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The fourth week of Donald J. Trumps Manhattan criminal trial veered from the salacious to the monotonous, and ended with a preview of a showdown coming next week: the long-awaited testimony of Mr. Trumps fixer-turned-nemesis, Michael D. Cohen.

On Friday, Justice Juan M. Merchan asked prosecutors to tell Mr. Cohen to stop talking about Mr. Trump, after a defense lawyer told him of a recent TikTok video in which Mr. Cohen wore a shirt with a picture of Mr. Trump behind bars.

His request capped a week in which the jury heard a porn stars lurid story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Mr. Trump but also less sensational, if potentially damning, testimony about Mr. Trumps checks, invoices and ledgers.

The former president is accused of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to the porn actress, Stormy Daniels, just before the 2016 election, a payment meant to silence her. Mr. Trump, 77, has denied the charges and says he did not have sex with Ms. Daniels. If convicted, he could face prison or probation.

Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trumps fourth week, and 15th day, on trial:

For almost eight gripping hours, Ms. Daniels took the jurors inside the Lake Tahoe, Nev., hotel suite where she said she and Mr. Trump had sex, a detailed account that included everything from what was in his bathroom to her conflicted feelings before and after.

Initially, her testimony meandered, leading to interruptions and a warning from Justice Merchan to avoid tangents, as well as many successful objections by defense lawyers.

But under cross-examination from Susan Necheles, one of Mr. Trumps lawyers, Ms. Daniels seemingly became more focused, sharply defending herself against charges that she made up her testimony and was out only for money.

By the end of her testimony, she had rebutted Mr. Trumps denial of their sexual encounter and given jurors a clear sense of what Mr. Trump was trying to suppress before the election.

On Thursday night, Ms. Daniels continued to provoke Mr. Trump online, needling him that real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh wait. Nevermind.

Its not yet clear yet whether the former president will testify.

Ms. Daniels testimony elicited strong feelings from Mr. Trump, who at one point caught the attention of the judge by muttering an expletive during Ms. Danielss memorable description of a playful spanking.

Justice Merchan, who has already held Mr. Trump in contempt and fined him $10,000 for breaking his gag order, privately warned his lawyers that Mr. Trump may be intimidating the witness.

I wont tolerate that, Justice Merchan said, in a sidebar.

It remains unclear whether members of the jury noticed his outburst. Until then, Mr. Trump appeared to be keeping his emotions in check, often sitting with his eyes closed. He has said he does that to listen intensely, but the jury could also view it as indifference.

It might not have been as memorable as Ms. Danielss presence in court, but testimony from Trump Organization employees and others about the chain of custody of Mr. Trumps repayment checks to Mr. Cohen was crucial to the prosecution.

It was painstaking, and sometimes dull, and included a blow-by-blow account about how checks were approved, then cut, then mailed, then signed, then returned.

But by showing the jury the paper trail, as well as phone logs and other documentary evidence, prosecutors were stitching a case without the emotional, subjective uncertainty of witnesses like Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump long tried to burnish his reputation with self-aggrandizing books. But the prosecution applied some of those against him this week, using his own writing to portray him as a micromanager a man who distrusted his employees for a fear that they will rob you blind. That could bolster their assertion that Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Ms. Daniels and payback arrangement with Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Trumps tendency to punch back was also evident in those excerpts, including one that espoused the policy of an eye for an eye. But Mr. Trump, already found to be in violation of the gag order, wont be able to speak out against Mr. Cohen his lawyers will. How well they tear down his opponents may be critical to their success.

Mr. Cohen will take the stand on Monday.

If the brief spectacle in court on Friday was any indication, his testimony should be passionate, prolonged and likely to trigger strong emotions from Mr. Trump.

Already, the defense is saying that Mr. Cohen is unruly, which the prosecutors acknowledged. How he performs next week could be crucial to how the jury accepts or rejects their arguments.

Prosecutors said on Friday that they may rest their case by the end of next week.

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Quiet End of Week for Trump Trial as Cohen Looms as Witness - The New York Times

At Donald J. Trumps Manhattan criminal trial, his lawyers have insisted he had nothing to do with any of the felony charges against him.

But testimony from prosecution witnesses over the last several weeks has called that argument into question, underscoring that Mr. Trump can be obsessive about two all-important aspects of his work: Anything having to do with the media, and anything having to do with his money.

The 34 documents at the heart of the prosecutions case relate to both obsessions.

The Manhattan district attorney says Mr. Trump orchestrated the disguise of 11 checks, 11 invoices and 12 ledger entries to continue the cover-up of a damaging story, paying his former fixer $420,000 in the process. And the testimony about Mr. Trumps management style could play a central role as prosecutors seek to convince the jury that there is no world in which Mr. Trump was not tracking the outflow of cash from his accounts.

The prosecutors strategy illustrates the risk of a criminal trial for Mr. Trump, one of the most famous men in the world, whose character and habits are familiar even to those who have not tracked his every move. The Manhattan district attorneys office has accused him of orchestrating the falsification of the 34 documents to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.

David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer and the trials first witness, worked with Mr. Trump for decades, the two men trading favors as each sought to make headlines. Asked about Mr. Trumps qualities as a businessman, Mr. Pecker described him as a micromanager from what I saw, adding that he looked at all of the aspects of whatever the issue was.

The prosecutor questioning Mr. Pecker next asked about Mr. Trumps approach to money. He was very cautious and very frugal, Mr. Pecker replied.

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Trump Has Long Been Known as a Micromanager. Prosecutors Are Using It Against Him. - The New York Times

In a startling precursor to what could be the most explosive testimony in Donald J. Trumps criminal trial, the judge on Friday told prosecutors that he was personally asking that a key witness stop speaking out against the former president.

The witness, Michael D. Cohen, was once a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump and in 2016, paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star to silence her account of extramarital sex with the then-presidential candidate. Mr. Cohen, who is expected to begin testifying next week, has been outspoken in his taunting of Mr. Trump, recently posting a TikTok video in which he wore a shirt with a picture of the former president behind bars.

On Friday, moments after prosecutors acknowledged that they have little control over their star witness, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, asked them to tell Mr. Cohen again to refrain from making any more statements about the case. He made it clear that the directive came from the highest authority in the court: him.

That comes from the bench, Justice Merchan said.

Mr. Cohen declined to comment.

Justice Merchans remarks might as well have been a billboard previewing next weeks main event. Mr. Cohen is crucial to the case: He says that records of his reimbursements for the hush-money payment were falsified in 2017 at the then-presidents direction.

The judges admonition injected a sense of anticipation into an otherwise placid proceeding, perhaps the first routine day in a most unusual trial. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorneys office steadily tightened their focus on the central accusations against Mr. Trump ahead of what they said could be their final week of witness testimony.

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Judge Merchan Cracks Down on Michael Cohens Taunting of Trump in Hush-Money Case - The New York Times

President Biden makes his way to Air Force One after posing with highway patrol troopers in Mountain View, Calif. on May 10. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

President Biden makes his way to Air Force One after posing with highway patrol troopers in Mountain View, Calif. on May 10.

The Biden administration is getting ready to announce new tariffs on imports of goods from China products like electric vehicles deemed to be policy priorities.

The announcement, which could come as early as next week, was confirmed by a source familiar with the tariff deliberations, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement of the decision.

The administration has been reviewing tariffs on Chinese goods since President Biden took office steep duties on about $370 billion of imports from China each year, put in place by former President Donald Trump as one of his signature policy moves.

The Biden administration has decided to keep those Trump tariffs in place and in addition, add a range of strategic items to the list. The decision was first reported by Bloomberg.

The new items that will be subject to tariffs align with Biden's policy priorities on climate, technology and manufacturing, the source said. These areas are covered by Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, which made hundreds of billions of dollars available to boost the domestic clean energy and semiconductor sectors.

Biden has been campaigning hard on jobs created by the big legislative packages. He has insisted that projects will use American-made goods and labor.

"When folks see shovels in the ground on all these projects, when they see new pipes being laid and people going to work, I hope they feel the pride that I feel pride in their hometowns making a comeback," he said last week in Wilmington, N.C.

It's a message aimed at resonating in swing states that lost massive numbers of jobs when manufacturing moved offshore states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Last month, Biden announced in a speech to United Steelworkers union members in Pittsburgh that he wants to hike tariffs on imports of Chinese steel and aluminum, noting that more than 14,000 steelworkers in Pennsylvania and Ohio had lost their jobs between 2000 and 2010.

"I promise you that I'm not going to let that happen again," he said.

Trump has also said he would broaden tariffs on imported goods, including targeting Chinese cars.

Biden in Pittsburgh sought to contrast his approach as "strategic and targeted" and has said Trump's broader approach would raise costs for U.S. consumers.

The rest is here:
Biden will keep Trump's China tariffs, and add new ones on electric vehicles - NPR

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Its a reliably memorable scene in any courtroom drama: The lawyer stands up to call the next witness, the door swings open, and its the priest who testifies he was at a Yankees game with the accused at the time of the crime and has ticket stubs to prove it! The decedents daughter, who stepped out of the shower to find her fathers bloody body, only to be exposed as an extravagantly permed fraud by Elle Woods! Mocha Joe, back to exact vengeance on Larry David for his spite store! As attorney extraordinaire (and personal role model) Lionel Hutz advised his client, Homer Simpson: I have a foolproof strategy to get you out of here: surprise witnesses, each more surprising than the last!

But in real life, I regret to inform you, there are no surprise witnesses. To the contrary, judges typically require prosecutors to disclose the names of their upcoming witnesses at least a day in advance, and often more than that. Its a matter of practicality, and it goes to the defendants fundamental right to defend himself; its difficult for a defense lawyer to prepare for the next day if he doesnt know who exactly hell be cross-examining. I once tried to get cute and told the judge at the end of a trial day I wasnt sure who Id be calling the next morning. The judge retorted, Either give us your witnesses names right now or dont bother showing up tomorrow. Point taken.

Yet when it comes to witness lists and, to be sure, in other respects the ongoing trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan is more like a movie than real life. Judge Juan Merchan, in a departure from normal practice, has permitted the prosecution to call its witnesses on the fly with a bare minimum of advance notice to the defense. The DA has turned over a witness list containing dozens of names, and Trumps team has a general idea who the witnesses will be but as to who will testify when, the defense is learning at essentially the same time as the rest of us.

Judge Merchan has reasoned that Trump cant be trusted not to publicly attack upcoming witnesses, and therefore has forfeited his right to advance notice. Hey, when you violate a gag order ten times, you suffer the consequences. When Trumps lawyer Todd Blanche promised that hed personally ensure that Trump refrained from public comment about upcoming witnesses, the judge responded, I dont think you can make that representation. Tough but fair.

The former federal and state prosecutor breaks down the headlines at the intersection of law and politics.

The result makes life harder for Trumps defense team, but it also makes the trial more cinematic for all of us. Whos next? Did we see anyone entering the courthouse? Could Stormy Daniels be up? Karen McDougal? Wheres Michael Cohen today? Hope Hicks reportedly drew gasps from the assembled media and courtroom observers when prosecutors called her to the stand.

Alas, there will be no surprise when it comes time for the biggest potential witness of all: the defendant himself, Donald John Trump. Let me preempt the Hamlet routine that surely will play out over the next couple weeks, the to be or not to be around whether Trump will take the stand in his own defense: He shouldnt, and he wont.

Trump, like any defendant, has an unconditional right to testify or not to testify. Nor can the prosecutor make any comment or ask the jury to draw any inference from any defendants decision not to take the stand. (It hardly needs to be said, but just to clear up any confusion: Contrary to Trumps preposterous courthouse rant, the gag order has zero to do with his ability to take the stand in his own defense.)

We can already see Trumps subtle but unmistakable retreat from bluster to sanity. At first, Trump boasted that he would testify in his own defense. Note the careful word choice: Would, which includes an element of conditionality, isnt quite the same as will. Days later, he prudently stepped back: Well, I would if its necessary. Right now, I dont know if you heard about today. Today was just incredible. People are saying the experts, Im talking about legal scholars and experts theyre saying, What kind of a case is this? There is no case.

Few legal scholars are saying quite that, of course, but, overstatement aside, Trump has the right strategic idea here. Indeed, hes got two ironclad reasons not to testify.

First: Hed get annihilated. Trump wouldnt necessarily suffer a Colonel Jessup Youre goddamn right I did! moment his self-preservation instincts are too strong for that but hed surely get twisted in a pretzel when confronted with the difficult questions posed by the prosecutions case. Did he in fact have affairs with McDougal and Daniels? If not, why did he falsely deny knowing them? Did he know about the hush-money payments made for his benefit? Did he authorize them? Why? And why did he falsely claim publicly to know nothing about the women and the payoffs? Why did he sign a series of reimbursement checks to Michael Cohen? Theres little chance hed offer coherent, consistent, plausible explanations.

Thats the risk whenever a defendant takes the stand: It essentially shifts the burden of proof to the defense table. Typically, if the jurors believe the defendant lies on the stand, its over. Cross-examination would simply be too fraught for Trump. He has every right to duck it, and hed be foolish to waive that right and expose himself here.

That brings us to the second point: Trump doesnt need to take the stand in his own defense. Thats not to argue that hes got an acquittal locked up, not by any stretch. (I still believe a conviction is more likely than not on balance.) But its become clear that his lawyers have all the ammunition they need to raise a defense, even without the risk of putting the client on the stand. Why take the risk of calling Trump to the stand to deny his sexual tryst with Daniels when she already signed a statement in 2018 declaring I am denying this affair because it never happened? Why does Trump need to swear he never dealt with Jeffrey McConney about the internal accounting behind hush-money reimbursements when McConney admitted the same in cross? Why must Trump proclaim Michael Cohen a liar when virtually every prosecution witness who has ever met the infamous Fixer has ranted about how he is (or was) a mendacious sleaze?

Indeed, if Trump takes the stand, the whole case will rise or fall on his testimony. If he doesnt, it likely will turn on Cohens. From the perspective of Trumps legal team, thats an easy call.

Weve seen this routine before. Trump vowed that he would testify, wanted to testify, was aching to testify before Robert Mueller, in Congress, and in some of his civil matters before he bailed out and avoided examination under oath. He did testify (sort of) at two of his recent civil trials involving E. Jean Carroll and business fraud in New York. But if Trump thinks those experiences prepared him for a criminal trial, hes mistaken. Both times he testified in civil court, the examinations were narrow, his testimony lasted only minutes, and he essentially self-destructed on the stand anyway. In criminal court, the restrictor plates come off, and prosecutors can drill Trump about the core allegations against him for as long as they please.

As we move toward the end phase of this trial, my sense is that both sides should be satisfied not overjoyed, but satisfied with how the case has gone. Prosecutors have done a solid, workmanlike job building their case, and Trumps lawyers have planted the seeds of reasonable doubt. As a defense attorney, thats about the best you can hope for at this point: Youre in the game and youve got a shot to pull it out. To call Trump to the stand would upend the trial and shove all the defense chips over to an extraordinarily risky bet. For all his public bluster and equivocation, theres simply no way Trump will engage in unilaterally assured self-destruction.

This article originally appeared in the free CAFE Brief newsletter. You can find more analysis of law and politics from Elie Honig, Preet Bharara, Joyce Vance, and other CAFE contributors at CAFE.com

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Will Donald Trump Take the Stand at His Trial? - New York Magazine