Politics
Column: The Trump prosecution has a Michael Cohen problem — and a plan to solve it
Since the opening of the Donald Trump’s New York trial — when the former president’s counsel told the jury that the prosecution’s star witness “cannot be trusted” — the defense has telegraphed its principal strategy: Eviscerate Michael Cohen.
As Trump’s fixer and attack dog at the time of the alleged crimes, Cohen was more central to the events spelled out in the indictment than anyone in the defendant’s orbit. He even fronted his personal funds to quiet Stormy Daniels, who was shopping a story of a 2006 sexual liaison with Trump.
And having pleaded guilty to tax evasion, false statements and campaign finance violations related to the Daniels affair, along with a separate plea to making false statements to Congress, he seems tailor-made to be accused of lying to settle scores with his former boss. For the loyalty-obsessed Trump, moreover, the prospect of savaging a traitor promises additional psychological rewards.
But before the jury has even heard from Trump’s bête noire, the prosecution has made great strides to neutralize any plan to undermine Cohen’s testimony.
They have done so first and foremost by presenting a wealth of evidence that prospectively corroborates what Cohen will say. (And after his grand jury testimony and numerous reported sitdowns with the district attorney’s office, the prosecution knows what Cohen is going to say down to the last comma.)
The prosecutors’ decision to introduce their story through David Pecker, the former chief executive of the company that owned the National Enquirer, worked beautifully. A sort of Runyonesque rascal in his business affairs, Pecker came across as completely forthcoming on the stand. And he came forth with many details that involved Cohen and will be echoed by him. Those particulars included a key August 2015 meeting in which Pecker said he first promised Trump that he would smother the stories of his purported former sexual partners who might come forward now that he was a presidential candidate.
Every major witness since Pecker has also covered ground that Cohen will retread. By the time the jury hears the account of Trump’s onetime fixer, it will ring familiar in almost all its particulars.
Almost but not quite all. Only Cohen and Trump could have been privy to certain details of the alleged falsification of documents, the basis of the 34 criminal counts in the indictment.
Still, the district attorney will be able to respond to the defense’s ferocious attacks on Cohen by noting, in time-honored prosecutorial form, that the jury needn’t rely on his word alone because of all the corroboration.
In fact, the prosecution’s case has been sprinkled with disparaging characterizations of Cohen by its own witnesses, who have called him a “jerk” and worse. It’s another signal that the district attorney will argue that the case does not stand or fall on Cohen’s testimony.
And much of what follows Cohen will reinforce his testimony. Longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks figures to provide devastating corroboration of Cohen’s testimony about “the Boss,” including her firsthand account of the 2015 meeting.
The extensive corroborating evidence is just one way the prosecution is cutting off the defense’s main line of attack. As important, prosecutors have constructed and reinforced a narrative that bolsters Cohen’s story. It moves from the initial meeting, through the efforts to “catch and kill” the stories of a Trump Tower doorman and a Playboy model, and then to the critically important “Access Hollywood” tape that left the Trump campaign in an existential crisis.
The recording, which surfaced shortly before the election and caught Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women, prompted Republican Party leaders such as John McCain to withdraw their support for Trump. The jury heard evidence on Friday that key players in the catch-and-kill scheme were confident that Trump could not recover from the revelation.
Enter Daniels, who had recently resumed her efforts to parlay her alleged affair with Trump into a payday. If the campaign was on life support, her account threatened to pull the plug.
The story that prosecutors have presented from multiple sides thereby leads to the conclusion that the dealings with Daniels could have had only one motivation: to salvage the campaign. And that meant that Daniels not only had to be paid off but also that the purpose of the payoff had to be hidden.
The force of this account has Team Trump staring up at a nearly insurmountable incline. It’s not just that Cohen’s explanation of Trump’s alleged scheme and purposes will be roundly corroborated by other witnesses; it’s that no other explanation would make any sense of the whole patchwork of evidence.
The prosecution’s marshaling of that evidence leaves the defense with no viable counternarrative. Assume Trump’s team beats Cohen up for days on cross-examination and reiterates in closing that he can’t be trusted. What alternative story can they offer to supply a reasonable doubt about the district attorney’s account?
As Pecker testified and we will probably hear repeated at closing, Cohen couldn’t buy lunch without Trump’s approval. Is it remotely possible that he would nevertheless take out a home equity loan and pay Daniels $130,000 without Trump’s knowledge and direction? The Manhattan jury might be expected to conclude, in a word, “Fuhgeddaboudit.”
That’s not to say that the prosecution is coasting toward a guilty verdict or that the jury’s response to Cohen won’t matter. The charges of falsifying business records are still vulnerable to technical challenges involving intent and other questions. Especially with two lawyers in the jury’s ranks, stitching up that part of the case could be difficult. But with a broader rejection of Cohen’s testimony looking unlikely, the defense’s options for preventing a conviction are dwindling.
Harry Litman is the host of the “Talking Feds” podcast and the Talking San Diego speaker series. @harrylitman
new video loaded: Trump Settled a Case With Himself. Was That Legal?
By Adam Liptak, Paul Abowd, Nikolay Nikolov, Rafaela Balster, Jon Miller and Whitney Shefte
May 21, 2026
Politics
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. says he expects to return to Congress ‘in the next couple of weeks’ after missing 100 votes
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Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., said Thursday that he expects to return to Congress “in the next couple of weeks” after missing 100 consecutive House votes during an extended absence tied to what his office has described only as a “personal health matter.”
“My doctors are confident that I’m on the road to a full recovery,” Kean, 57, told the New Jersey Globe in his first public comments since stepping away from Capitol Hill in March.
“I understand the need for public transparency, and I appreciate the support of my constituents,” he added. “I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks, I’ll return to voting and to the campaign trail.”
Kean last voted on March 5 and has missed every House roll call vote since then, according to GovTrack. His absence has drawn heightened attention because Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and because Kean represents one of the country’s most competitive congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
TOM KEAN JR’S PROLONGED ABSENCE PUTS PRESSURE ON HOUSE REPUBLICANS’ RAZOR-THIN MAJORITY
Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., is running for a third House term in 2026 after fending off Democratic challengers in prior election cycles. (Getty Images)
His office has repeatedly declined to disclose details about the illness, saying only that the congressman is focused on recovery and expected to return “soon.” Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Kean for additional comment.
Last week, Kean’s father, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr., told NJ.com that his son was recovering from a “serious illness.”
“You can’t say definitely, but their best guess is now he’ll be out in two or three weeks,” Kean Sr. said, referring to doctors treating his son. “Any time you’ve been through a serious illness, you can’t be 100% the day you get back. You’re gonna be able to do things, but gradually ramping up.”
COMPLEX PARTIAL SEIZURE RULED AS CAUSE OF PAUSING EPISODE DURING HOUSE FLOOR SPEECH, DEM CONGRESSMAN SAYS
Tom Kean Jr., GOP candidate for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, speaks at his election night party in Basking Ridge, N.J., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Stefan Jeremiah/AP)
Kean Sr. also said doctors expect his son to make a full recovery but declined to discuss the diagnosis.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters this week that he had spoken with Kean recently but was unaware of details surrounding the congressman’s condition.
“We’re expecting him back here soon. He’s had a medical issue,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I don’t even know the details.”
JOHNSON WARNS HOUSE REPUBLICANS TO ‘STAY HEALTHY’ AS GOP MAJORITY SHRINKS TO THE EDGE
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., listens. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)
The absence has become a growing political issue in New Jersey as Democrats target Kean’s swing district. Kean is running unopposed in the Republican primary on June 2, while several Democrats are competing for their party’s nomination.
Earlier this month, a top Kean aide told The New York Times, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”
Kean consultant Harrison Neely said this week the congressman remains committed to seeking reelection.
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“What I can tell you is that the congressman is dealing with a personal health matter. He is focused on his recovery,” Neely told the New York Post.
Fox News Digital’s Adam Pack contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — A political influencer has filed a complaint against Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor, saying the committee failed to notify her of disclosure requirements, as required by law, when she was paid to meet with Steyer in March and later produced social media content from the meeting.
What’s more, she said the Steyer campaign falsely accused her of posting paid content in support of Steyer’s chief Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, and failing to disclose it in a complaint filed by the billionaire’s campaign this week.
Maggie Reed, who regularly posts satirical takes on politics to roughly half a million followers on Instagram and TiKTok under the username mermaidmamamaggie, said she was actually paid by Steyer’s campaign and signed an agreement that barred her from disclosing the payment.
She posted, and later deleted, a video from her meeting with Steyer in March.
“In plain terms: the Committee paid for political content, structured it to look like an ordinary creator’s organic opinion, and used a non-disclosure agreement to keep the public from learning the truth,” says the complaint, filed Thursday with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
Steyer’s campaign disclosed in a campaign filing that it had paid the agency that represents Reed $5,000 for digital advertising, but didn’t indicate that the payment was connected to Reed’s meeting with Steyer or her production of content.
The Steyer campaign said that while it did pay to meet with Reed, it left the decision of whether to create content entirely up to her.
Since then, Reed has produced several videos expressing support for Becerra, the former California congressman and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, but she said that she was not paid to produce those videos and that they reflected her genuine support for Becerra’s campaign.
Becerra has been the top Democrat in recent polling in the race, maintaining a narrow edge over Steyer and a firm grip on one of the top two spots in the June 2 primary that would send him to the general election in November.
Reed’s complaint is the latest volley in a back and forth involving the use of paid influencers in the gubernatorial race.
Two influencers who support Becerra — but were not paid by his campaign — filed a complaint last week saying that a number of influencers had created paid content in support of Steyer but failed to disclose so in their posts.
Steyer’s campaign then filed a complaint earlier this week in which it leveled accusations against Reed and another influencer named Jay Gonzalez, who is now a paid staffer on the Becerra campaign. The complaint alleges that Gonzalez made several pro-Becerra posts after joining the campaign and belatedly amended them to include disclosure that they were sponsored.
The Becerra campaign has maintained that it does not otherwise pay influencers to produce content on its behalf.
Steyer’s complaint included screenshots of an email sent to Reed’s talent agency by a gubernatorial campaign gauging her interest in producing paid content.
While the screenshots produced in Steyer’s complaint did not disclose who had sent the inquiry, Reed said in her complaint that the request had come from a staffer for the gubernatorial campaign of former Los Angeles Mayor and California State Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.
Disclosure of paid political content by social media creators is required in California thanks to a law passed in 2023.
Influencers themselves are required to disclose that a post they created was sponsored, but campaigns are required to notify them of the requirement.
Violation of the law doesn’t trigger civil, criminal or administrative penalties, but the Fair Political Practices Commission has the right to take violators to court and request that a judge force compliance with the law.
The agreement Reed signed with Steyer’s campaign, which was attached to her complaint, indicated that she needed to follow all applicable state, federal and local laws, but made no specific mention of her requirement to disclose that content she produced was sponsored.
The agreement did specify that Steyer’s campaign might need to disclose the payment.
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