Michael Cohen seemed to have delivered for prosecutors - if jurors believe him

NEW YORK - Prosecutors who are trying to convict Donald Trump of falsifying documents bet big on Michael Cohen this week. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has relied on Trump’s fixer and attorney to make their case at trial that the former president was directly involved in a scheme to conceal a hush money payment on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.

It was a gamble from the start. Cohen - who served prison time for multiple crimes, including for lying to Congress in 2018 - is a key witness with significant credibility issues.

But prosecutors had little choice. Witness after witness testified earlier in the trial that they had worked through Cohen as they brokered a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to prevent her from going public about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter she said she’d had with Trump.

None, however, testified that they directly communicated with Trump about the payments. So the prosecutors needed Cohen himself to connect the former president and presumptive Republican nominee to the alleged crimes, and to provide evidence that Trump directed the hush money payments and then knowingly lied on the business forms to conceal campaign finance crimes.

Trump, who faces 34 charges for allegedly falsifying business records, has pleaded not guilty.

In nearly two days of direct examination, Cohen told prosecutors that Trump instructed him to make the payment to Daniels and then, months later, approved a plan to record the reimbursement instalments to Cohen as a legal retainer - even though Cohen told the jury he did little legal work for Trump that year.

Cross-examination, which began late Tuesday, will continue Thursday after a day off for the trial. Trump’s attorneys are expected to try to bludgeon holes in Cohen’s account, exposing discrepancies in his story and portraying him to the jury as an opportunistic criminal who can’t be trusted.

The defence team has already elicited damaging testimony from Cohen, including that he wants to see Trump convicted.

But legal experts said Cohen has so far provided the testimony that prosecutors need. Cohen said he was close to Trump in 2016, talking daily about matters that Trump wanted him to handle. He critically testified that Trump told him to “just do it” and pay Daniels the $130,000 in hush money, and echoed other witnesses who said they thought the payment was mostly about the presidential campaign. And Cohen said he kept Trump in the loop as he brokered the deal to silence Daniels (mostly, he said, so he could get credit with his boss for the work).

In many of the instances, the only person who could contradict Cohen’s version of events would be Trump. And while Trump has flirted with the idea of testifying at his own trial, it’s highly unusual for a criminal defendant to testify, and legal experts say that it could be disastrous for Trump if he took the stand.

Still, successfully relying on Cohen to secure a conviction requires the jury to believe Cohen’s testimony - a big question mark in this case and in any case that relies on witnesses with credibility issues.

“It’s unfortunate from the prosecution that it has to come from Cohen,” said Matthew Galluzzo, a former Manhattan prosecutor and current criminal defence lawyer. “Because he is the worst in terms of credibility. But sometimes that’s the hand you are dealt as prosecutors.”

Critical moments in Cohen’s testimony came when he described a series of meetings in which he and Trump discussed how he would be reimbursed the $130,000 he fronted for the Daniels hush money payments. Trump’s attorneys have said that Trump was not involved in the payments and that he could not have intentionally falsified business records if he didn’t know the details.

But Cohen said that in a meeting with Trump and Allen Weisselberg - the former chief financial officer at the Trump Organization - the two men agreed to repay him a total of $420,000 in monthly instalments of $35,000 and record the payments as legal retainers.

A few weeks later, Cohen met privately with the newly sworn-in president in the Oval Office.

“I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was okay,” Cohen testified. “He asked me if I needed money, and I said, no, all good. He said, because I can get a check.”

Cohen testified that Trump said he would soon be receiving a check for January and February. Prosecutors then showed the jury the invoices and $35,000 checks that Cohen received - each labelled as a legal retainer.

While these documents would exist without Cohen’s testimony, only Cohen could explain the reason for the payment.

“They laid the bricks. Trump knew of the payments and he approved them,” said Anna G. Cominsky, a New York Law School professor. “If they didn’t have Cohen they couldn’t win the case.”

Beyond that, legal experts said the direct examination of Cohen could be considered a success because he didn’t notably contradict what witnesses had testified earlier in the trial. For example, many witnesses said they understood that the payment to Daniels would be most valuable before the 2016 election because Trump’s team was concerned about the story of an alleged sexual encounter further damaging his reputation with female voters.

That point is key because prosecutors must prove the hush money payment was campaign-related and that Trump falsified the documents to conceal campaign finance crimes. Trump’s defence has said that he didn’t want the Daniels story to be made public because it would hurt Trump’s wife and family.

Cohen’s testimony bolstered prosecution claims that Trump’s intent was to ensure he didn’t hurt his election chances. Cohen said Trump’s reaction when he learned that Daniels wanted to go public with the alleged sexual encounter was: “This is a disaster, total disaster.”

“Women are going to hate me,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “Women will hate me. Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.”

Ron Kuby, a veteran New York defence attorney, said that much of the earlier testimony had aligned with Cohen’s, but had been circumstantial.

“Michael Cohen is less the keystone of the case and more the explainer of various events that have already been attested to,” said Kuby. “Michael Cohen helps tie it all together and takes all the different pieces of evidence and assembles them.”

While cross-examination could further threaten Cohen’s credibility, legal experts said, it is not unusual for prosecutors to secure convictions while relying on a key witness with credibility issues.

In the end, though, they said Trump’s fate will hinge on the jury - and no one can predict how each juror will respond to the witnesses and assess whether Cohen’s should be believed.

“None of this means that Trump is going to be convicted,” Kuby said. “This is not a sporting event. We do not know who is ahead or who is behind, and we do not know how this is impacting the jury.”