Since the opening of the Donald Trump’s New York trial — when the former president’s counsel told the jury that the prosecution’s star witness “cannot be trusted” — the defense has telegraphed its principal strategy: Eviscerate Michael Cohen.

As Trump’s fixer and attack dog at the time of the alleged crimes, Cohen was more central to the events spelled out in the indictment than anyone in the defendant’s orbit. He even fronted his personal funds to quiet Stormy Daniels, who was shopping a story of a 2006 sexual liaison with Trump.

And having pleaded guilty to tax evasion, false statements and campaign finance violations related to the Daniels affair, along with a separate plea to making false statements to Congress, he seems tailor-made to be accused of lying to settle scores with his former boss. For the loyalty-obsessed Trump, moreover, the prospect of savaging a traitor promises additional psychological rewards.

But before the jury has even heard from Trump’s bête noire, the prosecution has made great strides to neutralize any plan to undermine Cohen’s testimony.

They have done so first and foremost by presenting a wealth of evidence that prospectively corroborates what Cohen will say. (And after his grand jury testimony and numerous reported sitdowns with the district attorney’s office, the prosecution knows what Cohen is going to say down to the last comma.)

The prosecutors’ decision to introduce their story through David Pecker, the former chief executive of the company that owned the National Enquirer, worked beautifully. A sort of Runyonesque rascal in his business affairs, Pecker came across as completely forthcoming on the stand. And he came forth with many details that involved Cohen and will be echoed by him. Those particulars included a key August 2015 meeting in which Pecker said he first promised Trump that he would smother the stories of his purported former sexual partners who might come forward now that he was a presidential candidate.

Every major witness since Pecker has also covered ground that Cohen will retread. By the time the jury hears the account of Trump’s onetime fixer, it will ring familiar in almost all its particulars.

Almost but not quite all. Only Cohen and Trump could have been privy to certain details of the alleged falsification of documents, the basis of the 34 criminal counts in the indictment.

Still, the district attorney will be able to respond to the defense’s ferocious attacks on Cohen by noting, in time-honored prosecutorial form, that the jury needn’t rely on his word alone because of all the corroboration.

In fact, the prosecution’s case has been sprinkled with disparaging characterizations of Cohen by its own witnesses, who have called him a “jerk” and worse. It’s another signal that the district attorney will argue that the case does not stand or fall on Cohen’s testimony.

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