‘That was a lie and he got caught red-handed,’ his lawyer says.
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Tuesday said a key witness in his New York criminal trial lied to the jury, while saying that his client is innocent and broke no laws.
The remarks were made during closing arguments in the case in which the former president is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Defense attorney Todd Blanche told the jury that the prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, a former Trump associate and lawyer, lied to the court about several matters.
At one point, he said that Mr. Cohen lied about speaking to President Trump about an Oct. 24, 2016, phone call regarding an arrangement to pay off an adult film performer, Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence about an alleged affair that the former president has denied.
“It was a lie,” Mr. Blanche said. “That was a lie and he got caught red-handed.”
He then called Mr. Cohen “literally like an MVP of liars,“ adding: “He lied to Congress. He lied to prosecutors. He lied to his family and business associates.”
“He lied to you repeatedly. He lied many, many times before you even met him. His financial and personal well-being depends on this case. He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true,” the attorney told jurors before he ended his closing arguments.
A key part of prosecutors’ claims is that Mr. Cohen wasn’t being paid for legal work in 2017, but rather was being reimbursed in a veiled way for the Daniels payment. But Mr. Blanche pointed to emails and testimony showing that Mr. Cohen did indeed work on some legal matters for President Trump that year.
While Cohen characterized that work as “very minimal,” Mr. Blanche said it wasn’t the case. “Cohen lied to you. Cohen lied to you,” he said.
Mr. Blanche added that Mr. Cohen went on television to discuss his role as the former president’s personal lawyer and put the title in the signature of every email that he sent. “This was not a secret. Michael Cohen was President Trump’s personal attorney. Period,” he said.
