Tag: donald trump

Key takeaways from day 18 of Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial | Donald Trump News

In New York, the fifth week of Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial has drawn to a close, as disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen testified for a third day about his interactions with the former United States president.

But Trump’s defence team again took the opportunity to try to poke holes in Cohen’s testimony on Thursday, blasting his credibility, his motivations and even his recollection of key events in the criminal case.

Cohen, formerly a member of Trump’s inner circle, is the prosecution’s star witness — and likely the last it will call before resting its case.

The former lawyer has alleged that Trump, a former Republican president and current presidential candidate, orchestrated a scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 race.

Daniels maintained she had an affair with Trump, and prosecutors say she was poised to sell her story to the press when Trump, through Cohen, bought her silence for $130,000.

The payment, they allege, was aimed at suppressing negative coverage during the 2016 presidential election, which Trump eventually won. The Republican politician was already facing scrutiny at the time for an audio recording in which he described grabbing women by their genitals.

Cohen himself previously pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance violations related to the hush-money payment.

But Trump has denied the charges against him as well as the affair itself. He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case, one of four ongoing criminal indictments against him.

He is the first US president, past or present, to face criminal charges. Here are the highlights from day 18 of the trial:

Michael Cohen departs his apartment building on his way to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York on May 16 [Andres Kudacki/AP Photo]

Defence questions Cohen’s motives

Straight away on Thursday, the defence resumed its attacks on Cohen, probing the disbarred lawyer for evidence that he was motivated by personal animus against Trump.

Early in the day’s proceedings, they confronted Cohen with recordings of his own voice, clipped from a 2020 podcast, showing the former lawyer relishing the prospect of a Trump conviction.

The recording captured Cohen saying he hoped “this man ends up in prison” and will “rot inside for what he did to me and my family”.

“It won’t bring back the year that I lost or the damage done to my family. But revenge is a dish best served cold,” Cohen said in one clip.

In another moment, he said, “You better believe that I want this man to go down.”

The audio clips painted a stark contrast with Cohen’s relatively demure behaviour on the witness stand: In the podcasts, he was animated, speaking at a furious pace that was punctuated by expletives.

The defence also sought to underscore why Cohen felt such hatred for his former boss. Lawyer Todd Blanche implied Cohen was angling for a White House position as chief of staff — and was ultimately disappointed.

“The truth is, Mr Cohen, you really wanted to work in the White House, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen.

“No, sir,” Cohen replied, later saying Blanche was not “characterising” his motivations correctly.

Lauren Boebert and other Republican politicians gather to give a press conference outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse
US Representative Lauren Boebert attends a news conference outside the courtroom with other Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump [David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters]

Cohen testifies to lying under oath

Cohen remains a key pillar of the prosecution’s case, as the only witness who can testify to certain private discussions about the hush-money payment at the centre of the trial.

So the defence on Thursday continued to batter his credibility, asking him to revisit moments when he lied under oath, in order to cast doubt on his current testimony.

Blanche, for example, raised the fact that Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying before Congress about a failed attempt to build a version of Trump Tower in Moscow.

“You lied under oath, correct?” Blanche asked Cohen, who responded: “Yes, sir.”

Cohen has long maintained he lied at the time out of loyalty to Trump.

Blanche also pressed Cohen on statements he made indicating he felt pressure to plead guilty when faced with the 2018 charges, which included tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

When defendants plead guilty in court, they must affirm they made the plea of their own volition. Blanche used that point to ask Cohen: Did he lie under oath when he said he pleaded guilty of his own free will?

“That was not true,” Cohen said.

In addition, the defence highlighted instances where Cohen used artificial intelligence to generate fake legal citations in a court application, again calling into question the former lawyer’s reliability.

Former US President Donald Trump exits the courtroom during a break at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on May 16 [Jeenah Moon/Pool via Reuters]

Defence challenges Cohen’s testimony

Having raised questions about Cohen’s trustworthiness, the defence zeroed in on key moments from his testimony for the prosecution.

Cohen, for instance, testified earlier this week that he called Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller in October 2016 as a means of reaching Trump himself.

The call, Cohen explained, was about the “Stormy Daniels situation” and the hush-money payment they planned to transfer to her lawyer.

But on Thursday, Trump’s defence questioned if that was the real reason Cohen was in touch with Schiller at the time. Blanche, the defence lawyer, suggested that Cohen was instead seeking Schiller’s help to deal with a 14-year-old who had been making harassing calls to his phone.

Blanche showed the jury text messages Cohen wrote to Schiller on the same night as the 2016 conversation, saying, “Who can I speak to about harassing calls to my cell and office?”

He proceeded to ask Cohen if his description of the 2016 phone conversation “was a lie” and whether the focus was on the harassing calls, not on hush money.

“Part of it was about the phone calls, but I knew that Keith was with Mr Trump at the time, and it was more than potentially just this,” Cohen responded.

After a break, Blanche questioned Cohen about how he could recollect specific details from so long ago.

“These phone calls are things I’ve been talking about for the last six years,” Cohen said in reply. “They were and are extremely important, and they were all-consuming.”

Lawyers meet with Judge Juan Merchan during one of many sidebars held during day 18 of Donald Trump’s trial [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]

The prosecution struck back multiple times at the defence’s assertions, punctuating the cross-examination with objections and requests for “sidebar” conversations with the judge.

But the defence proceeded to try to undermine the prosecution’s central narrative, that Trump tried to conceal the hush-money payment to Daniels as part of a broader effort to influence the 2016 election.

Rather, Blanche tried to frame the actions as ordinary legal maneouvres.

He presented Cohen with a copy of the nondisclosure agreement Daniels signed and noted Trump’s signature was nowhere to be found on it. Then he asked Cohen, “In your mind, then and now, this is a perfectly legal contract, correct?”

Cohen agreed. “Yes, sir.”

He also had Cohen confirm that nondisclosure agreements were a regular practice in business law.

Blanche further questioned whether the hush-money payments had anything to do with the 2016 election at all.

He pointed to past statements Cohen made about a separate hush-money payment made to a doorman, saying that Trump was “concerned” about the doorman’s story because “it involved people that still worked with him and worked for him”.

The defence also raised comments where Cohen echoed Trump’s allegation that Daniels was extorting him for money to keep quiet.

“In your mind, there were two choices: pay or don’t pay and the story comes out,” Blanche asked Cohen, who replied with his usual, “Yes, sir.”

The cross-examination of Cohen is set to resume on Monday. Trump had requested the trial take a recess on Friday to allow him to attend the graduation of his youngest son, Barron.

Representative Matt Gaetz, centre, leads a news conference on May 16 in support of Donald Trump, while a protester holds up a sign that calls him and the other Republicans present ‘bootlickers’ [Andrew Kelly/Reuters]

Trump surrogates crowd the court

As much as Cohen was in the spotlight during the day’s proceedings, so too were the gaggle of Republican lawmakers who accompanied Trump to court.

Trump is famous for demanding loyalty from his fellow Republicans — and so, as the trial stretches on, several prominent politicians have made the pilgrimage to the Manhattan Criminal Court to show their support.

On Thursday, that entourage included no fewer than nine members of the US House of Representatives, including Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert and Arizona’s Andy Biggs.

In fact, so many members of the House Oversight Committee were in attendance that a vote was delayed to allow them to fly back from New York to Washington, DC.

That vote concerns a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for failing to turn over audio recordings related to another Trump case, this time pertaining to his handling of classified documents after leaving office.

While in New York, though, several of the representatives took the opportunity to denounce the myriad legal troubles facing Trump.

Gaetz, for instance, described Trump as the “Mr Potato Head of crimes”, a reference to a children’s toy with interchangeable parts.

He explained that prosecutors “had to stick together a bunch of things that did not belong together” to cobble together a case against the ex-president.

Gaetz also sparked criticism for a social media post he made on Thursday morning, showing him watching Trump enter the courtroom.

“Standing back and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote.

Critics pointed out that his words echoed a statement Trump made in 2020 when asked in a televised debate about white supremacist groups and far-right militias like the Proud Boys.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said at the time. He later denied knowing who the Proud Boys were. Senior members of the group have since been found guilty and sentenced to prison for their participation in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

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Who benefits from US tariffs on Chinese imports? Experts weigh in | US Election 2024 News

The trade war between the United States and China continued this week with its latest salvo – a move that comes amid a heated race for the White House.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden announced tariff hikes on imports of various Chinese goods, worth $18bn.

Lithium-ion batteries make up $13bn of the total imports, while certain steel and aluminium products, as well as items like medical gloves and syringes, accounted for the remaining $5bn.

Experts say tariffs on these products will likely have limited effects on consumer goods prices and economic growth. The greater gain, they say, may lie at the ballot box, as Biden jockeys for a second term in the White House.

“These tariffs are very much on the margins, and the impacts on the economy will be a rounding error,” Bernard Yaros, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, told Al Jazeera.

While the tariffs do not change much for the US economy, it is still “good politics to do this”, especially during an election year, Yaros added.

Projecting strength

The US is set to hold a presidential vote in November, and Biden is expected to face his predecessor, former Republican President Donald Trump, in a tightly fought race.

Trump has long sought to project a tough-man image, particularly in foreign policy and the economy, while framing his Democratic rival as “weak”. Biden, however, has sought to deflect that criticism by imposing policies that, in some cases, build on Trump’s.

A January paper (PDF) from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that tariffs can pay political dividends, even if they do not translate into “substantial job gains”.

The paper looked at the period from 2018 to 2019, when Trump slapped stiff tariffs on China and other countries, targeting products like aluminium, washing machines and solar panels.

It found that residents in US regions that were more exposed to import tariffs became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote Republican.

The report concluded that voters “responded favourably” to the tariffs “despite their economic cost”, which came in the form of retaliatory tariffs from China.

“Tariffs are good politics, even though the economics don’t work,” Yaros said.

Appealing to the Rust Belt

Biden and Trump are in a neck-and-neck race, with some polls showing the Republican candidate edging out the incumbent in key swing states.

A poll this week found that former US President Donald Trump had an advantage in a few pivotal states over President Biden [File: Brendan McDermid and Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters]

A poll this week from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer, for instance, found that Trump had an advantage in pivotal states like Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.

Biden appeared in one of those states, Pennsylvania, last month to announce his intention to triple tariffs on Chinese steel. Pennsylvania is part of the Rust Belt, a region historically known for manufacturing, and the state itself is famed for steel production.

Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Biden has also sought to protect other US industries, like its burgeoning electric vehicle (EV) sector.

His new trade rules will ensure that the US cannot directly import EVs made in China, Setser explained.

He added that China has built a competitive EV industry on the back of deep government subsidies and could flood the global and US markets with cheap cars if it was not for such measures.

“China, with its significant auto needs, provided a lot of subsidies to its EV industry that has led to this strength,” said Setser.

“It needs to recognise that the US and Europe will use some of these techniques [of subsidies and tariffs] to build their own industries. It’s unrealistic for China to object to other countries doing the same thing.”

Protecting the American auto industry will also help Biden in the polls. The sector is historically centred in Michigan, another key battleground state where Biden has recently faced backlash.

Michigan is the birthplace of the “uncommitted” movement, which encouraged Democrats to withhold their votes from Biden during the primaries and cast ballots for the “uncommitted” option instead.

The protest was seen as a part of a broader, largely progressive backlash to Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Looking ahead to November

However, the experts who spoke to Al Jazeera questioned whether Biden’s newly announced tariffs would move the needle at election time.

The US imported $427bn in goods from China in 2023, but it only exported $148bn to the country in return, according to the US Census Bureau.

That trade gap has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington, particularly as China competes with the US to be the world’s largest economy.

While the trans-Pacific trade has benefitted both countries – providing cheap goods to American consumers and a large market to Chinese manufacturers – it remains a contentious issue, especially at election time, because of a history of US manufacturing jobs moving overseas.

US politicians have also raised concerns over privacy, as Chinese technology enters the North American market.

Although China has promised retaliation for the latest round of tariffs, experts say it will likely be symbolic as the US tariffs themselves are very targeted.

“We don’t assume the retaliation will be anything disruptive,” said Yaros. “They’re not going to up the ante. That’s not been their MO [modus operandi] in the past when the US has imposed tariffs.”

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‘Make my day’: Biden challenges Trump to two debates ahead of November vote | US Election 2024 News

United States President Joe Biden has challenged his Republican rival and predecessor Donald Trump to two debates before November’s election but said he would bypass a traditional debate schedule set by a bipartisan commission.

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then, he hasn’t shown up to a debate,” Biden said in a video posted on social media on Wednesday morning. “Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”

Biden called on Trump to join him for two televised presidential debates in June and September.

The Democratic president also took a swipe at Trump’s legal troubles in the video with a reference to the weekly break in Trump’s hush money trial in New York. “So let’s pick the dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” Biden said.

His proposal, outlined in a letter and a video, called for direct negotiations between the Trump and Biden campaigns over the rules, network hosts and moderators for the one-on-one meetings.

Trump responded swiftly, writing on his Truth Social media platform that he is “Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe” on the proposed dates.

“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That’s only because he doesn’t get them,” Trump wrote.

“Just tell me when, I’ll be there. ‘Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!’”

Biden later confirmed that he had accepted an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27, and challenged Trump to attend.

“Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,” he wrote in a social media post.

Fox News reported that Trump intends to accept the invitation.

Most polls show a tight race between Biden and Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

Experts said the contest will likely come down to how the candidates fare in critical swing states, such as Michigan, Georgia and Nevada.

But there is also widespread frustration that the choice this election cycle is the same as in 2020 when Biden defeated the then-incumbent Trump to win the White House.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found nearly half of all registered voters said they would replace both Biden and Trump on the ballot if they could.

About two-thirds of respondents said they had little to no confidence that Biden is physically fit enough to be president while a similar number said they did not believe Trump would act ethically in office.

“It is Election 2.0,” Jan Leighley, a political science professor at American University in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera this month.

“I think that creates a disincentive for voting, which again comes back on the campaigns to convince people that, even though it’s the same choice, there’s still a reason to vote.”

Both candidates also face serious challenges before the election.

Trump is currently in court on accusations he falsified business documents to conceal hush money payments made to an adult film star – one of four criminal indictments against the former president.

Biden, for his part, has faced widespread criticism and public anger for his support of Israel during the Gaza war with key segments of his Democratic Party base saying they would not vote for him if he doesn’t change his stance.

Trump, who refused to debate his rivals in the Republican primary race, has in recent weeks been challenging Biden to engage in a one-on-one match-up, offering to debate the incumbent Democrat “anytime, anywhere, anyplace”.

On Wednesday, the Biden campaign explained its decision to eschew the traditional debate schedule in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit that has sponsored US presidential debates since 1988.

“The Commission’s schedule has debates that begin after the American people have a chance to cast their vote early, and doesn’t conclude until after tens of millions of Americans will have already voted,” the campaign wrote.

It also said the commission’s model of holding debates with large, in-person audiences “simply isn’t necessary or conducive to good debates”.



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Biden slaps new tariffs on Chinese imports, ratcheting trade war | Business and Economy News

President Joe Biden has slapped major new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminium and medical equipment, taking potshots at Donald Trump along the way as he embraced a strategy that’s increasing friction between the world’s two largest economies.

The Democratic president said on Tuesday that Chinese government subsidies ensure the nation’s companies do not have to turn a profit, giving them an unfair advantage in global trade.

“American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone as long as the competition is fair,” Biden said in the White House Rose Garden. “But for too long, it hasn’t been fair. For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies … it’s not competition, it’s cheating.”

China immediately promised retaliation. Its Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was opposed to the tariff hikes by the United States and would take measures to defend its interests.

Biden will keep tariffs put in place by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump while ratcheting up others, including a quadrupling of EV duties to more than 100 percent and doubling the duties on semiconductor tariffs to 50 percent.

The new measures affect $18bn in imported Chinese goods including steel and aluminium, semiconductors, electric vehicles, critical minerals, solar cells and cranes, the White House said. The EV figure, while headline-grabbing, may have more political than practical impact in the US, which imports very few Chinese EVs.

The US imported $427bn in goods from China in 2023 and exported $148bn to the world’s number-two economy, according to the US Census Bureau, a trade gap that has persisted for decades and become an ever more sensitive subject in Washington.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the revised tariffs were justified because China was stealing US intellectual property. But Tai recommended tariff exclusions for hundreds of industrial machinery import categories from China, including 19 for solar product manufacturing equipment.

The tariffs come in the middle of a heated campaign between Biden and Trump, his Republican predecessor, to show who’s tougher on China.

Asked to respond to Trump’s comments that China was eating the US’s lunch, Biden said of his rival, “He’s been feeding them a long time.” The Democrat said Trump had failed to crack down on Chinese trade abuses as he had pledged he would do during his presidency.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, called the new tariffs a “weak and futile attempt” to distract from Biden’s own support for EVs in the United States, which Trump says will lead to layoffs at car factories.

Administration officials said their measures are combined with domestic investment in key industries and unlikely to worsen a bout of inflation that has already angered US voters.

Trade tariff

Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of his economic policies despite a backdrop of low unemployment and above-trend economic growth. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last month showed Trump had a seven percentage-point edge over Biden on the economy.

China’s BYD overtook Tesla as the biggest seller of electric vehicles [File: VCG/VCG via Getty Images]

Analysts have warned that a trade tiff could raise costs for EVs overall, hurting Biden’s climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.

Biden has said he wants to win this era of competition with China but not to launch a trade war. He has worked in recent months to ease tensions in one-on-one talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Both 2024 US presidential candidates have departed from the free-trade consensus that once reigned in Washington, a period capped by China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. Trump’s broader imposition of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency kicked off a tariff war with China.

As part of the long-awaited tariff update, Biden will increase tariffs this year from 25 percent to 100 percent on EVs, bringing total duties to 102.5 percent, from 7.5 percent to 25 percent on lithium-ion EV batteries and other battery parts and from 25 percent to 50 percent on photovoltaic cells used to make solar panels. Some critical minerals will have their tariffs raised from nothing to 25 percent.

More tariffs will follow in 2025 and 2026 on semiconductors, as well as lithium-ion batteries that are not used in electric vehicles, graphite and permanent magnets, as well as rubber medical and surgical gloves.

A number of lawmakers have called for massive hikes on Chinese vehicle tariffs or an outright ban over data privacy concerns. There are relatively few Chinese-made light-duty vehicles being imported now.

The United Auto Workers, a politically important union that endorsed Biden, said the tariff moves would ensure that “the transition to electric vehicles is a just transition.”

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Key takeaways as Cohen faces more questioning on day 17 of Trump’s trial | Donald Trump News

Donald Trump’s erstwhile lawyer Michael Cohen has faced a tough cross-examination, as he delivered a second day of testimony in the former United States president’s hush-money trial in New York.

Cohen is the prosecution’s star witness — and his testimony marks the pinnacle of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the former president.

On Tuesday, prosecutors also announced that Cohen will be the final witness they plan to call, as the first criminal trial against a US president nears its seeming conclusion.

As he returned to the witness stand on Tuesday, Cohen sought to make the case that Trump, his former boss, orchestrated a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels — and then covered it up by filing the charges as “legal expenses”.

The former Republican president, who is seeking re-election in November, faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case.

Cohen described a meeting with Trump at the White House in 2017 during which the pair allegedly discussed a repayment plan to reimburse Cohen for the hush-money payment.

The former lawyer has maintained he made the $130,000 payment at the behest of Trump to prevent Daniels from going public with a sexual encounter she says she had with the former president. Trump has denied that any such encounter took place.

Trump has also slammed the case as a politically motivated “witch-hunt”, and his legal team on Tuesday sought to portray Cohen as a liar who cannot be trusted.

But prosecutors believe Trump tried to influence the outcome of the 2016 vote by engaging in a “catch-and-kill” scheme to stifle media coverage that could have negatively affected his campaign for the White House.

Here are the key takeaways from day 17 of the trial:

Cohen details Oval Office meeting

Early on Tuesday, Cohen recounted an Oval Office meeting with Trump in February 2017, wherein the newly inaugurated president allegedly said Cohen would soon be receiving the first two installments of a bonus package.

That package, Cohen said, included reimbursements for the Daniels payment.

“I was sitting with President Trump, and he asked me if I was OK,” Cohen told the jurors. “He asked me if I needed money, and I said, ‘All good,’ because I can get a cheque.”

Cohen testified that Trump then told him, “OK, make sure you deal with Allen,” a reference to Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization at the time.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger also walked Cohen through a series of invoices and checks — some signed by Trump himself — that Cohen said were falsely marked as paying for retainer services.

“There was no retainer agreement, was there?” Hoffinger asked.

“No, ma’am,” Cohen replied.

In the courtroom, Trump was seen to react at various points in Cohen’s testimony, leaning over to speak with his lawyer Emil Bove, seated to his left.

Trump sits at the defendant’s table during his criminal trial in New York on May 14 [Justin Lane/Pool via Reuters]

Cohen says he lied to protect Trump

The 57-year-old former lawyer also testified on Tuesday that a February 2018 statement he released about the hush money-payment was purposely “misleading”.

The statement declared, “Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction.”

Cohen explained that the statement was “deceptive”, because it was neither the Trump Organization nor the campaign that was a part of the transaction. “It was Mr Donald J Trump himself,” Cohen said.

He added that he made the statement “in order to protect Mr Trump, to stay on message”.

Cohen also told the jurors that he helped craft a pair of statements purportedly from Daniels, the adult film star, denying her affair with Trump.

The first came after The Wall Street Journal reported in 2018 that he arranged the $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels. The second was written after Cohen said he heard Daniels was planning to go on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show.

Cohen explained he contacted Keith Davidson, the lawyer who represented the adult film star in the hush money deal, to put together the statement, which Daniels issued on the day of her appearance. It reiterated that she had not been paid “hush money” to deny the claim.

Cohen testified that he knew the statements were false because he had helped craft them — and that he knew the payment had been made because he had paid it.

He also said he regretted “lying, bullying people” during his many years working for Trump.

“To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he asked me to do, I violated my moral compass. And I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Cohen said.

Defence presses Cohen on credibility

Trump’s defence team pressed Cohen during cross-examination on Tuesday afternoon, seeking to poke holes in his testimony and present him to the jury as a serial liar seeking revenge against a former boss.

Cohen served time in federal prison for various crimes, including some related the hush-money payment, and has admitted to lying under oath. He has also been vocal about his antipathy towards Trump, with whom he had a public falling-out.

Under aggressive questioning from Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, Cohen acknowledged calling the former president a “dictator douchebag” on the social media platform TikTok.

The defence also showed jurors pictures of Trump-themed merchandise for sale on Cohen’s website, including shirts with an illustration of the former president behind bars. Blanche pointed to statements Cohen made on his podcast as well, indicating the former lawyer would like to see Trump convicted.

In one of several moments when Blanche asked Cohen if he wanted to see Trump found guilty, the former lawyer hedged: “I would like to see accountability. It’s not for me. It’s for the jury and this court.”

Blanche pressed him: “I’m just asking you, yes or no: Do you want to see President Trump get convicted in this case?”

“Sure,” Cohen replied.

Cohen’s shorter answers under cross-examination marked a contrast with his more voluble testimony with prosecutors, and court observers noted he carefully hedged in several of his responses, using ambiguous language to skirt the defence team’s questions.

Republicans show support; appeals court upholds gag order

Mike Johnson, speaker of the US House of Representatives, travelled to court with Trump in his motorcade on Tuesday, in a prominent show of support.

They were joined by other prominent right-wing figures, including North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom ran against Trump for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.

The appearances come as Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, retains a solid grip on the party despite his legal troubles.

Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Johnson weighed in on the case. “Trump is innocent of these charges,” he said.

The case, he added, “is not about justice. It’s all about politics, and everybody can see that.”

The House speaker also slammed the gag order against Trump, which prevents him from publicly speaking against witnesses, jurors and family members of court officials.

The former president has been fined multiple times and held in contempt of court for violating that order since the trial began last month.

Separately on Tuesday, a New York appeals court rejected an attempt by Trump’s legal team to have the gag order lifted.

Judge Juan Merchan, who issued the gag order, “properly weighed” Trump’s free speech rights “against the court’s historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases, and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm”, the appeals court ruled.



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Key takeaways as ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testifies in New York trial | Donald Trump News

Michael Cohen, the key prosecution witness in Donald Trump’s hush-money case, has testified against the former United States president in one of the most widely anticipated days in court since the trial began.

Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, told the court on Monday that he lied and bullied on behalf of his former boss.

“It was what was needed in order to accomplish the task,” said Cohen, periodically glancing over at Trump, who was slouched in his chair at the defendant’s table in the New York City courtroom.

Prosecutors have accused Trump of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments made before the 2016 election, which he won.

The prosecution’s case hinges on a $130,000 payment Cohen made to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the vote, in an effort to keep her from speaking publicly about a 2006 sexual encounter she says she had with Trump.

The former president has denied that any such encounter took place. He also has rejected the charges against him as politically motivated. The trial has come as Trump campaigns for re-election in November.

Here are the key takeaways from Cohen’s testimony on day 16 of the trial.

Cohen says he did ‘whatever’ Trump wanted

Cohen, 57, testified on Monday that it was fair to describe his role as being a fixer for Trump, testifying that he took care of “whatever he wanted”.

Rather than work as a traditional corporate lawyer, Cohen reported directly to Trump and was never part of the general counsel’s office for the Trump Organization.

Among his duties were renegotiating bills from business partners, threatening to sue people and planting positive stories in the press, he said.

Trump, he added, communicated primarily by phone or in person and never set up an email address.

“He would comment that emails are like written papers, that he knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result of having emails that prosecutors can use in a case,” Cohen said.

A courtroom sketch shows Cohen being questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger as Trump sits with his eyes closed on May 13 [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]

Cohen details effort to quash bad press

Cohen testified that — at a meeting in 2015 with Trump and David Pecker, then-publisher of the National Enquirer — the trio discussed using the supermarket tabloid to boost Trump’s candidacy while attacking his rivals.

According to the testimony, Trump told Pecker to let Cohen know if he became aware of negative press that might arise, and the three men agreed that Pecker would try to suppress any such stories.

As Trump prepared to announce his campaign for president, he allegedly told Cohen that there would be “a lot of women coming forward”.

Cohen further explained that, as Trump’s then-lawyer, he sought to harness the power of the National Enquirer for his boss’s benefit, given its high visibility next to the cash registers at tens of thousands of supermarkets across the US.

He testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story being peddled about an alleged affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Cohen recalled going to Trump’s office and asking him if he knew McDougal or anything about the story. Cohen said Trump then told him to make sure that the story doesn’t get released.

Cohen said he thought the story would have a “significant” impact on Trump’s presidential campaign if it were to be published.

The McDougal news came shortly after the National Enquirer paid $30,000 to squash a doorman’s false rumour that Trump had a child out of wedlock. “You handle it,” Cohen remembers Trump telling him after learning that the doorman had come forward.

Cohen’s testimony on Monday echoed similar claims from Pecker, the publisher, earlier in the trial. Pecker testified about the so-called “catch-and-kill” scheme to suppress stories that could negatively affect Trump before the 2016 vote.

Publisher pressed him for reimbursement, Cohen says

After the National Enquirer paid $150,000 to suppress McDougal’s story, Cohen testified that the tabloid’s publisher was hounding him to get Trump to reimburse him for the cost.

Cohen recounted meeting Pecker at his favourite Italian restaurant and the publisher being upset about not being repaid for burying the story about Trump’s alleged affair with the ex-Playboy model.

Pecker was concerned, Cohen said, that “it was too much money for him to hide from the CEO of the parent company” and he’d already laid out $30,000 to suppress the doorman’s story.

Cohen added that, at some point, Pecker had also expressed to him that his company, American Media Inc, had a “file drawer — or a locked drawer as he described it — where files related to Mr Trump were located”.

Cohen said he was concerned because the publisher’s relationship with Trump went back years and that Pecker was in the running to head another media company. Cohen feared what would happen to the files if Pecker left.

Trump attends the sixteenth day of his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 13 [Steven Hirsch/Pool via Reuters]

Trump furious at Daniels’ claims, Cohen says

Cohen also told jurors on Monday that Trump was furious that Daniels, the adult film star, was shopping a story about the sexual encounter she says she had with the ex-president.

“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, a total disaster. Women are going to hate me,’” Cohen testified. “‘Guys, they think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”

Cohen explained he learned that Daniels was selling her story at a critical moment for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. An audio recording had just been leaked from the TV show Access Hollywood, in which Trump bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.

The tape left the Trump campaign scrambling to contain the damage only weeks before Election Day in November 2016.

The ex-president’s defence team has suggested the payment to Daniels could have been made to spare Trump and his family embarrassment, not to boost his campaign. But Cohen testified that Trump appeared solely concerned with the effect on his presidential bid.

“He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign,” said Cohen, referring to Trump’s wife. At the defence table, Trump shook his head.

Cohen added that he recalled Trump saying, “Just get past the election, because if I win, it will have no relevance because I’m the president, and if I lose, I won’t really care.”

‘Just do it,’ Cohen says Trump told him

Cohen also provided detailed testimony about the hush-money payment that he made to Daniels, which is at the heart of the prosecution’s case.

Cohen said Trump urged him to delay sending payment to Daniels’s lawyer until after the election, telling him that the story would no longer matter. In October 2016, with Daniels’s story about to come out, Cohen said Trump told him to finally pay up.

“He expressed to me: Just do it,” Cohen testified, saying Trump advised him to meet Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg and figure it out. Weisselberg baulked at paying, however, so Cohen said he decided to come up with the money himself.

“I ultimately said, ‘OK, I’ll pay it,’” Cohen testified, explaining that he resisted paying out of his own pocket, but eventually relented after Trump promised him, “You’ll get the money back.”

Trump’s lawyers have argued that Cohen acted on his own, a notion he rejected on the witness stand. “Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off,” Cohen said on Monday.

Cohen also described during his testimony how he set up a shell company — falsely listed as a “real estate consulting company” — to facilitate the payment through a bank across the street from Trump Tower.

Prosecutors showed phone records to jurors indicating that Cohen called Trump’s line twice on the morning he visited the bank.

Trump’s defence team is expected to challenge Cohen’s credibility during cross-examination later this week and paint him as a liar who cannot be trusted.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to the hush-money payments, as well as for lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

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Star witness Cohen to testify against Trump in hush money trial | Donald Trump News

Former lawyer’s testimony viewed as key in former president’s criminal prosecution six months ahead of election.

The star prosecution witness in Donald Trump’s hush money trial, Michael Cohen, is set to take the stand to testify against the former president.

Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, is due in court on Monday. The Manhattan district attorney hopes that the testimony of the key witness would help influence the verdict in the first-ever criminal case against a US president, sitting or former.

Cohen’s expected appearance in the New York courtroom signals that the closely-watched trial is entering its final stretch. Prosecutors say they may wrap up their presentation of evidence by the end of the week.

Cohen is set to testify about his role in arranging hush money payments on Trump’s behalf, including to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Daniels told jurors last week that a payment of $130,000 that she received in 2016 was meant to prevent her from going public about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament a decade earlier.

Trump is accused of falsifying business records to reimburse Cohen for the payment on the eve of the 2016 presidential election when the story could have proved politically fatal. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged as legal expenses to conceal their true purpose.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied the allegations.

Defence lawyers are expected to try to paint Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, as untrustworthy. They are also expected to cast him as vindictive and agenda-driven.

Since their fallout, the fixer-turned-foe has emerged as a relentless and sometimes crude critic of Trump. Last week he appeared in a live TikTok stream wearing a shirt featuring a figure resembling Trump behind bars and wearing handcuffs.

Five years ago, Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments and to lying to Congress. Trump’s defence will highlight the prosecution’s reliance on a witness with such a record.

Other witnesses, including former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker and former Trump adviser Hope Hicks, have testified at length about the role Cohen played in arranging to stifle stories that were feared to be harmful to Trump’s 2016 candidacy.

Jurors also heard an audio recording of Trump and Cohen discussing a plan to buy the rights to a story of a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who has said she had an affair with Trump.

The trial is taking place six months before the November election, when the presidential hopeful will try to defeat Democratic President Joe Biden.

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Giants legends Lawrence Taylor, Ottis Anderson speak at Trump rally

New York Giants legends Lawrence Taylor and Ottis “O.J.” Anderson made surprise appearances on Saturday in Wildwood, New Jersey, taking the stage at Donald Trump’s campaign rally.

The pair were welcomed to the microphone by the former president and received a rousing ovation from the thousands in attendance.

“I grew up a Democrat, and I’ve always been a Democrat until I met this man right here,” Taylor said. “Nobody in my family ever will vote for a Democrat again.”

Anderson was a bit more subdued when it was his turn to speak.

“Don’t you just love that guy?” Anderson said, referring to Taylor. “It has been a very exciting day. You guys, not one person left. You’re still here yelling and screaming.

“Thank you guys for all of your support. And how about a great shout-out for Metro Exhibits, baby. We made it happen. All because of you!”

Trump acknowledged the all-time Giants greats as they left the stage but admitted they don’t always see eye-to-eye on all things.

“He’s doing quite a great job. What do you think, Lawrence? Doing a great job!” Trump said. “Look at those two guys, O.J., Lawrence, my golfing friends. We don’t have to agree on everything!”

Anderson was a first-round pick of the then-St. Louis Cardinals in the 1979 NFL draft. He was traded to the Giants during the 1986 season and went on to rejuvenate his career in East Rutherford, highlighted by winning MVP in a Super Bowl XXV victory over the Buffalo Bills. The two-time Super Bowl champion and 1989 Comeback Player of the Year was enshrined in the Giants’ Ring of Honor in 2022.

Taylor was a first-round pick of the Giants in the 1981 NFL draft and his resume is too extensive to list. The three-time Defensive Player of the Year and one-time league MVP changed the way the game of football is played, both offensively and defensively. He is widely regarded as the greatest of all time.

In 1999, Taylor became a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer. He was inducted into the Giants’ Ring of Honor in 2010 and had his No. 56 jersey retired in 1994.

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Five takeaways from day 15 of Donald Trump’s New York hush-money trial | Donald Trump News

The fourth week of Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in New York has come to a close, with the prosecution hinting that it would soon rest its case.

Nevertheless, on Friday, the prosecution continued to call a line of witnesses, seeking to bolster its case that Trump, a former United States president, intentionally falsified business documents in an effort to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The documents in question pertain to an alleged hush-money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who came forward with allegations that she and Trump had an affair.

Trump has denied any sexual relations with Daniels, but in 2016, his former lawyer Michael Cohen transferred $130,000 to Daniels to buy her silence.

Cheques to reimburse Cohen for the payment were classified as “legal expenses”, a label the prosecution says was designed to conceal their true purpose. Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as a result.

Trump’s defence team, however, has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the former president merely aimed to avoid embarrassment for his family. It has also sought to have a mistrial declared in the case.

Here are five main takeaways from day 15 of the criminal trial, the first in history to feature a US president:

Madeleine Westerhout has testified about her past experiences serving in Trump’s White House [File: Andrew Harnik/AP Photo]

Trump aide returns to the witness hand

The first witness to take the stand on Friday was a familiar face: Madeleine Westerhout, who appeared a day earlier to testify to how Trump managed his affairs while in the White House.

A former White House aide who served as a personal assistant to Trump, Westerhout explained that the then-president would regularly receive envelopes from New York with cheques to sign.

But as cross-examination proceeded on Friday, Westerhout was pressed about the details she presented and whether she could have been aware of the precise business matters Trump was attending to.

Trump defence lawyer Susan Necheles also asked Westerhout about the amount of work the then-president juggled each day.

“Would you see him signing things without reviewing them?” Necheles asked at one point.

Westerhout responded, “Yes.” She also testified that Trump was worried about how rumours of an affair with Daniels would affect his family.

“My understanding was that he knew it would be hurtful to his family,” Westerhout said, echoing a centrepiece of the defence’s argument.

Trump’s lawyers have maintained that the former president did not seek to sway the 2016 election but rather to shield his wife and children from news that might cause them discomfort.

Defence lawyer Emil Bove questions paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on May 10 [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]

Technical witnesses fill out the day

Four more witnesses took the stand after Westerhout, testifying to technical aspects of the case and other evidence collected.

They included two representatives from major phone services: compliance analyst Daniel Dixon from AT&T and Jenne Tomalin from Verizon.

They briefly authenticated phone records, tracing communications between key figures in the trial, like Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer for the Trump Organization.

The last two witnesses on Friday came from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office: Georgia Longstreet — a familiar face on the stand — and Jaden Jarmel-Schneider, both paralegals.

Longstreet reviewed social media posts and text messages on behalf of the district attorney’s office.

During Friday’s testimony, she read aloud text messages Daniels’s manager Gina Rodriguez exchanged with an editor from the National Enquirer tabloid in 2016, before she accepted a hush-money payment from Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen.

Jarmel-Schneider, meanwhile, spoke to the data collected from Cohen’s phone.

He discussed, for example, why a recorded conversation between Cohen and Trump — seemingly about a hush-money payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal — appeared to be so short: Cohen had another call coming in.

Prosecutors also used Jarmel-Schneider’s testimony as an opportunity to display on screen the 34 documents Trump allegedly falsified — the basis for the case.

Former President Donald Trump walks with his defence lawyer Todd Blanche on May 10 [Curtis Means/DailyMail.com via AP, Pool]

Larry King interview barred from evidence

During breaks in the witness testimony, the prosecution sought to convince Judge Juan Merchan to allow a 1999 interview between Trump and CNN personality Larry King into evidence.

The interview contained a segment where Trump professed to be familiar with campaign finance laws, something the prosecution hoped to use to buttress its case that he knew his actions were illegal.

But the defence argued that an interview from 1999 had little relevancy to a case hinged on events in 2016, by which time campaign finance laws had changed.

Judge Merchan ultimately sided with the defence. The 1999 interview, he said, was “too attenuated” by the long stretch of time between the events in question.

Former lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to testify in the New York hush-money trial on Monday [File: Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo]

Cohen attacks Trump from TikTok

Another matter before the court was the question of Cohen’s presence on the social media platform TikTok.

Cohen is a key witness for the prosecution. He is expected to testify on Monday that Trump himself directed the hush-money payment to Daniels — and that the former president also ordered the subsequent falsification of the business records.

The defence, however, has sought to shift the blame away from Trump, saying that any criminal activity was Cohen’s fault instead.

Cohen and Trump have had a bitter relationship in recent years. Cohen left Trump’s employ in 2018, and the two men have exchanged lawsuits over legal fees and breached trust.

During the trial, Trump has been under a court-imposed gag order that bars him from speaking out against any witnesses, including Cohen. But he has violated that gag order multiple times, including to call Cohen a “liar” and share an article that labelled Cohen a “serial perjurer”.

But on Friday, Judge Merchan turned his attention to the comments Cohen himself was making on TikTok, attacking Trump.

The defence team had asked the judge to issue a separate gag order against Cohen, to stem his comments.

“It’s becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness but this witness is allowed to continue to talk,” defence lawyer Todd Blanche said.

The prosecutors, however, argued they had little control over what Cohen said in his free time.

Judge Merchan, nevertheless, issued a stern warning. The prosecutors, he said, should tell Cohen “that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements” about Trump.

“That comes from the bench,” he added.

Paralegal Georgia Longstreet testifies at the Manhattan criminal court on May 10, sharing messages sent by Stormy Daniels’s manager Gina Rodriguez [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]

Two more prosecution witnesses to go

Friday’s court proceedings ended with an acknowledgement that the prosecution’s case is winding to a close.

Lawyer Joshua Steinglass told the court that the prosecution anticipated calling two more witnesses, then potentially resting its case.

“It’s entirely possible” that the prosecution could finish presenting evidence by next week, Steinglass explained.

The coming week is expected to be a short one, though: The court takes a midweek break every Wednesday, and on Friday, May 17, Trump requested the day off to attend his son Barron’s graduation.

With Friday’s hearing finally at an end, Trump exited the courtroom and spoke to the press, denouncing the prosecution’s case as a “scam”.

He complained that the court hinged on events that happened years ago, in 2016 — and that the charges landed in the middle of his current re-election campaign.

“It’s all fake. The whole case is fake,” he said as he left court for the day.

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Judge delays Trump classified documents case indefinitely | Donald Trump News

Judge says setting a new date would be ‘imprudent’, raising further doubt about whether the trial will start before the November 5 US election.

A United States judge in Florida has postponed indefinitely former President Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he illegally kept classified documents after leaving office.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon said on Tuesday that Trump’s trial would no longer begin on May 20, but she did not set a new date for proceedings to start, casting further doubt on whether he will face trial before the November election when he hopes to win the presidency for a second time.

Trump faces dozens of charges accusing him of illegally keeping top secret documents that he took from the White House in 2021 after losing the election to Democrat Joe Biden. Also accused of obstructing the FBI’s efforts to get the papers back, Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

The prosecution and defence had both acknowledged that the May date trial would probably need to be delayed, given still-unresolved issues in the case and because Trump is currently on trial in New York in connection with alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election. The New York case involves several of the same lawyers who are representing Trump in the Florida case.

Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, scheduled pre-trial hearings to take place until July 22.

She said it would be “imprudent” to set a new trial date given the uncertainties.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought case, has proposed proceedings begin in July.

Trump’s lawyers have said it should not start until after the November 5 election, although suggested an August 12 date in response to an order from Cannon to propose a timeline for the case.

Trump’s lawyers have worked to delay all four criminal cases he faces.

The other two cases relate to his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 election – he has already been charged in a Georgia state court over the allegations while the Supreme Court is weighing Trump’s arguments that he is immune from federal prosecution in a separate case brought by Smith.

“We’re in this absolutely unprecedented situation where a defendant is potentially going to have the power to shut down his own prosecution,” said George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason, an expert in white-collar criminal cases.

“That’s an argument for getting the case to trial before the election.”

Trump has sought to portray all the legal cases against him as politically motivated.

The charges in the Florida case include violations of the Espionage Act, which criminalises the unauthorised possession of national defence information, as well as conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements to investigators.

Cannon has denied two attempts by Trump to dismiss the charges, but several remain pending.

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