President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, highlighted the many times Cohen has lied and his guilty plea to federal charges in 2018.
The most interesting part, though, is that Blanche might have caught Michael Cohen committing perjury during his testimony on May 13.
On Tuesday, Cohen testified that he tried to contact Trump through bodyguard Keith Schiller on October 24, 2016, to talk about “the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it.”
Cohen claimed that during the phone call, he proceeded with Daniels’ $130,000 payment.
Blanche asked Cohen about his recollections of phone calls. It shocked him that Cohen could not remember specifics about phone calls from a year ago but remembers every detail of phone calls with Trump in 2016.
(I don’t have today’s transcript yet. I need to use snippets from live blogs.)
I wonder if Blanche foreshadowed his angles by questioning about remembering phone calls.
Today, Blanche asked Cohen about the phone call. Cohen said he told Trump the payment went to Daniels (emphasis mine):
Cohen testified as a prosecution witness that he called Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller on Oct. 24, 2016, days before the Daniels payment was transferred, to tell him a deal with Daniels’s lawyer had been reached.But Blanche confronted Cohen with text messages that were not shown by prosecutors on direct-examination showing that in that same several-minute time frame, Cohen was talking to Schiller about a 14-year-old who had been harassing him with prank phone calls.His call with Schiller was less than two minutes, according to cellphone records, and Blanche suggested there was no way he had time to speak about both when he was clearly focused on telling the Trump security adviser about the person harassing him.“That is a lie you did not talk to President Trump that night …” Blanche said, his voice booming through the courtroom.“I’m not sure that’s accurate,” Cohen said.
It does not look good for Cohen.
Even Trump’s critics admitted that Blanche’s cross-examination of Cohen harmed the prosecution’s case.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper spoke about the exchange over the 2016 phone call (emphasis mine):
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: I got to say there was a lot of boring moments early on. There was a lot of kind of meandering cross-examination or seemingly meandering cross-examination by Todd Blanche, but the last 20 minutes of court today right before the lunch break, it was incredible. I mean, it was Elie Honig on my program last night had talked about on cross-examination lawyers want to kind of put the witness and build a box around the witness and then slamming shut that’s what Todd Blanche did to Michael Cohen.I mean, the story that Todd Blanche just methodically went through the sequence of events of this phone conversation that allegedly, that Michael Cohen had testified to previously that he had had this consequential phone conversation with Donald Trump, who was a 90 second phone conversation. I believe it was October 24th was the date testified to in around 8:00 p.m. or so at night but Todd Blanche on his cross-examination today when kind of looked at the transcripts of text messages that Michael Cohen had received and sent before that time frame and there had been this series, I guess a crank calls that Michael Cohen had received. It turned out to be from some 14-year-old. There was an exchange of messages between the alleged 14-year-old and Michael Cohen. And then Michael Cohen texted Keith Schiller, like 7:50 something or 7:48 p.m. saying, “Hey, some dope has been harassing me. I got the person’s phone number or who can I talk to?” Keith Schiller texting back, saying call me and Michael Cohen calls Keith Schiller. This is the conversation that previously Michael Cohen had said he was calling speak to Donald Trump to tell him that he was going ahead with the Stormy Daniels arrangement and then Trump approved it, which was crucial to Michael Cohen’s whole raison d’etre for Michael Cohen being on the stand. He’s the only person testifying to direct involvement by Donald Trump in the Stormy Daniels payments, but according to suddenly now, Michael Cohen’s refreshed memory, he now says, “Oh, it was a call about this 14-year-old making prank phone calls to me, but also about the moving ahead on Stormy Daniels.”Todd Blanche was incredulous. His voice cracking, his voice raising up, moving around the courtroom speaking, saying the jury doesn’t want to hear for him guessing, it wants to hear facts.It was an extraordinary cross-examination by Todd Blanche and Michael Cohen’s throughout the day, Michael Cohen, when cornered, he found himself in a corner, he does have a pattern of suddenly not understanding the questions being asked or seemingly kind of, I mean, one could say buying time to try to figure out what, how he wants to answer. But he definitely suddenly starts to have Todd Blanche repeat questions since “I don’t quite understand what you mean, I’m confused by the question.” But this time, Michael Cohen was cornered in what appeared here to be a lie, I think to many in the room. And had to adjust, suddenly, his memory that he had just testified to on Tuesday.If jurors don’t believe Michael Cohen, how significant that might be — he was I mean, it is hard to — I wonder how prosecutors are going to redirect on this because Todd Blanche also pointed out, got Michael Cohen to admit that he had not seen these text messages in the prep by prosecutors, so he had apparently had no memory of those text messages, and the implication is that he concocted, you know, he was shown that there was a phone call to Keith Schiller at this time by prosecutors in the prep and the implications, certainly by Todd Blanche, is that he concocted this story of what that 90 second phone call was, not realizing that there were text messages right ahead that directly related and right after for the directly related.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber also thinks the jury will have a hard time believing Cohen due to his past lies:
ARI MELBER: I think the punches are building cumulatively. I think the punches are building cumulatively. I think Tuesday there were bruises and today there is blood. They’re not done and this is a back-and-forth process. I was listening to your reporting, following along like everyone. I’m going in the courtroom next. I was speaking to Lawrence O’Donnell who spoke to MSNBC today as well.The collective view is these are moments the jury will remember, and they are instilling or adding possible doubts about Michael Cohen’s long-term credibility.As I think everyone knows who has followed the trial, the question isn’t has he changed his mind and retracted things? Both sides agree on that. That’s not in doubt. The question is, “Does this guy still lie?” If he lies about anything, little, medium or large, can you trust him?The standard is not, okay, do we have to be convinced that he lies about everything? The standard for the jury, and why Blanche is making progress is, by the end of this does the jury have reasonable doubt about Cohen telling the truth on elements of the crime?The other stuff won’t matter when they deliberate. It just accrues. What we saw in the dramatic back and forth as it has been described today, “But you did lie, have you lied? Why do you sound like this? And a podcast where you sound unhinged.”All of that accrues. And a jury goes back, and say, “I doubt whether he’s telling the truth about an element of the crime.” For example, Trump’s criminal intent in 2016. I think they are landing blows.
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