Prosecutors have a paper trial for Trump false business documents charges and Michael Cohen is walking the jury through it.
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Here is what happened in the courtroom:
We are now, again, looking at Weisselberg’s handwritten notes on the reimbursement to Cohen. We have seen these at least once before, while Jeffrey McConney, an underling of Weisselberg’s, testified. But now, Cohen is testifying that he was in the room as Weisselberg made these notations on how to repay him for the hush money, as well as his shrunken bonus, and other things he was owed.
This document, prosecutors say, leads straight to the repayments to Cohen, and the false documents used to disguise them. Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, one for each of those documents: 11 checks, 11 invoices and 12 ledger entries.
Cohen has appeared to be convincing and credible. What has helped Cohen’s possible credibility with the jury is that there are documents to back up what he is saying. In fact, there seem to be a lot of documents. It is interesting and important that the Trump lawyers are not challenging the authenticity of the documents.
There defense has taken several body blows during Cohen’s first day of testimony as he has claimed that Trump was only concerned with the presidential campaign and not his family.
Cohen has painted a picture of Trump as a person who was only concerned about his presidential campaign and that was his sole motivation for the hush money payments. Trump moved on to the much riskier plan of using Cohen to pay Daniels after his agreement with David Pecker collapsed.
Not a whole appears debatable in this case, but juries are unpredictable, even if things appear not to be looking so good for Donald Trump.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
