Trump’s Lawyer and Cohen Match Wits in Crucial Cross-Examination

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s lawyers on Thursday took their best shot at Michael Cohen, the star witness in the former president’s criminal trial in Manhattan, grilling Cohen about a medley of misrepresentations, manipulations and outright lies.

Seeking to destroy Cohen’s credibility, a defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, portrayed him as an unrepentant criminal and a serial deceiver who took the stand only to exact revenge on Trump.

He argued that Cohen, Trump’s loyal lawyer and fixer until a falling-out years ago, had changed his story about matters big and small: whether he had wanted a White House job, whether he had sought a presidential pardon and whether he had lied during the trial about a phone call he said he had with Trump.

Cohen testified that he had contacted Trump in October 2016, during the presidential campaign’s waning days, to update him about a hush-money deal that Cohen was negotiating with a porn actor on his boss’s behalf. Blanche, raising his index finger as his voice hit a higher register, offered an alternative theory about the conversation, arguing that Cohen was actually calling to complain about a teenage prankster who had targeted him.

“You were actually talking,” Blanche said, “about harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old,” rather than the hush money.

“That was a lie,” Blanche then shouted, evoking the climax of a courtroom drama. “You can admit.”

“No sir, I can’t,” Cohen responded, sticking to his story, as he did through much of the day while the defense sought to corner him. “I believe I was telling the truth.”

Now on his third day of testimony in the first criminal trial of an American president, Cohen showed signs of fragility as the defense chipped at his credibility without delivering a fatal blow to the prosecution’s case. Cohen, a self-described former “thug” for Trump who oscillates between defiance and charm, bent on the stand, but did not break.

Cohen’s conduct — and truthfulness — is at the case’s heart. He made the $130,000 payment to the porn actor, Stormy Daniels, to suppress her account of a sexual liaison with Trump, who later reimbursed Cohen from the White House. Prosecutors accused Trump, who denies the sex and any wrongdoing, of falsifying related records so he could cover up the scandal for good.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .