Former President Trump took a victory lap on social media late Wednesday, claiming the prosecution’s case was “dead” after his former fixer Michael Cohen appeared to contradict himself on the stand earlier that day.
Trump claimed Cohen, New York Attorney General Letitia James’s “star” witness in the fraud case, “lied like a dog on the stand today, and then admitted I did NOTHING WRONG. … A total SleazeBag.”
“The New York State Attorney Generals case against me is DEAD, but the Radical Left Judge REFUSES to end it. He just can’t let it go,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, repeating his frequent attack on the judge in the case.
“Letitia James should focus on Violent Crime, which is out of control. So unfair. I don’t even get a Jury Trial. A blight on the New York State Judicial System,” he continued. “Businesses are watching all over the world, and never coming in, only moving out. The Governor should get involved.”
He added, “Election Interference by my Political Opponent!”
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Trump’s post followed a surprising day of testimony in the civil fraud case; Cohen was confronted with his 2019 testimony about the former president and his business practices that appeared to contradict testimony he gave earlier this week.
The transcript presented to him was the same testimony that James said inspired the case. In his testimony, Cohen said Trump did not direct him to inflate his net worth.
Earlier this week, he said otherwise.
“Mr. Trump never directed you to inflate the numbers in his personal statement. Yes or no?” Clifford Robert, an attorney for Trump’s sons, asked Cohen. The question followed a heated exchange, when the former lawyer avoided answering a question directly.
“Yes,” Cohen said.
He later explained his apparent contradiction by saying Trump’s attorneys were “cherry-picking” words in his testimony.
Cohen also repeated a frequent argument he has made that the former president “speaks like a mob boss” and will “tell you without specifically telling you” what to do.