the defense seeks to make Michael Cohen, his number one accuser, falter

Donald Trump’s lawyer tried to show the court that the former US president’s former personal advisor was not a man worthy of belief.

At Donald Trump’s criminal trial, his former confidant who became his first accuser, Michael Cohen, is on Thursday, May 16, under heavy fire from the former American president’s defense in an attempt to make him flinch. The one who described himself as a man of bad luck, capable of “lie” or d”‘intimidate” on behalf of his former boss, is the last piece of the puzzle deployed by New York prosecutors to convince the jury that Donald Trump approved the concealed payment of $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels, at the very end of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, resumed his cross-examination with Michael Cohen on Thursday morning to seek to prove that the former personal adviser to the former American president was not a man worthy of belief. He questioned him at length about his lies before the American Congress in 2018, facts which have nothing to do with the current trial and for which he was sentenced to prison. “I agreed to take my responsibilities”replied Michael Cohen.

The defense also played excerpts from a 2020 episode of a Michael Cohen podcast in which he rambled on about Donald Trump: “You better believe in my will to bring this man down.” The trial, which since April 15 has forced the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election to sit and listen to the proceedings in silence, in a Manhattan court room, could speed up.

Donald Trump’s team of lawyers has still not specified whether it intends to call his client to the stand and has only confirmed one witness for the moment. Then, the jurors will hear the final arguments and will deliberate, with the difficult task of finding guilty or not guilty a former president of the United States, in the middle of a campaign to return to the White House.

During nearly eight hours of hearing Monday and Tuesday, the billionaire’s ex-personal lawyer incriminated him at length. He claimed to have acted under her direction when at the end of 2016 he paid the actress and director of porn films, Stormy Daniels, via a shell company, to buy her silence about a sexual relationship she claims to have had in 2006 with the businessman, then already married to Melania Trump.