Stephen Colbert has poked fun at the relatively sparse crowds at Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 after Michael Cohen revealed at the former president’s hush money trial that he had a hard time getting tickets for the event.
As the fourth week of Mr Trump’s ongoing criminal trial over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels drew to a close, his former attorney Michael Cohen took the stand again for a tense morning of cross-examination.
Mr Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of alleged cover up of the payments. He has pleaded not guilty.
A clip from Cohen’s podcast was played aloud on Thursday in the courtroom, revealing how Cohen celebrated his former boss’ indictment on criminal charges saying, “I hope he rots” in jail “for what he did to me.”
Mr Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche used this clip to try and undermine Cohen’s credibility as the prosecution’s star witness, portraying him as seeking revenge.
“As motivation for Cohen’s vindictiveness,” Colbert explained on his Thursday night show, “the defense tried to show that Cohen felt rejected by Trump, including getting him to confirm that he had a hard time getting tickets to Trump’s 2017 inauguration.”
Mr Blance confronted Cohen with texts between him and his daughter, noting that he was having difficulty obtaining tickets to Mr Trump’s 2017 inauguration, and Cohen confirmed this on the stand.
“Wow,” Colbert reacted. “That had to sting. Because we all know, there were plenty of seats available.”
Colbert then put the infamous picture from the 2017 inauguration on screen, which showed areas of the National Mall in front of the United States Capitol in Washington DC being glaringly sparse – at lerast compared to Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 .
After Mr Trump was sworn in as president, the new White House had spent the large part of Mr Trump’s first day in office falsely claiming his inauguration was the most-viewed in history, with the largest audience in attendance in Washington.
At the time, Mr Trump complained about "a lot of empty areas" he had seen from his inauguration in photos released by the National Park Service, and documents later appaered to reveal that pictures from the inauguration had been edited to crop out areas that had not been filled by audience members.
It is unclear in the documents if those photos had been released.
Elsewhere during Cohen’s cross-examination, Mr Blanche spent several hours in court trying to paint the former “fixer” as a serial liar, even raising his voice and screaming at the witness over a pivotal phone call that connected Mr Trump to a conspiracy at the centre of the case.
“That’s a lie!” Mr Blanche fumed on Thursday.
At one point, Mr Blanche pushed Cohen to “admit” that he was lying about the true purpose of the call.
“No, sir, I can’t,” Cohen replied.
“Ooh, so close,” Colbert said, clicking his fingers. “Was kind of a weak way to try and get a confession. It would be like a detective gathering everyone in the room at the end of a murder mystery and saying, ‘And the murderer is..any volunteers? It would really help me out’.”
