Douglas Daus told defense attorney Emil Bove that the recording on Michael Cohen’s phone of of a 2016 conversation with Donald Trump lacks any metadata to suggest it was ever modified. Bove asked Judge Merchan to strike the response from the record, but the judge denied the request.

Bove then continued to ask Daus about about reliability of the evidence extracted from Cohen’s phones.

At one point, Bove suggested that jurors would have to take “Michael Cohen’s word for it” regarding the integrity of the evidence after Daus was unable to answer a series of questions with confidence. Daus’ said his role was limited to extracting the data from phone, so he couldn’t answer questions about the context of the investigation.

Bove suggested for a second time that, in order to fully trust the integrity of the phone, “We would have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it.”

“It would seem so,” Daus said.

Bove subsequently ended his cross-examination of Daus.