by JENNIFER PELTZ and ERIC TUCKER | Associated PressFILE - Michael Cohen arrives at New York Supreme Court Oct. 25, 2023, in New York. He once said he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. Now Michael Cohen is prosecutors' biggest piece of legal ammunition in theBut if Trump's fixer-turned-foe is poised to offer jurors this week an insider's view of the dealings at the heart of prosecutors' case, he also is as challenging a star witness as they come.
"What the defense is going to want the jury to focus on is the fact that he's a liar" with a blemished past and a tetchy streak, said Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense lawyer and former federal and Manhattan prosecutor. Cohen soon told a federal court that he had helped candidate Trump wield the National Enquirer tabloid as a sort of house organ that flattered him, tried to flatten his opponents and bottled up seamy allegations about his personal life by buying stories or flagging them to Cohen to purchase. Trump says all the stories were false.
Then, in the course of two federal guilty pleas, Cohen admitted to tax evasion, orchestrating illegal campaign contributions in the form of hush money payments, and lying to Congress about his work on a possible Trump real estate project in Moscow. He also pleaded guilty to signing off on a home equity loan application that understated his financial liabilities.
Since splitting with Trump, Cohen has confronted his past lies head-on. His podcast's title – "Mea Culpa" – gestures at a reckoning with his crimes, and he acknowledged in the foreword to his 2020 memoir that some people see him as "the least reliable narrator on the planet." To Jeremy Saland, a New York criminal defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, Cohen's background is not such a hurdle for prosecutors.
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