Michael Cohen is Set to Testify Against Trump Regarding Payments Made on His Behalf

Michael Cohen, the former fixer of Donald Trump who is currently estranged from him, is set to provide testimony starting Monday that could impact the outcome of the trial involving the former U.S. president’s payment to a lawyer labeled as a legal expense.

For close to ten years, Cohen, 57, served as an executive and lawyer in Trump’s New York real estate company. He once expressed extreme loyalty to Trump but later broke ties with him when federal prosecutors investigating Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign focused on Cohen. Cohen is now one of Trump’s most vocal critics, frequently criticizing him on social media and podcasts.

During the trial that began on April 15 in a New York state criminal court in Manhattan, the focus is on Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election over an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Prosecutors claim that Trump mislabeled these payments as legal expenses in his company’s books in 2017.

Trump insists that the payments to the lawyer were legitimate legal expenses and not related to any campaign violations. However, prosecutors argue that such mislabeling of expenses was a deliberate attempt to avoid election-law and tax-law violations, which could elevate the charges against Trump to felonies.

Despite denying any wrongdoing and pleading not guilty to the 34 counts he faces, Trump maintains that the case is politically motivated. The prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, are Democrats, further fueling Trump’s claims of bias against him.

While the trial is considered less significant than other legal battles Trump is involved in, it is expected to be the only one concluded before the upcoming election. The other cases involve Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling of classified documents post-presidency.

Reuters and Newsmax’s Eric Mack contributed to this report.