Former Attorney Michael Cohen Testifies Against Trump in Civil Fraud Trial Transcript

Donald Trump is facing legal hurdles on several fronts, both civil and criminal, in both state and federal courts. And today, it was some of the former president's closest former aides who were pointing the finger at him. Laura Barron-Lopez picks up the story.

In New York, the State Attorney General's $250 million civil fraud trial against Trump and his company is in its fourth week. Today, Trump's former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, took the stand for their first face-to-face confrontation in five years. Cohen put the blame squarely on Trump for inflating the value of his assets. The war of words began before they entered the courtroom.

This is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple.

He's a proven liar, as you know. He's a felon, has served a lot of time for lying. And we're going to just go in and see, and I think you'll see that for yourself.

Andrea Bernstein covers Trump legal issues for NPR and hosts the new podcast, We Don't Talk About Leonard, from ProPublica and On the Media. She was in court today and joins me now. Andrea, thanks so much. This fraud trial in New York is in its fourth week. What role does Michael Cohen play in this case, and how does his testimony today, directly implicating the former president, change anything?

Yeah, so up to now, we've had a lot of sort of bits and pieces of testimony, accountants, bookkeepers. There have been spreadsheets introduced, documents. And little bits of the story have emerged about how it is that Trump, which a judge already found that Trump committed persistent and repeated fraud. And the question here is, was there a conspiracy, and how much money does Trump have to pay back to New York State? (01:54) So there have been all these little pieces by witnesses who have been sort of reluctant to testify. But Cohen is in a different category. When Cohen was sentenced to prison back in 2018, he said that he wanted to make sure that history doesn't remember him as the villain in this story. And this testimony was part of that. He really wanted to say how Trump, according to Cohen, fraudulently valued his assets. (02:21) And he gave this description of being called into Trump's office and Trump saying, "I'm not worth 4.5 billion, I'm really worth 6 billion." And then he would direct Cohen and the chief financial officer to basically go back and find numbers to, as Cohen said, reverse-engineer the asset value. So this is what Cohen did. He was somebody very close to Trump who was able to tell the full story of how this happened.

And Judge Arthur Engoron said that Trump committed fraud by misrepresenting his wealth. So what's ultimately at stake for Trump and his businesses in New York?

Right. So already there is a procedure going on, a parallel procedure, to basically force Trump to sell most of his business and activity in New York. And at stake is $250 million, which is a lot of money for Donald Trump -- for anybody, really -- about whether he will have to pay the state, as well as this sort of parade of witnesses and testimony showing the anatomy of how Trump fraudulently values his property. (03:23) Now, I should say, his team very strongly pushed back. And at the end of the day, they really leaned into what the former president said, that Cohen had been convicted of lying and that he was somebody who is not to be trusted.

This isn't the only case against Trump, as you know. He's facing 91 felony charges across four jurisdictions. In Georgia's Fulton County today, a third former lawyer for Trump, Jenna Ellis, pled guilty and expressed regret.

In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse.

Jenna Ellis also said that she was relying on advice from lawyers with more experience than her. How significant are these guilty pleas in Georgia, Andrea, and specifically Ellis's testimony and whether or not that impacts Trump and Rudy Giuliani?

Right. Well, this is all of a piece with what we see. Michael Cohen in New York, a former attorney who worked closely with Trump. Now there are three attorneys in Georgia who worked with Trump who have pleaded guilty. And Ellis, who sort of is central to this, and has said she will cooperate with prosecutors all along. (04:48) So if that plays out as this Cohen case has in New York, what I think we may see is a lot of intimate details about the anatomy of how this happened. So you really see this pattern of people who worked with Trump feeling that he betrayed them or let them hang out loose, and are now deciding that they want to do what they can to cut him loose.

And with the 30 seconds or so we have left, Andrea, there's another member of Trump's inner circle that appears to have turned on him. ABC is reporting that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff, has been granted immunity by Special Counsel Jack Smith in exchange for his testimony. What does this mean?

Well, Mark Meadows, as he has said, was everywhere with Trump, after the 2020 election, up to January 6. On January 6, we've had his former staffers testifying about what he knew. He knows a lot. And if he's talking, and talking truthfully, I think we will learn a great deal about what the former president did and did not do in the run-up and in the aftermath of January 6.

Andrea Bernstein of NPR, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.