TRUMP ON TRIAL: Donald Trump’s defense called two witnesses yesterday after the prosecution rested following about 17 hours of testimony from former lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen. The Trump lawyers are expected to wrap it up today. 

  Things quickly went south with the testimony of former legal adviser Robert Costello, who tried to strike one of his own answers and became audibly exasperated with the judge’s rulings. Judge Juan Merchan scolded Costello saying, “If you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes.”

  Eventually Merchan cleared the court of the jury, spectators, and the press for a private conversation with Costello and the lawyers.

  Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover a payment of $130,000 to porn star stormy Daniels for her silence about a sexual fling.

  The defense rested its cross-examination of Cohen after re-visiting an admission that he had stolen $30,000 from Trump that was supposed to have been paid to the tech company RedFinch.

  “You stole from the Trump Organization, right?” defense lawyer Todd Blanche asked. “Yes, sir,” Cohen replied.

  It was another hole in Cohen’s credibility, which was already a sieve. Blanche has elicited testimony from Cohen about lying under oath in previous cases cast him as profiting off his ruptured association with Trump.  Cohen testified that he has earned about $4 million from his books and podcasts since the fall of 2020. When Blanche suggested Cohen has a financial interest in Trump being convicted he answered that it would be “better” for him if Trump were acquitted. “It gives me more to talk about in the future.” 

  A parade of notables, including about 20 Republican politicians, has visited Trump’s trial. Yesterday it was Chuck Zito, founder who the New York Nomads chapter of the Hells Angels who spent time in prison on drug charges. Zito was one of few non-members of the Mafia who attended the wake for the notorious mobster John Gotti.

ACCUSED: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “disgrace” that the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court asked for a warrant to arrest him for war crimes in Gaza.

  The prosecutor Karim Khan also asked for warrants on Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of Hamas.

  President Biden denounced the move by Khan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it “shameful.” 

  More than 35,000 people have been killed during Israel’s campaign to wipe out Hamas militants in Gaza. About 800,000 have now fled the southern city of Rafah under threat of a full Israeli incursion into that area.

  Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he had consulted a wide range of experts on international law, that he was applying the law equally and, “This is not a witch hunt. This is not some kid of emotional reaction to noise.” 

IN TRANSITION: New York City parents challenging the school system’s policy of allowing student athletes to play on sports teams that align with their gender identity have met stiff opposition from the educators and elected Democratic officials.

  A parent council argues that the policy is particularly unfair to girls when their team is joined by an athlete born male. Athletes born male develop stronger muscles and in some cases athletes with male genitalia are changing and showering in female locker rooms

  Schools chancellor David Banks called the proposal to reverse the acceptance policy “despicable” and “no way in line with our values.” Democratic officials also have responded to the parent council swiftly, and angrily.

Eighteen Democratic elected officials called the proposal “hateful, discriminatory and actively harmful” to the city’s children. 

  Public opinion seems to lean quite the other way. One Siena College poll found that two-thirds of registered voters in New York State, including 83 percent of Republicans and 77 percent of independents, would require high school athletes to “only compete with others of the same sex that they were assigned at birth.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Ivan Boesky, the financier who made a fortune on insider trading and went to prison for it in the 1980s Wall Street scandals, died at his home in La Jolla, California near San Diego. He was 87.

  Boesky was the inspiration for Gordon Gecko, the slimy financier played in the 1987 movie “Wall Street” by Michael Douglas, who famously said, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

  What Boesky actually told graduating business school students at UC Berkeley in 1986 was, “I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

  In the mid 1980s Boesky had a net worth of $280 million, a lot of money at the time, and a trading portfolio valued at $3 billion. He had a Manhattan pied-à-terre, a place on the French Riviera, a Paris apartment, and a condo in Hawaii. He was known in the investment world as “Piggy” and “Ivan the Terrible.” 

   But he was caught paying for inside information to make his trades and profit. Boesky agreed to wear a wire to help the feds bring down fellow high-flyer Michael Milken and other players on Wall Street. Boesky paid $100 million in fines, spent 18 months in prison and, when his wife sued for divorce, he demanded half her $100 million fortune. He got $20 million.

THE SPIN RACK: One person was killed on a Singapore Airlines plane that hit severe turbulence on a flight from London to Singapore. — Scarlett Johansson is unhappy that ChatGPT was using an artificial intelligence voice that sounded too much like the actress. ScarJo said she had been offered to be a voice but had declined.  

BELOW THE FOLD: Don’t be cruel. Elvis Presley’s Graceland Mansion is up for auction Thursday over the objections of his granddaughter, Riley Keough, the legal owner. A lending company claims Keough’s mother, the late Lisa Marie Presley, defaulted on a $3.8 million loan on the property, but Keough says the documents are fraudulent.

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