Looks like Michael Cohen dropped a bombshell in court that could shake up the whole narrative.
But it’s not the kind of bombshell he wanted.
Cohen’s testimony suggests Trump wasn’t losing sleep over the Stormy Daniels saga, he wasn’t trying to ‘hush’ it up.
That seems to poke a few holes in the prosecution case. We’re talking holes the size of cannon balls used in the Civil War.
As a former close ally turned backstabber in the ‘hush money’ saga, Cohen’s words could be bring the case down on his head!
Political commentator Travis_4_Trump on X points out:
According to Cohen, Trump didn’t care about the story being embarrassing because he only cared about the campaign.
This testimony contradicts the entire indictment, because the prosecution says Trump wanted to hide the story for campaign gains, but the checks to Cohen came after he was elected.
He claims Trump said that if he wins, the story will no longer matter, but also claims Trump paid him as “legal fees” to hide the affair in 2017.
Well that’s contradicting. Which one is it?
JUST IN: Michael Cohen just blew the entire case apart as he spent the later part of the morning talking about Trump’s knowledge of the Stormy Daniels situation. According to him, Trump didn’t care about the story being embarrassing because he only cared about the campaign.… pic.twitter.com/DqCKxguDZA
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_4_Trump) May 13, 2024
Business Insider reports:
When Michael Cohen was arranging hush-money payments for Stormy Daniels, he tried very hard to keep Donald Trump’s name out of it.
But in his under-oath testimony for Trump’s criminal trial Monday, Cohen placed Trump firmly in the room where it happened.
Trump’s attorney-turned-nemesis quoted his former boss extensively, telling jurors about key moments when the billionaire-turned-candidate participated fully in the plot to keep Daniels quiet ahead of the 2016 election.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has accused Trump of falsifying 34 different documents — including checks bearing Trump’s signature — to hide an election-influencing, $130,000 hush-money payment that silenced the porn star 11 days before the vote.
Trump’s legal team has cast all the blame on Cohen, suggesting he went rogue and came up with the hush-money scheme without the former president’s approval.
On the witness stand, Cohen spoke cautiously, walking jurors through his long history as Trump’s sometimes bullying “fixer.” Trump, having heard much of the story before, appeared almost bored at the defense table. For minutes at a time, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair without moving.
Here are key moments in Cohen’s testimony when he did the greatest damage to his former boss simply by quoting what he said were Trump’s own words.
1. “You know what? Just be prepared — there’s going to be a lot of women coming forward.”
Cohen, who began working for Trump in 2007, talked to Trump for years about running for president. Cohen testified that the real-estate mogul had considered a campaign in 2011 but ultimately decided against it, resolving to run in the “next election cycle.”
In 2015, Trump told Cohen he would run for president.
2. “That’s fantastic. That’s unbelievable.”
The meeting with David Pecker was a success.
The National Enquirer ran a series of positive articles about Trump. And it ran sensationalistic articles attacking his opponents — claiming that Hillary Clinton wore “very thick glasses” to bolster a conspiracy theory of some brain injury, a photograph of Ted Cruz’s father hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald, and a theory that Marco Rubio participated in a “drug binge” with a group of men in a swimming pool.
3. “She’s really beautiful… Make sure it doesn’t get released.“
In June of 2016, Cohen got a call from AMI telling him that a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, was shopping around a story about having sex with Trump.
When Cohen told Trump about it, his response was, “She’s really beautiful,” Cohen said.
“Okay. But there is a story that’s right now being shopped,” Cohen said he replied.
Trump instructed Cohen to “Make sure it doesn’t get released” and work with Pecker and National Enquirer editor to purchase the rights to McDougal’s story — and then make sure it never got to see the light of day, he said.
4. “Do it. Take care of it.”
In 2011 — long before Trump ran for president on the Republican ticket — Cohen was involved in convincing another gossip website to pull an article involving Daniels and Trump.
TheDirty.com ran an interview with Daniels where she talked, in broad strokes, about a fling with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Trump wanted the story taken down.
“I said I’ll take care of it,” Cohen testified Monday. “He said, ‘Absolutely, do it, take care of it.'”
5. “Women will hate me. Guys, they’ll think it’s cool.”
Weeks before the election, (Danies) returned with the force of a hurricane.
Keith Davidson, her lawyer, was in talks with The National Enquirer about the rights to her story,
Trump was livid, Cohen said.
“I thought you had this under control. I thought you took care of this,” Trump said, according to Cohen.
“Just take care of it.”
Cohen said Trump acknowledged his polling with women was poor and understood the damage that Daniels’ story could do to his candidacy — a key detail for prosecutors, who want to show jurors that Trump wanted to suppress Daniels’s story for his own campaign.
“Women are going to hate me,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “Guys, they’ll think it was cool.”
6. “Meet up with Allen Weisselberg and figure this whole thing out.”
In mid-October 2016, when discussing the idea of cutting a hush-money deal with Daniels, Trump told Cohen to get Allen Weisselberg, the then-Trump Organization CFO, on the case to figure it out, Cohen testified.
“Meet up with Allen Weisselberg and figure this whole thing out,” Cohen said Trump ordered.
7. “If I win, it has no relevance because I’m president. And if I lose, I don’t even care.”
But when the time came to cut an actual check, Trump didn’t actually want to pay Daniels anything, Cohen testified.
According to Cohen, Trump’s goal was to postpone the payment until after the November 2016 election, at which point he didn’t think it would matter.
“If I win, it has no relevance, because I’m president,” Trump said, according to Cohen. “And if I lose, I don’t even care.”
“He wasn’t thinking about Melania,” Cohen added of Trump.
“This was all about the campaign.”
Hmm, very interesting statment there, Cohen.
Michael Cohen is a pathological liar. He was sent to prison for lying under oath. How can we tell if he is telling the truth or not in this case? You can’t. #TrumpTrials pic.twitter.com/2NaKCcm5Dg
— Conservative News Feed (@C_N_F__on__X) May 13, 2024
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