Michael Cohen says he used to be ‘knee deep in cult’ of Trump as he stands firm in fiery cross-examination

“Boorish cartoon misogynist.” “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.” “Dictator douchebag.”

Michael Cohen used to be one of Donald Trump’s closest legal advisers and a senior counsel within his Trump Organization empire.

But on Tuesday, the former president’s more recently acquired attorneys quoted from Cohen’s insults aimed at his former boss while he sat on the witness stand in Mr Trump’s criminal hush money trial.

Mr Trump’s ex-attorney and one-time “fixer” was confronted with a string of barbs he fired at his former boss over the years, as the former president’s legal team tried to depict him as motivated by vengeance and greed to undermine his damning testimony that directly connected Mr Trump to a fraudulent scheme that silenced stories of his affairs before the 2016 election.

Cohen readily admitted that he was “knee-deep in the cult” of Mr Trump in the years before federal law enforcement raided his home, office, phones and computers, resulting in a plea deal that landed him in prison for crimes connected to the Manhattan case before Mr Trump.

Defence attorney Todd Blanche reminded Cohen of his past praise for the former president – how he admired him “tremendously” and would take a bullet for him.

“At that time, I was knee-deep into the cult of Donald Trump, yes,” Cohen said. “I was not lying. It’s how I felt.”

Hours earlier, jurors heard Cohen express life-shattering regret for his actions at the center of the case, and blind loyalty that “violated” his “moral compass” and made his family suffer.

That loyalty collapsed in 2018, after Cohen was caught up in a federal investigation into tax and campaign finance violations tied to a “catch and kill” scheme that unlawfully suppressed politically damaging stories about Mr