Trump set to face ex-lawyer Michael Cohen at Manhattan fraud trial

MANHATTAN (CN) — Donald Trump may be in the New York City courtroom next week when his former attorney Michael Cohen takes the stand at his ongoing $250 million fraud trial.

The former president is scheduled to fly to Manhattan from Iowa on Monday after a rally for his 2024 presidential bid, according to multiple Thursday reports. He’s slated to attend trial Tuesday, the same day Cohen is expected to deliver dramatic testimony against his former boss.

“It’s been 5 years since we have seen one another,” Cohen told Courthouse News. “Assuming I am even on to testify next week, I look forward to the reunion. I hope Donald does as well.”

Trump and Cohen’s history tees up a potentially explosive showdown between the two at the courthouse.

As Trump’s longtime attorney and personal fixer, the now-disbarred Cohen was once counted among the most loyal figures in Trump’s inner circle, but after the two parted ways in 2018 he became one of the former president’s most outspoken critics and a key witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal probe of Trump’s finances, which resulted in the first-ever criminal charges against a U.S. president.

Under the Trump administration in 2020 Cohen, who was on home confinement while serving his three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to lying to Congress and campaign finance fraud, was sent to prison after he announced he was writing a tell-all book about his experience with Trump. A federal judge ordered Cohen’s release in July 2020, calling the federal government’s retaliation unprecedented in his 21-year career. Cohen later sued Trump and officials in his administration for First Amendment retaliation.

Notably, Trump’s expected appearance in Manhattan next week may see him miss an obligation in another lawsuit. He has a deposition set for Tuesday, Oct. 17 in a case brought by ex-FBI officials who Trump attacked for investigating his campaign’s ties with the Russian government.

Trump has made a habit of skipping other depositions by showing up to court, on his own accord, for the fraud trial. When he came to the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan last week, he ditched a deposition for a now-dropped $500 million lawsuit he filed against Cohen.

Ex-Trump CFO grilled during fraud trial testimony

News of Trump’s potential return broke as his co-defendant Allen Weisselberg, the former finance chief of the Trump Organization, prepared to return to the witness stand Thursday to resume his testimony.

Louis Solomon of the Attorney General’s Office questioned Weisselberg on Tuesday before pausing on Wednesday to fit in testimony from another witness, Nicholas Haigh of Deutsche Bank.

On Thursday, Solomon grilled Weisselberg over his $2 million severance package from the Trump Organization, the same amount Weisselberg was ordered to pay earlier this year after pleading guilty to fraud. Even as he cooperated with state prosecutors in that case against the Trump Organization, Weisselberg remained loyal to the Trumps — and on the company payroll.

As for the $2 million severance, Weisselberg called the identical dollar amounts a “coincidence.”

But Solomon implied that the payout package, which was to come in quarterly $250,000 increments over two years, may have influenced Weisselberg’s cooperation with the attorney general’s office.

Solomon presented the terms of Weisselberg’s severance agreement, which barred voluntary cooperation with authorities unless “directly compelled by a subpoena or other lawful process issued by a court.”

Both Judge Arthur Engoron and Attorney General Letitia James were critical of Weisselberg’s apparent evasiveness during his testimony.

Engoron had chided Weisselberg on Tuesday for his long-winded answers to yes-or-no questions, while James on Wednesday took jabs at his unwillingness to answer many of her office’s questions; he answered more than 100 inquiries with some form of “I don’t recall.”

Even Forbes piled onto Weisselberg, claiming in a Thursday story that the ex-CFO committed perjury with his testimony.

“Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, lied in sworn testimony on Tuesday when questioned about Donald Trump’s penthouse atop Trump Tower,” wrote Dan Alexander, a senior editor at Forbes.

As Alexander has reported, Trump claimed his Manhattan penthouse was about 30,000 square feet, when it was just 10,996 square feet. Weisselberg admitted on Tuesday that the apartment was not, in fact, 30,000 square feet. He implied that he didn’t pay it much thought or have much to do with its phony valuation.

“But that’s not true,” Alexander wrote. “A review of old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general’s office does not possess, show that Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment — and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was.”

Weisselberg, 76, was sentenced to five months in jail and ordered to pay nearly $2 million in back taxes. He was released from Rikers Island jail on good behavior in April.

After lunch on Thursday, Weisselberg’s testimony was abruptly paused by the judge after both defense and state attorneys reserved the right to call him back later. It’s unclear when he will return to the stand.

Weisselberg’s unexpected exit gave way to the Attorney General James’ next witness: Patrick Birney, a financial analyst at the Trump Organization who worked under Weisenberg and other senior employees.

Birney testified that he helped prepare Trump’s scrutinized statements of financial condition between 2016 and 2021. He claimed that Weisselberg was the “final decisionmaker” on those financial statements, and that the documents often went through 20 or 30 drafts before being finalized.

The attorney general’s office prodded Birney for details on how the Trump Organization valued some of its assets, including Mar-a-Lago and the controversial Trump Tower penthouse. Birney notably claimed that the Trump Organization changed its valuation of the apartment after Forbes’ reporting revealed its true square footage.

Birney will continue his testimony on Friday.

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