Quote:
Why would the prosecution be attempting to make Cohen look dislikeable and not trustworthy? I thought he was going to be their star witness and discrediting him was Trump's team goal?
All in all this is basically going to come down to does the jury believe somehow the convicted perjurer elaborate story I'm sure he'll tell that Trump told him verbally to set up this eleaborate scheme without any evidence other than his word which will be coming from a documented hater of Trump who's made it clear his goal is to ruin him. If not 1 juror sees through this child like charade, the ny jury pool is more biased and ignorant that even imaginable.
This is the reason trial attorneys don't like lawyers on their juries. They tend to carry more weight in the jury room during deliberations. Other jurors look to them to resolve lingering questions they may have, instead of sending questions to the judge.
As I have said before, when the state has a problematical witness that they know the defense will attack on cross, it is considered better practice to bring it up first so the jury doesn't think the state was hiding something from them. It's called drawing the sting, a type of advance rehabilitation as when the defense does attack that weakness, jury has already heard it and is not as surprised.
That's the theory, at least. Here, I think the state went overboard in drawing the sting starting with opening statements and continuing on through direct exam of their own witnesses. Not one of them has had anything nice to say about Cohen. Even his own banker testified he was assigned to cohen's accounts because he could "be firm" with difficult customers and that was the nicest thing said. But the state were the ones eliciting that evidence during direct exam...in detail. Touch on it lightly to draw the sting and then move on is the better practice.
Which leads me to the question as to why they chose to bring all of those emails into evidence between various people and Cohen? Trump has never used email. He is not on any of those email chains. But once the state opened that door, all of them would come in under the doctrine of completeness which prevents cherry picking. But without the emails, there would be a hearsay issue with the witnesses testifying as to the contents of those emails and since Trump was not on any of them there isn't prior inconsistent statements exception. From a trial strategy standpoint, a conundrum.
Of course in my view, even taking this to trial on such a weak case is perplexing. The state's narrative about Trump trying to hide improper campaign activity to steal the 2016 election with actions done in 2017 after he was sworn in, is nonsensical.
The biggest BOOM was when Keith Davidson was pressing Cohen about being late on the Stormy payment, Cohen said he was not able to reach Trump while he was campaigning those days (October 2016) and that Cohen said he would, "just handle it himself." Davidson also said he wasn't sure Cohen even had been authorized by Trump to do anything regarding Stormy. This was after Trump's supposed long term bestie David Pecker had given a hard no to AMI having anything to do with Stormy.
Even Stormy's media agent, Gina Rodriuez, called Cohen an A-hole in her email exchanges with Davidson.
