Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen goes back on the stand Thursday braced for another bruising day of cross-examination that is shaping up as the most crucial chapter in the first criminal trial of a former president.
Cohen is the last prosecution witness, and his testimony is a sign that the trial – arising from a hush money payment Trump allegedly made to an adult film star and efforts to cover it up – is moving swiftly toward a climax that could rock the last five months of the election.
Trump’s self-described former “thug” endured a withering grilling Tuesday, as Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche sought to puncture his credibility, portraying him as a liar obsessed with the ex-president who was raking in a fortune with his quest to bring him down.
CNN’s Paula Reid reported that Blanche – whose cross-examination some outside observers said was erratic and over personalized on Tuesday – will strike directly at charges that Trump ordered the payment to cover up an alleged affair to mislead voters in an early instance of election interference in 2016. (Trump denies the affair and has pleaded not guilty in the case). Blanche is also expected to challenge Cohen’s memory of conversations with Trump. And he will seek to sow doubt within jurors’ minds that a decision of such magnitude should be made on the word of Cohen alone, Reid reported.
Two significant strategic questions remain unanswered. The first centers on whether the presumptive GOP nominee will testify — after initially signaling he would like to despite the view of many legal experts that he’d be courting disaster on the stand. It’s also unclear how many witnesses the defense will call, or whether Trump’s attorneys will make a bold argument that the state of New York has failed to meet the bar of proving Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and rest their case.
However things unfold, it’s obvious that following summations from both sides, the jury will retire within days to consider a verdict that will effectively decide whether, for the first time in history, a major political party will nominate a convicted felon for president.
A suddenly compressed political calendar:
Every criminal trial is a grave process since a defendant’s reputation and even liberty is on the line. But this case is especially momentous, given the identity of the accused — a former president who has about a 50-50 chance to win back the White House, according to national polls.
The trial is one of several critical events weighing on the destiny of the presidential race in a suddenly compressed political calendar that means voters will be wrestling with their critical choice long before Election Day in November.
For instance, long-held doubts that there’d be any presidential debates were dispelled Wednesday morning as President Joe Biden threw down the gauntlet in a video, telling Trump, “Make my day, pal,” while his campaign suggested debates in late June and early September. Biden later said he’d accepted a CNN debate on June 27. Trump quickly accepted. Later that morning, both men said they’d accepted an invitation from ABC for a second debate on September 10.
The sudden breakthrough means that debates will take place far earlier than usual in the campaign — even before either party has officially anointed their nominee at conventions in July for the GOP and in August for the Democrats. There’s some logic to the shift because voting starts in some states as early as September. But the development also means that the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which has hosted debates since 1988 and has angered both parties in recent years, now seems to be on borrowed time and is at risk of becoming the latest tradition to be swept away in the turbulent Trump era.
The 81-year-old Biden’s decision to take Trump on is a risk since any flubs attributable to his age could play into the ex-president’s claim that he’s not fit to serve a second term. Some commentators have also argued that Biden should not offer the implied legitimacy of the debate stage to a former president who has been indicted over an attempt to destroy democracy after the 2020 election.
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