Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted the “scam” hush money trial against him as his ex-attorney and former fixer Michael Cohen took the stand for more questioning from prosecutors.
Moments before entering the courtroom, Trump was flanked by Republican allies as he read aloud quotes from several conservative legal analysts and argued the hush money trial against him is an effort to damage his 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump hit out at District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the elected Democrat who brought the case against him, accusing the prosecutor of “making a mockery” of the legal system.
“There is an insufficient amount of evidence,” he said. “No crime has been shown. No crime has been committed.”
“There’s never been anything like this in the history of our country,” Trump added. “It’s a scam. It’s election interference at a level that’s never taken place before.”
Shortly into this second day of testimony on Tuesday, Cohen was asked about allegedly false invoices surrounding the 2017 reimbursement he received for the $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, according to the New York Times.
Cohen testified about check stubs for the first two checks out of the 11 he received and said the descriptions of them were “false.” He claimed both Eric Trump, who was inside the courtroom on Tuesday, and former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg signed the first two checks from the former president’s revocable trust account. Later in the repayment process, the money came from Trump’s personal account.
The jury has already seen Cohen’s invoices and checks, but the prosecution is using Cohen directly to confirm each of the alleged false statements on the record.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
During the jury selection process, prospective jurors were asked if they could believe people could be guilty of a crime if they did not commit the crime themselves. What prosecutors are asking the jury to believe is that Trump, by signing the repayment plan, is the person who commissioned the crime even if he did not execute it personally.
It’s likely that Trump’s defense during cross-examination will try to argue the statements weren’t false because Cohen was acting as his lawyer at the time he received the payments, which were labeled as “legal expenses” in the Trump Organization’s ledger.