Day 3 of testimony from Michael Cohen continued today! The cross examination started mid-day on Tuesday and we fully expected it to wrap up today, but it did not! So Cohen will be back on the stand on Monday at 9:30am. Hopefully it wraps up at that point and we can get to redirect and then the defense case.

As of the writing of this summary post, the defense has alluded to the fact that they may have two witnesses. No idea if one of those may be Donald Trump, but my bet is no.

Ok, so onto the fun summary of today's testimony! The focus of today's cross: painting Cohen as the biggest liar to ever walk the earth AND to chip away at his credibility. Did they succeed, though? DID THEY HAVE THEIR "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH" moment?

But first, Matt Gaetz posted this totally real and not at all creepy post to his official twitter account:

Notice the Proud Boys language HA HA HA I hate this timeline.

The circus sent a clown car of idiots to support Dear Leader:

Cross starts with some questions about a retired detective, Jeremy Rosenberg, who left the DA's office under weird circumstances. Blanche is trying to get Cohen to admit if Rosenberg confirmed the indictment before it became public. He does not confirm it.

Then a very loud clip from Cohen's podcast "Mea Culpa" is playing. In the clip, Cohen talks about his "delight" at the thought of Trump going through the booking process. Same, Michael, same. Pretty sure a bunch of people in that courtroom would also enjoy this.

Moving on. Blanche talks about a tweet Cohen had put up on twitter from March. Trump called Cohen "jailbird" prompting Cohen to respond, calling Trump a "Dumb-Donald." Blanche asks if he did that. Cohen says "Sounds correct."

Lots of painting Cohen as a liar. Yes, he made false statements to the House Select Committee and to the special counsel's office during Robert Mueller's probe into Trump's links to Russia. We all know this. Move on, Blanche!

Reports from court are that the jury is not as interested in this. Little to no notes being taken. Blanche is losing them with this line of questioning.

Now onto Cohen's guilty plea related to tax evasion. Blanche asks him if anyone "induced or threatened him" to make him plead guilty. Cohen paused and then stated: “As I stated previously, I was provided with 48 hours within which to accept the plea or the Southern District of New York was going to file an 80-page indictment that included my wife, and I elected to protect my family."

NOTE: Blanche continues to bounce around from topic to topic, in a seemingly disjointed and confusing cross examination. I tried keeping up with tweets and they are ALL OVER THE PLACE. I am trying to hit the high notes, as always!

Now we get to pardons. Blanche asks Cohen if he asked Trump for a pardon. Cohen says no. He explained it this way: “I spoke to my attorney about it because we had seen on television President Trump potentially pre-pardoning everybody to bring an end to this. I reached out to my attorney to ask him whether or not this is legitimate.” He did add that he never asked for and would not accept a pardon. But he did ask his lawyer to look into it. That was the end of the story.

Blanche continues to paint Cohen as an angry ex employee out for revenge after not getting a job in the administration. Thus far, Cohen has held steadfast that this was not the case. He had never dreamed of being chief of staff of AG.

Then we moved onto a weird topic: Cohen calling Keith Schiller on Oct 24, 2016. Cohen said he wanted to talk to Trump about harassing texts he was receiving, allegedly from a 14 year old. During this line of questioning, Blanche is reportedly FIRED UP and raising his voice at Cohen, who continues to remain calm.

Reminder, on direct questioning from the prosecutor, Cohen testified that he reached out to Keith Schiller in a call on October 24, 2016 because he needed to discuss the Stormy Daniels matter with Trump and to inform him of the resolution/payment. On cross, they got him to admit that texts discussed harassing phone calls.

Who remembers what they discussed on a phone call 8 years ago? Texts have context, phone calls maybe not. It is possible that he talked about both topics, but this will need to be cleaned up in redirect from prosecutors.

But, the exchange got HEATED:

BLANCHE: You said you had a recollection of a phone call on Oct. 24 at 8:02 p.m., and you called Schiller and he gave the phone to President Trump and you gave Trump an update and he said, 'OK, good.' That was a lie! You did not talk to President Trump on that night. You talked to Keith Schiller about what we just went through.

COHEN: I'm not certain that is accurate. I believe I spoke to Mr. Trump about the Stormy Daniels matter.

BLANCHE: We are not asking for your belief. This jury does not want to hear what you think happened.

LUNCHBREAK!

BACK FROM LUNCH!

Interesting twist. Before the jury was brought back in, Todd Blanche made it clear that he wanted to "rehab" his line of questioning from the start of day when he insinuated that the former detective from the DA's office gave Cohen a heads up about the indictment.

Now onto journalists and those who Cohen considered allies and friends. Cohen confirmed that certain journalists would reach out about stories. Cohen confirmed that he always spoke to Trump before giving a response. Why? Because if he didn't, it would "cause him to blow up at me, and two, it would probably be the end of my job."

Then, in one of the least surprising revelations, Cohen confirmed that he had close communication with 3 reporters: Maggie Haberman (NYT), Katy Tur(d) of MSNBC and Jeff Zucker (former CNN head). The funniest part was that Tur had to report this LIVE on air while she was hosting her show. Side note: She is awful and continues to be a Trump apologist.

Blanche continued to insinuate that the payments were not related to the campaign, but it was all over the place and there is enough evidence to confirm that it was.

Ok, that was it for real testimony. Court is out Friday so Trump can attend Barron's graduation (I will be shocked if he actually does), so we are back on Monday.

One of the potential witnesses for Monday:

Summations Tuesday, hopefully!

By the way, still no confirmation if Trump will testify or not.

See you all back on Monday for the final day of Cohen's testimony! Let's see what the defense does.