Michael Cohen on the witness stand
Michael Cohen is on the witness stand, answering questions about his educational background and prior criminal convictions. When he entered the courtroom moments ago to testify against his former boss, Donald Trump, he walked to the witness stand without fanfare. He nodded at several people in the gallery but did not appear to look at Trump.
Key events
Michael Cohen set to testify at Trump’s civil fraud trial
Victoria Bekiempis
Greetings from the downtown Manhattan court where Donald Trump is expected to soon come face-to-face with his onetime consigliere, Michael Cohen, in the ex-president’s sprawling civil fraud trial.
Trump, along with his sons and companies, is accused of unlawfully inflating the value of assets to secure more favorable loan and insurance terms. Cohen is expected to testify about his deep knowledge of the questionable real estate valuations.
“It appears that I will be reunited with my old client @realDonaldTrump when I testify this Tuesday, October 24th at the @NewYorkStateAG civil fraud trial. See you there!” Cohen said last week on the social media platform Threads.
It will be the first time in five years that the two have come face to face.
Indeed, it was Cohen’s startling testimony before Congress in 2019 that spurred a legal inquiry into Trump’s real estate valuations. “Mr. Trump is a cheat,” Cohen told the House Oversight Committee.
“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.” New York Attorney General Letitia James opened a probe that March.
Cohen’s testimony is likely to involve confabs between Trump and Allen Weisselberg, his ex-chief financial officer, who provided bombshell testimony in a criminal case against the Trump Organization, as well as general discussion of business valuations. Prosecutors played a portion of Cohen’s deposition in the case during their opening statement in the civil trial.
Cohen said in his deposition that Trump “wanted to be higher on the Forbes list, and he then said ‘I’m actually not worth $6 billion. I’m worth seven. In fact, I think it’s actually now worth eight, with everything that’s going on.’”
“Allen and I were tasked with taking the assets, increasing each of those asset classes, in order to accommodate that $8 billion number,” he also said, per ABC News.
A Covid delay at the court on Monday means a previous witness will have to finish their testimony first. But we’ll bring you the latest updates from Cohen’s testimony and any other trial news as we get them.
