Cohen expected to testify on Monday
Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is expected to take the witness stand Monday in the former president's hush money criminal trial, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Cohen is the star witness in the case brought last year by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He is expected to testify at length about an alleged conspiracy led by Trump to buy negative stories about his conduct with women to keep them from being published before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen's testimony is crucial for Bragg because he personally made a US$130,000 payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade before the 2016 election. The former president is charged with falsifying dozens of business records while repaying Cohen in order to conceal the true nature of the payment.
Cohen will testify at some point Monday, said the person, who asked not to be identified because witness names haven't been released in advance by prosecutors or the court. The New York Times reported on the schedule earlier Friday.
The New York jury has already heard this week from Daniels, who testified over two days about what she says was a brief sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel suite.
Prosecutors said Thursday that they won't call at least one witness that had been expected to appear in court. Karen Mcdougal, a former Playboy model who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, won't testify.
Cohen, a former Trump Organization vice-president, became Trump's personal attorney after Trump won the election. But he has since become one of his most outspoken critics of the former president, regularly exchanging insults on social media.
Several prosecution witnesses have testified about their disdain for Cohen, who was regarded as Trump's attack dog. The defence is expected to question his credibility and portray him as a bitter liar, based on opening statements to the jury.
Madeleine Westerhout, a former assistant to Trump at the White House, returned to the witness stand Friday for her cross-examination.
Under questioning by defence lawyer Susan Necheles, Westerhout said the Trump Organization regularly used Fedex to send Trump's personal cheques to Washington for his signature. The line of questioning sought to poke holes in the district attorney's contention that the Trump Organization was hiding something by using Fedex rather than the regular White House mail system to send Trump's personal cheques to Cohen.