NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s faithful fixer-turned-gleeful antagonist after he famously flipped, is now claiming he did so under duress.
In a Substack post, Cohen claimed the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general forced his hand in their sweeping criminal and civil cases against the president, which ultimately branded Trump a convicted felon on the eve of his return to power and hamstrung his real estate company’s New York operations.
During both the investigations and subsequent trials, Cohen now claims, he “felt pressured and coerced” to provide testimony that would secure Trump’s conviction.
An analysis of Cohen’s statements over the years belies his claims. He often reflected enthusiasm about his cooperation in the Trump probes and concern with getting credit.
“I brought the whole mishegas, the whole bulls–t to the surface,” he defiantly told the Daily News in June 2021.
When District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money probe kicked into high gear in early 2023, a beaming Cohen was effusive, heaping praise on the prosecutors he now accuses of unprofessionalism.
“The level of specificity to which they are unpacking the various issues is extraordinary, and they are really professional,” he told The News after a sitdown with prosecutors that March. “There’s so much that I would really like to spill and just tell you, but out of respect to the DA’s office, I’m gonna refrain from doing so.”
After testifying before the grand jury on March 15, Cohen didn’t mince words.
“Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds,” he said, standing beside his lawyer Lanny Davis, later adding he was “certain” he’d provided the most complete account yet of the hush money saga.
Davis praised Cohen at the news conference, lauding him for taking responsibility. Reached for comment Monday, the high-profile defense attorney declined to comment on Cohen’s about-face.
“I don’t represent Michael anymore,” Davis said. “He has his own world now, and I’ve definitely not talked to him for a long time.”
Trump was indicted weeks after Cohen’s grand jury testimony on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, all of which he was convicted of in May 2024. Cohen described himself as the “key witness” at the trial in his new piece, though he really played a supporting role.
Acknowledging his record of dishonesty, prosecutors called him at the very end to act as a tour guide of incontrovertible physical evidence.
Cohen’s turnaround seems to have Trump convinced, at the very least. In what appears to be his first post in years about his former fixer without an insult, the president claimed vindication on his Truth Social site.
“These horrible Radical Left people, doing everything possible to destroy our Country, should pay a big price for this! It was a SET UP from the beginning,” Trump wrote.
Turning on Trump
Trump’s right-hand man for a decade, Cohen parted with Trump after he was arrested by the feds two years into Trump’s first term.
He first served as an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and later as Trump’s special counsel. At the 2024 hush money trial, he told jurors his job had been to handle for Trump “whatever concerned him, whatever he wanted.”
Federal agents stormed his Manhattan residences and office in the spring of 2018, leading to his arrest and disbarment. That August, he pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws by paying porn star Stormy Daniels to hide her claims of a tryst with Trump from voters and to an assortment of other crimes, what the late Federal Judge William Pauley described as a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent misconduct.”
While he implicated Trump in his plea, Cohen refused to be forthcoming with the feds about other criminality he’d witnessed.
Why now?
By his own admission, Cohen’s metamorphosis to liberal resistance hero was lucrative.
He made millions from two best-selling memoirs about his time working for Trump, became a cable TV fixture, and launched the popular Trump resistance podcast “Mea Culpa.” The left-leaning network MeidasTouch said Sunday it would no longer carry the show. In a followup piece on Substack, Cohen said, “Losing that partnership feels like losing family.”
Cohen, who sought a pardon from former President Joe Biden in vain, has insisted his motivation isn’t to get one from Trump, but rather to advance criminal justice reform via a proposed executive order that would erase the records of felons convicted of nonviolent offenses.
“Some have claimed that my Friday post was motivated by a desire for a pardon. Let me be honest. Of course I would welcome the erasure of a felony conviction. Who wouldn’t?” Cohen wrote. “But the request I have before the White House is far larger than me.”
