Donald Trump's estranged former lawyer Michael Cohen began testifying on Monday at the Republican presidential candidate's criminal trial, where he described his role as Trump's long-time fixer and was expected to tell jurors that he helped Trump illegally hide a hush money payment to a porn star.
Once one of Trump's most loyal lieutenants, Cohen is the prosecution's star witness as the trial enters its fifth week in New York state criminal court in Manhattan.
He started his testimony by explaining that he went to law school at his grandmother's urging, even though he "really didn't want to be a lawyer."
In 2007, he left his job at a law firm to join Trump's New York-based family real estate company. Trump offered him a job, Cohen said, after Cohen presented Trump with a $100,000 bill for work his firm had done for one of Trump's companies.
"I was honoured. I was taken by surprise, and I agreed," Cohen said, adding that Trump never paid the bill.
For nearly a decade, Cohen, 57, worked as an executive and lawyer for Trump's company and once said he would take a bullet for Trump, a Republican former president trying to take back the White House from Democratic President Joe Biden in this year's Nov. 5 U.S. election.
Cohen's $130,000 hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, intended to keep her from speaking publicly about a 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, is at the centre of the trial.
Cohen said it was fair to describe his role as a fixer for Trump, testifying that he took care of "whatever he wanted." Rather than work as a traditional corporate lawyer, Cohen reported directly to Trump and was never part of the Trump Organization's general counsel's office.
Among his duties was renegotiating bills from business partners, threatening to sue people and planting positive stories in the press, he said.
Trump, he said, communicated primarily by phone or in person and never set up an email address.
"He would comment that emails are like written papers, that he knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having emails that prosecutors can use in a case," Cohen said.
Cohen, who served as Trump's personal lawyer after his presidential term began in 2017, broke with him when federal prosecutors probing Trump's 2016 presidential campaign focused on Cohen. He has become one of Trump's most outspoken critics, frequently disparaging him on social media and on podcasts.
While the jurors saw Cohen in person for the first time, his presence has loomed over the trial. Witnesses have spoken about him dozens of times, while Trump's defence lawyers attacked his credibility from the trial's outset, calling him an untrustworthy liar in their opening statement.
On Friday, Justice Juan Merchan urged prosecutors to tell Cohen to stop making public statements about the case after defence lawyer Todd Blanche said Cohen had posted on social media while wearing a T-shirt showing Trump behind bars.
Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office have accused Trump of falsely labelling his reimbursement payments to Cohen in 2017 as legal expenses in his New York-based real estate company's books.
They say the altered business records covered up election-law and tax-law violations that elevate the 34 counts Trump faces from misdemeanours to felonies punishable by up to four years in prison.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts and denies having had a sexual encounter with Daniels. He argues the case is a politically motivated attempt to interfere with his campaign. Bragg, the prosecutor, is a Democrat.
"Fat Alvin, corrupt guy," Trump said of Bragg at a New Jersey political rally on Saturday night.
Trump arrived at the courthouse on Monday with several Republican lawmakers in tow, including U.S. senators J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville and U.S. Representative Nicole Malliotakis.
COHEN IS FREQUENT TRUMP TARGET
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to violating federal campaign finance law by paying off Daniels and testified that Trump directed him to make the payment. Federal prosecutors did not charge Trump with any crime.
Trump's defence lawyers have told the 12 jurors and six alternates that Cohen acted on his own when paying Daniels, seeking to distance Trump from the payments at the heart of the case.
Cohen has admitted to lying under oath multiple times, providing substantial fodder for the defence to undermine his credibility.
He has acknowledged lying to the U.S. Congress in 2017 about a Trump Organization real estate project in Moscow but has since said he did so to protect Trump.
He also pleaded guilty to violating tax law in 2018, but now claims he did not commit that crime.
Cohen has been on the receiving end of Trump's vitriolic social media attacks, some of which the judge has said violated a gag order restricting Trump from making statements about witnesses, jurors and families of the judge and prosecutors if meant to interfere with the case.
Trump has called the gag order a violation of his right to free speech and has said it is unfair to bar him from responding to attacks by witnesses such as Cohen and Daniels.
Merchan has fined Trump $10,000 for repeated violations and warned the former president he could face time in jail if he keeps up his attacks.
The case is widely seen as less consequential than three other criminal prosecutions Trump faces, but it is the only one certain to go to trial before the election.
The other cases charge Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat and mishandling classified documents after leaving office. Trump pleaded not guilty to all three.
