Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer and right-hand man, Michael Cohen, claimed Tuesday before a civil court in New York that he was instructed by his former boss to increase the value of his assets.
Published on: 10/25/2023 – 04:32
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He was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, nicknamed his “pitbull”, before becoming his sworn enemy: Michael Cohen on Tuesday, October 24, charged the former American president at his civil trial in New York, accusing him of being the principal of the fraud to inflate the value of his real estate assets.
The two men, who now have a tenacious hatred for each other, in the courts or on social networks, found themselves in the crowded courtroom of the Supreme Court of the State of New York: one, Michael Cohen, already convicted by American justice, but this time sitting in the witness seat; the other, Donald Trump, prosecuted in this civil case, faced him, seated between his lawyers.
In this case, New York State Attorney General Letitia James accuses Donald Trump, 77, two of his children, Eric and Donald Jr, and two executives of the Trump Organization, of having overvalued by several billion of dollars from its golf courses, residences and New York skyscrapers in the 2010s to obtain more advantageous loans from banks. Accusations firmly denied by Donald Trump.
“Serial liar”
With graying hair, a white shirt and a dark jacket with small checks, Michael Cohen quickly overwhelmed his former boss, whose gaze he avoided. “I was instructed by Mr. Trump to increase the value of the heritage, on the basis of a figure that he set arbitrarily,” he responded to the representative of the general prosecutor’s office. “He could tell us: ‘I’m not worth 4.5 billion (dollars). I’m more like 6 billion,'” he said.
“My responsibility, with Allen Weisselberg (the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer), was to reverse engineer the assets and increase them in order to reach the number … whatever the requested figure”, added Michael Cohen, not prosecuted in this case.
“He’s a liar. He’s trying to sort out his affairs, but it’s not going to work,” attacked Donald Trump upon his arrival at the Manhattan court, setting the tone for the cross-examination led by his lawyer Alina Habba, which is to continue on Wednesday.
As a preamble, she recalled, one by one, the offenses for which Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty in August 2018, and which earned him a three-year prison sentence: tax evasion, false declarations to the American Congress, and violation of the laws of electoral campaign financing.
The defense intends to rely on this sulfurous CV to attack his credibility: “you know what it is to testify under oath”, quipped Alina Habba, even asking him if he had lied to his wife when he was evading taxes. “Serial liar,” said another of Donald Trump’s lawyers, Chris Kise. In the courtroom, Donald Trump remained silent.
Liste Forbes
Michael Cohen is behind the current civil lawsuit. During a spectacular hearing in the US Congress in February 2019, he claimed that Donald Trump “inflated his wealth when it served his interests”, in particular to climb the list of the greatest fortunes of Forbes magazine.
Donald Trump does not risk prison in this affair, but he is playing big. Even before the trial began, on October 2, Judge Arthur Engoron decided that the frauds had been established and took measures of confiscation and liquidation of companies which could lead to the dismantling of the real estate empire of the Republican billionaire. The application of these measures was suspended on appeal and the trial now focuses on other convictions, such as insurance fraud, and the financial penalties – $250 million – claimed by the Attorney General.
Michael Cohen is also one of the main prosecution witnesses in one of Donald Trump’s four future criminal trials, in New York in March 2024, on payments to cover up embarrassing affairs during the 2016 presidential election. -even settled the payment of $130,000 to a porn star, actress Stormy Daniels, so that she would keep quiet about an alleged relationship with Donald Trump, hence her conviction for violating campaign financing laws.
Favorite in the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, the former American president sees his campaign disrupted by legal cases. On Tuesday, a fourth defendant, lawyer Jenna Ellis, pleaded guilty in the case of attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 elections in the state of Georgia, a case where Donald Trump is also being prosecuted.
With AFP
2023-10-25 02:32:25
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