Trump’s civil trial: the ex-president faces testimony from a believer who became his sworn enemy

Michael Cohen has long been Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and called himself the billionaire’s “pit bull.” Except that in 2018, Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in a case involving payments to protect the reputation of the former US President. And since then, the lawyer has a strong tooth, if not to say that he retains a persistent hatred of his former boss.

Donald Trump, along with his two children, Eric and Donald Jr., and two Trump Organization executives, are accused of overvaluing his New York City golf courses, apartment buildings and skyscrapers by several billion dollars in the 2010s. to get better loans from banks. He is also expected to attend a hearing this Tuesday that will pit the two men head-to-head in what promises to be a sensation.

In another post, he added a drawing of himself behind the poll favorite in the Republican primary, with prison bars adorned and a phrase directed at his former boss: “We’ll put you back in a cell.”

A self-described former lawyer is one of the prosecution’s star witnesses in one of Donald Trump’s four future criminal trials in New York in March 2024 over payments intended to cover up damaging matters during the presidential election. 2016.

Sulfur Reputation

He himself paid porn star and actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about her alleged relationship with Donald Trump. Michael Cohen has already been convicted in the case and claims he acted on orders from his former boss. He is also at the origins of the current civil process. During a caustic US Congressional hearing in February 2019, he said Donald Trump was “inflating his assets when it serves his interests.”

New York State Attorney General Letitia James launched an investigation and, after three years of investigation, filed a lawsuit seeking, among other things, $250 million in financial compensation. During the investigation, Michael Cohen testified about his role, admitting that he, along with former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, revised upward the value of some properties at the request of Donald Trump.

But the defense intends to rely on the unreliability of this disreputable witness, convicted by the courts, in particular, of lying to the US Congress in the Russia investigation. For his part, Donald Trump recently dropped a civil lawsuit he brought against Michael Cohen, seeking $500 million in damages.

If he can’t be sentenced to prison, Donald Trump will still play a major role in a civil trial in New York that threatens to unravel his real estate empire. The former president attended the debate for several days and continued to viciously attack Letitia James, a Democratic elected official and African American, whom he calls “racist” and “corrupt,” and her judge Arthur Engoron, whom he called a “thug.”

On Friday, a judge fined him $5,000 for a post that insulted his clerk and threatened the former president with jail time if he did it again.