The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the U.S. through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The nature of their suspected connections to the IS was not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF. They were in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which made the arrests while working with the JTTF, pending proceedings to remove them from the country.

The individuals from Tajikistan entered the country last spring and passed through the U.S. government’s screening process without turning up information that would have identified them as potential terrorism-related concerns, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a statement confirming the immigration-related arrests of “several non-citizens” but did not detail specifics. The agencies noted that the U.S. has been in a “heightened threat environment.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray has said the U.S. is facing accelerating threats from homegrown violent extremists as well as foreign terrorist organizations, particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

He said at one recent congressional hearing that officials were “concerned about the terrorism implications from potential targeting of vulnerabilities at the border.” The Biden administration in August said that it had detected and stopped a network attempting to smuggle people from Uzbekistan into the U.S. and that at least one member of the network had links to a foreign terrorist group.

“The FBI and DHS will continue working around the clock with our partners to identify, investigate, and disrupt potential threats to national security,” the agencies said.

The judge responded to a jury request by rereading 30 pages of jury instructions. The 12-person jury, which deliberated for about 4 1/2 hours Wednesday without reaching a verdict, also reheard testimony Thursday morning from a tabloid publisher and Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer.

It’s unclear how long the deliberations will last. A guilty verdict would deliver a stunning legal reckoning for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to reclaim the White House while an acquittal would represent a major win for him and embolden him on the campaign trail. Since verdicts must be unanimous, it’s also possible the case ends in a mistrial if the jury can’t reach a consensus.

In a memo Wednesday evening, Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles blasted the proceedings as a “kangaroo court” and argued the case would not matter in November.

“The bottom line is this case doesn’t have an impact on voters,” they wrote.

Trump, who on Wednesday appeared to be priming supporters for the possibility of a guilty verdict by saying “Mother Teresa couldn’t bear these charges,” struck a pessimistic tone again Thursday.

“It’s all rigged. The whole thing, the whole system is rigged,” he said. It’s the same language he used to try to inoculate himself against losses in the 2020 presidential election and Iowa’s 2016 GOP primary.

He continued to rail against the case on his social media network from a room in the courthouse, writing in capital letters, “I did nothing wrong! In fact, I did everything right!” Trump did not testify in his own defense, something the judge told jurors they could not take into account.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to hide potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 presidential election campaign.

The charge, a felony, arises from reimbursements paid to then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he made a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims that she and Trump had sex in 2006. Trump is accused of misrepresenting Cohen’s reimbursements as legal expenses to hide that they were tied to a hush money payment.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and contends the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal services. He has also denied the alleged extramarital sexual encounter with Daniels.

To convict Trump, the jury would have to find unanimously that he created a fraudulent entry in his company’s records or caused someone else to do so and that he acted with the intent of committing or concealing another crime.

The crime prosecutors say Trump committed or hid is a violation of a New York election law making it illegal for two or more conspirators “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

While the jurors must unanimously agree that something unlawful was done to promote Trump’s election campaign, they don’t have to be unanimous on what that unlawful thing was.

The jurors, a diverse cross section of Manhattan residents and professional backgrounds, often appeared riveted by testimony, including from Cohen and Daniels. Many took notes and watched intently as witnesses answered questions.

In their first burst of communication with the court, jurors asked to rehear excerpts of the judge’s legal instructions, including a portion related to how inferences may be drawn from evidence.

They also reheard testimony Thursday from Cohen and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker about an August 2015 meeting with Trump at Trump Tower, where the tabloid boss agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of his fledgling presidential campaign.

Pecker testified that the plan included identifying potentially damaging stories about Trump so they could be squashed before being published. That, prosecutors say, was the beginning of the catch-and-kill scheme at the heart of the case.

Jurors also reheard Pecker’s account of a phone call he said he received from Trump in which they discussed a rumor that another outlet had offered to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story that she had a yearlong affair with Trump in the mid-2000s. Trump denies the affair.

Pecker testified that Trump told him, “Karen is a nice girl,” and asked, “What do you think I should do?” Pecker said he replied: “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.” He added that Trump told him that he doesn’t buy stories because they always get out and that Cohen would be in touch.

The publisher said he came away from the conversation thinking Trump was aware of the specifics of McDougal’s claims. Pecker said he believed the story was true and would have been embarrassing to Trump and his campaign if it were made public.

The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., eventually paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story in an agreement that also included writing and other opportunities with its fitness magazine and other publications.

The fourth bit of testimony jurors requested was Pecker’s account about his decision in October 2016 to back out of an agreement to sell the rights to McDougal’s story to Trump through a company Cohen had established for the transaction, known as an “assignment of rights.”

“I called Michael Cohen, and I said to him that the agreement, the assignment deal, is off. I am not going forward. It is a bad idea, and I want you to rip up the agreement,” Pecker testified. “He was very, very, angry. Very upset. Screaming, basically, at me.”

Pecker testified that he reiterated to Cohen that he wasn’t going forward with the agreement.

He said Cohen told him: “The boss is going to be very angry at you.”

The 12-person jury was sent home around 4 p.m. after about 4 1/2 hours of deliberations. The process is to resume Thursday.

Jurors also asked to rehear at least part of the judge’s instructions meant to guide them on the law. The notes sent to the judge with the requests were the first burst of communication with the court after the panel of seven men and five women was sent to a private room just before 11:30 a.m. to begin weighing a verdict.

“It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. It is yours,” Judge Juan M. Merchan told jurors earlier in the day before dispatching them to begin deliberations, reminding them of their vow during the selection process to judge the case fairly and impartially.

It’s unclear how long the deliberations will last. A guilty verdict would deliver a stunning legal reckoning for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as he seeks to reclaim the White House while an an acquittal would represent a major win for Trump and embolden him on the campaign trail. Since verdicts must be unanimous, it’s also possible that the case ends in a mistrial if the jury can’t reach a consensus after days of deliberations.

Trump struck a pessimistic tone after leaving the courtroom following the reading of jury instructions, repeating his assertions of a “very unfair trial” and saying: “Mother Teresa could not beat those charges, but we’ll see. We’ll see how we do.”

He remained inside the courthouse during deliberations, where he made a series of posts on his social media network complaining about the trial and quoting legal and political commentators who view the case in his favor. In one all-capital-letters post, he proclaimed that he didn’t even “know what the charges are in this rigged case,” even though he was present in the courtroom as the judge detailed them to jurors.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to hide potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential election campaign.

The charge, a felony, arises from reimbursements paid to then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he made a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to silence her claims that she and Trump had sex in 2006. Trump is accused of misrepresenting Cohen’s reimbursements as legal expenses to hide that they were tied to a hush money payment.

Trump has pleaded not guilty and contends the Cohen payments were for legitimate legal services. He has also denied the alleged extramarital sexual encounter with Daniels.

To convict Trump, the jury would have to find unanimously that he created a fraudulent entry in his company’s records, or caused someone else to do so, and that he did so with the intent of committing or concealing another crime.

The crime prosecutors say Trump committed or hid is a violation of a New York election law making it illegal for two or more conspirators “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

While the jury must unanimously agree that something unlawful was done to promote Trump’s election campaign, they don’t have to be unanimous on what that unlawful thing was.

The jurors — a diverse cross-section of Manhattan residents and professional backgrounds — often appeared riveted by testimony in the trial, including from Cohen and Daniels. Many took notes and watched intently as witnesses answered questions from Manhattan prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers.

Jurors started deliberating after a marathon day of closing arguments in which a prosecutor spoke for more than five hours, underscoring the burden the district attorney’s office faces in needing to establish Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Trump team need not establish his innocence to avoid a conviction but must instead bank on at least one juror finding that prosecutors have not sufficiently proved their case.

Earlier Wednesday, the jury received instructions in the law from Merchan, who offered some guidance on factors the panel can use to assess witness testimony, including its plausibility, its consistency with other testimony, the witness’ manner on the stand and whether the person has a motive to lie.

But, the judge said, “there is no particular formula for evaluating the truthfulness and accuracy of another person’s statement.”

The principles he outlined are standard but perhaps all the more relevant after Trump’s defense leaned heavily on questioning the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, including Cohen.

Jurors asked to rehear testimony from Cohen and former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker about an August 2015 meeting with Trump at Trump Tower where the tabloid boss agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of his fledgling presidential campaign.

Pecker testified that the plan included identifying potentially damaging stories about Trump so they could be squashed before being published. That, prosecutors say, was the beginning of the catch-and-kill scheme at the heart of the case.

Jurors also want to hear Pecker’s account of a phone call he said he received from Trump in which they discussed a rumor that another outlet had offered to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s alleging that she had a yearlong affair with Trump in the mid-2000s. Trump has denied the affair.

Pecker testified that Trump told him, “Karen is a nice girl” and asked, “What do you think I should do?” Pecker said he replied: “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.” He added that Trump told him he doesn’t buy stories because it always gets out and that Cohen would be in touch.

The publisher said he came away from the conversation thinking Trump was aware of the specifics of McDougal’s claims. Pecker said he believed the story was true and would have been embarrassing to Trump and his campaign if it were made public.

The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., eventually paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story in an agreement that also included writing and other opportunities with its fitness magazine and other publications.

The fourth item jurors requested is Pecker’s testimony about his decision in October 2016 to back out of an agreement to sell the rights to McDougal’s story to Trump through a company Cohen had established for the transaction, known as an “assignment of rights.”

“I called Michael Cohen, and I said to him that the agreement, the assignment deal is off. I am not going forward. It is a bad idea, and I want you to rip up the agreement,” Pecker testified. “He was very, very, angry. Very upset. Screaming, basically, at me.”

Pecker testified that he reiterated to Cohen that he wasn’t going forward with the agreement.

He said that Cohen told him: “The boss is going to be very angry at you.”

The lawyers’ dueling accounts, wildly divergent in their assessments of witness credibility and the strength of evidence, offered both sides one final chance to score points with the jury before it starts deliberating the first felony case against a former American president.

“This case, at its core, is about a conspiracy and a cover-up,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told jurors.

The trial featured allegations that Trump and his allies conspired to stifle potentially embarrassing stories during the 2016 presidential campaign through hush money payments , including to a porn actor who alleged that she and Trump had sex a decade earlier. Trump has denied having sex with both women. His lawyer Todd Blanche told jurors that neither the actor, Stormy Daniels, nor the Trump attorney who paid her can be trusted in their testimony.

“President Trump is innocent. He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period,” Blanche said.

Following more than four weeks of testimony, the daylong summations teed up a momentous and historically unprecedented task for the jury as it decides whether to convict the presumptive Republican presidential nominee ahead of the November election. The political implications of the proceedings were unmistakable as President Joe Biden’s campaign staged an event outside the courthouse with actor Robert De Niro while Blanche reminded jurors that the case was not a referendum on their views about Trump.

Steinglass sought to defray potential juror concerns about witness credibility. He acknowledged that Daniels’ account about the alleged 2006 encounter in Lake Tahoe hotel suite was at times “cringeworthy” but said the details she offered — including about the decor and what she said she saw when she snooped in Trump’s toiletry kit — were full of touchstones “that kind of ring true.”

The story matters, he said, because it “reinforces (Trump’s) incentive to buy her silence.”

“Her story is messy. It makes people uncomfortable to hear. It probably makes some of you uncomfortable to hear. But that’s kind of the point,” Steinglass said. He told jurors: “In the simplest terms, Stormy Daniels is the motive.”

He also tried to reassure jurors that the prosecution’s case did not rest solely on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer who paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Cohen later pleaded guilty to federal charges for his role in the hush money payments, as well as to lying to Congress. He went to prison and was disbarred, but his direct involvement in the transactions made him a key witness at trial.

“It’s not about whether you like Michael Cohen. It’s not about whether you want to go into business with Michael Cohen. It’s whether he has useful, reliable information to give you about what went down in this case, and the truth is that he was in the best position to know,” Steinglass said.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, charges punishable by up to four years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. It’s unclear whether prosecutors would seek imprisonment in the event of a conviction, or if the judge would impose that punishment.

Though the case featured seamy details about sex and tabloid industry practices, the actual charges turn on something more mundane: reimbursements Trump signed for Cohen for the hush money payments.

The reimbursements were recorded as being for legal expenses, which prosecutors say was a fraudulent label designed to conceal the purpose of the hush money transaction and to illicitly interfere in the 2016 election. Defense lawyers say Cohen actually did substantive legal work for Trump and his family.

In his own hourslong address to the jury, with sweeping denials echoing Trump’s “deny everything” approach, Blanche attacked the entire foundation of the case.

He said Cohen, not Trump, created the invoices that were submitted to the Trump Organization for reimbursement and that there was no proof that Trump knew what staffers were doing with the payments. He disputed the contention that Trump and Daniels had sex, and he rejected the idea that the alleged hush money scheme amounted to election interference.

“Every campaign in this country is a conspiracy to promote a candidate, a group of people who are working together to help somebody win,” Blanche said.

But as expected, he reserved his most animated attack for Cohen, with whom he tangled during a lengthy cross-examination.

Mimicking the term “GOAT,” used primarily in sports as an acronym for “greatest of all time,” Blanche labeled Cohen the “GLOAT” — greatest liar of all time. The lawyer also called Cohen “the human embodiment of reasonable doubt.” That language was intentional because, to convict Trump, jurors must believe that prosecutors proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“He lied to you repeatedly. He lied many, many times before you even met him. His financial and personal well-being depend on this case. He is biased and motivated to tell you a story that is not true,” Blanche said.

The attorney’s voice became even more impassioned as he revisited one of the more memorable moments of the trial: when Blanche sought to unravel Cohen’s claim that he had spoken to Trump by phone about the Daniels arrangement on Oct. 24, 2016.

Cohen said he had contacted Trump’s bodyguard as a way of getting a hold of Trump, but Blanche asserted that at the time Cohen was actually dealing with a spate of harassing phone calls and was preoccupied with that problem.

“It was a lie,” Blanche said. “That was a lie, and he got caught red-handed.”

In his testimony, Cohen acknowledged a litany of past lies, many of which he said were intended to protect Trump. But he said he had subsequently told the truth, at great cost: “My entire life has been turned upside-down as a direct result,” he said.

Steinglass used a bit of stagecraft to challenge the defense’s assertion that Cohen was lying about the subject of that phone conversation, demonstrating a hypothetical version of the call to show jurors how Cohen and the bodyguard, Keith Schiller, could have covered multiple subjects in less than a minute.

Cohen’s actual call to Schiller’s phone number lasted 96 seconds, according to phone records. Steinglass showed, with his hypothetical, that Cohen could’ve spoken to Schiller about the prank calls, asked him to pass the phone to Trump and then discussed the Daniels deal with Trump, all in 49 seconds.

The New York prosecution is one of four criminal cases pending against Trump as he seeks to reclaim the White House from Biden. It’s unclear if any of the others will reach trial before November’s election.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.

It’s impossible to say how long all of that will take, but in a landmark trial that’s already featured its fair share of memorable moments, this week could easily be the most important.

Here’s what to expect in the days ahead:

What happens during closing arguments?

Starting Tuesday morning, prosecutors and defense lawyers will have their final opportunity to address the jury in closing arguments expected to last for much of the day, if not all of it.

The arguments don’t count as evidence in the case charging Trump with falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments during the 2016 presidential election to a porn star who alleged she had a sexual encounter with him a decade earlier. They’ll instead function as hourslong recaps of the key points the lawyers want to leave jurors with before the panel disappears behind closed doors for deliberations.

Look for prosecutors to remind jurors that they can trust the financial paperwork they’ve seen and the witnesses they’ve heard from. That includes porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump is at the heart of the case, and Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen, who testified that Trump was directly involved in the hush money scheme and authorized payments.

It’s worth remembering that the defense, which called only two witnesses but not Trump, doesn’t have to prove anything or convince jurors of Trump’s innocence.

To prevent a conviction, the defense simply needs to convince at least one juror that prosecutors haven’t proved Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard for criminal cases.

Expect the defense to try to poke holes in the government’s case by disputing Daniels’ testimony about her hotel suite encounter with Trump and by distancing Trump from the mechanics of the reimbursements to Cohen, who was responsible for the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels.

The defense may also assert one last time that Trump was most concerned about shielding his family from salacious stories, not winning the election, when it comes to the hush money that was paid.

And it’ll certainly attack the credibility of Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payment and who was accused by Trump’s lawyers of lying even while on the witness stand. How much of his testimony the jury believes will go a long way in determining the outcome of the case.

Since the prosecution has the burden of proof, it will deliver its summation last — the reverse order from opening statements, in which the prosecution went first.

One last thing before the jury deliberates

A critical moment will take place, perhaps Wednesday morning, before the jury begins its deliberations.

Judge Juan M. Merchan is expected to spend about an hour instructing the jury on the law governing the case, providing a roadmap for what it can and cannot take into account as it evaluates the Republican former president’s guilt or innocence.

In an indication of just how important those instructions are, prosecutors and defense lawyers had a spirited debate last week outside the jury’s presence as they sought to persuade Merchan about the instructions he should give.

The Trump team, for instance, sought an instruction informing jurors that the types of hush money payments at issue in Trump’s case are not inherently illegal, a request a prosecutor called “totally inappropriate.” Merchan said such an instruction would go too far and is unnecessary.

Trump’s team also asked Merchan to consider the “extraordinarily important” nature of the case when issuing his instructions and to urge jurors to reach “very specific findings.” Prosecutors objected to that as well, and Merchan agreed that it would be wrong to deviate from the standard instructions.

“When you say it’s a very important case, you’re asking me to change the law, and I’m not going to do that,” Merchan said.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, requested an instruction that someone’s status as a candidate doesn’t need to be the sole motivation for making a payment that benefits the campaign. Defense lawyers asked for jurors to be told that if a payment would have been made even if the person wasn’t running, it shouldn’t be treated as a campaign contribution.

Once the jury gets the case

The deliberations will proceed in secret, in a room reserved specifically for jurors and in a process that’s intentionally opaque.

Jurors can communicate with the court through notes that ask the judge, for instance, for legal guidance or to have particular excerpts of testimony read back to them. But without knowing what jurors are saying to each other, it’s hard to read too much into the meaning of any note.

It’s anyone’s guess how long the jury will deliberate for and there’s no time limit either. The jury must evaluate 34 counts of falsifying business records, so that could take some time, and a verdict might not come by the end of the week.

To reach a verdict, either guilty or not guilty, all 12 jurors must agree with the decision for the judge to accept it.

Things will get trickier if the jury can’t reach a consensus after several days of deliberations. Though defense lawyers might seek an immediate mistrial, Merchan is likely to call the jurors in and instruct them to keep trying for a verdict and to be willing to reconsider their positions without abandoning their conscience or judgment just to go along with others.

If, after that instruction, the jury still can’t reach a verdict, the judge would have the option to deem the panel hopelessly deadlocked and declare a mistrial.

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Michael R. Sisak and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.

The decision Friday by the International Court of Justice in The Hague adds to the pressure facing an increasingly isolated Israel, coming just days after Norway, Ireland and Spain said they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor of a separate international court sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as leaders of Hamas.

The Biden administration stands apart from the global community — though it is opposed to a major offensive in Rafah, the administration also insists that the steps its close ally Israel has taken so far have not crossed red lines.

Administration officials so far have appeared determined to press on with military and political support for Israel following the deadly Hamas attack it endured last October, while also pressuring its ally to avoid a full-scale military operation in densely populated Rafah.

“What we have seen so far in terms of Israel’s military operations in that area has been more targeted and limited, has not involved major military operations into the heart of dense urban areas,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at a White House briefing this week.

But, he added, “We now have to see what unfolds from here.”

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s internal assessment of the situation, said the operation in Gaza had “not yet moved into the core heart of Rafah that gets us to the densest of dense areas.”

Earlier this month, the White House announced it was pausing a shipment of some 3,500 bombs, including massive 2,000-pound explosives that the Biden administration said were leading to civilian deaths. President Joe Biden warned during a CNN interview that “if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah.”

U.S. officials in pressuring Israel had suggested that a major operation was a red line that would undermine stalled negotiations on a deal to return Israeli hostages taken by Hamas and would lead Biden to further dial back what weaponry he would send Israel.

But the tone at the White House seemed to take a notable shift this week after Sullivan returned from a visit to Israel, where he said he had been briefed on “refinements” in the Israeli plan to root out Hamas in Rafah, and to Saudi Arabia.

During Sullivan’s talks with Netanyahu and other officials during the trip, the Israeli side addressed many of Biden’s concerns about its plans for Rafah, according to a senior administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The official said the administration stopped short of greenlighting the Israeli plan but Israeli officials’ altered planning suggested they were taking Biden’s concerns seriously.

That assessment may be of little consolation to Palestinians still trapped in Rafah — the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, and the site of a critical crossing for aid. More than 1 million people sought refuge there in recent months after escaping fighting elsewhere but some 900,000 have since fled the city.

Israel has brought hundreds of trucks in through the other main border crossing, Kerem Shalom, but the U.N. and aid groups say Israeli military operations make it dangerous for them to pick up food, water and other supplies for starving Palestinians.

The U.S. Agency for International Development says Gaza requires a steady flow of 600 trucks a day of food and other aid to reverse the onset of what the heads of USAID and the U.N. World Food Program call famine in the north and to keep it from spreading to the south.

Even with a U.S. pier starting to bring in a small amount of aid by sea, Gaza has received only a fraction of the amount of supplies needed since the start of the Israeli offensive.

Leading international humanitarian groups welcomed the ICJ ruling for the pressure they hoped it would bring. Doctors Without Borders said it was confirmation of how “catastrophic” the situation had become for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and “the desperate need for humanitarian aid to be scaled up immediately.”

There’s no practical mechanism to force Israel to comply with the court order, which, in addition to ordering a halt to the offensive, also mandates an increase of humanitarian aid to the region and access to Gaza for war crimes investigators.

Israel showed no signs that it intended to change course after Friday’s ruling. The war in Gaza followed an Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people, about a quarter of them soldiers, with another 250 taken captive. At least 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The court’s demands go beyond what the U.S. has asked of Israel at the moment, though Washington has nonetheless signaled that it remains opposed to a more intrusive operation in Gaza.

“When it comes to Rafah, we’ve made known for a long time our concerns about a full-on military assault of Rafah and the damage that that could do to civilian population absent a clear and credible plan to protect it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Blinken also reiterated that the administration does not believe a major offensive would achieve the results that Israel is looking to achieve, “which is to deal effectively and durably with Hamas.”

“Our concerns about a full-on military assault in Rafah remain,” he said. “We have other ways of dealing with the challenge posed by Hamas that we believe can be more effective and more durable.”

Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Jurors over the course of a month have heard testimony about sex and bookkeeping, tabloid journalism and presidential politics. Their task ahead will be to decide whether prosecutors who have charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records have proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here’s a look at what the two sides have argued, who has been missing from the case, what to listen for in the final days and what prosecutors will have to prove to secure a conviction.

THE PROSECUTION’S CASE

Through witnesses including a porn actor, a veteran tabloid publisher and longtime Trump aides, the prosecution aimed to link the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House this year to a hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential campaign that resulted in the filing of phony business records to mask the alleged conspiracy.

Jurors heard testimony that two women and a doorman were paid tens of thousands of dollars to keep quiet during that campaign about stories that, had they emerged, could have embarrassed Trump. Jurors heard claims of sex, saw copies of texts, emails and checks and listened to a secret recording in which Trump and his then-lawyer can be heard discussing a plan to buy the silence of a Playboy model.

One witness, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer and a longtime Trump friend, testified that he had agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign by alerting it to any negative stories about him.

Actor Stormy Daniels told jurors, in occasionally graphic terms, about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006; he denies the whole thing. She described being offered $130,000 by Trump’s then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, to remain silent after she said she was looking for ways to sell the story and get it out there.

Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, spent days on the stand recounting what he said was Trump’s role in authorizing the hush money payments. Cohen described Trump as anxious that stories alleging extramarital sex could harm his campaign standing with female voters and said the then-candidate had directed him to suppress the stories, quoting him as saying exhortations including, “Just do it” and “We need to stop this from getting out.”

THE DEFENSE POSITION

Trump’s legal team has not yet called witnesses, and it remains unclear what exactly his lawyers will do when it is their turn to present evidence.

But they have signaled through their questioning of the prosecution’s witnesses specific areas where they think they can sow doubt for the jury, contesting along the way the foundational premises of the case.

They have disputed Daniels’ account of a hotel suite sexual encounter, with the actor facing an aggressive cross-examination from a defense lawyer who said at one point, “You have made all of this up, right?” Daniels said no.

And they have suggested that Trump’s celebrity status made him an easy extortion target. They grilled the Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated Daniels’ deal about other celebrities from whom he had previously “extracted” money in exchange for a client’s silence.

But the most consequential cross-examination, by far, has been that of Cohen. The defense has tried to depict him as a fame-seeking fabulist desperate to contribute to a Trump conviction.

The cross-examination began in splashy fashion, with Trump attorney Todd Blanche asking the former fixer if he recalled referring to the lawyer by an expletive on TikTok last month. Prosecutors objected, the judge summoned the parties to the bench and the question was stricken. But the point was clear.

Over the course of hours, Blanche refreshed Cohen’s recollection about a litany of colorful but often profane monikers he had assigned Trump — “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” was one — as a way to paint Cohen as egregiously biased, blinded by hatred and therefore not credible.

There was also an avalanche of questions about Cohen’s past crimes and lies. Blanche forced Cohen to acknowledge that he fibbed under oath during his own 2018 plea hearing about not feeling pressure to plead guilty. In a dramatic moment, Blanche suggested that Cohen had not told the truth when he said he spoke to Trump about the Daniels payment before wiring her lawyer $130,000.

Blanche confronted Cohen with texts indicating that what was on his mind, at least initially, during the phone call were harassing calls he was getting from an apparent 14-year-old prankster.

The strategy was predictable given Cohen’s significance to the case but it is too soon to tell how it landed with the jury.

THE MISSING LINKS?

Multiple characters pivotal to the saga have been name-dropped in court but have been notably absent from the witness stand.

One is Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with Trump and received $150,000 from the National Enquirer in a hush money deal that Cohen helped broker. Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard, was described in court as the person who asked Daniels for her phone number on Trump’s behalf and was an important conduit for Cohen when he needed to reach Trump.

And then there’s Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organization chief financial officer now serving a five-month jail sentence for lying under oath in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trump.

Weisselberg did not testify in the hush money trial but he matters because, according to Cohen, he was present for a Trump Tower discussion that arguably most directly links Trump and the reimbursements at the center of the case that prosecutors say are fraudulent.

Cohen says the 2017 Trump Tower meeting occurred on the cusp of Inauguration Day and was where he, Trump and Weisselberg hammered out the mechanics of reimbursing him for the Daniels hush money payment. There, Cohen said, they agreed that the lawyer would receive a total of $420,000 in monthly installments for what would be billed — deceptively, prosecutors say — as legal services.

“He approved it,” Cohen testified. “And he also said: ‘This is going to be one heck of a ride in D.C.”’

Whether jurors will have wanted to have heard from Weisselberg is uncertain, but in a case that centers more on paperwork than sex, the account of that meeting is likely to be held up by prosecutors as a vital piece of evidence and it will be important to see how they return to it as they wrap up their case with closing statements.

WHAT MUST BE PROVED FOR A CONVICTION?

To convict Trump of felony falsifying business records, prosecutors must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that he not only falsified or caused business records to be entered falsely, but that he did so with intent to commit or conceal another crime. Any verdict must be unanimous.

Prosecutors allege that Trump logged Cohen’s repayment as legal expenses to conceal multiple other crimes, including breaches of campaign finance law and a violation of a state election law alleging a conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.

In his opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo told jurors the case “is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up — an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election, and then the steps that Donald Trump took to conceal that illegal election fraud.”

Specifically, prosecutors contend, the payments to McDougal, Daniels and the doorman violated federal restrictions on corporate and individual campaign contributions and were meant to conceal damaging information from the voting public.

Among other evidence, jurors heard testimony about Cohen’s 2018 guilty to a campaign finance crime and the National Enquirer’s nonprosecution agreement and $187,500 fine for the McDougal payment, which the Federal Election Commission considered an illegal corporate contribution to Trump’s campaign.

New York also has a misdemeanor falsifying business records charge, which requires proving only that a defendant made or caused the false entries, but it is not part of Trump’s case and will not be considered by jurors.

Tucker reported from Washington.

The complicated break led to a 2018 guilty plea to federal charges involving a payment to the porn actor Stormy Daniels to bury her story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump and to other, unrelated crimes. And it’s that insider knowledge of shady deals that pushed Manhattan prosecutors to make Cohen the star witness in their case against Trump about that same payment, which they say was an illegal effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. Under questioning this week, Cohen has described the nuts-and-bolts of how the scheme worked.

“To keep the loyalty and to do the things that he had asked me to do, I violated my moral compass, and I suffered the penalty, as has my family,” Cohen testified Tuesday.

Defense attorneys tried to draw attention to Cohen’s social media commentary and persistent insults of Trump to try to undermine him as a witness. But there has been no bombast or fireworks so far from the man who was defined for years by his braggadocio as Trump’s problem-zapper.

Instead, his testimony about purposefully mislabeled checks, false receipts and blind loyalty, however dry it was, placed Trump at the center of the scheme and underscored the foundational argument of the case — that it’s not about the spectacle of what Trump was paying for, but rather his effort to illegally cover up those payments.

A shocking moment did come, but it was courtesy of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who appeared at the courthouse with Trump and who used his powerful bully pulpit to turn his political party against the rule of law by declaring the Manhattan criminal trial illegitimate. He and other GOP lawmakers are serving as surrogates while Trump himself remains barred by a gag order in the case following an appeals court ruling Tuesday.

“I do have a lot of surrogates, and they’re speaking very beautifully,” Trump said before court as the group gathered in the background. “And they come … from all over Washington. And they’re highly respected, and they think this is the greatest scam they’ve ever seen.”

The Republican presidential nominee has pleaded not guilty and denies that any of the encounters took place.

Cohen has testified in detail about how the former president was linked to all aspects of the hush money scheme, and prosecutors believe Cohen’s testimony is critical to their case. But their reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — he was disbarred, went to prison and separately pleaded guilty to lying about a Moscow real estate project on Trump’s behalf — could backfire, especially as Trump’s attorneys continue to cross-examine him.

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche spent no time Tuesday asking about the allegations at the center of the trial. He instead worked to portray Cohen as a Trump-obsessed media hound, intimating that Cohen leaked self-serving information about himself.

Amid rapid-fire objections from prosecutors, Blanche probed Cohen’s hyperfocus on Trump, quizzing him about various social media posts and comments he’s made. Cohen was asked to listen through headphones to a snippet of his podcast, as was Trump while sitting at the defense table.

Cohen was asked by Blanche if he recalled an October 2020 podcast episode in which he said Trump needs to wear handcuffs and that “people will not be satisfied until this man is sitting inside a cell.” The line of questioning was designed to persuade jurors that Cohen was driven by personal animus to hold Trump accountable.

“I wouldn’t put it past me,” Cohen testified.

“Is it fair to say you’re motivated by fame?” Blanche asked.

“No sir, I don’t think that’s fair to say,” Cohen said. “I’m motivated by many things.”

Cohen will be the prosecution’s last witness. Trump’s defense will begin after Cohen, though it’s not clear whether his attorneys will call any witnesses or if Trump will testify in his own defense.

Jurors have already heard how Trump and others in his orbit were reeling after the leak just a few weeks before the 2016 election of an “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about grabbing women by the genitals without their permission. The publication of the tape hastened the payments to Daniels, according to testimony.

Cohen testified that Trump was constantly apprised of the behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign. And after paying out $130,000 to Daniels in order to keep her quiet about an alleged sexual encounter, Trump promised to reimburse him.

Jurors followed along as Hoffinger, in a methodical and clinical fashion, walked Cohen through that reimbursement process. It was an attempt to show what prosecutors say was a lengthy deception to mask the true purpose of the payments.

As jurors were shown business records and other paperwork, Cohen explained their purpose and reiterated again and again that the payments were reimbursements for the hush money — they weren’t for legal services he provided or for a retainer.

It’s an important distinction, because prosecutors allege that the Trump records falsely described the purpose of the payments as legal expenses. These records form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. All told, Cohen was paid $420,000, with funds drawn from a Trump personal account.

“Were the descriptions on this check stub false?” Hoffinger asked.

“Yes,” Cohen said.

“And again, there was no retainer agreement,” Hoffinger asked.

“Correct,” Cohen replied.

But prosecutors also spent time working to blunt the potential credibility issues, painting Cohen as a longtime Trump loyalist who committed crimes on behalf of the former president. On the witness stand, Cohen described in detail the April 2018 raid that marked the beginning of the end of his time being devoted to Trump.

“How to describe your life being turned upside-down? Concerned. Despondent. Angry,” Cohen told the jury.

“Were you frightened?” Hoffinger asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

But he was heartened by a phone call from Trump that he said gave him reassurance and convinced him to remain “in the camp.”

He said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I’m the president of the United States. There’s nothing here. Everything’s going to be OK. Stay tough. You’re going to be OK,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen told jurors that he “felt reassured because I had the president of the United States protecting me … And so I remained in the camp.”

It was his wife and family who finally made him see how sticking by Trump was detrimental.

“What are you doing? We’re supposed to be your first loyalty,” Cohen testified. “It was about time to listen to them,” he said.

The men were once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump. But as their relationship soured, Cohen became one of Trump’s most vocal critics. The two have, over the years, traded vicious barbs. During their last courtroom faceoff in October during Trump’s civil fraud trial, Trump walked out of the courtroom after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen.

Throughout Cohen’s testimony Tuesday, Trump reclined in his chair with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the side. He shifted from time to time, occasionally leaning forward and opening his eyes, making a comment to his attorney before returning to his recline. Even some of the topics that have animated him the most as he campaigns didn’t stir his attention.

“Mr. Cohen, do you have any regrets about your past work for Donald Trump?” Hoffinger asked.

“I do,” Cohen said. “I regret doing things for him that I should not have. Lying. Bullying people to effectuate a goal. I don’t regret working for the Trump Organization. As I expressed before, I had some very interesting, great times.”

Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

“Everything required Mr. Trump’s sign-off,” said Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer-turned-foe and the prosecution’s star witness in a case now entering its final, pivotal stretch.

In hours of highly anticipated testimony, Cohen placed Trump at the center of the hush money plot, saying the then-candidate had promised to reimburse the lawyer for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury stories feared to be harmful to the campaign.

“Stop this from getting out,” Cohen, the prosecution’s star witness, quoted Trump as telling him in reference to porn actor Stormy Daniels’ account of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.

A similar episode occurred when Cohen alerted Trump that a Playboy model was alleging that she and Trump had an extramarital affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” Cohen said Trump told him. The woman, Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in an arrangement that was made after Trump received a “complete and total update on everything that transpired.”

“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen testified.

Cohen is by far the prosecution’s most important witness, and though his testimony lacked the electricity that defined Daniels’ turn on the stand, he nonetheless linked Trump directly to the payments and helped illuminate some of the drier evidence such as text messages and phone logs that jurors have seen.

The testimony of a witness with such intimate knowledge of Trump’s activities could heighten the legal exposure of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee if jurors deem him sufficiently credible. But prosecutors’ reliance on a witness with such a checkered past — Cohen pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments — also carries sizable risks with a jury and could be a boon to Trump politically as he fundraises off his legal woes and paints the case as the product of a tainted criminal justice system.

The men, once so close that Cohen boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, had no visible interaction inside the courtroom. The sedate atmosphere was a marked contrast from their last courtroom faceoff, when Trump walked out of the courtroom in October after his lawyer finished questioning Cohen during his civil fraud trial.

This time around, Trump sat at the defense table with his eyes closed for long stretches of testimony as Cohen recounted his decade-long career as a senior Trump Organization executive, doing work that by his own admission sometimes involved lying and bullying others on his boss’s behalf.

Jurors had previously heard from others about the tabloid industry practice of “catch-and-kill,” in which rights to a story are purchased so that it can then be quashed. But Cohen’s testimony, which continues Tuesday, is crucial to prosecutors because of his direct communication with the then-candidate about embarrassing stories he was scrambling to suppress.

Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received from a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which prosecutors say was meant to buy her silence in advance of the election, form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.

Under questioning from a prosecutor, Cohen detailed the steps he took to mask the payments. When he opened a bank account to pay Daniels, an action he said he told Trump he was taking, he said it was for a new limited liability corporation but withheld the actual purpose.

“I’m not sure they would’ve opened it,” he said, “if it stated: ‘to pay off an adult film star for a non-disclosure agreement.’”

To establish Trump’s familiarity with the payments, Cohen said Trump had promised to reimburse him and called him while the lawyer was on a December 2016 family vacation. Trump told him: “Don’t worry about that other thing. I’m going to take care of it when you get back.”

The two men even discussed with Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization chief financial officer, how the reimbursements would be paid as “legal expenses” over monthly installments, Cohen testified.

And though Trump’s lawyers have said he acted to protect his family from salacious stories, Cohen described Trump as preoccupied instead by the impact they would have on the campaign. He said Trump implored him to delay finalizing the Daniels transaction until after Election Day so he wouldn’t have to pay her.

“Because,” Cohen testified, “after the election it wouldn’t matter” to Trump.

Cohen also gave jurors an insider account of his negotiations with David Pecker, the then-publisher of the National Enquirer, who was such a close Trump ally that Pecker told Cohen his publication maintained a “file drawer or a locked drawer” where files related to Trump were kept. That effort took on added urgency following the October 2016 disclosure of an “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump was heard boasting about grabbing women sexually.

The Daniels payment was finalized several weeks after that revelation, but Monday’s testimony also centered on a deal earlier that fall with McDougal.

Cohen testified that he went to Trump immediately after the National Enquirer alerted him to a story about the alleged McDougal affair. “Make sure it doesn’t get released,” he said Trump told him.

Trump checked in with Pecker about the matter, asking him how “things were going” with it, Cohen said. Pecker responded: “‘We have this under control, and we’ll take care of this,’” Cohen testified.

Cohen also said he was with Trump as Trump spoke to Pecker on a speakerphone in his Trump Tower office.

“David stated it would cost $150,000 to control the story,” Cohen said. He quoted Trump as saying: “No problem, I’ll take care of it,” meaning that the payments would be reimbursed.

To lay the foundation that the deals were done with Trump’s endorsement, prosecutors elicited testimony from Cohen designed to show Trump as a hands-on manager. Acting on Trump’s behalf, Cohen said, he sometimes lied and bullied others, including reporters.

“When he would task you with something, he would then say, ‘Keep me informed. Let me know what’s going on,’” Cohen testified. He said that was especially true “if there was a matter that was troubling to him.”

Defense lawyers have teed up a bruising cross-examination of Cohen, telling jurors during opening statements that he’s an “admitted liar” with an “obsession to get President Trump.”

Prosecutors aim to blunt those attacks by acknowledging Cohen’s past crimes to jurors and by relying on other witnesses whose accounts, they hope, will buttress Cohen’s testimony. They include a lawyer who negotiated the hush money payments on behalf of Daniels and McDougal, as well as Pecker and Daniels.

Cohen’s role as star prosecution witness further cements the disintegration of a mutually beneficial relationship. After Cohen’s home and office were raided by the FBI in 2018, Trump showered him with affection on social media, praising him as a “fine person with a wonderful family” and predicting — incorrectly — that Cohen would not “flip.”

Months later, Cohen did exactly that, pleading guilty that August to federal campaign-finance charges in which he implicated Trump. By that point, the relationship was irrevocably broken, with Trump posting on the social media platform then known as Twitter: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Cohen later admitted lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that he had pursued on Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 campaign. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but spent much of it in home confinement.

But if Trump’s fixer-turned-foe is poised to offer jurors this week an insider’s view of the dealings at the heart of prosecutors’ case, he also is as challenging a star witness as they come.

There is his tortured history with Trump, for whom he served as personal attorney and problem-zapper until his practices came under federal investigation. That led to felony convictions and prison for Cohen but no charges against Trump, by then in the White House.

Cohen, who is expected to take the stand Monday, can address the jury as someone who has reckoned frankly with his own misdeeds and paid for them with his liberty. But jurors likely also will learn that the now-disbarred lawyer has not only pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and a bank, but recently asserted, under oath, that he wasn’t truthful even in admitting to some of those falsehoods.

And there is Cohen’s new persona — and podcast, books, and social media posts — as a relentless and sometimes crude Trump critic.

As Trump’s trial opened, prosecutors took pains to portray Cohen as just one piece of their evidence against Trump, telling jurors that corroboration would come via other witnesses, documents and the ex-president’s own recorded words. But Trump and his lawyers have assailed Cohen as an admitted liar and criminal who now makes a living off tearing down his former boss.

“What the defense is going to want the jury to focus on is the fact that he’s a liar” with a blemished past and a tetchy streak, said Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense lawyer and former federal and Manhattan prosecutor.

“What the prosecution is going to want to focus on is ‘everything he says is corroborated — you don’t have to like him,’” Serafini added. “And No. 2, this is the guy Trump chose.”

LOYALIST TURNED FOE

Cohen’s early-2000s introduction to Trump was a classic New York real estate story: Cohen was a condo board member in a Trump building and got involved on Trump’s side of a residents versus management dispute. The mogul soon brought Cohen into his company.

Cohen, who declined to comment for this story, had had an eclectic career that veered from practicing personal injury law to operating a taxi fleet with his father-in-law. He ultimately functioned as both a Trump lawyer and shark-toothed loyalist.

He worked on some deal-making efforts but also spent much of his time threatening lawsuits, berating reporters and otherwise maneuvering to neutralize potential reputational dings for his boss, according to congressional testimony that Cohen gave after breaking with Trump in 2018. The rupture came after FBI raided Cohen’s home and office and Trump began to distance himself from the attorney.

Cohen soon told a federal court that he had helped candidate Trump wield the National Enquirer tabloid as a sort of house organ that flattered him, tried to flatten his opponents and bottled up seamy allegations about his personal life by buying stories or flagging them to Cohen to purchase. Trump says all the stories were false.

Those arrangements, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office portrays as a multipronged scheme to keep information from voters, are now under a microscope at Trump’s hush money trial. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records so as to veil reimbursements to Cohen for paying off porn performer Stormy Daniels. She claimed a 2006 sexual encounter with the married Trump, which the former president has denied.

Other witnesses have testified about the hush money dealings, but Cohen remains key to piecing together a case that centers on how Trump’s company compensated him for his role in the Daniels payoff.

Trump’s defense maintains that Cohen was paid for legal work, not a cover-up, and that there was nothing illegal about the agreements he facilitated with Daniels and others.

A WITNESS WITH HISTORY

In criminal trials, many witnesses come to the stand with their own criminal records, relationships with defendants, prior contradictory statements or something else that could affect their credibility.

Cohen has a particular set of baggage.

In testimony, he will need to explain his prior disavowals of key aspects of the hush money arrangements and to convince jurors that this time he is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Still in the Trump fold when the Daniels deal came to light, he initially told The New York Times that he had not been reimbursed, later acknowledging repayment — as did Trump, who had previously said he did not even know about the Daniels payout.

Then, in the course of two federal guilty pleas, Cohen admitted to tax evasion, orchestrating illegal campaign contributions in the form of hush money payments, and lying to Congress about his work on a possible Trump real estate project in Moscow. He also pleaded guilty to signing off on a home equity loan application that understated his financial liabilities.

While many types of convictions may be used to question a witness’ credibility, when crimes involve dishonesty, “there’s a treasure trove of stuff there for a cross-examiner,” Serafini said.

Moreover, Cohen raised new questions about his credibility while testifying last fall in Trump’s civil fraud trial. During a testy cross-examination — he answered some questions with a lawyerly “objection” or “asked and answered” — Cohen insisted he was not quite guilty of tax evasion or the loan application falsehood. Ultimately, he testified that he had lied to the now-deceased federal judge who took his plea.

The fraud trial judge found Cohen’s testimony credible, noting that it was corroborated by other evidence. But a federal judge suggested that Cohen perjured himself either in his testimony or his guilty plea.

Since splitting with Trump, Cohen has confronted his past lies head-on. His podcast’s title – “Mea Culpa” – gestures at a reckoning with his crimes, and he acknowledged in the foreword to his 2020 memoir that some people see him as “the least reliable narrator on the planet.”

At his 2018 sentencing, he said his “blind loyalty” to Trump made him feel it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds, rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.” Outside court, he has cast himself as an avatar of anti-Trump sentiment. In social media salvos as the trial opened, Cohen used a scatological nickname for Trump, taunted him to “keep whining, crying and violating the gag order, you petulant defendant!” and commented acerbically on his defense.

The posts could give Trump’s lawyers fodder to paint Cohen as an agenda-driven witness out for revenge. In a nod to that vulnerability, Cohen posted two days after opening statements that he would cease commenting on Trump until after testifying, “out of respect” for the judge and prosecutors.

Yet in a live TikTok this past week, Cohen wore a shirt featuring a figure resembling Trump with his hands cuffed, behind bars. After Trump’s lawyers complained, Judge Juan M. Merchan exhorted prosecutors Friday to tell Cohen that the court was asking him not to make any more statements about the case or Trump.

To Jeremy Saland, a New York criminal defense lawyer and former Manhattan prosecutor, Cohen’s background is not such a hurdle for prosecutors.

“Where Cohen has the problem is: He doesn’t shut his trap,” Saland said. “He just constantly takes shots at his own credibility.”

Prosecutors will need to persuade Cohen to be forthright, acknowledge his past wrongdoing and rein in his freewheeling commentary, Saland said, or the case can become “the Michael Cohen show.”

Indeed, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche used his opening statement to hammer on Cohen’s “obsession” with Trump and his admitted past lying under oath.

“You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump relying on the words of Michael Cohen,” Blanche told jurors.

But prosecutor Matthew Colangelo characterized Cohen as someone who made “mistakes,” telling jurors they could believe him nonetheless.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have pointed to remarks Trump has made about Cohen and others to accuse him of multiple violations of a gag order that bars him from commenting on witnesses, jurors and some other people connected to the case. The judge has held Trump in contempt, fined him a total of $10,000 and warned that jail could follow if he breached the order again.

Prosecutors also have not shied from testimony about Cohen’s combative personality. A banker testified that Cohen was seen as a “challenging” client who insisted everything was urgent. Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, described his first phone call with Cohen as a screaming “barrage of insults and insinuations and allegations.”

While such episodes might not be flattering to Cohen, eliciting them could be a way for prosecutors subtly to indicate he is not their teammate, but simply a person with information, said John Fishwick Jr., a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia.

“It’s a way to try to build up his credibility while you distance yourself from him,” he suggested.

When Cohen takes the stand, prosecutors would be wise to address his problematic past before defense lawyers do, said New York Law School professor Anna Cominsky. She taught a course with Bragg before he became district attorney, but she offered comments as a legal observer, not someone privy to his office’s strategy.

“I imagine in their closing arguments,” Cominsky said, “that the prosecutor is going to look right at the jury and say, ‘This is not a perfect witness, but none of us are.’”

Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.