Before Michael Cohen's testimony, take a look back at he and Trump's long and tortured history

Cohen's early-2000s introduction to Trump was as a condo board member in a Trump building, where he got involved on Trump's side of a residents versus management dispute.But if Trump's fixer-turned-foe is poised to offer jurors this week an insider's view of the dealings at the heart ofThere is his tortured history with Trump, for whom he served as personal attorney and problem-zapper until his practices came under federal investigation.

“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.

At his 2018 sentencing, he said his “blind loyalty" to Trump made him feel"it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds, rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass." Outside court, he has cast himself as an avatar of anti-Trump sentiment. In social media salvos as the trial opened, Cohen used a scatological nickname for Trump, taunted him to “keep whining, crying and violating the gag order, you petulant defendant!” and commented acerbically on his defense.

"Where Cohen has the problem is: He doesn’t shut his trap,” Saland said. “He just constantly takes shots at his own credibility.”

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