As Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer turned adversary, prepares to take the stand on Monday, the judge in the trial over payments to hide damaging information from the former president stern warning to prosecutors: get Cohen to stop his provocative posts and take a dig at Trump.
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s comments Friday came at the end of a dramatic and important week in the former US president’s first criminal trial.
Prosecutors have built their case ahead of crucial testimony from Cohen, who arranged to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to prevent her from appearing before the 2016 election. about a sexual encounter with Trump that happened ten years ago. Trump denies having a sexual relationship with Daniels.
Defense lawyers will argue that the disbarred lawyer who handed down a prison sentence against the former president is untrustworthy.
Two people familiar with the case told The Associated Press that Cohen plans to testify Monday. The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Trump’s lawyers complained after Cohen this week wore a T-shirt with a likeness of the former president behind bars in a video posted on social media. They have argued that it is unfair that Trump is under a gag order barring him from speaking publicly about the witnesses while Cohen has continued to post about Trump in the media. social.
“It’s becoming more of a problem every day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this testimony, but this witness is allowed to continue to speak,” said attorney Todd Blanche.
Merchan told prosecutors they should tell Cohen “that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any further statements” about the case or Donald Trump. Prosecutors told the judge they had asked – that Cohen and other witnesses would not talk about the case, but that they had no direct way of controlling what they did.
As the third week of testimony came to a close on Friday, the case, which ultimately hinges on how the count was conducted, returned to deep technical evidence, quite different from a dramatic count, if not It’s not completely ridiculous, about the alleged sexual incident with Trump. sequestered jurors earlier this week.
Prosecutors could wrap up their case by the end of next week, said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
Jurors saw social media posts showing that Trump first praised Cohen after the then-lawyer was the subject of a federal investigation. Trump began criticizing him after Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, among other crimes, and said Trump ordered him to pay to set Daniels up. Trump has never been charged with any crime related to that federal investigation.
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Rich reported in Washington. Associate reporters Eric Tucker in Washington, Ruth Brown in New York and Adriana Gómez Licón in Miami contributed to this report.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generational artificial intelligence engine.
2024-05-11 03:48:00
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