Skip the Issues: Michael Cohen’s Courtroom Showdown With Donald Trump Is a Spectacle for the Ages

A disbarred attorney, Michael Cohen, enters the courtroom at Lower Manhattan wearing his trademark checked blazer and jeans. The star witness is about to testify against his ex-boss, President Trump, in a civil case over claims that the real estate tycoon inflated his corporate assets when applying for credit.Skip the issues, though: This courtroom scene is a remarkable spectacle. The 45th president of America sits at the defense table, hunched over and wearing his trademark suit, bright blue tie, and scowl.Cohen has turned state’s evidence in the courtroom only when he testifies. Cohen, who was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, an executive at the Trump Organization, and his admitted “fixer” for 12 years, once said he would “take a bullet” for his boss. That, though, is now long in the past. In 2018, Cohen’s “all-consuming infatuation” with Mr. Trump, as the New Yorker described it, soured badly, and the servile fixer became an embittered turncoat. On day one of his testimony, Cohen is seemingly at ease. The state attorney general, who has credited Cohen with being the impetus for her civil investigation, claims Mr. Trump deliberately and mendaciously inflated his personal net worth and the value of his assets by billions of dollars on financial statements given to banks, insurers, and other parties to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits. Mr. Trump has denied the accusations. President Trump at the New York supreme court, October 24, 2023. AP/Luiz RibeiroCohen’s testimony is meant to shine light on the skulduggery and legerdemain he has described in two books, podcasts, and countless interviews in the years since he turned on his master. Now, though, he is speaking about Mr. Trump in the presence of Mr. Trump.The two men had not seen each other in five years. It’s a “heck of a reunion,” Cohen, who is an ex-con, jokes to news photographers. Mr. Trump, who is the Republican front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and who has been in the courtroom since the morning, has called Cohen a “rat,” a “proven liar,” a “felon,” and a terrible lawyer. He shrugs off any concern, telling reporters at the lunch break, “He’s not a credible witness.”Yet Mr. Trump is attending the hearing, though he is not legally obliged to do so, for his first face-to-face with Cohen in five eventful years. He had already waited for Cohen last week, when his former lawyer was first scheduled to testify but postponed due to “medical reasons.” During the proceeding, Mr. Trump often leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and looks straight at Cohen. His nemesis, by contrast, keeps his gaze on the attorneys who are examining him. A prosecutor, Colleen Faherty, also an assistant attorney general, begins by asking Cohen about his own federal crimes, which include his guilty plea to a campaign finance violation and lying to Congress.Cohen explained that he lied “at the direction of, in concert with, and for the benefit of Mr. Trump.” Hearing this, the former president shakes his head and consults with his lawyers. Cohen then goes on to explain that he “wanted to correct the record.”He says that “when all of this started, the amount of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, about me was overwhelming.” Over the next hour and a half, the prosecution dives into his role at the Trump Organization, beginning in 2011.The court learns about the “Gang of Four,” or the “Team of Four”: Cohen, along with a sometime Trump Organization chief financial officer and fellow convicted felon, Alan Weisselberg; the Trump Organization chief operating officer, Matthew Calamari; and another company executive, Ron Lieberman. According to Cohen, they had been assigned to work together on insurance deals. “There would be a conversation,” Cohen relays, about Mr. Trump’s “extensive net worth,” and adds, “He’s actually richer than the insurance companies … we’ve got to get a good premium.”Cohen repeats over and over again that in every deal and every evaluation, “all the final decisions were done by Mr Trump.” That seemed to solidify the claims of the attorney general. When New York’s Ms. Faherty dwells on documents pertaining to Mr. Trump’s intended acquisition of an NFL team, the Buffalo Bills, the defense begins striking back with objections.Mr. Trump’s attorney, Chris Kise, argues that the Bills acquisition is irrelevant because it never came to fruition. The prosecution answers that it mattered because it proved a pattern of inflating assets. There is an overall relief in the courtroom when another of the 45th president’s defense lawyers, the highly animated Alina Habba, spices up the afternoon. Using a portable microphone and dressed in a bright purple suit and high heels, she paces up and down, her evident rage invigorating a tired courtroom. Condescendingly, she asks the witness, “We’ve met a few times. Do you want me to call you Mr. Cohen or Michael?” Then she inquires if Cohen was on any — or should need any — medication, if he is fully prepared to testify, if he understands what an oath was, and if he knows the meaning of “deception,” which she herself explained is a “form of lying.” Through her cross-examination, Ms. Habba paints a portrait of a congenital liar wholly unable to tell the truth. She treks line-by-line through his past guilty plea for tax evasion and campaign finance violations involving an adult film star, Stormy Daniels. The atmosphere gets tense when Ms. Habba asks whether Cohen also told his own wife that he had cheated on his taxes.The former lawyer says, “I have to object to that.” Then he began citing case law, at which point Mr. Kise exclaims from the table that “the witness is completely out of control.”The prosecution jumps to Cohen’s defense, suggesting that such personal questions are “below the belt.”“He is a serial liar, and if he lied to his wife, it’s relevant for impeachment,” Mr. Kise answers. When the judge reminds Ms. Habba that court is about to adjourn, she offers to continue her questioning: “If it’s entertaining, I am happy to go all night.” Indeed, one could think, it’s all a theatrical performance. Mr. Trump, though, is not amused. His business is at stake.Cohen’s testimony foreshadows what the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg, will present in March when his criminal case accusing Mr. Trump of falsifying business records connected to hush money payments to Ms. Daniels is scheduled for trial. Cohen is Mr. Bragg’s key witness. Two of Mr. Trump’s other attorneys, Susan Hoffinger and Todd Blanche, are in the courtroom, watching Mr. Cohen’s testimony attentively. The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, has predicted the civil fraud trial will last until December. “If this was Broadway,” he remarks on the third day, “we would have a long run.”

Skip the Issues: Michael Cohen’s Courtroom Showdown With Donald Trump Is a Spectacle for the Ages

Skip the Issues: Michael Cohen’s Courtroom Showdown With Donald Trump Is a Spectacle for the Ages

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