Although apparently this isn't news; he said all those things in his book, and said he did it to protect his wife from liability.Lisa Rubin
@lawofruby
Alina Habba just took the podium to begin Michael Cohen’s cross exam; she acknowledges they’ve met a few times and asks whether she should address him as Mr. Cohen or Michael. Cohen, who is not a formal guy, says, “Mr. Cohen” to mild chuckles.
Habba starts with Cohen’s health, asking whether he is taking medication that would interfere with his ability to answer questions truthfully. He says no and admits that he has been deposed many times, including by her.
Now she is rehashing the same guilty pleas he admitted to on his cross examination, and is referring him to his 2018 plea allocution transcript.
Cohen is not making it easy for her. For example, he says he doesn’t recognize his plea allocution transcript by its cover sheet. But what she is doing is smart.
She is confronting him with his guilty pleas to the counts that he, to this day, denies constituted crimes.
The tactic is to force Cohen to admit to a lie: Either he was lying when he said he was guilty, or he is lying now when he denied he evaded taxes and/or lied on a home equity line of credit application.
Habba takes a lot of abuse on this app and in other places about her skills. But her questions are clear and well formed, designed to elicit yes or no answers, and I am the most awake I have been all day because she is compelling in the courtroom.
Now she is reviewing the SDNY’s sentencing submission to the court, where he is accused of a pattern of deception.
And here she goes, reminding him that when he pled guilty, under oath, on August 21, 2018, he had a legal obligation to testify truthfully. Now she is asking him whether he committed perjury in that proceeding, to which the AG’s office objected. Engoron overruled it.
Cohen said yes, he lied to Judge Pauley at his plea allocution in 2018. The woman next to me — another journalist — audibly gasped.
I agree with Rubin that this is competent cross.