Disloyal

by Michael Cohen

  “You don’t have to stay here,” the lead agent. “You’re not under arrest.”

  “Do you guys want coffee?” I asked. “How long does this last?”

  “It will be as quick and painless as possible,” the lead agent said. “Thanks for the offer, but we’re okay.”

  “Thank you for waiting until my son went to school,” I said.

  I was now on the other side of the power dynamic I had exploited so often on behalf of Donald Trump. I was effectively in the position of E.J. Ridings at Trump Mortgage all those years ago, having my reality dictated to me in real time. It was mind-boggling. I’d had one speeding ticket in my life, in the 1980s, along with a handful of parking tickets, but that was the sum total of all of my brushes with the law. I’d never been in any kind of trouble, and now there were FBI agents going through my couches and searching the drapes.

  “What the hell are they looking for?” Laura asked.

  “I have no clue,” I said. “Let them look all they want.”

  My second thought was that I had to get word to Mr. Trump. I asked for my phone back, to make calls, but they refused. I said I just wanted to retrieve the private number of the President of the United States but they said I couldn’t touch the phone. I asked them to at least let me retrieve the number, so I instructed them how to find the number and they read it to me. I was worried that the President would hear about the raid from a third party and go insane. Two hours passed and then my daughter Samantha walked through the door, to our great surprise, asking what the hell was going on.

  After five hours, the FBI left, carrying boxes loaded with my possessions. I went directly to the AT&T store on Lexington Avenue and bought a new phone, using my old number, and I called Madeline Westerhout at the White House.

  “Tell the President that my hotel and apartment and law office and safe deposit box have been raided by the FBI,” I said.

  “The President will be notified immediately,” she said.

  Minutes later, my phone rang. It was the President.

  “Michael, are you and the family okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” I replied. “I have no idea where this is coming from. I have no idea why this has happened.”

  “They’re coming after all of us,” Trump said. “This is all part of the witch hunt. Stay strong. I have your back. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Thank you for your call and concern,” I said.

  The President of the United States hung up, the words “I have your back,” ringing in my ears. That was Trump’s mantra and exhortation: the President had my back. If I stayed loyal to Trump, he would stay loyal to me. I had to stay the course. Always stay the course. Be loyal. I was going to be fine.

  But in the back of my mind, I knew trouble was coming. That afternoon, I’d watched the President sitting at a long table in the White House talking to the press. Trump spoke about the FBI raid on my office and apartment. What worried me, knowing how he speaks and acts and thinks, was that Trump had described me as “one of my personal attorneys.” All of a sudden I didn’t have a name? All of a sudden I’m only one of his attorneys? This was how Trump distanced himself from people. I was still blind to the implications, unable to actually acknowledge and confront what I knew in my heart, but a sense of dread began to shroud my thoughts.

  That was the last time I ever spoke to Donald Trump.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Conviction Machine

  Over the course of the next several weeks, Trump continued to make statements putting more and more distance between us, including the most hurtful, to me, that I really wasn’t an attorney—I was just a low-level PR guy. Hindsight being 20-20, what I realized sitting in prison is that there is no way in the world that Trump wasn’t notified in advance by the Department of Justice that the raid was going to take place. He was the chief law enforcement officer in the country, so it’s unimaginable that he didn’t know—and that he didn’t have a plan.

  After the raid, I had no choice but to continue to stay the course as we entered into a joint defense agreement. Trump, Jared, Ivanka, and I all collaborated using my attorney, Stephen Ryan, as the lead attorney. I never expected that Trump was going to do to me what I’d done to so many others over the years on his behalf: stiff me on the legal fees I owed to lawyers.

  Staying on message meant calling the investigation a witch hunt, no Russian connections, all of the various ways to delegitimize the investigation. I’d already testified to Congress, for the first time, and I’d lied and lied and lied. I was stuck with that reality. I’d lied because that was what they wanted me to do, and also because I thought the lies were immaterial. What’s the difference between three conversations with Trump about a failed Russian real estate deal, or ten conversations? I saw no danger in that statement. I was thinking straight. All I wanted to do was get rid of the problem, believing that the most powerful person on the planet was going to make sure that this headache would go away.

  I knew I was in deep, deep trouble when Trump stopped paying my lawyer, who was lead counsel to the entire joint defense agreement, causing a rift between me and the law firm at a time when I was completely overwhelmed with anxiety. I’d never had to deal with law enforcement in my life; I’d never imagined I’d experience what had become a waking nightmare. The outstanding legal fees were more than $1 million. I was supposed to be concentrating on the substance of the case, but I was sidetracked and my mind was racing with fear. There were millions of documents to review to ensure that nothing damaging to Trump and his family was revealed, so I kept going and kept going, still believing that he would stay loyal to me and at least pay the legal bill.

  Reporters were outside my apartment all the time, adding another level of tension. Ultimately, the review was completed and the judge identified a relatively small number of documents that would be considered privileged. My counsel said he couldn’t represent me going forward if I was criminally charged. He recommended I find a criminal attorney in New York City, who would know how to deal with the Southern District’s federal prosecutors. I wound up engaging Guy Petrillo. He was a former head of the criminal division of the Southern District, so I figured he’d know what to do and have the best relationships. Despite Petrillo’s continuous requests with the SDNY prosecutors for a sit-down meeting with me, they refused.

  Queen for the Day is the term used for a meeting with prosecutors to tell law enforcement the truth about any and all criminal activity, without prejudice, in order to negotiate a plea-bargain agreement. The SDNY response was always the same: we’re not ready yet. Four months passed. I was sitting in my apartment with Laura and the kids and dealing with legal issues as they arose, but mostly I was spinning my wheels and waiting, the dread and anxiety growing and growing and growing. Petrillo told me that the longer things went on, the better, because it likely meant that they didn’t have a case.

  On Thursday, August 16, 2018, fed up with sitting idle, and unable to do anything, I demanded that Petrillo send to the acting Assistant United States attorney handling the case a letter saying that we needed to meet, outlining our continuous requests and how I was being strung along. That night, Petrillo received a call from the Southern District stating that he had until tomorrow to meet with them. Petrillo said he’d have to call me to ensure I was available, but they said I couldn’t participate in a meeting—it was lawyers only.

  I was just thankful that someone finally responded. On Friday, Petrillo took the meeting and late that afternoon he called my cell. I was at a friend’s place, with my wife, so I placed the call on speaker so Laura could hear it. The three of us were horrified when Petrillo advised Laura and me that it didn’t go well and we’d have to come to his office first thing Saturday morning.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I said.

  “They want you to plead guilty to tax evasion, lying to Congress, and misrepresentatio
n to a bank,” Petrillo said. “On Monday.”

  He paused, to let that sink in.

  “If you refuse, on Monday they are going to file an eighty-five-page indictment,” Petrillo said. “They are going to drag you out of your apartment on national television. They are also going to indict Laura.”

  So there it was: the government was going after my wife? It was like getting sucker punched in the gut.

  “Tax evasion,” I yelled. “Where does that even fucking come from?”

  Petrillo fell silent as I continued to rant and rave about how I’d never filed a late tax return in my life. I’d never been audited. I’d never received a single letter from the IRS.

  “I know,” Petrillo said. “I know, I know.”

  Early the next morning, Laura and I met Petrillo and his co-counsel. He said I was definitely going to be indicted unless I was prepared to plead guilty. I kept asking, over and over, why I was facing these charges when I was always a legitimate local businessman who followed the letter of the law and only dealt with respectable banks and financial institutions. The government was saying I had evaded taxes, and I was sure I hadn’t. There was no explanation about the allegation. All I was told was that Laura would be charged as well, without any knowledge of the facts regarding her, let alone the truth or possible defenses we could mount.

  Petrillo thought we could win at trial, but the Southern District had made it clear that they were going to freeze and move for forfeiture of all my assets, to the tune of more than $50 million. If I wanted to proceed, I needed to immediately wire $1 million to Petrillo’s escrow account as a retainer. He also said I should reach out to friends to prepare to borrow several million dollars to cover his fees and living expenses.

  Petrillo explained that there was allegedly unreported income from my New York City taxi medallions, as well as interest on a loan that I’d made to a private individual. All of the money had gone into local NYC banks, and I’d given all the records to my accountant—whose job it was to reconcile my books and records, I believed. I had two three-ring notebooks tabulating my accounts in monthly order, but by that time the FBI had taken those files.

  Laura was crying by now. I had tears running down my face.

  “You have to let me know what you want to do,” Petrillo said, in a voice devoid of the milk of human kindness. “But just know that they intend on convicting you.”

  This was the American justice system at work. My lawyers had continually stated that they didn’t see any charges coming, but the truth in this country is that if federal prosecutors want to get you, they will. No matter who you are. No one reading this book should think for a second that they’re immune to these gangster tactics that have been so widely publicized, but continue unabated and unapologetically. I was in the grip of the conviction machine. I was the ham sandwich, and I had been indicted.

  I looked at Laura, I took her hand, and I said, “I will never let anything happen to you.”

  “No, I don’t want you to go to prison,” she said. “Let’s fight this.”

  “I’m not going to put you in harm’s way,” I told her. “I cannot take that risk, based upon their actions.”

  I knew that the Southern District would be ruthless. I knew that they’d stop at nothing to convict me and my wife, who is the furthest thing from a criminal you can imagine. She’s the personification of sweetness and innocence, and they were threatening to put her behind bars?

  Petrillo said it was unlikely that I would go to prison, based on the charges I had to plead guilty to, but that I’d face significant monetary penalties. I made up my mind to plead and took Laura home, both of us in a state of shock. Petrillo called me later that afternoon to discuss the money amounts on the tax-evasion allegation, and I told him that the IRS had made an error in their calculations by more than half a million dollars. It turned out that the businessman managing my taxi medallions, Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, had defrauded hundreds of medallion owners, as well as the city of New York, for more than $20 million. He was facing serious prison time, but he didn’t do a day behind bars because he’d talked to the FBI and testified against me.

  The next day, I was told that the plea was being moved to Tuesday. The reason? Petrillo said that there was better media coverage on Tuesdays, that they needed an extra day to prepare their media material to display at the press conference. On Monday, Petrillo showed me the allocution that I was to read, word for word, as I stood in court. Three counts had turned into eight counts. Instead of one tax charge, they’d separated it into five different charges, one for each year from 2012 through 2016. They’d also added Karen McDougal’s payment to the Stormy Daniels payment for the campaign finance fraud count, along with a final count of misrepresentation to the bank about the use of my line of credit to pay off the porn star on behalf of Donald J. Trump.

  My head was spinning. I said there was no tax evasion. How could there be a misrepresentation to the bank regarding the use of the line of credit, when the bank never asked what I was doing with the money? I had millions of dollars in that bank, and I’d never had any trouble. By now, I was shouting at Petrillo that I was barely involved in the McDougal payment; that was between David Pecker and AMI and Donald Trump.

  “Are we pleading guilty, or not?” Petrillo yelled at me. “If we’re not, I need that money sent to my account right now.”

  “There were supposed to be three counts,” I replied. “Now there are eight.”

  “This is their offer, take it or leave it,” he said. “You know what the ramifications will be if you elect to fight.”

  The next day, I stood before the court and I took responsibility for all the counts. I read the allocution word for word. I was told to return in sixty days for sentencing, and the rest, as they say, was history. The prosecutor’s memorandum criticized every aspect of my life, ignoring the forty letters I’d submitted in support of my good nature and character. As I stood before the judge, after I received the sentence of thirty-six months, as I heard the gasp from the packed courtroom and the sobs from my family, I had to ask Petrillo if I’d heard the judge correctly. I had.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Otisville Federal Satellite Camp

  On May 6, 2019, I took a friend’s car upstate to Otisville Federal Satellite Camp, in the Catskill Mountains near the Hudson River. As I arrived at the winding road leading to the mountaintop camp, there were four or five helicopters in the sky, as well as a mass of people lining Two Mile Road, with satellite trucks, TV reporters, onlookers, and police cruisers. Some of the crowd were holding placards saying, “Stay Strong” and “Down with Trump.”

  It was like I was Al Capone, or El Chapo, not a corporate attorney railroaded into prison by federal prosecutors who’d since gone on to high paying white-shoe law firms, with my conviction as their signature achievement at the Southern District. Otisville was on complete lockdown, meaning that no movement was allowed by any of the inmates. Processing started with photographs and fingerprinting, and then I was stripped naked and issued khaki prison clothes, including socks and underwear. I wasn’t afraid, as it turned out, as the people who processed me were very professional and decent.

  The low security Otisville camp was like the worst summer camp you can imagine your parents sending you to. Otisville has a kosher diet available, as almost half the camp are Jews, with many Hasidic Jews. The camp is all white-collar crime, with accountants, doctors, lawyers, bankers, and Wall Street tycoons all mixed in together. The first bunk I got was the worst in the facility, located between two toilets, with the scent of locked-up inmates performing their ablutions, no matter which way you turn your head, but I was soon reassigned to 28 Lower, a decent location. I was bunked with the head orderly, a longtime inmate who was a forensic accountant, and we got along well as I described all the bullshit accounting I’d been through with the Southern District.

  There was a tennis court painted
on the parking lot, and my eating seat was next to Michael Sorrentino—the “Situation” from The Jersey Shore—while behind me was Dean Skelos, the former Senate Majority Leader in New York, and nearby was Joe Percoco, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s longtime Chief of Staff. It was quite a scene. I came in with a lot of fanfare, and I was immediately accepted. It was prison, but if you’re going to be in prison, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  I’d never been away from my wife and children before, so that caused melancholy, along with the fact that I truly didn’t believe that I belonged there. Talking to family was difficult because we only got 300 minutes a month of phone calls, which diced down to ten minutes a day, and visiting was complicated because the meeting room often became overcrowded.

  There was a saying in prison: The days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast. Every Friday night, there was a Sabbath dinner, which I attended, so that was a good way to measure time. But there was another reality, as I developed serious hypertension problems, leading to my hospitalization twice, accompanied twenty-four-hours-a-day by two prison officers. The hospitalizations, along with pre-existing blood clotting conditions from years earlier, eventually provided the basis for my early release during the COVID-19 crisis.

  But first I had to go through the William Barr Department of Justice kangaroo-court process. As the virus spread throughout the country, including the petri dishes that constituted prisons in a time of plague, I was moved to solitary confinement to quarantine for release on furlough to convert to home detention. As the date for my release neared, though, Bill Barr changed the criteria for release and seventy inmates were returned to the camp, leaving a dozen of us in solitary. It felt like Barr’s sudden amendment of the rules was aimed at me, at the direction of President Trump, which speaks volumes about the nature of the rule of law in this age.

  During these days, I truly did believe the President of the United States wanted me dead. It felt like I was receiving a death sentence, by proxy. A lot of the guards disliked me intensely, because they were big Trump supporters, and they followed his words when he attacked me on TV and Twitter, giving them license to be unusually cruel to me. As I tried to sleep, they’d flash a light in my eyes every half hour; they’d kick my door; they wouldn’t let me get hot water from the machine for my coffee. These might sound like petty things, but when you’re in solitary in a facility raging with COVID-19 it really is like psychological torture.