Donald Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, stormed out Tuesday as he began his cross-examination of the former president’s ex-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Blanche began her attack by questioning Cohen — the prosecution’s star witness in Trump’s criminal trial in New York — about the numerous times Cohen insulted Trump and himself on social media.
“You called President Trump an ‘asshole dictator,’ right?” Blanche said while questioning Cohen about an April 23 TikTok that Cohen made, just a week after the historic trial began.
Cohen deadpanned from the witness stand: “That sounds like something I would say.”
Reporters and members of the public watching the trial on video screens in the court’s extra room in midtown Manhattan burst into laughter.
Blanche also lashed out at Cohen over his comments in the recent TikTok video that Trump “belongs in a fucking cage.”
“You said, ‘He goes back to that little cage where he belongs, to a fucking cage, like an animal.’ Did you say that?” Blanche asked Cohen, who replied, “I remember saying that.”
While questioning Cohen, Blanche then asked him if he called Trump a “cartoonish gross misogynist.”
“That sounds like something I said,” Cohen responded.
Blanche later asked, “Do you remember calling President Trump a ‘Cheeto-sprinkled cartoon villain?’ » »
Cohen responded again: “That sounds like something I said.”
The shootings were at his own client’s expense. But Blanche’s attack had a pro-Trump goal: to cast doubt on Cohen’s credibility.
The ex-lawyer presented himself as discreet and polite during his direct testimony. But Cohen’s personality on social media and podcasts can be abrasive, profane and aggressively anti-Trump.
Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s lawyer, leaves his Manhattan home to testify in Trump’s criminal trial. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Cohen’s roasts about his former boss were revisited
Blanche began her fiery cross-examination by asking Cohen if they had ever met — they hadn’t.
But they had a past, Blanche noted. “Actually, on April 23, you went on TikTok and called me a crying little shit, right?”
“That sounds like something I would say,” Cohen said to an earlier wave of laughter in the court’s extra room — a second courtroom in the building where members of the public and the press can watch the trial on television. screens.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan quickly granted an objection from the prosecution, striking the issue from the record.
Later during cross-examination, Blanche brought up other occasions when Cohen had roasted Trump. He asked about a T-shirt featuring an illustration of Trump in an orange jumpsuit and behind bars, which Cohen wore in his April 23 TikTok video.
“It’s part of the merch store,” Cohen said, touting items sold by MeidasTouch Network, the left-leaning media company where he hosts one of his anti-Trump podcasts.
Todd Blanche has just submitted as evidence an image of this shirt, sold by the Medias Touch network.
It was shown to the jury. pic.twitter.com/Jvlebw8A1O
– Jacob Shamsian ⚖️ (@JayShams) May 14, 2024
The site also sells a mug featuring Trump’s iconic hairstyle with the phrase “Send him to the big house, not the White House,” as Blanche emphasized to the jury.
Cohen’s cross-examination comes after he spent the last day and a half on the witness stand, questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.
Cohen testified that it was Trump who ordered him to pay money to porn star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election.
Much of his most damning testimony came when he cited what he described as Trump’s own words.
“Take care of it,” Cohen said Trump told him when ordering him to rescind Daniels’ story about having sex she claimed to have had with Trump.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office accused Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Prosecutors allege that Trump illegally falsified records reimbursing Cohen for a secret $130,000 payment made to Daniels before the 2016 election.
The payment, prosecutors say, was intended to buy Daniels’ silence during a one-off sexual encounter The porn star says she had sex with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006 during a celebrity golf tournament.
Trump has denied having sex with Daniels.
Prosecutors hope Cohen’s testimony will bolster their argument that Trump orchestrated the payment to Daniels as part of an illegal plot to influence the election.
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen testified about Trump. “It was all about the campaign.”
Blanche still wasn’t done with Cohen at the end of the court day Tuesday afternoon.
He said he would continue the cross-examination when the trial resumed on Thursday, and possibly on Monday. The trial will not take place Friday because Trump is scheduled to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.
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