That Sound You Hear Is Donald Trump Shitting Several Bricks Over Michael Cohen’s Grand Jury Testimony - Vanity Fair

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WASHINGTON DC FEBRUARY 27 Michael Cohen former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump is sworn in before...

Grand jury testimony from Trump’s former attorney could be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to criminal charges for the ex-president.

By Bess Levin

March 13, 2023

Last week, we learned that after seven and a half decades escaping any and all responsibility for his shady, unethical, seemingly criminal behavior, Donald Trump might—might!—soon be held accountable. That accountability, according to The New York Times, appears likely to come in the form of an indictment from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which, per the paper of record, has “signaled” to the ex-president’s lawyers that criminal charges for a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels could be coming. (The signal was that prosecutors invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, an invite he reportedly declined in addition to insisting on Truth Social that he did “absolutely nothing wrong.“) Anyway, on Monday, an old pal of the former president’s showed up to talk to the grand jury from which the indictment would come—and we’re guessing the details he shared did not help make the case for innocence!

Speaking to reporters outside a Manhattan courthouse, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen said his goal was to “tell the truth” and that he is not seeking revenge against his former boss. “This is all about accountability,” Cohen said. “He needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds.”

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Cohen’s testimony is presumably of particular interest to prosecutors given his central role in the hush money case; Cohen was the one to pay Daniels, on the eve of the 2016 election, to stay quiet about the affair she alleged to have had with Trump, a detail which probably wouldn’t have gone over well with voters. The then Trump Organization attorney was subsequently reimbursed for the $130,000 while Trump was in office, with the leader of the free world, per the Times, “signing monthly checks.” Asked while testifying before Congress why his reimbursement was spread out over several months instead of being taken care of in one or two lump sums, Cohen said it was “in order to hide what the payment was,” explaining it was meant to “look like a retainer.” Asked in congressional testimony if Trump knew about the deal, Cohen answered, “Oh, he knew about everything, yes.” (In fact, the former Trump Organization lawyer has said he arranged the hush money payoff at Trump’s direction.)

As for the likelihood of charges, they appear to remain high, as The New York Times noted on Monday. In addition to inviting Trump to testify, the DA’s office has “already questioned at least seven other people before the grand jury this year,” and, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke with the Times, Cohen is expected to be one of the last witnesses; as the Times notes, “it would be rare for a prosecutor in a high-profile white-collar case to question nearly every relevant witness without intending to seek an indictment.” Also on Monday, one of Trump’s lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, told Good Morning America that the ex-president’s legal team recently met with prosecutors to argue against an indictment.

As for the actual why of the charges, meaning, “why can’t you just pay any porn star you want to keep quiet,” here’s the Times on that:

Mr. Bragg’s case would likely center on how Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, handled the reimbursement payments to Mr. Cohen. The company falsely recorded the payments in internal records as legal expenses, according to court papers in Mr. Cohen’s federal case. The Trump Organization’s records also cited a phony retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen, who was a lawyer but had no such agreement with the Trumps.

In New York, it can be a crime to falsify business records, but to make it a felony, prosecutors would need [to] show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an effort to commit or conceal a second crime. While it is unclear what that second crime might be in this case, it is possible that Mr. Bragg will cite a violation of state election law. Like the federal prosecutors who charged Mr. Cohen, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors could argue that the payment to Ms. Daniels was an illicit contribution to Mr. Trump’s campaign, given that the money silenced the porn star, which helped his candidacy…. An attempt to combine the false records charge with the election violation would be based on a legal theory that has not been evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges. But if a case does go to trial, the circumstances of the hush money payment—a president essentially paying off a porn star—could appeal to a jury.

While a conviction is obviously not a forgone conclusion, according to the ex-president and current presidential candidate, criminal charges would only help his chances of winning the GOP nomination. Speaking at CPAC earlier this month, he boldly claimed that not only would he not drop out of the race should an indictment materialize, but that one or more indictments would “probably…enhance my numbers.”