Trump glowers as Cohen dishes

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s onetime loyal aide turned vocal antagonist, took the witness stand Tuesday to testify against Trump in a $250 million civil fraud trial, telling the judge that the former president ordered Cohen to falsify financial documents.

In measured tones, Cohen testified that when he worked for Trump as his lawyer and fixer, Trump directed him to modify documents that represented Trump’s net worth so that they reflected the number Trump desired.

“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen said, “and my responsibility, along with [former Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg, predominantly, was to reverse engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us.”

As Cohen delivered that testimony, Trump, who was seated at the defense table, grew red in the face and shook his head. Trump didn’t look at Cohen as he entered the courtroom, but as Cohen spoke on the witness stand, Trump trained his eyes on him and either crossed his arms or leaned forward over the defense table.

Cohen didn’t look at his former boss as he testified, instead directing his attention entirely to the lawyer from the New York attorney general’s office who was questioning him.

Cohen is one of the central witnesses in Attorney General Tish James’ case against Trump, which accuses him, his adult sons and his business associates of inflating his net worth in order to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers.

Cohen’s testimony Tuesday marks a fresh front in his efforts to take down Trump after years of defending him. That defense ended five years ago, when Cohen pleaded guilty to federal campaign finance crimes that he and federal prosecutors said Trump directed him to commit, and Cohen began speaking publicly about his former boss as a coward and a “con man.”

In the intervening years, the two traded endless barbs — with Trump calling Cohen a liar and a “rat” — but hadn’t had a face-to-face standoff until Tuesday.

“Well, I haven’t seen him in years, and you know his record, his record is a horrible one,” Trump told reporters during a break in testimony. “But they’re just starting, but you’ll see how it ends up. It’s not going to end up very good for him.”

He added: “We’re not worried at all about his testimony.”

The vast majority of Cohen’s testimony Tuesday focused on what he described as the falsified financial documents.

Cohen said Trump would call him into his office to discuss them. “He would look at the total assets and he would say, ‘I'm actually not worth 4.5 billion, I’m really worth more like 6.’ OK,” Cohen said. Trump would then order Cohen and Weisselberg, who is also a defendant in the case, to go to Weisselberg’s office “and return after we had achieved the desired goal.”

Cohen said there was “no specific program” by which they changed the numbers, but that they would often derive new figures by looking at other properties, typically ones that were more valuable than the Trump properties.

“Are those called comparables?” asked the lawyer for the attorney general’s office, Colleen Faherty, using a real estate term.

“You could call them comparables, but that would imply they were similar,” Cohen replied, saying the properties they assessed were often more desirable, with higher ceilings or unobstructed views.

Cohen testified that falsified documents concerning Trump’s net worth were used for various purposes, including in Trump’s failed effort to purchase the Buffalo Bills football team.

And Cohen said they were presented to insurance underwriters, along with a staged dramatic flourish by Trump. About three-quarters of the way through meetings during which insurance underwriters would be presented with documents, Trump would enter the meeting and “there would be a conversation about his extensive net worth,” with Trump telling the representatives that “he was actually worth more than the insurance companies” and wondering aloud if “maybe we should go self-insured.”

Faherty asked if those episodes were pre-planned. “It was coordinated so that he would arrive like that,” Cohen said.

Cohen was scheduled to return to the witness stand on Wednesday. His testimony is likely to be some of the most contentious of the monthslong trial, in part because of his own court record. He is a convicted felon who served a prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to federal tax evasion and campaign finance violations tied to his role in paying hush money during the 2016 presidential election to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with Trump. Cohen told a federal judge that it was Trump who ordered him to pay Daniels.

Cohen also subsequently pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts to help build a Trump Tower in Russia.

On Tuesday, Trump lawyer Alina Habba pressed Cohen not only on the fact of his guilty pleas but also on whether at least some of those pleas were themselves lies. Cohen has made repeated public statements disavowing the tax evasion pleas, and he repeated in court earlier Tuesday that the tax issues were ones of “omission,” not evasion.

Habba seized on that statement. “Did you lie to Judge Pauley?” she asked Cohen, referring to the federal judge who accepted Cohen’s plea concerning the tax counts.

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

“So you have lied under oath numerous times, Mr. Cohen, is that correct?” Habba asked.

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

Cohen’s testimony in the civil trial is just the start of his tenure as a witness against Trump. In the spring, Cohen is expected to serve as a witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal case against the former president over his alleged role in hush money payments to Daniels.

On Tuesday, Trump’s attorney in the Bragg case, Todd Blanche, attended the civil fraud trial in state court, saying he was there to observe Cohen’s testimony in advance of his expected role in the criminal trial.