Donald Trump’s lawyers attack Michael Cohen’s credibility at hush money trial
- The former fixer faced aggressive questioning as the ex-US president’s defence team sought to undermine testimony by the prosecution’s star witness
- Cohen’s own insult’s about his ex-boss – ‘Dictator douchebag’, ‘Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain’ – were used to paint him as a disgruntled turncoat
Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen faced aggressive questioning on Tuesday from the Republican presidential candidate’s defence lawyers, who sought to undermine Cohen’s testimony that Trump was intricately involved in a scheme to buy a porn star’s silence.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche used Cohen’s own words to paint a picture of a turncoat who went from revering the former president to reviling him, even calling Trump a “dictator douchebag,” a “boorish cartoon misogynist” and a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain”.
Cohen, who spent more than a decade working as Trump’s fixer, had already answered prosecutors’ questions for about nine hours in the witness box on Monday and Tuesday.
He testified that Trump ordered him to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 to stay quiet about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter, lest it torpedo his presidential campaign, and then approved a plan to reimburse Cohen through a series of bogus invoices.
But Cohen’s checkered history – he served time in federal prison for various crimes, including the hush money payment, and has admittedly lied under oath – offered Trump’s lawyers an obvious target, once they were free to question Cohen themselves.
