In a new discussion on CNN, legal analyst Norm Eisen argued that prosecutors in Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal case, amid which trial was continuing on Monday, had successfully proved their case against the former president beyond a reasonable doubt. Ultimately delivering a final decision on that question is, of course, up to the jury.
“Juries convict every day in New York based on the word of far more problematic witnesses than Michael Cohen, including contract killers, mob figures, and other wrongdoers,” Eisen opined. “I believe the prosecution has established proof beyond a reasonable doubt. […] We’ll find out who’s right soon enough when we get that verdict from the jury.”
Closing arguments in the trial are set to arrive next Tuesday, and in theory, there could be a verdict relatively quickly after courtroom arguments wrap up. Trump is facing dozens of felony criminal charges of falsifying business records of repayments for former ally Michael Cohen after the latter provided hush money before the 2016 presidential election to a woman named Stormy Daniels. Daniels allegedly had a sexual encounter with the eventual president some years before he took that role.
Daniels testified at the trial already, but the prosecution’s central witness and the witness with whom proceedings started on Monday was, in fact, Cohen, who’d already provided multiple days of trial testimony before that point. He made a prominent, public break with Trump after his prior years of alignment with the former president, and experts including Eisen were repeatedly questioning the Trump defense team’s performance in their cross-examination of Cohen.
The defense’s questioning seemed, at times, to veer into territory irrelevant to their case or actively undercutting towards it, like a Cohen admission on Monday to stealing a large sum of money from the Trump Organization… which inadvertently bolstered the argument that the overall sum of money constituted reimbursements, not legitimate payments for legal services that Cohen provided.
