NEW YORK — Michael Cohen took the witness stand Monday to provide a firsthand account of hush payments made near the 2016 election as the trial against former President Donald Trump reaches its climax.
Mr. Cohen, a hard-charging lawyer who went from being Mr. Trump’s loyal “fixer” to his top detractor, is the prosecution’s most important witness.
Wearing a dark suit and light necktie, Mr. Cohen spoke about his upbringing in New York as the son of a Holocaust survivor before meeting Mr. Trump through business deals and his standout performance during a real-estate dispute.
Mr. Cohen said he became special counsel at the Trump Organization, “whereby I would only answer to him.” He stayed from 2007 to 2017.
Early in his testimony, Mr. Cohen was asked to point out his former boss in court.
“He’s wearing a blue-and-white tie,” Mr. Cohen said, standing up in the witness box to see the former president over the corner of the judge’s bench.
Prosecutors say Mr. Trump used Mr. Cohen to pay $130,000 before the 2016 election to suppress porn star Stormy Daniels’ story about a 2006 sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. They say the pair concealed the nature of the payment through false business records.
On the witness stand, Mr. Cohen testified he tried to negotiate down bills with vendors on Mr. Trump’s behalf, as prosecutors painted a portrait of their relationship.
“I was accomplishing what he wanted,” Mr. Cohen said, admitting he could be aggressive and threaten to sue people.
Mr. Cohen said he usually spoke to Mr. Trump in person or by phone, partly because “Mr. Trump never had an email address.”
“He knows too many people who have gone down as a direct result from having emails, that prosecutors can use in a case,” Mr. Cohen said.
While Mr. Cohen’s direct examination has been a calm affair, defense lawyers are expected to batter Mr. Cohen by pointing to his criminal record and history of lying.
They will cast him as a rogue actor who paid Ms. Daniels on his own and demanded fees while Mr. Trump was busy running the country from the White House in 2017.
Yet Mr. Cohen described Mr. Trump as a “micro-manager” who wanted to be kept in the loop about tasks he gave him.
Mr. Cohen said if Mr. Trump was kept in the dark about matters, yet he found out about it through other means, it “wouldn’t go over well for you.”
He also described working at the Trump Organization, during his heyday there, as “fantastic” and a “big family.”
In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges of fraud and campaign finance violations. He served prison time and is still on supervised release.
Mr. Cohen provided 10 hours of high-profile testimony before Congress in 2019, during which he labeled Mr. Trump a “con man” and expressed regret for working for him.
Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records and says the trial is an attempt to thwart his presidential campaign as the presumptive GOP nominee.
Mr. Cohen frequently slams Mr. Trump on his podcast and social media.
Whether Mr. Trump can respond to Mr. Cohen’s attacks — the former president is under a gag order — has been a running theme through the trial. State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan instructed prosecutors before the weekend to keep Mr. Cohen quiet before his testimony.