Michael Cohen has his revenge on Donald Trump – but this is not the end of the story
Cohen’s testimony was a key part of Trump’s hush-money case, writes Kim Sengupta, but if the former president makes it back into the White House, we could see another chapter in what has become a bitter feud
After Donald Trump became the first former president in US history to be convicted of a felony, Michael Cohen declared: “Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law. While it has been a difficult journey for me and my family, the truth always matters.”
The testimony of Cohen, the former lawyer and devoted fixer who became an embittered enemy of Trump, was instrumental in the bringing of guilty verdicts in New York against the former president on all 34 counts relating to a hush-money plot to influence the 2016 election.
Sitting just a few feet away from a furious, red-faced Trump in room 1530 at the Manhattan criminal courthouse, Cohen described how the payoff made to adult actor Stormy Daniels had been organised: “He stated to me that he had spoken to some friends, some individuals, very smart people, and that ‘it’s $130,000 [£102,000], and [they said] you’re, like, a billionaire – just pay it’. And he expressed to me, ‘Just do it.’”
Delivered in a broad Long Island accent, with Trump glowering, it sounded like a mafia consigliere putting the knife into his capo di tutti capi. The jury appeared transfixed. It seemed in keeping with the drama when Robert De Niro, who played gangsters in some of his best roles, described Trump as “the biggest gangster of all” during a visit to the court.
Cohen faced barrages of aggressive, hostile questions from his former boss’s attorneys. They knew just how much damage the things being said were doing to their client. Todd Blanche used his opening statement to try to convince the jury that Cohen was a disgruntled former employee and a criminal who “cannot be trusted”, adding: “The jury must not believe him.”
Trump had employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after special counsel Robert Mueller began his “Russiagate” investigation. Cohen subsequently pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance violations, tax and bank frauds, and was sent to jail for three years. He received a further sentence of two months after pleading guilty to lying to a congressional committee about attempts to build a Trump tower in Moscow.
Cohen claimed he had committed some of the offences at Trump’s direction. He sued the Trump Organization for allegedly failing to pay his legal fees: a settlement was reached before that case came to trial.
Cohen had been fierce and intimidating in defending his boss, living up to his “pit bull” image, as some of us found out while trying to look into the many allegations against Trump.
Cohen was Trump’s trusted messenger, and thus it was not a huge surprise that Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer, gave him prominence in his Trump dossier. Cohen, it was claimed, had been to Prague for a secret tryst with Russian officials at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign.
It was one of the most specific allegations in Steele’s report, and of great significance if true. No proof, however, has ever been produced of such a meeting. Cohen steadfastly denied it. Czech security officials whom I and others spoke to could find no trace of him in Prague at the relevant time. The Mueller investigation found no evidence that the meeting had taken place.
Mueller’s report, when it was eventually published, commended Cohen for his cooperation with the investigation. After his acrimonious parting from his boss, Cohen also became helpful towards the media, helping us to decipher Trump’s tangled affairs.
Cohen admitted that he and his friend Felix Sater, who had become close to the Trump family, had met with Ukrainian politician Andrei Artemenko to discuss lifting sanctions against Russia and “leasing” Crimea to Moscow, proposals he had delivered personally to Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Cohen also claimed that Trump had been fully aware of a meeting his son Donald Jr and campaign officials had with Russians who said they had negative information on Hillary Clinton.
Cohen and his family became targets for Trump and his allies. The former president claimed that Cohen’s father, a Holocaust survivor, “should be looked at”. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani (now bankrupt and facing potential jail time in relation to criminal cases) claimed that the father had “ties with organised crime”. Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz was censured by the state’s Bar Association for threatening Cohen on Twitter.
Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, and Elijah Cummings, chair of the House oversight committee, deplored the “intimidation” taking place, saying that threatening a witness’s family amounted to “textbook mob tactics”.
Cohen has stated that he performed his duty in court by “telling the plain truth” to try to ensure that justice is upheld. In the process, he has done his best to damage the man he has described as a “cheat, mobster, liar, fraud, bully, racist, predator and conman”.
But Trump may yet win in November, and there may yet be another chapter in this bitter feud between a hubristic president and his former fixer in the dark arts, who could turn out to be his nemesis.