Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said in an interview on The Rachel Maddow Show hinted that he’s cooperating with investigators in ongoing cases regarding President Trump.
“I was acting at the direction of and for the benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen said explicitly regarding his payoffs to Stormy Daniels to secure her silence during the 2016 presidential race. Cohen noted that both Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. signed checks to repay Cohen for his expenses and fees in the scheme, for which Cohen pleaded guilty to a federal felony.
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Cohen also states that Trump told him that the actual buyer of a house he sold in Palm Beach in 2008 was Vladimir Putin, not the Russian fertilizer oligarch who bought the house for $50 million more than Trump paid for it, giving Trump cash in a collapsing real estate market.
Concerning the Trump Tower Moscow project, which Trump signed a letter of intent for on the night of the first republican presidential debate in 2015, Cohen said the Trump plan was to give Russian President Vladimir Putin the penthouse to drive up the prices of the other condos in the building.
Cohen said he wanted to invite Putin to Trump Tower to “have a hamburger” with Trump while Putin was in New York City for the UN General Assembly meeting in 2015. The meeting never occurred.
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Maddow asked Cohen about a passage in the book where Cohen connected Trump with Fox “News” host Sean Hannity, who pledge his fealty to Trump.
“I can’t come out publicly to endorse you at this time. It would destroy my credibility as it relates to you. But I want you to know that I am today and have always been behind you…. I speak to Michael on a daily basis,” Hannity said. “Anything he has asked me to do that benefits you, I have done.”
Hannity was Cohen’s third client, with Trump and Elliott Broidy (for whom Cohen arranged a payment for a mistress who had an abortion), as Cohen’s lawyer disclosed in court. Cohen explained that Hannity was in “the penalty box” because Trump believed Hannity supported Ted Cruz.
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About the allegation that Trump personally authorized the story in the National Enquirer that Ted Cruz‘s father was involved in the JFK assassination: “Nothing happens with Mr. Trump’s approval at the Trump Organization,” Cohen said. “To the same extent, nothing happens [in the campaign or the White House] without President Trump’s approval. He micromanages everything, especially and including things that he doesn’t know anything about.”
Cohen said David Pecker, the former president of the National Enquirer’s parent company American Media Inc., would give Cohen ideas–including the one relating to Cruz’s father and another that Marco Rubio had a drug problem–that Trump would approve and the Enquirer would run the following week.
Cohen continued: “There’s other stations, right now, that are doing the same thing. They’re becoming state-run television as well as newspapers, that, if Donald Trump sneezes, [they’ll run] it’s the greatest sneeze in the history of the world.” It is unclear if Cohen was referring to Fox “News” or OANN.
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Cohen related a story where Trump used Trump Foundation funds to buy a portrait at a charity event. The use of Foundation funds was filed as an FEC complaint by a 2016 republican presidential rival. Don McGahn, who would become Trump’s White House Counsel, was a commissioner at the FEC when the complaint was filed, and was the deciding vote to kill the complaint.
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Cohen says he “knows for a fact” that despite Trump’s public proclamations, Trump is pro-choice. Maddow asked if Cohen arranged for any woman to have an abortion at the behest of Trump; Cohen said he was not involved in any such action.
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Cohen said that, while he helped settle a case of potential blackmail for Jerry Falwell, Jr. regarding compromising photos of his wife, Becki, with a pool boy/business partner, Cohen never used the knowledge of those photos “as a chit” to get the Falwells to endorse Trump. All he had to do was ask for the favor. Cohen also said that he’s still in contact with the Falwells, including talking them two hours before his interview with Maddow.
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Maddow asked Cohen about Trump’s obsession with Barack Obama and his clear desire to denigrate Obama’s legacy, including through birtherism. Cohen said “Donald Trump is like a cult leader. He’s very Stalinistique in the fact that, he repeats things over and over and over again, with the theory that, if you continuously say the same thing over and over, people will start to believe it.”
“He is devoid of empathy. He doesn’t care what he says. He doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as he wins, ” Cohen explained about Trump touting birtherism. “And when he saw that his poll numbers and his popularity and the number of times that he’s gracing the front cover of the newspaper is increasing, he just added on to it. All of a sudden, he was sending people to Hawaii to go check–that’s a lie! He never sent anybody anywhere.”
“[Trump’s] hatred for Barack Obama is simple: he’s Black. He went to Harvard Law. He graduated the top of his class,” Cohen explained. “He’s incredibly articulate and he’s all the things Donald Trump wants to be. Alright? And he just can’t handle it.”
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“All of a sudden, I’ve become a convicted liar. Well, why am I the liar, alright? [Fact Check: Cohen admitted in court to lying in multiple statements to Congress and investigators.] At the end of the day, who did I lie for, when I lied to Congress? I lied for the benefit of and at the direction of Donald J. Trump. … Why am I the one taking all of the, y’know, responsibility? I took my own responsibility, but now it’s time for him and his sons and [Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg and all of the other people that were involved–it’s time for them to now, y’know, face the consequences. It shouldn’t just be me.”
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Maddow asked if Cohen has noticed a decline in Trump’s mental facilities over the time they have worked together versus now.
“He’s not the same person that I knew, going back years ago,” Cohen stated. “He was always gruff. He was always a ‘certain way,’ but the power he now has, has gone to his head. He wants to be an autocrat. He wants to be the president of this country for life. He wants to be just like Putin, just like [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un, just like [Venezuela President Nicolás] Maduro. He wants to be just like [Saudi prince] Mohammed bin Salman. He craves this. He doesn’t want to run for president and that’s why he says ‘Well, what about 12 more years? 12 more years!’ He’s not joking. Understand: Donald Trump does not have a sense of humor. He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t tell jokes. He doesn’t have a sense of humor. He means it when he says it.”
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Noting that one thing that parallels with Trump’s “empathy deficit” is the story from The Atlantic about Trump demeaning the military dead and wounded, Maddow asked if Cohen could corroborate the story.
“Rachel, corroborate it? I said it 18 months ago before the House Oversight Committee,” Cohen said.
“He literally had his father go to a podiatrist to claim that he had bone spurs in his feet,” Cohen stated. “He doesn’t even remember which… foot he had the bone spur in. That’s impossible. … Plus, I was tasked by him… to tamp down all of the media, all of the friends that I have in media, to tamp down the 1-Y deferment because he did not want it to detract from his claims that he is pro-veteran and that he is the veterans’ hope for America and for them and that’s why they should vote for him.”
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Regarding Trump’s relationship with his oldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., Cohen stated that the relationship was “a very, very cutting relationship. At times it was very hard to even be in the room.”
“Trump used to say that he has the worst judgement of anyone that he’s ever met. And I actually interceded on many occasions on behalf of Don [Jr.], both on his personal life and in his business life, to protect him from his father’s wrath.”