Cohen to Face Cross Examination Tuesday05/14 06:11

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- Donald Trump's fixer-turned-foe awaits a bruising round of 
questioning from the former president's lawyers on Tuesday after testimony that 
linked the celebrity client to all aspects of a hush money scheme that 
prosecutors say was aimed at stifling stories that threatened his 2016 campaign.

   Michael Cohen returns to the stand Tuesday as the prosecution's star 
witness, where a day earlier he delivered matter-of-fact testimony that went to 
the heart of the former president's trial.

   "Everything required Mr. Trump's sign-off," Cohen said.

   He placed Trump at the center of the hush money scheme, saying he had 
promised to reimburse money the lawyer had fronted for the payments and was 
constantly apprised of the behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to 
be harmful to the campaign.

   "We need to stop this from getting out," Cohen quoted Trump as telling him 
in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels' account of a sexual encounter with 
Trump a decade earlier. The then-candidate was especially anxious about how the 
story would affect his standing with female voters.

   A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was 
alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. "Make sure it doesn't 
get released," was Cohen's message to Trump, the lawyer said. The woman, Karen 
McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump 
received a "complete and total update on everything that transpired."

   "What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. 
Trump," Cohen testified.

   Trump has pleaded not guilty and has denied both sexual encounters.

   Cohen is by far the prosecution's most important witness, and though his 
testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels' turn on the stand, he 
nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of 
the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors had already 
seen.

   The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump's 
activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican 
presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors' 
reliance on a witness with such a checkered past -- Cohen pleaded guilty to 
federal charges related to the payments -- also carries sizable risks with a 
jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal 
woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

   The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would "take a bullet" for 
Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere 
was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff in October, when Trump 
walked out of the courtroom after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during 
his civil fraud trial.

   This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for 
long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a 
senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission 
sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss's behalf.

   Trump's lawyers will get their chance to begin questioning Cohen as early as 
Tuesday, where they're expected to attack his credibility -- he was disbarred, 
went to prison and separately pleaded guilty to lying about a Moscow real 
estate project on Trump's behalf -- and cast him as a vindictive, agenda-driven 
witness. The defense told jurors during opening statements that he's an 
"admitted liar" with an "obsession to get President Trump."

   Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen's past crimes 
to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will 
buttress his testimony.

   Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice 
of "catch-and-kill," in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can 
then be quashed. But Cohen's testimony is crucial to prosecutors because of his 
direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was 
scrambling to suppress.

   Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 
hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her 
silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging 
Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were 
logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments' true purpose.

   To establish Trump's intimate familiarity with the payments, Cohen told 
jurors under questioning that Trump had promised to reimburse him. The two men 
even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief 
financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as legal services over 
monthly installments, Cohen testified.

   He said Trump even sought to delay finalizing the Daniels transaction until 
after Election Day so he wouldn't have to pay her.

   "Because," Cohen testified, "after the election it wouldn't matter" to Trump.

   Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David 
Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Trump 
ally that Pecker told Cohen his publication maintained a "file drawer or a 
locked drawer" where files related to Trump were kept. That effort took on 
added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an "Access Hollywood" 
recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

   The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but 
Monday's testimony also centered on a deal earlier that fall with McDougal.

   To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump's endorsement, 
prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on 
manager. Acting on Trump's behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied 
others, including reporters.

   "When he would task you with something, he would then say, 'Keep me 
informed. Let me know what's going on,'" Cohen testified. He said that was 
especially true "if there was a matter that was troubling to him..