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Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, appeared in court to testify against his former boss in the New York civil fraud trial.
Cohen admitted that he and former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg were asked to "reverse-engineer" financial statements so their value would match the amount "arbitrarily" decided upon by Trump.
"I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected, and my responsibility along with Allen Weisselberg predominantly was to reverse engineer the various different assets classes, increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us," Cohen testified.
Weisselberg previously testified that he does not recall having any meetings with Cohen or Trump to discuss Trump's net worth.
When Cohen first took the stand, Colleen Faherty of the New York attorney general's office tried to blunt any attempts by Trump's attorney to attack Cohen's credibility by addressing his previous criminal history, which included campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.
When asked about lying to Congress about discussions he had about building a Trump Tower in Moscow, Cohen said that Trump told him to lie.
"I did that at the direction of in concert with and for the benefit of Mr. Trump," Cohen said.
Cohen said he agreed to plead guilty to the charges so he could take responsibility for his own actions of spreading lies and false information.
"When all of this started, it was overwhelming. The amount of disinformation, misinformation, mal-information about me. It was overwhelming and enormous," he said.