Trump Lawyer Tries to Trip Up Michael Cohen but Ends Up Owning Himself

Michael Cohen had no qualms about taking ownership of the insults he’s thrown at Donald Trump and the GOP presidential nominee’s legal counsel.

Opening cross-examination of Cohen on Tuesday, Trump attorney Todd Blanche attempted to call him out for Cohen’s relentless name-calling—but he only ended up embarrassing himself.

“You went on TikTok and called me a ‘crying little shit,’ didn’t you?” Blanche growled.

“It sounds like something I would say,” Cohen replied, before prosecutors objected.

Blanche then scrounged up another moniker Cohen had coined for Trump.

“You referred to Trump as a ‘dictator douchebag,’ didn’t you?” Blanche continued, referring to a post in which Cohen said Trump should be sent “where he belongs, in a fucking cage.”

“Sounds like something I said,” Cohen repeated to a crowd of stifled laughs.

Legal experts have speculated that Cohen may soon be the second person to receive a gag order in the hush-money trial due to his incessant online gossiping about Trump and his counsel.

“Witnesses need to keep their mouths shut until they are in the courtroom,” former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said on The Insider Podcast earlier this month, predicting that Cohen’s comments online would become “fodder” for Trump’s attorneys.

That was in reference to evidence brought out by Blanche earlier in the trial, including a mess of inflammatory social media posts Cohen made in April referring to Trump as “Von ShitzInPantz” and retweeting another post that lambasted Trump as a “racist jackass who referred to African nations as ‘shithole countries,’” in light of Trump’s attempt to liken himself to Nelson Mandela.

A bid launched by the Republican National Committee to block voting rights in Arizona failed Tuesday after a Maricopa County judge summarily dismissed a complaint lodged by the RNC against the state’s 2023 Election Procedures Manual, handing a win to voting rights advocates. Conservatives launched a tsunami of legal attacks in February against the manual, to impede voting rights and allow for voter harassment in Arizona. Tuesday’s decision is the first ruling addressing those lawsuits and mud in the eye of the RNC, newly run by nepobaby-in-law Lara Trump.

According to Democracy Docket, the lawsuit filed February 9 by the Republican National Committee, Republican Party of Arizona, and Yavapai County Republican Party sought to block enforcement of the EPM on the basis that Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes failed to give the public enough time to comment before implementing the EMP and that portions of the EMP violate state law. The complaint also sought to have provisions removed regarding limiting public access to voter signatures, restrictions against challenging early mail-in ballots before they’re returned, and allowances for out-of-precinct voting.

The suit was filed by the RNC the same day as another suit by conservative group Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which claims the EMP, by prohibiting voter intimidation and harassment, inhibits “free speech.” That case has not yet been decided.

The Department of Justice wants former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon to begin his prison sentence immediately.

In 2022, a federal jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress for ignoring the House January 6 committee’s subpoena, and he was sentenced to four months in prison. A federal judge had delayed the sentence while Bannon appealed the conviction, but that appeal was rejected last week.

In a federal court filing on Tuesday, the DOJ said that a person who is found guilty must report for their term of imprisonment unless the defendant can establish that “the appeal is not for the purpose of delay and raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal.”

“The D.C. Circuit rejected defendant’s appeal on all grounds, including the primary argument on appeal: the requisite mental state required for a contempt of Congress violation,” the Justice Department added.

Bannon fought the conviction and sentence every step of the way, attempting to turn the trial into a circus and stir up the MAGA faithful. Since Trump’s term ended, Bannon has attempted to interfere in Brazil’s politics as well as the upcoming election in the United States, and his radio show is a haven for Republicans who want to tout their pro-Trump bona fides. It’s pretty clear that he wants to continue his far-right activities and avoid jail. After all, he was already pardoned once by Trump for a border wall fraud scheme.

Michael Cohen dropped another bombshell on day two of his hush-trial testimony.

Back on the stand on Tuesday, Cohen went over the details of the FBI’s April 2018 raids on his New York City apartment, law office, and a hotel room where he was staying while his apartment was under renovation.

Cohen testified that after the FBI visited his hotel room, he called Donald Trump and “left him a message for him to call me to let him know what was taking place.”

“Don’t worry. I’m the president of the United States,” Cohen recalled Trump telling him. “There’s nothing here. Everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK.”

Asked by prosecutors how he viewed the call at the time, Cohen replied, “I wanted some reassurance that Mr. Trump had my back. Especially as this dealt with issues that related to him.”

“I felt reassured because I had the president of the United States protecting me. It’s his Justice Department, this should go nowhere,” Cohen said, adding that he decided to remain loyal to Trump after the call.

The short testimony is damning for Trump on multiple counts. First, it reveals that Trump was intimately familiar with the details of Michael Cohen’s hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, made to cover up an alleged 2006 affair between her and Trump. Second, it’s abundantly clear that Trump likely knew from the beginning that what they did broke the law—and he was willing to use his power as president to try to erase the whole thing.

It’s an unsettling reminder as Trump, the soon-to-be Republican nominee, faces down four criminal cases as he tries to return to the White House. Two of those are federal cases that he could very well try to make disappear by pardoning himself.

A Pennsylvania Senate candidate is siding with the conspiracy theorists regarding abortion access within the Keystone State.

GOP Senate candidate David McCormick agreed with an outrageous claim during an interview on the Dawn Stensland Show, purporting that the fight to secure abortion access is not actually about women’s healthcare, but rather an elaborate ruse to cover up a Democratic money laundering operation.

“I always say the abortion issue is not about women’s reproductive rights, it’s not,” said Stensland on her radio show Monday. “It’s really, to me, personally, look at the money… that goes from Democrat administrations to Planned Parenthood. Look at how much they have donated to elections across the nation, and here in Pennsylvania, even the last primary, a lot of money.”

“Yeah, and [Senator] Bob Casey’s position… is this federal funding, which I am opposed to,” said McCormick, referring to the Democratic senator he’s gunning to replace. “I agree with you, but we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about it on the campaign trail.”

McCormick, a former combat veteran, has also gone after Casey on a string of GOP hot topics, including the U.S.-Mexico border, foreign policy, and the state of the economy.

Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania until 24 weeks—or the end of the second trimester—unless the pregnancy endangers the life of the patient. In that case, abortions can be performed after 24 weeks under an emergency provision.

But the state’s access to the medical procedure is still considered restrictive, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Extensive regulations around the procedure, including requiring clinics to “obtain and maintain burdensome and unnecessary expensive structural modifications” such as widening hallways and procedure rooms, have shuttered all but 17 abortion clinics across the state.