The prosecution rests. That was the big surprise yesterday, as pathological liar and convicted felon Michael Cohen finished his testimony against Donald Trump, and the former president’s hush-money case reached its midweek recess.

Why rest? Well, perhaps the prosecution decided to adhere to the age-old advice that one should stop digging when one reaches rock bottom. After all, their star witnesses were a porn star who talks to dead people and a sleazeball fixer whom Trump wouldn’t even take to Washington with him.

More likely, though, it’s because the prosecution realizes that they’ve done their damage, which was to embarrass the former president, not to imprison him. Here, folks can be forgiven if they think this is a real trial with serious legal principles at stake. This is a show trial, a Democrat-led lawfare trial.

Still, it was a surprise because, as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley writes: “The prosecution never clearly stated the crime that it was proving, the elements of that crime, or even why denoting payments related to Stormy Daniels were not properly recorded as legal expenses. Indeed, the only thing the prosecutors proved was that, in the pantheon of dishonesty, there are liars, pathological liars … and Michael Cohen.” (Here we wonder: Will either of the two lawyers on the Trump jury be comfortable convicting a man of a felony that they can’t even articulate?)

Notice this difference, though, in how Turley describes the case and how the Trump-hating water carriers at the Associated Press describe it:

Cohen endured intense questioning by defense attorney Todd Blanche after providing pivotal testimony tying the presumptive Republican presidential nominee directly to the hush money scheme at the heart of the case.

Trump’s former fixer will return to the witness stand Thursday for more cross-examination before prosecutors rest their case alleging a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by silencing women who alleged sexual encounters with him. Trump denies that he had sex with the women and denies wrongdoing in the case.

What’s missing from the AP account? The crime.

As the AP continues: “Under questioning from prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress during an investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, admitting that he lied, among other things, about the number of times he spoke with Trump about a real estate project in Moscow.”

So Cohen admitted that he lied here, he lied there, he lied everywhere. And those admissions came under questioning from his own lawyers. So the prosecution wants us to believe that Cohen was lying all those other times but that he’s telling the truth now. Here’s former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy on the tangled web Cohen has weaved:

Just a few weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan concluded that Cohen had committed additional perjury in either — or both — (a) his 2018 guilty plea allocution (the statement a defendant makes when asked to explain his conduct) to federal tax- and bank-fraud charges, and/or (b) his testimony at Trump’s New York State civil-fraud trial just a few weeks ago. That’s because — you can’t make this stuff up — Cohen now says he was lying under oath when he admitted guilt to over $4 million in tax evasion and related false representations to financial institutions.

Yes, Cohen claims he was committing perjury, independent of his prior perjury conviction, when he was explaining how he committed fraud and made false statements to banks. Got it?

It was a predictably embarrassing performance, then, and it even included an attempt by Cohen to conduct a little personal business. Seriously. During his testimony, the shameless shyster took a moment to direct the jury and everyone else in the courtroom to his website, where they can buy his Trump-behind-bars shirt and other Trump-hating gear.

But it wasn’t the end of Cohen’s performance. Tomorrow, when the trial resumes, the defense will go back at him and further weaken his credibility — if that’s still possible. Among the gems from yesterday’s events, we learned that Cohen said Trump’s a “dictator d*****bag” and that he should go back to “where he belongs, in a f***ing cage, like a f***ing animal.”

No axes to grind here. As Fox News’s Jesse Waters put it, “When your star witness is a rat who lies for cheese, you know your case is fizzling out.”

And all the while, despite the Democrats’ best efforts to destroy Le Bête Orange, Trump’s political resurrection continues apace with Joe Biden’s demise.

Eight years ago, Donald Trump pulled off the greatest upset in American presidential election history. And now, from a Manhattan courtroom, and with the unwitting help of his political persecutors, he’s engineering what could be the greatest comeback in American political history.