IT WAS FUN WHEN NEVER-TRUMPERS PRETENDED THIS WAS THE WEAK CASE...:

"I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected," Cohen testified, in a steady, calm voice. "And my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, predominantly, was to reverse engineer the various different asset classes, to increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us to." At the time Weisselberg was the Trump Organization's CFO. Last year, he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and testified against the Trump Organization in its own tax evasion trail. 

Cohen was much more sure of the cooperation in his testimony. Asked how much he and Weisselberg inflated the value of various properties, Cohen did not hesitate.

Cohen described a process in which he would be called into Trump's office and--after a discussion of what Trump's actual net worth was--Trump would give Cohen and Weisselberg a larger number. Then, Cohen and Weisselberg would retreat to Weisselberg's office and try to figure out how to make Trump look wealthier than he really was. Earlier this month, Weisselberg appeared as a reluctant witness for James, saying he annually took the fraudulent estimates of Trump's wealth to Trump for approval. However, in his testimony he said he didn't recall working with Cohen on the numbers.

When Trump entered court on Tuesday, he seemed tired and somewhat deflated--walking slowly and stiffly, nodding to someone in the front row, but looking vaguely away in the opposite direction whenever he passed by Letitia James' seat. At various points, he whispered animatedly to his lawyers, but his voice was never more than barely audible to the audience. During Cohen's testimony, particularly when he described interactions with Trump personally, Trump would shake his head and whisper more forcefully to his attorneys.

When Cohen began discussing a failed effort by Trump to obtain financing to purchase the Buffalo Bills NFL team, Trump's attorneys objected, saying the purchase never happened and wasn't part of James' fraud complaint. James' attorneys said Cohen's accusation that the Trump Organization had cooked up numbers the NFL might like to see was part of a pattern of behavior. When Engoron sided with James' office, Trump threw his hands up and began tapping his attorney's hand and whispering.

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