A Key Weakness of Trump’s Defense Is Coming Into View

Read our ongoing coverage of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial here.

With the start of cross-examination of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen in Trump’s hush money trial on Tuesday, a potentially critical weakness with the defense came into view: They seem to be more focused on impressing their boss than on convincing the jury. Trump attorney Todd Blanche was surprisingly petty and tame, going above and beyond to insult adverse witnesses and boast about Trump himself in a way that may actually hurt the case with jurors.

Now, as Cohen’s cross-examination resumes on Thursday, the defense will have its best chance to puncture District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case. The prosecution has spent weeks trying to establish that the former president paid off Stormy Daniels through Cohen to cover up a sexual encounter and help Trump win the 2016 election.

The defense will need to do a better job than Blanche’s languid and sloppy opener. On Tuesday, Blanche struggled to put any major dents in Cohen’s credibility, which jurors have been long primed to doubt. The cross-examination immediately started shaky, with Blanche asking Michael Cohen if he had been observing the proceedings—as witnesses are instructed not to do—and pointing out that Cohen has been monetizing insults of Trump’s criminal defense team on TikTok. “You went on TikTok and called me a ‘crying little shit,’ didn’t you?” Blanche questioned Cohen.

Bragg’s prosecution team immediately objected, and Justice Juan Merchan sustained the objection, but not before Cohen could demurely respond, “Sounds like something I would do.” Blanche kept on this track, though, asking Cohen if he had also insulted Trump attorney Susan Necheles. There was another objection, again sustained, and Merchan demanded both sides come to the bench to hash out this line of questioning (and seemingly to instruct Blanche to cut it out).

It’s hard to see how this could have helped Trump’s case with the jury, which was instructed by the judge to disregard the questions immediately after the bench conference. Indeed, during that bench conference, it appeared as though Juror No. 2 was doing all that he could to refrain from laughing, unable to contain an enormous grin. Who’s to say what this means—maybe Juror No. 2 is just a messy bench who loves drama. Maybe, though, Blanche was the joke in this instance.

A similar thing happened later in questioning, when Blanche asked Cohen if he had referred to Trump on social media as “a dictator douchebag” and the ex-lawyer responded, again, “Sounds like something I said.” At this, Juror No. 5 looked like she was going to burst out laughing, unable to suppress a wide and gleeful smile. Juror No. 5 is the one who, during voir dire questioning, said she admired that Trump “speaks his mind,” saying, “You’d rather that than the alternative.” Perhaps she just likes, or is amused by, people who speak their hearts.

The goal of the defense was to portray Cohen as a small, petty man fueled by a volcano’s worth of hatred for Donald J. Trump, but in doing so they risked making their own challenges to Cohen’s credibility look nitpicky and small.

This was evident throughout Tuesday, with Blanche sparring incessantly with Cohen about his constant media appearances and his seemingly equivocating answers about those appearances. (A typical question: “You love being on TV? CNN, MSNBC, even Fox?”)

How this may have damaged Cohen’s Stormy story, which has been largely consistent since he pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance charges, is unclear.

The strongest moment in questioning came when Blanche confronted Cohen with the notes from an August 2018 meeting with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe team, during which Cohen seemingly lied by telling investigators that he “might” have spoken with Trump after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in October 2016. That contradicts what he told jurors during Tuesday’s direct examination, when he claimed to have a specific memory of Trump instructing him to cover up the Stormy encounter.

This timing is critical to prosecutors, who have argued that the release of the Access Hollywood tape is what spurred Trump and Cohen to pay Daniels for her silence because they were worried about how such news would play with voters following Trump’s damning on-video remarks. Cohen argued that he was being “deceptive” with prosecutors in 2018 because “I was trying to be loyal to President Trump.” This was in line with what Cohen had previously testified to on direct examination. But pointing out Cohen was lying in the past in describing the Trump phone call implied he could be lying again, doing some damage to the prosecution’s case.

This one good moment, however, was the exception in a day that was full of mostly banal exchanges that, again, seemed designed to please the client instead of convince the jury.

Blanche went at great length to list times when Cohen had—while he was still “on Trump’s team” to use Cohen’s language—praised the former president lavishly. A typical exchange:

This distinction between how Cohen “felt” about Donald Trump at various times in his life and the “truth” about Trump the human seemed ludicrous, but the purpose also seemed clear: Lavish Trump with praise in a way that would make him happy.

This was the same approach the defense team took with Stormy Daniels, in fact, spending hours on seeming minutiae, such as whether Daniels actually ate dinner with Trump the night of their alleged sexual encounter and her views on the paranormal. Notably, Necheles also asked Daniels about the golf tournament where she and Trump met, noting that “He did very well at that golf tournament, right?”

“I don’t remember what the score was,” Daniels responded. (Trump actually finished 62^nd out of 80 players at the tournament.)

It’s unclear who might have benefited from this question, other than Trump’s ego. Which is the defense’s main problem: They’re working overtime to please Donald Trump and barely working at all to disprove the prosecution’s case to the jury.

If there’s still a Perry Mason moment coming for Trump’s cross-examination of Cohen, they better change up their entire approach on Thursday. Otherwise, they could be missing their one chance to win this case.