Former President Donald Trump's ex-personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified this week as the star witness for the prosecution in his prior boss' criminal trial in New York.

Cohen's testimony may well have won the case for Trump as the convicted perjurer and serial liar was -- surprise -- caught in his own dishonesty by Trump's attorneys during cross-examination, according to The Epoch Times.

The moment was so bad that even several left-leaning legal experts and media pundits who utterly despise the former president were forced to admit that they'd had a great day in the Manhattan courtroom.

Cohen caught in a lie by defense attorneys

Earlier in the week, Cohen testified for the prosecution about a 2016 phone call with Trump's former bodyguard Keith Schiller that was purportedly about the "hush money" payments to silence porn actress Stormy Daniels' allegations of an affair with the then-businessman.

That was supposed to have been a smoking gun for prosecutors, but Cohen's story fell apart under cross-examination by Trump's defense attorneys, who revealed a text message they'd found from the same night as that phone call that told a substantially different tale.

Rather than discuss the hush money payment plans, the text revealed that Cohen had actually talked to Schiller about how to deal with harassing prank calls from a teenager. When confronted with that text, Cohen buckled and had no good explanation for his disparate prior testimony about the phone call.

It didn't go over particularly well

The Epoch Times noted that several of Trump's critics who are also legal experts had to acknowledge the damage done, even as they attempted to spin it as positively as possible or worked to quickly change the subject.

Former federal prosecutor Barb McQuade admitted that Cohen was "getting beaten up on cross-examination today," though she suggested that prosecutors would have expected and prepared for that.

Likewise, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman suggested that the exchange about the text message "was by far the most effective part of the cross," and though Cohen "can talk about two things on one call, but the texts make fairly clear he talked with Schiller about an harassment issue."

Law & Crime reported that CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said the moment was a "blow on the chin" against the prosecution, though probably not a "knock out" punch, while notable Trump hater George Conway recognized that "the issue about the Schiller call wasn’t helpful for the prosecution."

On the more pro-Trump side of the equation, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said that Cohen's dishonest testimony presented "serious ethical problems" for the prosecution, and further stated, "In 60 years of doing this, I’ve never put a witness like Michael Cohen on the stand because I have ethics and good lawyers don’t put people on the stand that they know are going to lie, either on direct or cross."

The "dramatic implosion" of Cohen's testimony exposed the prosecution's "grift"

Along those lines, law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in his blog, "With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction."

Aside from the Cohen moment, Turley also observed that liberal legal commentators on the cable news networks were still unsure of the prosecution's legal theories and the "still mysterious" other alleged crime that supposedly elevated expired misdemeanor book-keeping errors into felonies.

In the end, Turley likened the prosecutors to conmen working a "grift" with the jurors as the "suckers" who, regardless of their personal dislike for Trump, may ultimately punish the prosecution in response to the realization that they've been played for fools.