Soon after Cohen left the witness box, prosecutors rested their case and Trump’s lawyers began calling witnesses of their own.
One of them drew a reprimand from the judge after he expressed dissatisfaction, prompting the judge to momentarily clear the courtroom.
“If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes,” Justice Juan Merchan told Robert Costello, a lawyer called by the defence team to testify.
Trump’s lawyers have said they do not plan to call many witnesses, and it was unclear whether Trump himself will testify.
Cohen, 57, said he paid roughly US$20,000 in cash that was in a paper bag to a tech company out of the US$50,000 that it was owed and kept the rest. The Trump Organisation later reimbursed him US$100,000 in total.
New York prosecutors say Trump broke the law by covering up that payment to Daniels.
Cohen testified that he discussed that payment more than 20 times with Trump in October 2016, at a time when Trump was facing multiple accusations of sexual misbehaviour.
Cohen previously testified that Trump worried that Daniels’ story would hurt his appeal to women voters. That undercut the argument by Trump’s legal team that he was seeking only to protect his family from embarrassment.
But as a convicted criminal and admitted liar, Cohen is a problematic witness.
Testifying for the defence, Costello said Cohen told him after a 2018 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) raid that he did not have any dirt on Trump to offer prosecutors.
“He said: ‘I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,’” Costello said, referring to Cohen.
Costello also said Cohen told him numerous times that Trump knew nothing about the payment to Daniels.
Cohen has previously testified that he lied to Costello because he was worried he would relay to Trump any indications that he might cooperate with prosecutors.
Though Trump said before the trial began that he planned to testify, defence lawyer Todd Blanche told the judge last week that it was no longer certain. Outside the courtroom on Monday, Trump did not tell reporters whether he would testify or not.
At the outset of Monday’s session, Merchan said he expected the prosecution and the defence to make their closing arguments next week followed by jury deliberations.
The first former president to face a criminal trial has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment to Daniels, who had threatened to go public with her account of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter – a liaison Trump denies.
If he chooses to testify, Trump will have the opportunity to convince jurors that he was not responsible for the paperwork at the heart of the case, and rebut Daniels’ detailed account of their meeting in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
He would not be restrained by a gag order that bars him in other settings from criticising witnesses, jurors and relatives of the judge and prosecutors.
However, he would face cross-examination by prosecutors, who could try to expose inconsistencies in his story. Any lies told under oath could expose him to further criminal perjury charges.
Trump last appeared as a witness in a civil business-fraud trial last year, delivering defiant and rambling testimony that aggravated Justice Arthur Engoron, who was overseeing the case. Engoron would go on to order him to pay US$355 million in penalties after finding he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders.