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Donald Trump has accused his onetime lawyer Michael Cohen of delivering "lie after lie" during his highly anticipated testimony in the $250 million civil fraud trial against the former president.
Trump and Cohen faced off against each other in the courtroom on Tuesday as the former president arrived to hear Cohen deliver evidence as part of New York Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit, alleging Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his properties for years in financial statements.
During his testimony, Cohen said that he was tasked with listing the value of Trump's assets based on figures that the former president had "arbitrarily" decided on and then worked with the Trump Organization's longtime chief finance officer Allen Weisselberg to "reverse engineer" the financial statements to achieve these valuations.
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in connection with James' lawsuit, and has frequently accused her of carrying out a politically motivated "witch hunt" with her probe into his finances. The former president and his legal team argued the testimony of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2018 regarding hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels, cannot be relied upon.
"Michael Cohen was a complete and total disaster in the Biden Inspired Trial today. Lie after lie, and getting caught each time," Trump posted on Truth Social.
"My great assets are worth MORE than is on my Financial Statements, and it's not even close," he wrote. "The Rigged Trial doesn't even give me the right to a Jury, but the people are watching, and they are seeing what is going on here. A MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE—The Statute being used for this 'case' gives me No Rights, and has never been used for this before, but the FACTS are all on my side. WITCH HUNT!"
Trump made a similar remark outside the New York courtroom on Tuesday, telling reporters that Cohen is a "proven liar."
"The witness is totally discredited," Trump said. "He's a disgraced felon, and that's the way it's coming out."
In 2018, Cohen was handed a three-year prison sentence, serving just over a year, after he pleaded guilty to a number of offenses. These included lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws in relation to money he paid to Daniels on behalf of the former president to keep an alleged affair between her and Trump a secret ahead of the 2016 election.
Cohen has been contacted for comment via email.
Cohen, whose 2019 congressional testimony triggered the investigation that resulted in James' lawsuit, has long been considered a key witness in the $250 million fraud lawsuit against the former president.
"I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected and my responsibility along with Allen Weisselberg predominantly was to reverse engineer the various different assets classes, increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us," Cohen told the court on Tuesday.
When asked what numbers they would work on, Cohen replied: "Whatever number Mr. Trump told us to."
Cohen added that Trump would also look at the total assets and "he would say 'I'm actually not worth 4.5 billion [dollars], I'm really worth more like six.' He would then direct Allen and I to go back to Allen's office and return after we achieved the desired goal."
Speaking outside the court, Cohen said it was a "heck of a reunion," between him and Trump, but that the case is about more than the feud between the pair.
"This is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump," he said. "This is about accountability, plain and simple."
Judge Arthur Engoron, who is overseeing the civil trial, has already ruled that Trump had committed fraud while inflating the value of several properties and that the proceedings in New York will now rule over six remaining allegations in James' lawsuit, as well as the size of the penalty.
Trump faces being banned from doing business in New York, having his properties removed from his control, or being forced to pay a fine totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more