Cohen claimed the Trump team will attack jurors and this will force them to stand down
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen went on TikTok Live last night and appeared to suggest that it would be impossible for jurors in Donald Trump’s criminal trial to resist intimidation by “the Trump team,” and that they would be forced to stand down as a result. Twitter user johnny maga suggested Cohen’s statements amounted to “jury tampering,” the crime of attempting to influence the composition or decisions of a jury during a trial.
In the Live stream, Cohen placed himself in the shoes of a juror on the trial, and described how they would be intimidated into standing down.
“After consultation with family and so on, and the danger that this poses to me and my family, [I would decide] I cannot in good conscience accept the seat. And I believe that will happen tomorrow. I believe that that is a real serious problem, as the Trump team ramps up their attacks.”
He described the media as being “complicit” in this process, because “they think that there’s going to be a breaking story, where they’ll somehow manage to get a photo of somebody leaving the court. They’ll start running through facial recognition programs who these people are and all of a sudden—boom!—what ends up happening? That person’s life gets turned upside down.”
Cohen said that he knows “better than almost anybody” what happens when a person is put “front and center in every single news outlet.”
“It turns your entire life upside down.”
Cohen will almost certainly testify in the trial, which centers around a so-called “hush money” payment made to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Mr Cohen facilitated the payment, and in 2018 was jailed for breaking a campaign finance law violation for doing so.
