MICHAEL COHEN FLIPS — AGAIN. Remember Michael Cohen? A man who was widely known as Donald Trump‘s “fixer,” Cohen was a lawyer who worked for Trump for many years before Trump first won the presidency in 2016. Then, in legal trouble, Cohen turned on Trump with a vengeance and made common cause with the collection of Resistance warriors, Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and their media allies who devoted their lives to trying to bring the president down.
It didn’t end well for Cohen. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion — he failed to pay taxes on $4,134,051 in income between 2012 and 2016 — plus defrauding banks and lying to Congress. Desperate to find a way to beat the rap, he came up with new accusations against Trump, hoping that a sympathetic Democrat in Congress might get in touch with prosecutors and help Cohen out.
In the end, Cohen’s testimony against Trump was crucial to the two most damaging cases against the former president — Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records, and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that Trump overstated the value of his properties when seeking loans. Both cases were flimsy and political. In the Bragg case, a deep-blue Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts, and in the James case, a pliant Manhattan judge found Trump liable for fraud and ordered him to pay a $355 million penalty, which, with interest, soon soared to nearly $500 million.
As this was going on, Michael Cohen was cheering for Trump’s destruction. He wanted Trump behind bars — just like he, Cohen, had been behind bars. He called the former president a “douchebag.” And he engaged in Twitter screaming matches with Trump supporters, once memorably saying, “F–k you MAGAT! The only liar is your fuhrer…” It was all part of Cohen’s transition into the full-time Trump-hating business, with a book, podcast, Substack, and more.
It certainly appeared that Michael Cohen would be Donald Trump’s mortal enemy for life. But that, apparently, is not Michael Cohen’s nature. What if something happened — something like Trump being elected president again — and Cohen saw some advantage in backing away from the hateful things he said and did related to Trump? What would Cohen do then?
The answer is found in a new entry from Cohen on his Substack headlined, “When Politics Blind Justice,” in which Cohen blames prosecutors for pushing him to turn on Trump. “From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s office and the New York Attorney General’s office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves,” Cohen writes, “I 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.”
Imagine that! Elected prosecutors who ran on a platform of going after Donald Trump win office and… go after Donald Trump. Cohen seems surprised.
There was more. After serving just 13 months in jail, Cohen was moved to home confinement until the end of his sentence in November 2021. “After my release, I continued to meet with [Alvin Bragg’s] prosecutors and hoped that, in exchange for my cooperation, my home confinement and later my supervised release sentence would be shortened,” Cohen writes. “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.”
Cohen also met with Attorney General James’s staff. “Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump. Her office made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony that would help them do just that. Again, I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking.”
All of a sudden, Michael “F–k you MAGAT” Cohen was blaming the prosecutors for pursuing Trump. He didn’t want to do it — it was the prosecutors. They pushed me.
Cohen’s turn was deeply disquieting for his allies in the Trump-hating world. MeidasTouch Network, which produced Cohen’s podcast, quickly dumped him. “Progressive media company MeidasTouch Network announced it was cutting ties with Michael Cohen on Saturday,” Mediaite reported, “hours after he claimed prosecutors ‘pressured’ him to mold his testimony to bolster a political witch hunt against President Donald Trump.”
Mary L. Trump, the president’s anti-Trump niece, had a revelation about her erstwhile ally: “Least surprising turn of events,” she posted on X. “Michael Cohen is claiming Letitia James and Alvin Bragg coerced him. Sure, Jan. If Donald had offered him a job in the White House, Cohen never would have spoken out. He’s a thug and an opportunist who’s simply reverting to type.”
What is next for Cohen? Having attacked TrumpWorld, and now having abandoned AntiTrumpWorld, he faces rejection and distrust — and ridicule — from both. The Resistance will hate him forever. For his part, Trump has called him a “sleazebag,” a “rat,” and a “serial liar.” In the end, Cohen may be counting on the fact that some who were once banished from TrumpWorld were later allowed back in. It seems (highly) unlikely in his case, but you never know.