Donald Trump’s lawyer on Thursday attacked the core charge against the former president as he sought to undercut Michael Cohen, the former attorney whose $130,000 hush-money payment to the adult film starThe defense, led by the Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, had Cohen admit that technically Daniels entered into a legal contract to sell the rights of her story about a sexual encounter with Trump, apparently in an attempt to justify labelling the repayments as legal expenses.
But relying on texts Cohen sent to Schiller complaining about prank calls from a 14-year-old, Blanche raised his voice to tell Cohen he must have phoned Schiller primarily about the prank calls and that he could not have had enough time in a one-minute 30-second call to tell Trump about the Daniels deal.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of felony falsification of business records. Prosecutors must prove Trump authorized what he knew to be hush-money repayments to be falsely characterized as “legal expenses” in the Trump Organization’s records, with an intent to commit a second, election crime.
In January 2017, Cohen previously recounted, he discussed with Trump and the former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about being repaid for the $130,000, an overdue bonus, and other expenses he incurred doing work that benefited the Trump 2016 campaign. The defense later dug into Cohen’s previous lies under oath and how he seemingly lied about details big and small. When Cohen testified to Congress in 2017 about a Trump real estate deal in Moscow, Blanche elicited, Cohen lied about how many times he spoke to Trump about the deal.
In an apparent effort to undercut Cohen’s testimony on direct examination that Trump was responsible and involved in the effort to cover up the hush money to Daniels, Blanche elicited from Cohen that he had a track record of trying to shift blame for his own actions on to other people.
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)
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