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In 2006, Cohen was a partner at the law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. He practiced law at the firm for about a year before joining The Trump Organization. Following his 2018 felony convictions, Cohen was automatically disbarred in New York.
The father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, owned condos both at Trump Tower and in a Trump development near Miami. According to former federal investigators, Shusterman actually introduced Trump to Cohen. On several subsequent occasions Trump hinted publicly that Cohen's father-in-law, or possibly even Cohen's wife, could be tied to criminal activity.
Cohen was born in 1950 and grew up in Port Chester ( New York) between Greenwich, Conn., and Rye (N.Y.) He was raised by Orthodox Jewish parents and attended Hebrew schools. He ceased practicing Judaism at 14.
Cohen grew up in the town of Lawrence on Long Island, New York. His mother was a nurse, and his father, who survived the Holocaust, was a surgeon. Cohen is Jewish. He attended Woodmere Academy and received his BA from American University in 1988 and his JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1991.
Cohen began practicing personal injury law in New York in 1992, working for Melvyn Estrin in Manhattan. As of 2003, Cohen was an attorney in private practice and CEO of MLA Cruises, Inc., and of the Atlantic Casino.
Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American disbarred lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018. Cohen was a vice-president of the Trump Organization, and the personal counsel to Trump, and was often described by media as Trump's " fixer .". He served as co-president ...
Cohen joined the Trump Organization in fall of 2006. Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump, having read Trump's Art of the Deal twice. He had purchased several Trump properties and convinced his own parents and in-laws, as well as a business partner, to buy condominiums in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his struggle with the condominium board at the Trump World Tower, which led Trump to obtain control of the board. Cohen became a close confidant to Trump, maintaining an office near Trump at Trump Tower.
On August 22, 2018, it was announced that the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance had subpoenaed Cohen in connection with its investigation into whether the Donald J. Trump Foundation had violated New York tax laws. This investigation is separate from the New York Attorney General 's lawsuit alleging that the foundation and its directors violated state and federal laws about the operation of charities.
On November 29, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee in 2017 regarding the proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal that he spearheaded in 2015 and 2016. Cohen had told Congress that the deal ceased in January 2016 when it actually ended in June 2016, and that he had not received a response about the deal from the office of a senior Russian official when he actually had. Cohen said that he had given the false testimony in order to be consistent with Trump's "repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia" and out of loyalty to Trump. Cohen received a two-month sentence, to be served concurrently with his three-year sentence for tax fraud, for the false testimony.
Trump employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections began. The investigation led Cohen to plead guilty on August 21, 2018, to eight counts including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud.
A few days after the raid, McClatchy reported that the Mueller investigation was in possession of evidence that Cohen traveled to Prague in August or September 2016. If true, the report bolsters similar claims in 3 of 17 reports from the Trump–Russia dossier.
Later, Cohen's lawyer, Davis, copped to being the one who had informed the media about Trump's supposed knowledge of the meeting, though he admitted that "the only person who could confirm that information is my client.".
Michael Cohen is a former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump. The revelation that Cohen engineered a financial payout to Stephanie Clifford, an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, led to a federal investigation and Cohen's plea deal on charges of tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions.
In early 2018, it was revealed that Cohen paid Stephanie Clifford, also known by her adult film name Stormy Daniels, $130,000 in the fall of 2016. The payment was made with regards to Daniels’ claim of a 2006 affair with Trump.
Cohen also described how Trump often understated his net worth for tax purposes and instructed him to threaten someone to prevent the release of potentially damaging information. His statements were met with significant pushback from the president's supporters, who sought to discredit him as a liar and convicted felon.
The club has been accused of being a base of operation for several Russian-American gangsters, and in the 1980s, Cohen’s uncle (the primary owner) was accused of providing medical advice to members of the notorious Lucchese crime family.
Michael Cohen began his career as a private injury lawyer in 1992, but his business interests quickly expanded as he built a large real estate portfolio and a business that specialized in the New York City taxicab trade. In the 2000s, Cohen began working for future President Donald Trump, where he earned a reputation for loyalty and ferocity.
Cohen initially claimed to have made the payment out of his own funds, and that Trump was not involved in the matter. It later emerged that Trump had directly reimbursed Cohen, and President Trump admitted that Cohen had represented him in the matter (although he continued to deny any affair).
Trump seemed to weaponize allegations about Shusterman’s supposed Russian mob ties against Cohen when it became clear that Cohen would cooperate with authorities on the investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
While New York is traditionally associated with the Italian mafia, Russian organized crime has a storied history in the city, too. While Russian gangs are known to operate in fraud and insurance scams and tax evasion, they’ve also been connected to early computer crime.
Stanley Cohen (born 1950) is an attorney and political activist. He has represented members of Hamas and Hezbollah, a relative of Osama Bin Laden, as well as other controversial clients.
One of his clients was Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a member of Hamas; he also defended Hezbollah and al-Qaeda members such as a relative of Bin Laden, his son in law, a case that generated harsh criticism.
Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American disbarred lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018. Cohen was a vice-president of the Trump Organization, and the personal counsel to Trump, and was often described by media as Trump's "fixer". He served as co-president of Trump Entertainment and was a board member of the Eric Trump F…
Cohen was raised in the town of Lawrence on Long Island, New York. His mother was a nurse, and his father, a Holocaust survivor, was a surgeon. Cohen is Ashkenazi Jewish. He attended Woodmere Academy and received his BA from American University in 1988 and his JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1991.
The Manhattan District Attorney and the New York Attorney General opened investigations into Trump. The Manhattan DA's office ultimately decided in 2022 not to pursue charges, in part because the new DA, Alvin Bragg, worried that the case relied too much on Michael Cohen's testimony.
These were separate from the investigation by the New York State Department of Taxation and F…
On January 10, 2019, Cohen agreed to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee to give a "full and credible account" of his work on behalf of Trump. On January 12, Fox News contributor and legal analyst Jeanine Pirro took a 20-minute, on-air phone call from Trump in which he claimed Cohen had fabricated stories to reduce the length of his expected sentence. Trump suggested that investigations should instead focus on Cohen's father-in-law, saying "that's the o…
Cohen's memoir on Donald Trump, Disloyal: A Memoir, was released in September 2020. In the foreword, Cohen characterizes Trump as "a cheat, a mobster, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man."
Cohen married Ukrainian-born Laura Shusterman in 1994. Laura Shusterman's father, Fima Shusterman, left Soviet Ukraine for New York in 1975. They have a daughter, Samantha, and a son, Jake. Cohen's father-in-law was the person who introduced him to Trump, according to a Trump biographer.
Cohen has been friends with Felix Sater since childhood. Sater is a convicted felon and real estat…