What to know about Michael Cohen, the central witness in Trump's hush money trial

NEW YORK (AP) — He once said he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. Now Michael Cohen is prosecutors’ biggest piece of legal ammunition in the former president’s hush money trial.

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.