Michael Cohen, the one-time lawyer for Donald Trump who is now the star witness against him, described his job as doing “whatever” Trump wanted. “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task, to make him happy,” Cohen told the jury on Monday in Trump's ongoing trial in New York City, reports the New York Times. Prone to tirades and charm, Cohen is an unpredictable witness whose testimony is at the heart of the first criminal trial of a U.S. president. In the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money out of his own pocket to a porn star, silencing her story of a sexual encounter with Trump, and was later reimbursed by the man he called “the boss.”
Michael Cohen spoke Monday about having recorded Trump directing him to pay David Pecker back in cash. The recording fits with Cohen’s narrative that he was often updating Trump on the progress of the hush money deal with model Karen McDougal. On the recording, Cohen only has to mention Pecker’s name and it seems as if Trump knows that he’s referring to that deal. Cohen claims that this was the only conversation with Trump that he ever taped, and that he did it so that Pecker could hear that Trump planned to pay him back, thus retaining Pecker’s loyalty. Cohen spoke clearly and carefully in his initial testimony on Monday, not getting ruffled. This was the easy part. Emotions could rise later when he comes under cross-examination from the defense, reports the Washington Post. He emphasized that when he worked for Trump, he liked his job, calling it an “amazing experience” and “fantastic.”
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