Michael Cohen, during testimony at the hush money trial against his ex-longtime boss Donald Trump, admitted to a slew of lies he made to protect the former president.
Prosecutors questioned Cohen — their star witness — for about eight hours over Monday and Tuesday about helping Trump allegedly cover-up a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election season to keep her from going public about claims she slept with the married real estate mogul once in 2006.
During the testimony in Manhattan Supreme Court, prosecutors spent time painstakingly going over Cohen’s fibs and misdeeds — likely in a bid to get ahead of Trump’s attorneys trying to eviscerate the ex-con’s credibility by playing up his criminal past and his numerous admitted lies.
Here are some of the lies, deceptions and misleading statements Cohen copped to on the witness stand:
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In 2018, Cohen finally decided with his family that he would stop lying for the real estate tycoon, a decision that culminated in Cohen taking two guilty pleas in connection to the deceptions he made for Trump.
He pleaded guilty to tax evasion, making false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations in August 2018 in connection to the hush money payment he made to Daniels. And he copped to lying to Congress in November 2018 for hiding Trump’s efforts for the development project in Moscow.
Cohen was sentenced in December that year to three years in prison and he served over a year before getting released in 2020 to home confinement due to the pandemic. He was freed altogether in November 2021.
He previously testified against Trump at a civil fraud trial last year where Trump’s lawyers sought to paint Cohen as a liar, and an ex-con whose testimony couldn’t be trusted.
Additional reporting by Ben Kochman and Kyle Schnitzer