Michael Cohen on the Trump Trial: Prepare To Be Surprised Trump’s former attorney on the hush money trial, how he’s preparing for life as the key witness and who he expects Trump will choose as a 2024 running mate. 04/12/2024
Trump’s defense is going to be to paint you as an untrustworthy witness. He’s going to cite your guilty plea for lying to Congress, and the fact that the Justice Department declined to offer you a cooperation deal because prosecutors thought you lied to them. And he’ll say you’re out for revenge and that you have a financial incentive to see him convicted. So how do you defend yourself from those accusations?
I wish that when people state that “you lied to Congress,” that you’d do me the courtesy — do yourself the courtesy — of finishing the sentence. What is the sentence? That I had done that, really, for the benefit of Donald J. Trump. And that lie centered around the number of times that I had stated that I spoke to Donald about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project — in conjunction with other lawyers Jay Sekulow, Abbe Lowell, Ty Cobb, with other individuals like Alan Garten or Ivanka [Trump] and Jared [Kushner]. Everybody worked on that statement. I was just the fool who went ahead and read it into the record and submitted it. But what benefit did I have in terms of saying three times versus 10? That’s the lie: That I claimed to have spoken to Donald three times about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project, when the true answer was 10.
