The former president and his ex-lawyer found themselves face to face once again, with the latter testifying against the former during a civil fraud trial.
For years, Michael Cohen and his former boss Donald Trump have lobbed insults at one another from afar, each man castigating the other in bitterly personal terms.
On Tuesday, they were face to face once again, with Cohen — a onetime attorney for Trump turned antagonist — testifying against the former president during a civil fraud trial stemming from a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
Cohen testified that Trump had ordered him and others to increase how they valued his assets to deliver him a desired net worth.
“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen said, with Trump sitting in court watching.
Cohen’s testimony marked a turbulent beginning to the fourth week of trial in James’s $250 million lawsuit against Trump, which accuses him and his business of drastically inflating the value of his real estate properties to gain better financial terms.
Trump, who is a Republican candidate for president, does not face any prison time in the civil case, and he and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing.
While the trial has largely focused on testimony about financial statements and real estate valuations, Cohen’s testimony injected another element to the proceedings by having the topics discussed by a man who has traded barbs with Trump for years — and touted his knowledge of the Trump Organization’s inner workings.
Cohen said Trump personally gave marching orders to him and the company’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, directing them to mold his assets to achieve a false net worth that could be used to save money in deals with lenders and insurance firms.
“He would look at the total assets, and he would say, ‘I’m actually not worth [$4.5 billion], I’m really worth more like [$6 billion],’” Cohen said, offering an example of the type of talks he would have with Trump about preparing the statements.
In those meetings, Trump “would then direct [Weisselberg] and I to go back to Allen’s office and return after we achieved the desired goal,” Cohen testified.
Cohen had worked as a lawyer and self-professed fixer for Trump before the men suffered a public rupture during Trump’s term in office.
