Trump trial: Cohen faces Trump team grilling over past lies, recollections

Restarting his cross-examination, defense attorney Todd Blanche asked Michael Cohen if he had been following the progress of the trial.

"I have made comments about the jury selection," Cohen said.

"On April 23, so after the trial started, you said that you had actually heard what a witness had testified about?" Blanche asked.

"Possible yes," Cohen replied.

"Do you recall saying on TikTok on April 23 and that's when Mr. Pecker was still on the stand that from everything you have heard David Pecker has corroborated everything you have been saying for six years?" Blanche asked.

"Somebody called me and told me that Mr. Pecker had corroborated what I'd been saying for a long time," Cohen said.

Under questioning, Cohen conceded that, while the trial has been ongoing, he has said disparaging things about former President Trump.

"You referred to President Trump as a dictator douche bag, didn't you?" Blanche asked.

"Sounds like something I said," Cohen answered.

Blanche asked Cohen if he commented that Donald Trump belongs in a "little cage ... like a f------ animal."

"I recall saying that," Cohen said.

Trump, at the defense table, has been leaning back in his chair and listening with his eyes closed.

With court resuming after the lunch break, Michael Cohen has retaken the stand for cross-examination by the defense.

Questioning has gotten off to a combative start.

"You know who I am, don't you?" defense attorney Todd Blanche asked Cohen.

"I do," Cohen said.

"In fact on April 23 you went on TikTok and called me a crying little s--- didn't you?"

"Sounds like something I would say," Cohen said, prompting some laughter in the overflow room.

The prosecution objected, prompting a conference at the bench.

The question was stricken from the record and cross-examination resumed.

Michael Cohen testified about the fallout from his work for Trump, telling the jury he is no longer a lawyer.

"I lost my law license as a direct result of this," he said.

He said he wrote his book, "Disloyal," to "pass the time" in prison, then wrote his second book, "Revenge," which he described as a "forensic dissection of the prosecution ... against a critic of the president."

The jury then saw a 2023 social media post by Donald Trump about "convicted liar and felon" Michael Cohen.

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger questioned Cohen about Trump suing him in Florida for half a billion dollars -- and for the first time in a while, Trump, at the defense table, opened his eyes, took notes, and passed them to his attorney Todd Blanche.

Cohen told the jury that he regrets what he did for Trump.

"I regret doing things for him that I should not have. Lying. Bullying people in order to effectuate a goal," Cohen said. "I don't regret working with the Trump Organization, as I expressed before some very interesting great times."

"But to keep the loyalty and do things that he had asked me to do -- I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family," Cohen said.

Trump appeared to have his eyes closed for the majority of Cohen's last answer. The prosecution completed its direct examination of Cohen, and the court recessed the lunch.

Michael Cohen said that after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges related to the Stormy Daniels payment -- as well as other tax charges -- he served 13 months in federal prison before being sent to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump, sitting at the defense table, had his eyes closed as Cohen testified about his time in prison.

Cohen then testified that he was sent back to prison after he declined to sign an agreement that would have prohibited him from speaking or writing publicly.

"Didn't seem like a federal document," Cohen said, adding that it did not include any numbers and included several typos.

Cohen suggested he was sent to solitary confinement around the time he was writing his book, prompting a sustained objection from defense lawyers.

Asked about the tax charges, Cohen told jurors that while he agrees his tax filings had an "error," he believes he was treated unfairly by prosecutors.

"I have constantly maintained that I did not dispute the fact there was an error in the taxable amount -- in the tax that was due," Cohen said.

"What I did dispute, and I continue to dispute, is for a first-time offender … never having been audited, that this would go immediately to a criminal charge. From the day that we found out, I was given 48 hours within which to plead guilty" -- or face an eighty-page indictment that would have included charges against his wife, he said.

"And I was going to protect my wife," Cohen said.