‘That’s a lie’: Trump attorney screams at Michael Cohen over critical phone call on Stormy Daniels payment

Donald Trump’s defense attorney unleashed a furious line of questions to accuse Michael Cohen of lying about his testimony that he spoke to Mr Trump after finalizing a deal to pay Stormy Daniels hush money in 2016.

Todd Blanche, after spending several hours painting the former “fixer” as a serial liar, raised his voice and screamed from inside the courtroom after grilling him about a pivotal phone call that connected the former president to a conspiracy at the center of the case.

“That’s a lie!” he fumed on Thursday.

Mr Blanche had accused Cohen of calling Mr Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller to complain about harassing phone calls – not to provide his boss with an update on the plan to buy Ms Daniels’ silence.

Cohen appeared unmoved, answering simply that those prank calls were “part” of the conversation.

“Now your memory is that you were testifying truthfully on Tuesday, and you had enough time to update Mr Schiller about all the problems you were having with these harassing calls?” Mr Blanche fired back.

“I always run everything by the boss immediately,” Cohen said. “It could’ve just been me saying, ‘everything’s been taken care of, it’s been resolved.’”

In his testimony earlier this week, and phone records confirm, Cohen said he called Mr Schiller on 24 October, after he transferred $130,000 to Ms Daniels’s attorney as part of a deal to buy her silence.

Cohen said Mr Schiller handed the phone to Mr Trump.

A few days later on 28 October, on a phone call that lasted more than five minutes, Cohen told Mr Trump that “the matter was completely locked down and under control,” he said.

Defense attorney Todd Blanche opened his cross examination of the prosecution’s star witness on Tuesday with a burst of barely disguised