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A coterie of Donald Trump’s close Republican allies, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, appeared at the Manhattan criminal courthouse on Tuesday, in a show of support for the former president as his lawyers attempted to skewer the “hush money” trial’s star witness.
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and Florida congressmen Byron Donalds and Cory Mills filled the rows behind the defence table at which Trump has sat for the past few weeks, to watch attorney Todd Blanche grilling fixer Michael Cohen over his desire to see his former boss behind bars.
In a series of heated exchanges, Cohen — a Trump loyalist turned arch nemesis — confirmed that he had previously called the defendant names including “dictator douchebag” and a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain”, and that he had said Trump “belongs, in a fucking cage, like an animal”.
Cohen also acknowledged he had said “I truly fucking hope this man ends up in prison”. He confirmed had made more than $3mn selling books in which he lambasted Trump, his former employer and longtime mentor.
Trump appeared to have his eyes closed for much of the afternoon.
The appearance of Cohen, whose payments to buy the silence of a porn actor who alleged an affair with Trump are at the heart of the Manhattan case, has attracted a rotating cast of campaign surrogates and possible running mates for the former president, including US senators JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville, New York congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, and the attorneys-general of Iowa and Alabama.
The proceedings, which Trump is forced to attend in person most days of the week, have limited his ability to hit the campaign trail, but the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House is nonetheless leading Joe Biden in several swing states, according to recent opinion polls, with fewer than six months to go until polling day in November.
“This is election interference at the most obvious,” said Trump, who is subject to a gag order preventing him from attacking witnesses or jurors in the case, as he left the courthouse on Tuesday. “It is a disgrace . . . I am not allowed to talk about big portions of my case. And nothing like that ever happened.”
Johnson echoed the former president in a press conference earlier on Tuesday morning, calling the New York trial a “sham”.
“It’s all about politics and everybody can see that,” he said. “The American people see right through these politically motivated attacks.”
In separate remarks outside the courthouse, Ramaswamy called the Manhattan case an “injustice”, adding: “This is a sham, this is not the United States of America, this is some third-rate banana republic.”
On Monday, Cohen had outlined a scheme he orchestrated on behalf of Trump to buy the silence of people threatening to come forward in the run-up to the 2016 election with allegations of infidelities by his former boss.
He testified that he paid $130,000 of his own money to Stormy Daniels, a porn actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump, after the then-presidential candidate declared it would be a “disaster” for his campaign if her story was to become public.
Trump is charged with falsifying records of the subsequent repayments to Cohen.
Under questioning from prosecutors, Cohen said he “regretted doing things for [Trump] that I should not have . . . lying, bullying people in order to effectuate a goal”. He added: “I violated my moral compass and I suffered a penalty, so did my family.”
Members of Trump’s immediate family have largely stayed away from the trial, with the exception of his son Eric, who has attended regularly. Other members of the Trump team, including lawyer Alina Habba and advisers Boris Epshteyn and Jason Miller, have often been present.
“This is the most freakishly bizarre thing in conservative politics I’ve ever seen,” former Republican congressman Reid Ribble, a Trump critic, told the Financial Times. “You would normally be 100 miles away from anybody who’s cheating on his wife . . . You can see who wants to be [vice-president].
“That Republicans — the pro-family values, pro-law and order party historically — would pander to this is just beyond weird to me.”
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