Here are all the bad things witnesses said about Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who is expected to testify on Monday

CNN
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Nobody has anything good to say about Michael Cohen.

Donald Trump’s former fixer and lawyer is set to take the stand Monday as the star witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s case against the former president, prepared to give testimony connecting Cohen’s hush-hush $130,000 payment to Trump to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

Over three weeks of testimony, jurors have already heard a lot about Cohen from countless witnesses, who have painted an unflattering portrait of an aggressive, impulsive and unpleasant lawyer.

David Pecker, the former head of American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, said Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.” Former Trump adviser Hope Hicks said Cohen liked to call himself a “fixer” — a role she said was possible only because “he broke it first.” And Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, said he only worked with Cohen because he was an “idiot” who Daniels’ then-manager Gina Rodriguez — along with everyone else — didn’t want to deal with.

“Gina called me to say that: ‘Some idiot called me and was very, very aggressive and threatened to sue me. And I, um, would like you, Keith, to call this idiot back,’” Davidson testified in the third week of the trial.

“I hate to ask it this way, but who was that idiot?” asked Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass.

“It was Michael Cohen,” Davidson replied.

Now Cohen is the witness prosecutors rely on to give testimony that could help them prove Trump falsified business records when he allegedly reimbursed Cohen for $130,000 to Daniels to stop her from going public with a previous meeting before the election. 2016. Trump pleaded not guilty and denied the case.

Cohen is the only witness who will testify about Trump’s alleged involvement in both the decision to pay Daniels and the plan to reimburse Cohen for the money advance. Cohen will likely serve as narrator for the prosecution and will serve on the jury from the initial meeting in which Pecker, Cohen and Trump allegedly agreed to buy negative stories that could harm Trump’s presidential run to the payment made to Daniels just days before Election Day to an Oval Office meeting in February 2017, just weeks after Trump took office.

Prosecutors allege that during the February meeting, Trump and Cohen agreed how Cohen would be reimbursed. That deal, prosecutors say, included a false story that Cohen was working under a retainer agreement. The paperwork, from invoices and accounting entries to checks signed by Trump, make up the 34 criminal charges in the case.

Prosecutors waited to call Cohen until late in the case, after presenting phone records, emails, text messages and bank records that they hope will bolster his credibility with the jury. They didn’t try to hide from the jury that he and other witnesses have a lot of problems.

“We will be very frank about the fact that several of the witnesses in this case have what you did and may consider some baggage,” Steinglass told a panel of potential jurors during jury selection.

The testimony will pit Trump against Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for the former president. They last saw each other when Cohen testified at Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York last fall. Cohen’s testimony was brief, but the confrontation was tense.

This week the stakes are higher, with a potential criminal conviction and possible prison sentence on the line for Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

This ends a long journey for Cohen, who is still smarting from serving three years in prison and home confinement after pleading guilty to federal campaign finance charges related to the payment, among other crimes.

Cohen met with prosecutors more than a dozen times and testified before the grand jury in the silence trial. He has immunity from state charges for his role in the alleged conspiracy.

He will also face a fierce cross-examination from Trump lawyer Todd Blanche. The former president’s lawyers are expected to insist on Cohen’s credibility, including probing his background, and suggest to the jury that Trump had no idea what deal Cohen made or how it was recorded on his company’s books.

“Even before he took the stand, Cohen was attacked and undermined by the prosecution’s own witnesses. For one, he may be damaged before testifying. But he could also benefit from low expectations if the jury finds him to be better than advertised,” said Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst and former state and federal prosecutor.

After prison sentence, Cohen released books and podcast attacking Trump

The charges brought against Trump date back to events that occurred during the 2016 election. But in many ways, the case against Trump stems from his former fixer’s decision to plead guilty in 2018 in federal court to two counts of making illegal campaign contributions in violation of federal campaign finance laws. He directly implicated Trump in the scheme and admitted that he orchestrated Daniels’ payment on Trump’s behalf.

Cohen also pleaded guilty to tax charges and lying to Congress about Trump’s business venture to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, which he served behind bars and under house arrest.

Cohen’s plea prompted the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to launch the investigation into the secret payments that led to Trump’s indictment last year.

Cohen dedicated himself to antagonizing Trump. He has published two books, “Disloyal” in 2020 and “Revenge” in 2022, and launched a podcast, “Mea Culpa” — all of which have spent a lot of time criticizing Trump and applauding his prosecution.

On social media, Cohen continued to attack Trump in the weeks leading up to the trial, and even after it began. The social media jabs reached the point where Judge Juan Merchan told prosecutors on Friday to give Cohen a message “from the court” that he should stop talking about the case. (Merchan said he cannot legally gag a witness.)

Trump has responded many times in interviews and on social media, including in several instances that he violated the judge’s gag order to the former president, preventing witnesses from discussing the case.

Starting with the case’s first witness, Pecker, jurors heard criticism from witness after witness of Cohen before his expected testimony.

Pecker, who met with Cohen and Trump at a high-profile Trump Tower meeting in 2015, was asked by Trump lawyer Emil Bove whether Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.”

“Yes,” Pecker said.

Bove then asked Pecker if he couldn’t trust everything Cohen said. The judge sustained an objection to the issue, telling Trump’s lawyer, in a parallel discussion, that this was not the right place to “argue” Cohen’s credibility.

More witnesses would keep doing this anyway.

Cohen’s former banker, Gary Farro, then testified that he specifically received Cohen’s account because he could be firm with individuals who “might be a little challenging.” Farro said it was fair to call Cohen an “aggressive guy.”

“Anything he needed, he would call me, and it was always urgent,” said the banker.

Probably the most negative assessment of Cohen came from Davidson, who negotiated the hush agreement with Cohen on Daniels’ behalf in 2016. Davidson described a 2011 conversation about a blog post about Daniels and Trump on thedirty.com, where Cohen sparked a “a barrage of insults, insinuations and allegations”.

“I don’t think he was accusing us of anything. He was just screaming,” Davidson said.

Daniels’ former lawyer explained how he ended up involved in the nondisclosure agreement when Daniels’ manager asked him to help finalize the agreement for a nondisclosure agreement.

Asked why he got involved, Davidson said: “The moral of the story was: Nobody wanted to talk to Cohen.”

Davidson recalled, under questioning from Steinglass, that after Trump was elected in 2016, he received a call in December from a “very discouraged and sad” Cohen.

“He said something like, ‘Jesus Christ. Can you believe I’m not going to Washington? After everything I did for that damn guy. I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington. I saved that guy so many times you don’t even know.

Others who didn’t interact with both Cohen and Davidson didn’t have much better things to say. Jeff McConney, former controller of the Trump Organization, was asked what Cohen’s position was at the company.

“He said he was a lawyer,” McConney responded.

“He worked in the legal department?” asked prosecutor Matthew Colangelo.

“I guess so,” McConney said scornfully.

And Hicks, who worked at the Trump Organization before becoming a key aide in the 2016 campaign, described to jurors how Cohen — Trump’s fixer — was likely to increase his influence in the campaign.

“There were times when Mr. Cohen did things that you felt were not helpful to what you were trying to accomplish, right?” Bove asked Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary.

“Yes,” replied Hicks. “I used to say he liked to call himself ‘Fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix it’, and it was only because it broke first that he was able to fix it.