche brought up an insult that Cohen had used, Cohen would say, that sounds like something I would say, kind of defanging like, yes, you know, I said that, but who cares? It's not a big deal. And Todd Blanche almost seems as if he's trying to win back control. And he starts asking questions that are a little harder to follow. For example, he's talking about these different investigations in which Cohen talked to this prosecutor or that prosecutor.

And it's all just very complex and somewhat abstruse or obscure. And I'm watching the jurors and they're glancing around the room. One yawns. And so these are about the most visible signs we can see of what the jurors are thinking. And what we're seeing is that they don't look keyed into this all-important question and answer session. And so by the end of the afternoon on Tuesday, it's hot in the courtroom, it's dry, it's confusing, and it's not really clear that Todd Blanche accomplished what he was trying to accomplish. Although, as you said before, we're only a couple hours into cross-examination, but first impressions matter. This is a crucial witness. And from what you're saying, it sounds like this first stab at discrediting Michael Cohen kind of peters out.

I think that's exactly right. But I also want to emphasize the first part of what you said again. I think that's exactly right. But I also want to emphasize the first part of what you said again. This was two hours. It was the afternoon. It was after a long day of him and a coherent strategy that he hopes will discredit Cohen and win him the trial with this all-important witness. So just to end here, Jonah, I want to understand where you think we are. In our last check-in, you had said that in the parlance of the legal world, the evidence was coming in well for the prosecution, by which you seem to mean the prosecution was hitting its marks. There wasn't a lot of confusion about what it was trying to do,

and it seemed to be doing what it was trying to do. And without treading into the land of prediction, which is totally pointless and counterproductive when we're talking about a jury trial, I wonder if you think it's fair to say that so far, this trial is going reasonably well for the Manhattan District Attorney. And the reason I ask that is because there were always these pretty big questions around this case.

Why was this the first criminal case against Trump? A hush money trial, business falsifications. I mean, this is a guy who in many people's eyes inspired an insurrection at the Capitol. And this is the case, right? It just to some people felt like a confusing anti-climax. And so I'm curious if as a reporter covering this in the room day in and day out, you're finding that so far, this just does seem like a relatively well-executed strong case. Prosecutors can only bring the case that they have in front of them.

So Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, doesn't have the... January 6th case. January 6th case. He doesn't have that. He has this. And this case, I think maybe more than any of the other cases in which Trump is charged, is a case that really exists in the eye of the beholder. And Michael Cohen is its perfect avatar in that sense. Michael Cohen may seem credible.

And he may seem utterly unbelievable. So as we look toward the end of this trial, this is the prosecution's last witness. We don't know what kind of case, if any, the defense will put on. We could very much see this case go to a jury very, very soon. Wow. It's worth refocusing on these 12 jurors and their relationship with Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen has told a compelling story, a compelling story. But again, he is the only witness who can link Trump to the crimes

that prosecutors here in Manhattan have alleged. And so as the trial is very, very close to ending, Michael Cohen is exactly what we expected. This big, prominent, important star witness and probably the biggest risk that prosecutors have taken. Well, Jonah, until next time, thank you very much. Of course. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn't shown up for debate.

Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. After exchanging online tots, President Biden and Donald Trump agreed to two general election debates to be held in late June and early September. The debates will bypass the nonpartisan organization that has managed presidential debates for decades, but whose rules have frustrated both campaigns.

As a result, the Biden-Trump debates will play by their own rules. The first debate, for instance, will not include a live audience, as presidential debates typically do, and will establish a high bar for including a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a statement, Kennedy wrote that Trump and Biden want to exclude him from the debates because, quote, they are afraid I would win. Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Stella Tan, and Will Reed. It was edited by Devin Taylor, contains original music by Pat McCusker, Marion Lozano, and Alisha Ba'etube, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.