The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 5, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2018. ^ Megerian, Chris; Sharp, Sonja (December 12, 2018). "Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime lawyer, sentenced to three years in prison". Los Angeles Times.
^ Vazquez, Maegan (August 22, 2018). "Cohen lawyer says he would testify to Congress about Trump without immunity". CNN. Archived from the original on August 22, 2018. Retrieved August 22, 2018. ^ Dwyer, Colin; Lucas, Ryan. "Michael Cohen's Lawyer Says His Client Would Never Accept Pardon From 'Corrupt' Trump". Morning Edition. NPR.
"Trump's Former Lawyer Michael Cohen Formed Delaware Company to Purchase Ex-Playboy Model's Story". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on July 25, 2018.
Because of these investigations, Michael Cohen and Donald Trump signed a joint defense agreement allowing their attorneys to share information during the Mueller investigations and joint defense agreements were arranged between Donald Trump and both Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort.
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.
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 March 5, The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources recounting Cohen as saying he missed two deadlines to pay Daniels because Cohen "couldn't reach Mr. Trump in the hectic final days of the presidential campaign", and that after Trump's election, Cohen had complained that he had not been reimbursed for the payment. Cohen described this report as " fake news ".
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. Cohen said he violated campaign finance laws at the direction of Trump and "for the principal purpose of influencing" the 2016 presidential election. In November 2018, Cohen entered a second guilty plea for lying to a Senate committee about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
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.
Cohen was paid $600,000 ($50,000 per month) over the year, which its CEO described as "a big mistake". Novartis was also approached by Cohen and was offered similar services.
The total purchase price of the four buildings was $11 million and the total sales price was $32 million. Cohen sold the four properties at above their assessed values, in all-cash transactions, to LLCs owned by persons whose identities are not public. After this was reported by McClatchy DC in October 2017, Cohen said that all four properties were purchased by an American-owned "New York real estate family fund" that paid cash for the properties in order to obtain a tax deferred (Section 1031) exchange, but did not specifically identify the buyer.
In Cohen’s tell-all book, Disloyal, he revealed Trump also committed tax fraud and lied to Melania to cover-up his affairs with other women.
Cohen went to prison for arranging payments to silence women who claimed to have had affairs with President Trump and for lying to Congress in 2016.
In Cohen’s tell-all book, Disloyal, he revealed Trump also committed tax fraud and lied to Melania to cover-up his affairs with other women.
In 2010, Cohen briefly campaigned for a seat in the New York State Senate.
Cohen implicated Trump in campaign finance crimes — but did not name him directly. Here’s why 1 President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen made a startling admission in New York federal court on Tuesday. 2 At the direction of a “federal candidate,” Cohen said, he facilitated payments on two occasions to two women in order to keep information from the public for the purposes of winning an election. 3 According to experts, Cohen may have been told that he was not allowed to use the president’s name because Trump is not a defendant in the case.
Trump’s attorneys have denied any wrongdoing in connection to the case against Cohen.
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…