Trump hush money trial day 18 highlights: Michael Cohen pressed on lies in cross-examination

Before adjourning, Judge Merchan noted the challenge of managing the trial schedule with myriad upcoming off days.

There’s no court Friday so Trump can attend his son’s high school graduation and an upcoming four-day weekend for Memorial Day. Court is also not in session on Wednesdays.

Depending on how long the defense case goes, it’s possible the trial could shift to closing arguments as early as Tuesday.

Merchan said he’d like to have both sides give their summations on the same day and could start court early or end late to accommodate that. Or, he said, they may have to spill into another day.

Then, before deliberations begin, Merchan will have to instruct and charge the jury. But the timing of that could be tricky, too, he said.

“It’s not ideal for there to be a big lapse in time between summations and a jury charge,” Merchan said.

“That’s another decision that we need to think through,” Blanche said.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said she expects about an hour of redirect questioning once Blanche is finished.

With the jury gone for the day, legal arguments are ongoing about the parameters of potential testimony from a campaign finance law expert the prosecution wants to call as a witness should the defense end up calling their expert to the witness stand.

Trump’s lawyers have said they may call Bradley A. Smith, a former Bill Clinton-appointed Republican Federal Election Commission member, to refute the prosecution’s contention that the hush money payments at issue in the trial amounted to campaign finance violations.

Trump is charged with felony counts of falsifying business records. In order to convict him, the jury must find that he improperly logged reimbursements to Cohen and did so with the intent to commit or hide another crime. Among those other alleged crimes, prosecutors say, were campaign finance violations.

Judge Merchan said he would take time this weekend to “digest both sets of submission further.”

By midafternoon, many of Trump’s congressional allies had not returned from the lunch break. Rep. Matt Gaetz however — who sat in the first row of the gallery behind Trump — remained for the trial and missed a key committee vote Thursday that moved to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for not turning over audio related to President Joe Biden’s classified documents case.

Cohen will return on Monday.

Cohen acknowledged telling a former prosecutor that he felt Daniels and her then-lawyer Keith Davidson were extorting Trump in seeking a $130,000 payment to keep quiet about her claim of a sexual encounter with Trump.

Cohen raised the specter of extortion during a conversation with Mark Pomerantz, who had led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Trump before leaving the office in 2022.

“Yes, I recall making a statement like that … that they were extorting Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

“In your mind, there were two choices: pay or don’t pay and the story comes out,” Blanche said.

“Yes, sir,” Cohen replied.

In 2018, Trump decried Daniels’ claims as “false and extortionist accusations.”

In her testimony last week, Daniels denied trying to extort Trump, calling the allegation “false.”

Blanche asked Cohen about the use of nondisclosure agreements and the one struck with Daniels specifically. Blanche asked if the agreement with the porn actor was a “completely legal-binding contract,” and noted that Trump himself did not sign his name to it.

“In your mind, then and now, this is a perfectly legal contract, correct?” Blanche asked.

“Yes sir,” Cohen said.

He also asked Cohen if nondisclosure agreements are a routine practice in law and Cohen affirmed that they are.

While much of Blanche’s questioning this morning was halting and methodical, the defense lawyer’s shift to much more aggressive exchanges with Cohen this afternoon is an important performance not just for the jury, but for his client.

Trump is known as a demanding client who likes his lawyers bulldoggish and tough.

Judge Merchan said he’ll wait to decide on next Thursday’s schedule in light of a scheduling conflict for one of the jurors. Prosecutor Steinglass suggested that if the trial can’t break early to accommodate the alternate juror, that person could be cut from the case at that time. Defense lawyer Blanche agreed with that plan.

Before Cohen returned to the stand at the start of the day, prosecutor Hoffinger asked the judge to stop Trump’s courtroom “guests” from coming in midtestimony.

On Tuesday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds were among those who came to support Trump in the gallery.

In a sidebar held out of earshot of reporters, Hoffinger told Judge Merchan that on that day, “some of the defense guests filed in the middle of direct examination with their security detail,” and asked that those who came Thursday not be allowed to do so during cross-examination, according to a transcript of the discussion.

“It’s — with their security detail for the jury and the witnesses to see,” Hoffinger said.

Merchan agreed that it was inadvisable, but Blanche, Trump’s defense lawyer, said it was out of his control.

“I have less than zero control over what is happening on anything or anyone that’s behind me when I am crossing a witness,” he said.

During the break, defense attorney Todd Blanche, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass and a court stenographer are going with Judge Merchan to his robing room to speak with a juror who has a scheduling issue next week.

According to the judge, the juror has an appointment at 1:30 p.m. next Thursday.

Blanche is seeking to sow doubt about whether Cohen has a “specific recollection” of certain phone calls that have come up repeatedly during the trial. To make his point, he asks Cohen to estimate how many phone calls he was receiving each day in 2016 and 2017.

“Hundreds,” Cohen replies. Conservatively, Blanche notes that would mean Cohen was receiving upward of 50,000 calls each year. How, then, could he have confidently testified that he remembers the specific details of certain phone calls?

“These phone calls are things I’ve been talking about for the last six years,” Cohen testified. “They were and are extremely important and they were all-consuming.”

Trump watched Cohen as the topic turned to the suppression of a former Trump Tower doorman’s since-debunked claim that the then-candidate had fathered a child with an employee. Cohen worked with the National Enquirer to get the tabloid to pay $30,000 for exclusive rights to the story, to keep it from coming out — a practice known as “catch and kill.”

Blanche emphasized that the 2015 payoff was made even though the story was — according to Cohen, Trump, the woman involved and then-Enquirer publisher David Pecker — false.

And the defense lawyer sought to suggest that squelching the story had nothing to do with Trump’s then-ongoing campaign. Rather, Blanche noted, Cohen told law enforcement that Trump was “concerned about the story because it involved people that still worked with him and worked for him.”

“So it was important to him to keep it from getting out?” Blanche asked.

“Yes sir,” Cohen testified.

The point is important to the defense because it’s trying to undermine prosecutors’ allegation that the hush money payments to the doorman and others were meant specifically to protect Trump’s electoral prospects.

Blanche suggested Cohen breached legal ethics when he secretly recorded himself briefing Trump in September 2016 about an arrangement to buy the rights of Karen McDougal’s story from the National Enquirer.

“You understand it’s not ethical for a lawyer to record a conversation with their client,” Blanche asked Cohen, who was Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.

Cohen conceded it wasn’t ethical, though he noted there were some exceptions — none of which applied in his case, he said. Cohen had testified that he made the recording so he could play it for the tabloid’s publisher at the time, David Pecker, to prove that Trump was going to make the deal happen.

“Just so I understand, you surreptitiously recorded your client so that you could play a privileged communication for a third party?” Blanche asked Cohen.

The witness agreed.

Cohen had a propensity to secretly record his conversations, though he said the September 2016 talk was the only one he recorded with Trump.

Blanche said many of Cohen’s recordings — about 40 — involved conversations he had with news reporters. Sometimes, the people Cohen was talking to would ask him if he was recording them, and he denied it, Blanche said.

Asked if he recalled that, Cohen said, “It’s not illegal in New York for one party.”

“Mr. Cohen, I did not ask you if you were breaking the law,” Blanche responded. “I just asked you if you were surreptitiously recording people.”

After reaching a crescendo just prior to the lunch break, Blanche has resumed his understated style of questioning as he asks Cohen to rehash his previous testimony in a “timeline fashion.” He began with a moment in 2011, when Cohen created a website to assess his boss’ odds of winning the presidency, which Blanche described as “ShouldTrumpRun.”

“Dot com,” Cohen added.

Blanche then segued into Cohen’s role in spinning press stories. In one of the earliest examples, Blanche noted, Cohen helped plant a positive story in the National Enquirer about Trump’s potential presidential bid. In addition, that story included positive information about Cohen, the defense attorney noted.

Blanche has sought to suggest that the former fixer didn’t always consult Trump about how to fend off or respond to unflattering news stories that were looming.

Cohen, however, has insisted it was always his routine to advise Trump about potential stories. If something wasn’t to his boss’ liking, he said, it could “one, cause him to blow up at me, and two, it would probably mean the end of my job.”

The questions appeared aimed at suggesting that Trump might not have been in on all the machinations surrounding Stormy Daniels’ claims, though Blanche has not specifically asked about that, yet.

“Welcome back, Mr. Cohen,” said Judge Merchan. “Let’s get the jury, please.”

He gave a fist bump as he entered the courtroom and gazed at the media gallery. Rep. Matt Gaetz was among the entourage following him in.

In a significant and heated moment, Blanche sought to unravel Cohen’s claim that he spoke by phone with Trump “to discuss the Stormy Daniels matter and the resolution of it” just days before wiring her lawyer $130,000.

Cohen testified earlier in the week that he called Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, just after 8 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2016, as a way of getting ahold of Trump because he knew he’d be with him.

But Blanche noted that at the time Cohen was dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and had exchanged text messages with the supposed harasser just before contacting Schiller.

Blanche cited text message records showing Cohen messaged Schiller at 7:48 p.m. regarding the caller, who’d identified himself as a 14-year-old boy who’d promised not to do it again.

“Who can I speak to about harassing calls to my cell and office,” Cohen wrote to Schiller.

Blanche then cited phone records showing Schiller calling Cohen and leaving a voicemail at 8:01 p.m., followed by a text message stating, “call me,” at 8:02 p.m. Cohen then called Schiller’s number. The conversation lasted 1 minute and 36 seconds, phone records show.

Blanche said Cohen’s claim that he was talking to Trump about the Daniels deal “was a lie because you were actually talking to Mr. Schiller about getting harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old.”

“Part of it was about the phone calls, but I knew that Keith was with Mr. Trump at the time, and it was more than potentially just this,” Cohen responded.

Blanche, his voice growing louder, was incredulous. After hours of slow and halting questioning, he spoke at a rapid clip as his voice rose to a new octave, a note of disbelief in his voice.

“You had enough time in that one minute and 36 seconds to update Mr. Schiller about all the problems you were having with this harassing phone call and also update President Trump on the status of the Stormy Daniels situation?”

Cohen responded that was his belief, based on records he was able to review that he said have refreshed his memory.

“Yes, I believe I was telling the truth.”

“We are not asking for your belief. This jury does not want to hear what you think happened,” Blanche said, even louder, prompting an objection from prosecutor Susan Hoffinger.

Trump left the courtroom and gave a fist pump. He did not speak to reporters in the hallway outside but did wink at Associated Press reporter Michael R. Sisak.

Blanche has brought up another embarrassing episode from Cohen’s past — when he supplied his lawyer with nonexistent, AI-generated legal cases to back up an application last year to end his postprison court supervision early.

As he has said previously, Cohen said he was doing research with an AI tool, and it served up a few cases that sounded useful but turned out to be inventions. He has said he didn’t realize such tools could make things up. His attorney ended up citing the bogus legal rulings in papers that went to a judge.

“Those citations were inaccurate. Not the sum and substance, but essentially the citations themselves,” Cohen testified Thursday, leading to an exchange that illustrated the disbarred attorney’s careful, sometimes hair-splitting responses to cross-examination.

“When you say the citations were inaccurate, you mean the cases didn’t exist, right?” Blanche asked.

“Under that citation, no.”

“The three cases that you gave to your attorney were not real cases, correct?”

“That’s correct,” Cohen acknowledged.

Blanche’s questioning of Cohen is much more halted and disjointed than it was during his first round with him on Tuesday, when the defense lawyer started right off the bat with some fireworks, confronting Cohen about some of his profane comments in the past.

Blanche’s questioning on Thursday has been slow and piecemeal, teasing out often short and nondescriptive answers from Cohen to try to portray him as an unreliable witness generally, without having gotten into the nuts and bolts at the heart of the case.

The defense is now seeking to undermine Cohen’s repeated contention that he had no aspirations to work in the White House following Trump’s election victory.

“The truth is, Mr. Cohen, you really wanted to work in the White House, correct?” asked Blanche.

“No sir,” Cohen replied.

Blanche then referred to a series of text messages, first presented by prosecutors earlier in the week, showing private conversations he’d had in November 2016. In one message, Cohen texted his daughter that he still had a shot of becoming the president’s chief of staff. Another shows Cohen telling a friend that she could serve as his assistant once he gets the position.

Reiterating his previous testimony, Cohen said that while he may have wanted to be considered as chief of staff for “ego reasons,” he was seeking a role as personal attorney to the president.

“I don’t think you’re characterizing this correctly at all,” Cohen said. “My conversations with my daughter, I wanted a hybrid position where I would still have access to President Trump but I would not be a White House employee.”

As Blanche questioned Cohen, Trump began writing something on a pad of sticky notes and chatting briefly with lawyer Emil Bove. He then handed the pad to Bove, who began writing as well. Trump tapped Bove on the arm and said something more to him. Bove listened, continued writing and then set it aside on the table next to him.

Trump then sat back a bit and gazed toward Cohen as he testified. He tapped Bove again to say something and then returned to his posture.

In between questions, Blanche approached the table and appeared to pick up a sticky note next to Bove. Blanche took it back with him to the lectern where he was standing to question Cohen and appeared to tuck it into his papers.

Outside the courthouse during a morning break, conservative Republican lawmakers immediately lit into Cohen’s credibility, levying criticism against him and the judicial system itself.

Rep. Matt Gaetz called Cohen a liar “who committed these lies for his own benefit” and colorfully referenced the case against Trump as the “Mr. Potato Head of crimes, where they had to stick together a bunch of things that did not belong together.”

Gaetz and others, including House Freedom Caucus members Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Ralph Norman, also criticized the judge’s daughter — something a gag order specifically prohibits Trump from doing. Norman called the whole proceeding “a kangaroo court, plain and simple.”

Many of the far-right lawmakers are among Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress and were instrumental in throwing the House into chaos last year with the ouster of the GOP leader, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Throughout the lawmakers’ comments, people nearby could be heard shouting criticism and obscenities at them.

After earlier floating the idea of holding the trial next Wednesday, typically a day off for the case, Judge Merchan now says that won’t be the case.

Some jurors had indicated they can’t work that day, “so that’s off the table,” the judge says.

Before the break, Blanche grilled Cohen about his contradictory testimony at a congressional hearing and a subsequent deposition in 2019 about whether he’d seek or accept a pardon from Trump.

In his prepared remarks, Cohen told the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Feb. 27, 2019, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.”

Ten days later, at a congressional deposition, Cohen testified that he had directed his lawyer to explore the possibility of a pardon.

“I never asked for it,” Cohen testified Thursday. “I spoke to my attorney about it because we had seen President Trump on television talking about potentially prepardoning everybody and putting an end to this — what I considered a nightmare. So I reached out to my attorney, asking him whether this was legitimate.”

At the March 6, 2019, deposition, Cohen attempted to reconcile his disparate remarks by saying that he was “talking about the present tense” in his committee testimony and “wasn’t talking about the past tense when I was writing my statement.”

Asked to explain on Thursday, Cohen testified: “At that present moment it was true. I wanted this nightmare to end. It was being dangled. I saw it on television. So I asked them, is this something that’s really being talked about? Can you find out?”

Cohen’s lawyer at the time, Michael Monico, followed up with a letter to the Oversight Committee explaining the disparity and confirming that Cohen had asked his attorney to “discuss with another Trump attorney possible pardon options consistent with the president’s prior public declarations.”

On the witness stand Thursday, Cohen said, “The conversation was confusing to me at the time, so we corrected the record.”

“Sir, this wasn’t a confusing conversation,” Blanche responded. Referencing Cohen’s prepared statement to the Oversight Committee, the lawyer said: “This was a prewritten statement by you that you then read into the record when the testimony started.”

Trump came back to the courtroom before reporters and members of the public could be cleared from the hallway, prompting court security officers to quickly force them into bathrooms.

Some of the lawmakers who accompanied Trump to court Thursday are in the front two rows, directly behind the former president, while others are relegated to the back of the gallery because there wasn’t enough room in the rows reserved for the Trump entourage.

Those in the front row appeared to be looking at their phones for large chunks of the morning, rather than up at the proceedings.

Earlier in the week, the former president’s squad of supporters mostly donned Trump’s favored look of a navy suit and red tie, a striking visual display of solidarity.

Trump himself wore the look Thursday, as did Reps. Matt Gaetz, Eli Crane and Andy Ogles. But others showed more color: Rep. Andy Biggs opted for a light gray suit while Rep. Michael Waltz chose a bright turquoise tie.

At one point, when Blanche was discussing one of Cohen’s past appearances before Congress, the defense lawyer drew a chuckle from some of the House members when he observed, “When congressmen ask you questions they tend to go on and on.”

Biggs flashed a knowing grin.

Blanche pushed Cohen, repeatedly and emphatically, on his admission that he had lied when pleading guilty to some federal charges, including tax fraud, before Judge William Pauley.

Cohen does not dispute the bulk of the defense’s characterizations, though he has couched some of his answers in legalistic terms. For his part, Blanche appears intent on connecting the words “lie” and “lying” to Cohen as often as possible.

In one representative exchange, Blanche asked Cohen if he agreed “that when you plead guilty to a crime and you’re lying, that’s not accepting responsibility for your conduct?”

After Cohen expressed ambivalence, Blanche continued, “You lied, you lied to the judge when you plead guilty,” adding: “Do you think Judge Pauley would have liked to know that you lied to him?”

Cohen initially said he wasn’t sure, before conceding the point. “I am certain he would have,” he said.

In a lightning round of questions and answers, Blanche pointed out that Cohen has, over time, blamed various other people for his problems, including his accountant, a bank, federal prosecutors and a federal judge.

And, Blanche asked, “You blamed President Trump?”

“Yes, sir,” Cohen replied.

Blanche cut off Cohen as he attempted to explain why he pleaded guilty to certain offenses he didn’t think should’ve been charged.

“I took the global plea that was provided to me,” Cohen said.

“Sir, please don’t make a speech,” Blanche interjected.

Judge Merchan then instructed Cohen to answer Blanche’s questions and avoid tangential answers.

Cohen explained his role in New York City’s taxi medallion system, the unusual and archaic economic model that underpins the city’s for-hire vehicle industry.

Cohen owned 32 medallions — of an estimated 13,000 citywide — which he leased out to Evgeny Freidman, a figure known locally as New York’s “Taxi King.”

“It would be no different than if you were leasing an apartment from somebody,” Cohen said of his relationship with Freidman. “He would lease my medallion or medallions in agreement with the contract and he would pay me a sum every month whether he made money or not.”

Blanche, like many before him, appeared confused by the system, asking Cohen to again explain how it works.

Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges that included hiding more than $1.3 million in income that he received from Freidman. Freidman was later sentenced to probation for tax fraud.

Blanche picked at Cohen’s previous insistence that he felt federal prosecutors had squeezed him into pleading guilty in 2018.

When Cohen entered his guilty plea, Blanche noted, he’d told the judge no one had induced or threatened him to plead guilty. Eventually, the defense lawyer compelled Cohen to admit that he’d lied when he said that.

Cohen has said that he was told that if he didn’t accept the plea, he and his wife would be indicted. “I elected to protect my family,” he testified.

Asked again if he felt like he’d been induced to plead guilty, Cohen said: “I never denied the underlying facts. I just did not believe I should have been criminally charged for either of those two — or six — offenses.”

So, Blanche asked, did he lie when he said during his guilty plea that no one pressured him to plead guilty?

“That was not true,” Cohen said.

Federal prosecutors told a judge in a court filing last year that Cohen’s claims to have been coerced into pleading guilty were false. “Cohen’s recent statements are belied by his under-oath statements when he pled guilty, which included that he was guilty of tax evasion and false statements to banks, and that he had not been threatened or forced to plead guilty.” In another filing in 2019, they called the story that they threatened to prosecute Cohen’s wife “patently false.”

Blanche is digging into why Cohen admitted lying to Congress. While Cohen previously told a federal judge he was accepting responsibility for the falsehoods, Blanche notes that Cohen has also repeatedly said that he lied out of loyalty to Trump.

Cohen testifies that his statement to Congress — crafted with lawyers who were working together with Trump and his attorneys — was styled “in order to stay on message, a message that we all knew Mr. Trump wanted.”

Cohen went on to testify that he does accept responsibility for what he did.

Pivoting from Cohen’s podcasts to his criminal history, Blanche grilled him about his 2018 guilty plea to federal charges, including for lying to Congress about a Trump Tower Moscow project.

As he did when pleading guilty, Cohen conceded on the witness stand that he lied to two congressional committees about his contacts with Russian officials and lied when he said he never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the project and never discussed with Trump plans to travel to Moscow to support the project.

“Just related to that issue, you lied under oath, correct?” Blanche asked.

“Yes sir,” Cohen said.

Trump’s attorneys gave jurors a picture of Cohen’s on-air persona, playing two clips of his podcasts in which he discussed Trump and the potential charges in this case.

In the recordings played in the courtroom, Cohen’s voice was louder, high-pitched and much more animated than the reserved and concise way he’s been answering questions. In one clip from an episode Blanche said was from October 2020, Cohen could be heard using an expletive and saying he truly hopes “that this man ends up in prison.”

“It won’t bring back the year that I lost or the damage done to my family. But revenge is a dish best served cold,” Cohen says in the clip. He adds: “You better believe that I want this man to go down.”

Blanche asked Cohen if he continued to call Trump various names on his podcasts and when he did interviews on CNN, and Cohen said he did.

“And that has continued even during this trial?” Blanche asked.

“Correct,” Cohen said.

Objecting repeatedly, prosecutor Susan Hoffinger disrupted Blanche’s efforts to get text message exchanges between Cohen and investigator Jeremy Rosenberg shown to jurors or read into the record. Hoffinger noted that the messages were heavily redacted, which Cohen then said deprived them of important context.

The messages were from around the time of Trump’s indictment on March 30. Blanche suggested that Rosenberg had confirmed for Cohen that the former president had been indicted, but Cohen said that news was already being reported by the news media. Cohen said he found out from The New York Times.

While the indictment remained under seal until Trump’s April 4 arraignment, the news of the indictment was widely reported. Some reporters even witnessed the moment officials brought the paperwork into the courthouse clerk’s office.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz echoed comments Trump once made to the extremist Proud Boys, in a social media post with a photo of him and other Republicans behind Trump at the court.

“Standing back, and standing by, Mr. President,” he wrote.

The extremist group, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, used that phrase to support Trump after he told the group to “stand back and stand by” after refusing to criticize the group in a 2020 debate against Joe Biden.

Clarification: A previous version of this post noted Gaetz evoked extremist language. It’s unclear whether Gaetz’s words was referencing Trump’s message to the Proud Boys or to the language of the extremist group itself.

Blanche asked Cohen about TV interviews he did when news of Trump’s indictment emerged last year, including a CNN appearance in which he compared himself and Trump to the Biblical David and Goliath.

Cohen confirmed that, in text messages not shown to jurors, an investigator with the prosecutors’ office complimented him on at least one of the interviews, though prosecutors also asked Cohen to refrain from talking to the news media about the case.

Court proceedings have been off to a slow start this morning, with attorneys halting proceedings to conduct several sidebar conversations with the judge out of earshot of reporters, including an extended discussion to start the day.

The stop-and-start continued as Blanche began questioning Cohen and prosecutors objected to the phrasing of several questions, prompting him to start and rephrase. As Blanche continued his questioning, Cohen twice asked Blanche to then rephrase his questions about when he learned that Trump was being indicted, saying he didn’t understand the question. Blanche kept trying and rephrased.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche resumed his cross-examination by asking Cohen about text messages he exchanged with an investigator for the Manhattan district attorney’s office who collected his cell phones as part of the hush money probe.

Blanche started showing Cohen copies of the text messages when a prosecutor interrupted and asked to speak with the judge and defense team at the bench. They quickly conferred to ensure the messages would be shown specifically to Cohen, not the jurors. Questioning subsequently resumed.

After the jurors entered the room and took their seats, Judge Merchan apologized to them for the delay. The judge told them that because of scheduling — the trial will not be held on Memorial Day nor this upcoming Friday — it may be necessary to hold court next Wednesday. He asks them to raise any conflicts with the court officers at the next break.

Cohen entered the courtroom carrying a bottle of water and his eyeglass case in his left hand. He strode confidently and briskly to the witness stand, not looking in Trump’s direction. Trump also did not look toward Cohen, instead gazing straight ahead.

The lawyers have returned to their respective tables.