CNN analyst Elie Honig unveiled the strategy he would have employed to undermine the credibility of former President Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, suggesting that Trump’s legal team had overlooked a chance to do so.
During a conversation with anchor Jake Tapper, Honig discussed the ongoing Manhattan hush-money trial involving the former president, outlining that the most effective strategy to demonstrate Cohen’s lack of credibility to the jury would be to highlight the numerous occasions in the past where he had been found to distort the truth.
Tapper started the conversation by observing that Trump attorney Todd Blanche had taken an intriguing approach, who began his cross-examination by reading a series of derogatory remarks Cohen had made or posted on social media about both Trump and Blanche.
“Do you have an idea why Blanche would start with that?” Tapper asked. “Because, I mean, it does kind of make it seem as though Michael Cohen is kind of just like a shoot-from-the-hip jerk and not necessarily focused entirely on Trump as a motive.”
“Well, I think it was a mistake to open the way that Todd Blanche opened. I absolutely never would have done it,” Honig replied. “It was properly sustained. First of all, it’s not the point. It’s not the point, does Michael Cohen hate Todd Blanche?”
“The point is, Michael Cohen hates and desperately wants the defendant, Donald Trump, in prison,” Honig continued. “Let me give you what I would have started with. We like to play like armchair prosecutor now that we’re no longer actual prosecutors. First question would have been, ‘Mr. Cohen, are you a perjurer?’ Okay? If he says ‘Yes,’ great! Folks, he’s a perjurer. He says ‘No,’ then you just hit him with the dozens of lies that he’s … He is a perjurer. I mean, that’s a fact. So it leaves him — it’s a win-win.”
Honig added that he was “not impressed” with the remainder of Blanche’s cross-examination. He emphasized that the key point was that Blanche should have started with a question where any response would have been advantageous for both him and Trump.
