TRUMP ON TRIAL: Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen testified yesterday that the $130,000 payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence was to protect his boss’s chances in the 2016 election and that he was reimbursed through invoices falsely labelled as “retainer” fees.

  It’s those invoices and payment records that the prosecution claims are the fraudulent business records that masked what was actually an expense on behalf of the Trump presidential campaign.

  Cohen told about how the coverup fell apart and he was the target of an FBI raid. He said Trump reassured him afterwards, “Don’t worry. I’m the president of the United States.”

  House Speaker Mike Johnson and a handful of other prominent Republican politicians made an appearance at the trial yesterday in support of Trump even as Cohen punched holes in the former president. Echoing Trump, Johnson called the court system “corrupt” and said this prosecution is “all about politics.”

  Cohen testified that after the raid a lawyer named Robert Costello with connections to Trump offered to represent him and be the communications conduit to Trump. An email from Costello that was displayed by prosecutors urged Cohen to “sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” Cohen said Costello also told him to “stay in the fold, don’t flip, don’t speak.”

  But Cohen said that after consulting with his wife and children he abandoned his loyalty to the then President. He pleaded guilty to federal charges that included breaking campaign finance laws in connection with hush-money deals with Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she’d had an affair with Trump.

  The defense went immediately on the attack when the prosecution was finished, pointing out Cohen’s personal history as a liar and a cheat.

  Spring boarding off the names of Cohen’s books, “Disloyal” and “Revenge,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche tried to reveal Cohen as a bitter outsider who had been ejected from the Trump fold, but it backfired. 

  Blanche asked whether Cohen had called Trump a “boorish cartoon misogynist.”

  “Sounds like something I would say,” Cohen responded.

   Blanche then asked whether Cohen called Trump a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain.”

  Again, Cohen replied, “That also sounds like something that I said.” 

CHINA SYNDROME: President Biden announced on Tuesday a sharp increase in import taxes on Chinese goods including electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors, and advanced batteries, to protect American industries that he said are unfairly subsidized by Beijing.

  The president also said he would maintain tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese imports that were imposed by President Trump, even though he criticized those same taxes during his 2020 run for the presidency.

THE WAR ROOM: The United Nations says the death toll for women and children in Gaza is lower than the number previously cited, although the total number of confirmed dead is still just shy of 35,000.

  The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that at least 4,959 women and 7,797 children were among the dead out of an overall death toll of 34,735.

  What they don’t say is how many of the 35,000 have been noncombatants, unarmed and uninvolved civilians whether male, female, or child.

LA MOUCHE: A manhunt is underway for a French criminal known as “The Fly” after he was freed in a coordinated attack on a prison van that involved automatic gunfire and resulted in the death of two escort guards.

  Video shows that the incident in Rouen began when a white prison van carrying Mohamed Amra was blocked in a toll gate by a small SUV. Men dressed all in black jumped out and opened fire before they were joined by similarly-dressed gunmen who appeared to be waiting for the moment.

  Amra was pulled from the prison van before the gunmen torched their original vehicle and took off in an escape car.

  Amra had been convicted only of burglary but he had also been indicted by prosecutors in Marseille for a kidnapping that led to a death. 

HOOP DREAMS: Former Iowa star and No. 1 WNBA draft pick Caitlin Clark scored 20 points in her first regular season game as the Indiana Fever lost to the Connecticut Sun 92-71. She hit four-three pointers and six foul shots in a disappointing performance in which she committed 10 turnovers. But, “Tonight the rookie joins Maya Moore and Edna Campbell as the only players in WNBA history to tally 20+ pts and 4+ 3PM in their debut,” the WNBA said about Clark in a post on Twitter/X.

THE OBIT PAGE: The Nobel-winning Canadian short story writer Alice Munro has died in Port Hope, Ontario, east of Toronto. She was 92.

  Munro made her name in the calculus of fiction, the short story. She had a precision with words.

  Her stories, many of them focused on women, portrayed small town people in unusual and character-revealing situations. Her work put her in a league with few members that included Katherine Anne Porter and Raymond Carver.

  “With Alice it’s like a shorthand,” the novelist Richard Ford once said. “You’ll just mention her, and everybody just kind of generally nods that she’s just sort of as good as it gets.”

  Munro’s Nobel citation in 2013 praised her ability to “accommodate the entire epic complexity of the novel in just a few short pages.”

THE SPIN RACK: Seven of nine South Dakota tribes have banned Governor Kristi Noem from their lands after she accused the tribes of being involved in drug trafficking. “We do not have cartels on the reservations,” Crow Creek Sioux Tribe Chairman Peter Lengkeek said following the vote. — Orca whales attacked and sank another boat off the Straits of Gibraltar, forcing the rescue of two sailors. The Orcas are angry. It was the fifth such sinking in waters off the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in recent years.

BELOW THE FOLD: A miniature poodle named Sage groomed like a topiary hedge won the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

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