Former President Trump’s ex-attorney and so-called “fixer” Michael Cohen on Tuesday detailed his 19th meeting at the office of the New York District Attorney in Manhattan.
Departing from Tuesday’s meeting, Cohen told reporters he has changed his initial view of D.A. Alvin Bragg and Manhattan prosecutors, whom he’d previously criticized for not bringing a case against Trump. He said he’s since come to be “actually impressed with their level of knowledge, their level of the law, and the way in which they are posing questions for understanding and for prosecution.”
On January 30 it was reported that Bragg’s office would begin presenting evidence to a grand jury regarding Trump’s role in paying hush money to the adult film actress known as “Stormy Daniels.”
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in 2018 for arranging a nondisclosure agreement for which he paid Daniels $130,000, a campaign contribution violation during the 2016 election cycle, since the payment was made in service of the Trump campaign and exceeded the federal limit.
On Tuesday Cohen asserted that those on the fringes of Trump’s influence had taken the fall while the “real heads of the family, so to speak, have not been, and I think this is really starting to change.”
Cohen added that Trump attorneys’ request to delay the hush money case by six months was, in his view, their attempt to give the former President “a kind of ‘get out of jail free’ card if by some chance he somehow becomes the Republican nominee, but if— it’s hard to believe—he becomes President.”
In November Trump announced he was seeking reelection in 2024.
Trump attorneys have also requested a delay in the civil fraud case brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. And in February a federal judge denied Trump’s offer to provide DNA in writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault case, calling it a delay tactic as for years he had previously denied Carroll’s attorneys requests for his DNA.
Cohen is not the only former high-profile Trump staffer who’s been questioned by D.A. Alvin Bragg’s office. Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and White House communications director Hope Hicks met with Manhattan prosecutors on Monday. And former Trump White House adviser KellyAnne Conway met with Manhattan prosecutors last Wednesday.
