When cross-examination resumed following the mid-morning break, Michael Cohen testified that he is considering a run for Congress.

"Going after President Trump, that's your name recognition?" defense attorney Todd Blanche asked.

"My name recognition is because of the journey I've been on." Cohen answered. "It is affiliated to Mr. Trump -- yes -- not because of Mr. Trump."

"Your journey includes near-daily attacks on President Trump?" Blanche asked.

Eventually Cohen conceded, "Yes sir."

Michael Cohen told jurors that he requested that his then-attorney Robert Costello reach out to Rudy Giuliani to get help paying for his own defense lawyers after Cohen's office and hotel room were raided by the FBI in 2018.

"The payment was not being made in accordance with the invoices," Cohen said about his own legal bills, which were initially covered by the Trump Organization after the FBI raid that resulted in part from Cohen's involvement in the Stormy Daniels arrangement.

Cohen said he asked Costello to tell Giuliani to communicate the payment issue to Trump.

"I expressed to him that the nonpayment was becoming an issue," Cohen said. "To, yes, let Mr. Giuliani know to pass it along to Mr. Trump that it is becoming an issue."

Cohen confirmed that he received approximately $4 million from his consulting work between 2017 and 2018.

Court was subsequently recessed for the mid-morning break.

Testifying about Robert Costello, Michael Cohen's attorney for a period until Cohen ended the association, Cohen initially said he spoke with Costello approximately a dozen times over the phone in 2018.

When defense attorney Todd Blanche suggested they actually spoke on the phone 75 times, Cohen responded, "It seems excessive but possible."

Blanche suggested that some of their phone calls lasted more than 30 minutes. According to Blanche, Cohen and Costello spoke for a total of nine hours over the course of a few months in 2018.

Last week, Michael Cohen testified that he did not trust Robert Costello to be his lawyer because he worried any information shared with him would get to Rudy Giuliani and then get to Trump.

But Cohen testified today that he took advantage of that back channel -- including asking Costello to ask Giuliani to try to learn more about the origins of the federal investigation that led to the search of Cohen's office and hotel room.

“I spoke with the person you asked me to and he said he would find out exactly how the matter ended up in the SDNY and in particular who in Main Justice approved this,” Costello wrote in an email to Cohen on April 23, 2018.

Cohen confirmed the “person” mentioned above was Rudy Giuliani.

The defense made a motion for the dismissal of the case, with defense attorney Todd Blanche telling Judge Merchan, "There's absolutely no evidence the filings were false, the business records were false."

When the invoices for Cohen's payment were sent to the Trump Organization there's no evidence they were entered improperly, Blanche said. "At the start, there is absolutely no false business filings. They're accurate business filings," he said.

Trump looked directly at Blanche as the attorney addressed Merchan.

"There's no evidence that there's any intent to defraud by Mr. Trump in connection to these filings," Blanche argued.

"There are no other crimes," defense attorney Todd Blanche argued about the legal standard in the case -- that Trump falsified business records in furtherance of another crime. "There is no evidence that any one was thinking about a campaign finance charge in 2016 when this payment was made to Ms. Daniels."

"The prosecutors have talked in their opening statement and in papers about some sort of conspiracy to influence the election but as the court knows there has to be something illegal about this effort," Blanche said. "There's no evidence from any of the witnesses who testified of any criminal intent."

"There is no way that the court should let this case go to jury relying on Mr. Cohen's testimony," Blanche said "Without Mr. Cohen, there is no case."

Judge Merchan asked if Blanche was calling for him to rule that Cohen's testimony is "not credible as a matter of law."

"Absolutely, that's exactly what we're calling on the court to do," Blanche replied. "He testified, and he lied under oath -- in this courtroom."