Michael Cohen, long one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies-turned enemies after testifying against him, revealed that he and the president have reconciled.
In an appearance on 77 WABC’s “Cats and Cosby Show,” Cohen told hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby that the reconciliation happened roughly six months ago. In his telling, the man best known as Trump’s former fixer who testified against him after feeling betrayed, came to believe that Trump’s critics were only using him to get at the president. The president extended an olive branch in January, which Cohen happily accepted.
“Out of nowhere, when I was sitting with my wife at a restaurant, my phone buzzed, and it was a text from that friend who expressed to me the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged through … I deeply appreciated that text,” Cohen recalled. “I actually texted the president. I thanked him. Expressed my sincere hope that this long, exhausting feud between the two of us could finally end.”
Trump replied to Cohen “almost immediately,” and said it was “actually time for us to meet.”
“We both knew the cost of this war,” Cohen said. “In that moment, the ice between us, it didn’t just melt, it broke.”
He said he was “very surprised” by the outreach from Trump, but then shifted to reflecting on their close history together, saying there was no one closer to Trump for an eight-year period.
The road to reconciliation appears to have begun in January, when Cohen announced that he “felt compelled and coerced” by New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to testify against Trump, outlining his mindset in a post on his Substack. The post stopped short of getting back with Trump, however, saying he was revealing as much to criticize the justice system rather than exonerate Trump.
From his first interaction with prosecutors in 2019, he wrote that he felt “pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.”
By Cohen’s account, he was first approached three months into his three-year prison sentence, and all of his actions revolved around his desire to do anything to lessen it.
“During my time with prosecutors, both in preparation for and during the trials, it was clear they were interested only in testimony from me that would enable them to convict President Trump. When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative,” he wrote.
MICHAEL COHEN ‘COERCED’ BY LETITIA JAMES AND ALVIN BRAGG TO TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP
The president quickly noticed the article, sharing a report on Cohen’s article on his Truth Social at the time, demanding that those who pressured Cohen pay a “big price.”
“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. “New York Courts, with many fair and wonderful Judges, are embarrassed by what has happened! We cannot let this pass.”