Is it possible to use a lie to reveal the truth? If serial liar Michael Cohen lied in the proper context, the answer is yes. Kudos to the prosecutors in the Trump felony trial for pulling off this tricky maneuver.
On Monday, we finally got to a key element of this case: campaign finance law. To convict Donald Trump of a felony, a jury would have to find that Trump falsified (or directed the falsification of) his business records with “intent to commit another crime.” Trump does not need to be convicted of any other crimes (in this case, tax evasion, election interference, campaign finance violations, etc.) to be convicted. But in at least one of these areas he must keep crime in mind.
Later in the morning, after the Wall Street Journal reported the story about Stormy Daniels’ hush money in 2018, Susan Hoffinger, who was a prosecuting attorney in her line of work, brought it to Cohen’s attention and asked his attorney. I drew attention to a letter written by Stephen Ryan. Mr. Cohen, still with the Trump campaign, told the world that he paid Mr. Daniels $130,000 himself. “The payments in question are not campaign contributions,” Ryan said in his letter.
Hoffinger asked, “Was that a real statement?” Cohen, newly civilized, replied, “No, ma’am.” This told the jury, “Cohen has lied again.” In other words, Mr. Cohen is a well-known liar, so when he said the payments were not campaign funds, it is plausible that he was lying to protect Mr. Trump and himself.
After a digression, Judge Juan Melchan turned to the jury and, during direct examination of Cohen, brought up the subject of his guilty plea in a 2018 criminal case that sentenced him to 13 months in prison. I repeated the instructions. . Cohen’s guilty plea is not proof of Trump’s guilt.
The judge was essentially telling the jury, “While you may believe that these two men intended to commit other crimes, you cannot use Cohen’s guilty plea to convict Trump.”
Campaign finance law expert Norm Eisen told me during a break, “The jury will listen to the judge, but that’s like saying, ‘Don’t look at the elephant.’ is”.
To further emphasize this point, Hoffinger asked, “Did Mr. Trump approve of the content of your false statements?” Which brings us back to “Yes, ma’am.”
The prosecution stalled again after Marchan refused to testify about Republican and former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith’s conservative interpretation of campaign law. The judge said that if he were to allow the testimony the defense desperately wanted, he would have to force the prosecution to call an expert witness with an opposing interpretation. Mr. Machan concluded that as a judge, it is his job, and his own job, to interpret how campaign finance laws should be viewed by juries.
Overall, this was a modest but important victory for prosecutors.
