Correction, in the civil fraud case. Too many trials.
No, not that.
Here’s one reference. There were a couple more but I can’t find them now.
My bold.
Like trigger point is some pivotal moment/event that the defense hopes to identify.
Something that gets him upset, loses his cool on the stand
Oh, that one. Yet a different case. Pauley was the judge before whom Cohen pled guilty for perjury.
But same thing - they’re hoping to trigger Cohen to lose his composure completely.
they are looking for a soft spot to unsettle him. the the unsettling may have him lose his head and spew random things.
so far there have been 24 objections, 14 have been sustained.
per cnn:
Prosecutors are asking Judge Juan Merchan to clarify the record over the questions about the unsealing of the Trump indictment, arguing that attorney Todd Blanche’s questions had suggested there was an impropriety with the district attorney’s office over an apparent leaking of the indictment.
Merchan says he’s going to give Blanche the chance to clean up the potential for misunderstanding by the jury before deciding whether he needs to give a curative instruction.
the jury is back. merchan said the defence gave the jury mistaken impression about cohen indictment.
rc: oh dear, that doesn’t sound good for the defence.
cnn update:
Judge Juan Merchan just said a juror has told the court they have an appointment next Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET.
Merchan is going to inquire further with that juror and said he’d take one attorney from each side with him during the break.
cross has restarted, with questions about nyt/tax fraud indictment that was mentioned above by the judge.
cnn update:
Trump attorney Todd Blanche begins by asking Michael Cohen whether he has any evidence that “anyone at the DA improperly leaked or even leaked at all” the indictment before it was unsealed.
“No sir,” Cohen says.
Blanche continues asking about the indictment and the judge asks the lawyers to briefly approach. He’s back at the podium.
Blanche reminds Cohen that he went on TV that day.
“When you did those interviews, the indictment was unsealed by the court, correct?” Blanche asks.
“I had read through the New York Times article,” Cohen says.
“By the time you went on CNN, it was public, correct?” Blanche asks.
“Yes,” Cohen says.
rc: now we are back to the 14 year harasser.
LOL nice lawyering there. They finally hit on a valid angle of attack then immediately screw it up by ensuring the thing the jurors will remember from today is this fuckery by the defense.
My $0.02 on the afternoons shenanigans anyway…
The only “job” these people has is to be re-elected, and if they have to huff Trump’s farts to accomplish this, then that’s exactly what they are going to do.
cnn update:
The jury is now seeing the text exchange Michael Cohen had with a 14-year-old who he says was harassing him by phone in 2016.
Cohen testified earlier that the teen had failed to block his number at one point, giving Cohen the ability to see who was calling him repeatedly.
The texts shown in court show Cohen telling the recipient that the number has been sent to the US Secret Service. The teen apologizes and says it wasn’t them making the calls, and that their friend had told them to call.
“This number has just been sent to secret service for your ongoing and continuous harassing calls over the past 3 days,” Cohen writes. “If you are a minor, I suggest you notify your parent or guardian.”
“I DIDN’T DO IT,” the other person texts back, adding “Im 14” and “Please don’t.”
Cohen wrote back for the teen’s parent or guardian to contact him “before the secret service reaches out to them.”
Why these messages are relevant: The defense has tried to show that Cohen’s phone call to Donald Trump’s bodyguard around this time was about helping Cohen deal with the harassment — not the Stormy Daniels payment, as Cohen has testified.
Cohen has said he spoke about both things with the bodyguard, Keith Schiller.
These messages were not displayed publicly before lunch because they needed to be redacted. Trump attorney Todd Blanche circled back to them now that they were redacted and accepted into evidence.
Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche says he is now going to go back chronologically over Michael Cohen’s testimony.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche turns his questioning to a website Michael Cohen created in 2011, shouldtrumprun.com
Cohen confirmed the website was a “stunt” but confirmed that he personally worked with The National Enquirer on a story after they conducted a poll that showed readers responded positively to the idea of Trump running for president.
Cohen also confirmed The National Enquirer then wrote a positive story about Cohen for starting shouldtrumprun.com.
Todd Blanche asked whether Michael Cohen “worked very hard” to get positive stories into the press about Donald Trump and the things he was doing.
“Yes,” Cohen says.
Blanche then asks if Cohen also worked very hard to make sure there were positive stories about him at times.
“Yes sir,” Cohen replies.
Blanche asks Cohen about how he worked with journalists both for positive stories and for negative stories.
Todd Blanche asks Michael Cohen about the frustration from the Trump campaign in 2016 when he would go off message.
Cohen says he was not part of the campaign, he was a “surrogate.”
rc: blanche appears to be building a “rogue” case for cohen. that if cohen would go “rogue” with the press, he would go “rogue” with a finance issue.
The two times I was on a jury that heard significant testimony* we didn’t even do that. We’d meet up in the hallway in the morning, scatter for lunch and be back in the hallway shortly before lunch was scheduled to be done. Not much time for talking.
*One was a civil trial what reached a verdict, the other was a criminal trial that the judge had a directed verdict of not guilty after the prosecution presented its case.
As so often happens, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. Nobody cares that Trump boned Daniels except Melania, it’s the $130,000 paid to keep her mouth shut during the campaign. The victims are the voters denied full knowledge of what a candidate had done.
If Clinton had paid $130,000 to catch and quash stories about her email server she’d be in the same boat.
I was picturing Uncle Jack.
from cnn update:
Trump attorney Todd Blanche is asking Michael Cohen about his first conversations with Donald Trump after becoming aware of a post about Stormy Daniels on the gossip site thedirty.com.
“Fair to say that the first time you heard about that and the story by Ms. Daniels, when you talked to President Trump about it, he said he was worried about what his family would think, correct?” Blanche asks.
“Yes, as well as, of course, for the brand,” Cohen says.
Blanche asks Cohen if he told law enforcement in February 2021, “The first thing that President Trump said to you was that his family wouldn’t like that very much?”
Cohen says, “That’s true.”
Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche is asking Michael Cohen about his relationship with New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman.
He confirms he feels he’s had a strong relationship with her and that they’ve known each other for 20 years.
Haberman is in the courtroom.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked Michael Cohen whether he recorded phone conversations with reporters.
Cohen said he wouldn’t characterize it as “a lot.”
Blanche asked him how many.
Cohen said about 40 phone conversations.
Trump turned and exchanged a smile with his attorney Susan Necheles at this response.
Cohen said he stopped recording calls with reporters after the 2016 presidential election.
Blanche asked him to clarify that he didn’t record calls with reporters in 2017 and 2018.
Cohen said, “I would have to check”
“We’ll check together in a minute,” Blanche said.
Donald Trump is leaning forward to read the texts between New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and Michael Cohen that are being shown on the screen.
Trump is paying attention to this line of questioning. He’s almost smirking.
Defense attorney Todd Blanche asked Michael Cohen, “by the way did you tell people you were recording them?”
“No sir,” Cohen replied.
Blanche followed up and asked if people asked Cohen if he was recording them and he told them he wasn’t.
“I don’t remember that specifically. It’s not illegal in New York,” Cohen said.
Trump has his body shifted toward the witness stand as he’s listening.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche asks Michael Cohen whether there are 95 “secret recordings” on his cell phone, which Cohen confirms.
rc: blanche is landing a few punches today. surreptitiously is being used quite a bit in this line of questioning.
from msnbc:
blanche: you surreptitiously recorded your client so you could play a privileged recording…?
cohen: that’s correct. cites crime fraud exception
rc: reminder that new york is a one person state for recordings, your state or commonwealth may differ.
This is getting weird now. 14 year olds, Secret Service…
To paraphrase Dick Shawn, “This is like a Convention!”
don’t forget the ballons!
from cnn update:
Michael Cohen is asked about the ethics of recording a conversation with Donald Trump.
After referencing the September 2016 recording that the jury heard, attorney Todd Blanche asks, “You understand that it is not ethical for a lawyer to record a conversation with their client.”
Cohen agrees and then adds that recording a client conversation is permitted under the crime-fraud exception.
“Just so I understand, you surreptitiously recorded your client so you could play a privileged recorded communication between you and your client with a third party?” Blanche asks.
“That’s correct,” Cohen said.
Now defense attorney Todd Blanche turns to American Media Inc.'s payment to former Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin to suppress his false claim that Trump had an alleged love child with a maid.
Blanche asked, “Money was paid to keep the story from getting out but the story was false, correct?”
“I believe so, yes,” Cohen says
"Do you have any doubt in your mind it’s false? Blanche asks.
“No sir,” Cohen says.
Beetleljuice! Beetleljuice! Beetleljuice!
from cnn update:
Trump attorney Todd Blanche is once again challenging Cohen about his specific memory of phone calls — a key issue regarding his recollection of discussing the Stormy Daniels story with Donald Trump.
Blanche asks how many calls Cohen was getting each day in 2016.
Cohen says 100, and Blanche says, for the purpose of a hypothetical, he’d go with 50 per day.
“So we’re talking about, conservatively, 14,000 calls a year in 2016 and 2017?” Blanche asks. Cohen confirms.
So, Blanche continues, when Cohen testified on Monday and Tuesday about specific conversations he had with people including former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, former editor Dylan Howard and President Trump, “You were not testifying from a specific recollection of that phone call, were you?”
Cohen insists that he was, “because these phone calls are things that I have been talking about for the last six years.” They were “extremely important and all-consuming,” so while he may not recall certain specific details, he remembers the overall conversation, Cohen continues.
Why this matters: Trump’s defense has repeatedly challenged Cohen’s memory of discussing the Stormy Daniels deal with the former president in an October 2016 phone call, which is a key piece of testimony for the prosecution.
The defense is highlighting the sheer number of calls Cohen was fielding at the time, and have tried to point out inconsistencies in his memory of other calls. They’ve also grilled Cohen about whether he’s only recalling things based on materials shown to him by prosecutors.
Cohen says he has used the documents to “jog his memory,” but not relied on them wholesale.
cnn colour commentary:
Trump is still turned in Michael Cohen’s direction and is watching the testimony closely.
It’s rare he’s had this much sustained attention on a witness, including through the first two days of Cohen’s testimony.
Michael Cohen is speaking in an even, slow tone, but is a bit halting at times as if he’s choosing his words carefully.
They’re taking a break in the courtroom.
The judge has asked an attorney for both sides to join him in the robing room.
He wants them present to talk to a juror who said they have an appointment next Thursday afternoon, which could affect proceedings.
They seem to take an awful lot of breaks…
1 morning, lunch, 1 afternoon. bathroom happens…unless…
Anything from reporters jury watching? I realize I’m not in the box, but I think I’d be alternately angry and bored if I’ve had to spend most of two days listening to this wide ranging cross that has nothing to do with the documents and charges and is all about attacking the witness.
and we are back. blanche is asking about the 130k payment.
I’m picturing this guy defending a restaurant owner in a food-poisoning case quizzing the plaintiff about how many meals they’ve eaten in their lifetime in order to cast doubt on their account of the specific incident in question.