Michael Cohen returns to witness stand for second day of testimony in Trump hush money trial

Donald Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen is due back on the witness stand Tuesday for testimony that's expected to delve into payments he said he received from the former president in return for hush money paid to adult film actor Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors allege that Trump falsified business records relating to those payments by classifying them as legal services pursuant to a retainer agreement. Cohen testified Monday in New York City that no such retainer agreement existed.

Cohen is a pivotal witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case against Trump. He told the jury during his first full day on the stand that Trump directly authorized him to pay Daniels the $130,000 and that Trump was involved in efforts to quash two other salacious stories that he feared could have damaged his candidacy.

"I was following his directions," Cohen testified.

Cohen is the only witness to directly tie Trump to the falsifying business records scheme, and Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche is expected to try to paint him as a serial liar when he begins cross-examining him as early as Tuesday.

Blanche told jurors in his opening statement that Cohen “cannot be trusted.”

“He’s a convicted felon. And he also is a convicted perjurer. He is an admitted liar,” Blanche said, referring in part to Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea to making false statements to Congress about a proposed project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Prosecutors said he’d lied to minimize Trump’s ties to Russia, which Congress and federal investigators were scrutinizing at the time.

Cohen also pleaded guilty to a number of other criminal charges, including tax fraud, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

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