Michael Cohen, once President Trump’s personal attorney and later his loudest antagonist, has now detonated a claim that undercuts the very cases that made him famous. In a recent Substack post, Cohen admitted that he felt “pressured and coerced” by prosecutors to shape his testimony against President Trump in both the Manhattan “hush money” criminal case and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit. For anyone who has followed these prosecutions closely, the revelation feels less shocking and more like confirmation.
Cohen was the star witness in the hush money case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a case that many legal analysts criticized as an unprecedented stretch of criminal law. Prosecutors relied on COVID era tolling rules to revive stale charges, then upgraded what would normally be a misdemeanor bookkeeping issue into 34 felony counts by copy pasting the same alleged conduct over and over. Cohen, a convicted perjurer, was central to making that legal gymnastics routine work.
Under oath, Cohen testified that President Trump directed him to arrange a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to prevent her story from affecting the 2016 election. That testimony was always controversial given Cohen’s history of lying to Congress and federal investigators. Now, Cohen says prosecutors were only interested in answers that helped convict Trump, and that when his recollections did not fit their narrative, they resorted to leading questions to get what they wanted.
The same pattern, Cohen says, played out in the civil fraud case brought by Letitia James. That case accused President Trump of inflating asset values to obtain favorable loan and insurance terms, despite the fact that banks testified they were repaid in full and suffered no losses. An appellate court later tossed James’ eye popping $454 million penalty, ruling it excessive and unconstitutional, a rare and humiliating rebuke.
Cohen now claims he felt compelled to cooperate because he was trying to reduce his own prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal crimes in 2018. He admitted that his first meeting with Manhattan prosecutors occurred while he was incarcerated and that he explicitly asked about benefits for cooperating. Even after his release to home confinement, he continued assisting prosecutors in hopes of shortening his supervised release.
This is a stunning reversal for a man who built a second career attacking President Trump. The president responded by calling the investigations a “SET UP from the beginning,” adding that New York courts are now embarrassed by what unfolded. It is hard to argue otherwise. When a prosecution relies on a witness who now admits he felt coerced into delivering a predetermined narrative, the integrity of the entire process collapses.
President Trump is appealing both cases in full. Cohen’s confession does not just raise questions, it screams them. If testimony was shaped to fit political goals rather than facts, then these cases were never about justice. They were about getting Trump, no matter the cost.
Leave a Comment