The end is near: 5 takeaways from Trump’s criminal trial

“That was a lie,” Blanche said, his voice rising.

Cohen is not done. After more than seven hours of cross-examination over two days, he will return to the stand Monday; the judge granted Trump a day off Friday so that the former president can attend his son Barron’s graduation.

Trump is charged with falsifying 34 business records related to the reimbursement of the $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in 2006. Trump, 77, has denied the charges and having had sex with Daniels. If convicted, he could face prison or probation.

Here are five takeaways from Trump’s 18th day, and his fifth week, on trial.

The content of a call could be trouble for Cohen.

It was a startling moment: Blanche on the attack, accusing Cohen of lying about a brief phone call on Oct. 24, 2016, which Cohen had previously said was to update Trump about the $130,000 he was going to pay to Daniels. Blanche, however, suggested Cohen was instead talking to a Trump bodyguard, Keith Schiller, about being the victim of phone pranks.

“You were actually talking to Mr. Schiller about harassing phone calls from a 14-year-old,” Blanche said heatedly.

Cohen said no, but wasn’t definitive: “I believe I spoke to Mr. Trump.”

The call, made to Schiller’s phone, lasted about 90 seconds. Whether jurors believe that conversation was an update on a hush-money payment — or about prank calls — will affect Cohen’s credibility.

Reciting Cohen’s lies has a cumulative effect.

Prosecutors have tried to blunt attacks on Cohen’s credibility by introducing the jury to his myriad legal problems and stint in prison.

That strategy, however, could only go so far. The defense had many lines of attack available Thursday: Blanche pressed Cohen about disavowing his 2018 guilty pleas for personal financial crimes and tax evasion related to the hush-money payoff. He was also asked about lying to a federal judge and making a false statement to Congress.

Jurors may not remember every attack, but they could buy the defense’s overall contention that Cohen is not to be trusted.

The defense finds a motive in Cohen’s self-interest.

Cohen said this week that he had turned against Trump after he was raided by federal agents in 2018, saying his loyalty should have been to “my wife, my daughter, my son and the country.”

But defense lawyers suggested Cohen was out for payback, playing a portion of an October 2020 podcast in which Cohen sounded giddy as he celebrated the investigations into Trump, saying that “revenge is a dish best served cold.” He concluded: “I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.”

Blanche also painted Cohen as upset over not getting a White House job after the 2016 election, asking him about conversations that indicated he had wanted to be chief of staff.

Pizzas for Donald Trump’s legal team and security staff are carried into the courthouse in Manhattan (The New York Times)

Cohen kept his cool.

He has been called a liar, a loser and a money-grubber in court. Through all of these attacks, Cohen has remained mostly calm, soft-spoken and deliberate on the stand.

Cohen also appeared unfazed as Blanche brought up slights and humiliations after Trump won the election in November 2016, potentially to provide a motive for Cohen’s testimony. But the witness largely stood firm, saying at one point that he was pleased with being Trump’s personal lawyer and that it was “the role that I wanted.”

The back-and-forth appeared to frustrate Blanche, who at one point rubbed his forehead after one of Cohen’s answers.

Jurors could get the case soon.

Cohen’s cross-examination will continue Monday, but should be done before noon, according to Blanche. Prosecutors may reinterview Cohen and then are expected to rest their case.

Next comes the defense’s turn. Trump’s lawyers told the judge late Thursday that the former president had yet to decide whether he would testify. It is unclear whether his lawyers might call other witnesses.

Justice Juan M. Merchan told the lawyers they should be ready to make closing arguments Tuesday.

That means that the jury, which has been on duty since April 22, could get the case just in time before the Memorial Day weekend.

Then the wait for a verdict begins.