The high-profile trial of former President Donald Trump has captivated the nation. The defense rested its case without Trump taking the witness stand.
This pivotal moment in American history has set the stage for closing arguments and the jury’s deliberations, which could determine the fate of the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
After more than four weeks of testimony, the defense team for Donald Trump has concluded its case without the former president taking the stand.
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The trial’s “star” witness, Michael Cohen, was supposed to play a crucial role in the prosecution’s case.
Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, spent nearly four full days on the witness stand, attempting to place the former president directly at the center of the alleged scheme. However, Cohen failed to do this and instead implicated himself as a thief.
In the highly anticipated cross-examination during the hush money trial in New York, Cohen revealed that he had, in fact, stolen from the Trump Organization while serving as Trump’s lawyer.
During the cross-examination, Trump’s defense attorney, Todd Blanche, confronted Cohen with a direct question: “You stole from the Trump Organization, correct?” To which Cohen replied, without hesitation, “Yes, sir.”
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The details of Cohen’s theft emerged as he testified about the reimbursement he received from the Trump Organization for a $50,000 payment he made to the tech company RedFinch.
Cohen admitted that he had only given the company $20,000, yet he had asked the Trump Organization to reimburse him for the full $50,000. This discrepancy, according to Cohen, amounted to a theft from the very organization he was representing as Trump’s lawyer.
The revelation of Cohen’s theft is particularly significant in the context of the hush money trial, which centers around the $130,000 payment he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to reimburse Cohen for this payment through monthly installments of $35,000, labeled as payment for “legal services.”
Read: Trump Suggests New York DA Alvin Bragg Will Drop Hush-Money Case Before It Goes To Jury
Cohen’s admission that he lied to the Trump Organization’s Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, about the amount owed for the RedFinch payment further underscores the complex web of deception that allegedly surrounded the Stormy Daniels hush money deal.
This admission directly implicates Cohen in the larger scheme of financial impropriety, casting doubt on his credibility as a witness and potentially killing the prosecution’s case against Trump.
Trump’s defense team has not been idle in the face of Cohen’s testimony. During the cross-examination, Blanche presented text messages that he claimed showed Cohen had a different purpose for a call he made to Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, than what Cohen had initially stated.
According to Blanche, the messages revealed that Cohen’s call to Schiller was actually about handling harassing calls he was receiving from a 14-year-old, rather than discussing the Stormy Daniels matter as Cohen had claimed. This line of attack from the defense aims to undermine
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