In a surprising twist, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, appeared to backtrack on his previous testimony during the New York civil fraud trial. Cohen had previously implicated Trump for directing him to inflate financial statements, but during cross-examination by Trump's attorneys, he contradicted his earlier statements. Cohen initially told one attorney that he had lied in his 2019 congressional testimony about Trump directing him to inflate numbers on his personal statement. However, when pressed by another attorney, Cohen stated that his earlier testimony was not false and that Trump never asked him to inflate the numbers.

This apparent backtrack by Cohen has thrown the trial into more chaos, and it raises questions about the credibility of his testimony. Cohen described Trump as speaking like a mob boss, stating that Trump tells you what he wants without explicitly stating it. Trump's lawyers have asked the judge for a directed verdict to throw out the case.

Meanwhile, during the trial, Trump himself took the witness stand to defend himself against claims that he violated a gag order. Trump denied referring to a judge's principal law clerk when he made a comment about a "very partisan judge." The former president testified that he believes the judge's clerk is biased against him and explained that he had taken down a post on his social media platform that sparked the gag order.