Trump trial live: Michael Cohen testifies he did everything to ‘protect my boss’

The fourth week of trial, and third week of testimony, in Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial concluded on Friday, closing out days of evidence from various witnesses and experts – including adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Early in the week, Ms Daniels gave detailed accounts about her alleged affair with Mr Trump that ultimately led the former president’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to pay her $130,000 in exchange for her silence.

Ms Daniel’s testimony was salacious enough to inspire Mr Trump’s defence team to ask for two mistrials or a modification to the gag order to allow the former president to speak about her.

Judge Merchan denied the motions and warned Mr Trump that future gag order violations could result in jail time.

Here are our key takeaways from last week:

It’s the moment that everyone following Donald Trump’s hush money trial had been waiting for.

Even before he stepped up to the witness stand, Cohen – as one of the most talked about figures of the ongoing criminal case – has been on display in many forms, both in trial and online.

In the first four weeks of the trial, Cohen’s name cropped up almost daily in courtroom testimony.

Jurors heard him described as Mr Trump’s “fixer,” his former personal lawyer, a campaign “surrogate,” a convicted felon, a “pants-on-fire kind of guy” and a liar.

Now, as he took the stand on Monday, Cohen revealed yet another version of himself: a compliant witness.

Donald Trump’s former attorney and one-time “fixer” Michael Cohen has been looming throughout the former president’s criminal hush money trial in New York, on the lips of nearly every witness and all over documents at the heart of the case.

He made his debut on the witness stand on Monday, testifying for nearly six hours – giving jurors the crucial connective tissue for the prosecution’s case against Mr Trump.

It was Cohen who negotiated hush money deals that kept stories of Mr Trump’s alleged affairs away from voters. It was Cohen who wired $130,000 to Stormy Daniels. And it was Cohen who sent invoices to Mr Trump and was reimbursed for his payout to the adult film star.

On Monday, he testified that Mr Trump directed him to pay Ms Daniels in the hopes of keeping his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election alive, following a series of explosive controversies involving women that threatened to derail his campaign.

Cohen has now directly linked Mr Trump to the alleged cover-up, labelling his reimbursements as “legal expenses” when they were actually, as Cohen testified, made to buy the life rights to Ms Daniels’ story.

Here are the key takeaways from Mr Trump’s day in court:

Donald Trump’s former lawyer and one-time fixer, Michael Cohen, testified that the former president expressed greater concern about the impact the Stormy Daniels affair story would have on his 2016 presidential campaign than how it would affect his wife.

“He wasn’t thinking about Melania, this was all about the campaign,” Cohen told the jury on Monday.

“I thought you had this under control. I thought you took care of this,” Cohen said from the witness stand in the former president’s hush money trial on Monday, recalling Mr Trump’s enraged reaction to news that the adult film star’s allegations had resurfaced.

“Just take care of it. There’s a lot going on at the campaign at the time. Just take care of it,” Mr Trump said, according to Cohen.

Alex Woodward and Kelly Rissman report from court:

Trump spoke to the cameras starting 4:29pm

In response to question on why elected we’re here today:

“To me it’s a terrible thing that’s happening to democracy in this country and we have a lot of them they want to come I say just stay back. Pass lots of laws to stop things like this. What’s going on in that courtroom is a threat to democracy and we cannot have a country where we get to prosecute your political opponents, instead of persuading voters.”

Named dropped around a dozen “legal experts” who agree with him, he said, including JD Vance, AG Brenna Bird (both were here today, and the other usual suspects, Jonathan Turley, Matt Whitaker.

“Look, they’re doing great. You know why they’re doing great? They’ve kept me here for three and a half, four weeks, instead of campaigning. Yet we still have the best poll numbers.”

“There’s no problem here. You know the FEC wrote this off. … they took a pass they said there’s no problem here.”

“It could have been brought six years ago, seven years ago, almost eight years ago. They bring it right in the middle of my presidential campaign.”

“We have a corrupt judge,” he yelling/raising his voice more than I’ve ever heard him in the hallway before. “and we have a judge who’s highly conflicted. And he’s keeping me from campaigning. He’s an appointed New York judge appointed, you know who appointed him? Democrat politicians. He’s appointed. He’s a corrupt judge. And he’s a conflicted judge and he outta let us go out and campaign and get rid of this scam.”

Tomorrow: Cohen will resume under direct and Team Trump will start cross-examination (which could take a long time).

We left off with Trump approving the reimbursement plan, with Cohen testifying that Trump personally knew that the plan was not for retainers or legal expenses but to make things right by reimbursing him for the Stormy Daniels pay-off.

Tomorrow we’ll likely go through each of those invoices from 2017.