Michael Cohen, once a close personal associate of former US president Donald Trump, has become a key witness in Trump’s indictment and a possible trial. Cohen was once a personal lawyer to Trump as well as a top executive at the latter’s real estate business. He has testrified twice before the Manhattan grand jury.
The grand jury last week decided to indict Trump making him first current or former US president to suffer such a predicament.
Trump is in a soup over alleged hush money payment to pornstar Stormy Daniels. Cohen has said that Trump asked him to pay Daniels USD 130,000 to buy her silence over a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006.
If the case against Trump goes to trial Cohen can be a key witness. Trump has denied that he directed Cohen to pay Daniels. He has also denied having any relations with her.
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Cohen’s statements about Trump have been contradictory. The once-loyal Trump associate told Fox News in 2017 that he would “do anything to protect Mr Trump”
But by 2019, Cohen’s stance changed. That year, he testified before US Congress and said, “I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”
Cohen was hired as the Trump Organization’s executive vice president and special counsel in 2007. Before that, the Long Island native and son of a Holocaust survivor worked as a malpractice lawyer and owned a fleet of yellow taxis.
Cohen said in an interview to Reuters that he was hired after he had orchestrated the ouster of the board of directors of a condominium in which he owned an apartment, a board that was trying to remove Trump’s name from the building’s exterior.
Cohen later advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and, as his personal lawyer, remained close to Trump once he became president, though he did not have an official job at the White House.
The Daniels issue
The hush money payment to Daniels came to light in 2018. At that time Cohen had claimed that he paid the pornstar with his own money.
He later pleaded guilty to a federal campaign finance law violation for paying Daniels, and then testified in Congress that Trump told him to make the payment. He said he was reimbursed in installments, and displayed a copy of a $35,000 check from Trump’s personal bank account.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for making unlawfully excessive campaign contributions and other crimes, including cheating on his personal taxes and lying under oath to Congress about when the Trump Organization stopped working on a proposed building project in Russia. Cohen served more than a year before being released.
(With inputs from agencies)
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