“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” one of the Republicans taunted me, perfectly expressing the stupidity and lunacy of his party’s antics. To drive this point home, they actually made a sign with a picture of me on it. In bold letters, the sign proclaimed, “Liar, Liar Pants on Fire.”
Sign at my Congressional Testimony. © 2020 Michael Cohen
I recognized the childish games, replete with a Trump-like slogan, because I had played them myself. In the pitiful sight of Republicans throwing aside their dignity and duty in an effort to grovel at Trump’s feet, I saw myself and understood their motives. My insatiable desire to please Trump to gain power for myself, the fatal flaw that led to my ruination, was a Faustian bargain: I would do anything to accumulate, wield, maintain, exert, exploit power. In this way, Donald Trump and I were the most alike; in this naked lust for power, the President and I were soul mates. I was so vulnerable to his magnetic force because he offered an intoxicating cocktail of power, strength, celebrity, and a complete disregard for the rules and realities that govern our lives. To Trump, life was a game, and all that mattered was winning. In these dangerous days, I see the Republican Party and Trump’s followers threatening the Constitution—which is in far greater peril than is commonly understood—and following one of the worst impulses of humankind: the desire for power at all costs.
“To those who support the President and his rhetoric, as I once did, I pray the country doesn’t make the same mistakes as I have made or pay the heavy price that my family and I are paying,” I testified to Congress, exhorting them to learn from my example.
“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” I concluded. “This is why I agreed to appear before you today.”
Representative Elijah Cummings had the final word, as chair of the Oversight Committee. I sat in silence, listening to this now deceased man with decades of experience in the civil rights movement and other forms of public service, who as a lawyer had represented disgraced lawyers like me. He understood that even the least of us deserve the opportunity to seek penance, redemption and a second chance in life. Cummings was the lone politician I encountered in all my travails who took an interest in me as a human being. When I reported to serve my sentence, he even took steps to ensure my security in prison. It was a selfless act of kindness for which I will always be grateful.
“I know this has been hard,” Cummings said to me and the nation, his words hitting me like a kick in the gut. “I know you’ve faced a lot. I know that you are worried about your family. But this is a part of your destiny. And hopefully this portion of your destiny will lead to a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America, and a better world. And I mean that from the depths of my heart.”
Representative Cummings concluded by saying, “We are better than this.”
Amen, I thought.
Now, sitting alone in an upstate New York prison, wearing my green government-issued uniform, I’ve begun writing this story longhand on a yellow legal pad. I often wrote before dawn so as not to be disturbed in my thoughts when my fellow inmates awoke. I had to report to the sewage treatment plant where some of us worked for a wage of $8 a month. As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to be only the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse, but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes—will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.
Watching Trump on the evening news in the prison rec room, I almost feel sorry for him. I know him so well and I know his facial tics and tells; I see the cornered look in his eyes as he flails and rants and raves, searching for a protector and advocate, someone willing to fight dirty and destroy his enemies. I see the men who have replaced me and continue to forfeit their reputations by doing the President’s bidding, no matter how dishonest or sleazy or unlawful. Rudy Giuliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner, and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss. All this will be to no avail. Trump doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pit bull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
During my testimony, Republican House members repeatedly asked me to promise that I wouldn’t write a book. I refused, repeatedly. It was another way of saying I shouldn’t be permitted to tell my story, in essence giving up my First Amendment rights. It was a clear sign of desperation and fear. I have lost many things as a consequence of my decisions and mistakes, including my freedom, but I still retain the right to tell this story about the true threat to our nation and the urgent message for the country it contains.
One last thing I can say with great confidence, as you turn the page and meet the real real Donald Trump for the first time: this is a book the President of the United States does not want you to read.
Michael Cohen
Otisville Federal Prison, Otisville, New York
March 11, 2020
Chapter One
The Apprentice
Donald Trump’s seduction began the way it would continue for years, with flattery, proximity to celebrity and power, and my own out-of-control ambitions and desires. For me, it started on a nondescript day in the fall of 2006. At the time, I was a successful, if little-known, middle-aged midtown Manhattan attorney and businessman on the make, sitting in a tidy nondescript office with two of everything arranged before me on my desk, a function of my obsessive nature: two staplers, two tape dispensers, two phones, two cups with sharpened pencils. I was thirty-nine and I worked for the mid-sized white-shoe law firm Phillips Nizer. As a lawyer I’d long had a busy practice in personal injury and medical malpractice, but my real passion and talent was in dealmaking, and I had accumulated a multi-million dollar fortune in the rough-and-tumble taxi medallion industry. Wealthy, with a beautiful wife and two healthy, happy young children, I had just purchased an apartment in the Trump Park Avenue building for $4.9 million and I tooled around the city in a Bentley and considered myself semi-retired.
I had it made, in other words, but I didn’t know that I was on the precipice of a mid-life crisis that would lead to an all-consuming fixation and my downfall.
On this fall day, in 2006, sitting at my desk doing the paper-pushing drone work of practicing the law, my secretary buzzed on the intercom.
“It’s Donald Trump, Jr. on line one,” she said.
I was half expecting the call. I knew the younger Trump from my recent purchase of three units in the new Trump Park Avenue, a project then under construction to be converted into my family home; two one-bedroom units and a two-bedroom apartment on the 10th floor of what had been the high-society Delmonico Hotel were being consolidated into a single residence with sweeping views of the iconic avenue from the living room running half the length of the building. Don Jr. was handling the construction job on behalf of the Trump Organization, so we talked often.
I picked up the call—news about the Trump Park Avenue, or TPA as insiders knew it, was a welcome distraction from my routine legal
work. Besides, I’d become friendly with the younger Trump and enjoyed our banter and shared New York real estate tough guy personas. I had long cultivated the image of a hard-ass, the kind of lawyer who could solve any and every kind of problem, not necessarily through my legal acumen, but as a hyper aggressive, take-no-prisoners fixer—kind of a knock-around version of the TV character Ray Donovan, but in real life.
“Hey, D, what’s up? How are things going at TPA?” I said.
“I’m not calling about TPA,” Trump, Jr. said. “Can you meet with me and my dad at his office? It’s about something else and very important. My dad thinks you could be very helpful.”
Everything with the Trumps was always “very,” I would learn, but I didn’t hesitate. A meeting with Donald Trump? Hell, yeah. I’d met Trump once before a few years earlier, at a political fundraiser for a Republican candidate for New York Attorney General, but that had only been in passing.
Within minutes, I was walking excitedly up Fifth Avenue towards Trump Tower. To me, the elder Trump wasn’t just a celebrity and billionaire real estate developer. As an undergraduate at American University, in Washington, DC, I’d read The Art of the Deal when it was published in the 1980s not once but twice, and I considered the book a masterpiece. Ruthless, relentless, insatiable, brilliant, innovative, hard-edged, hard-driving, above all always a winner—the self-portrait of Trump contained in those pages, however fictional and far from the truth, had enthralled me. Secretly, in my heart of hearts, I thought I possessed some of Trump’s best qualities. I saw myself as deal-driven, relentless, a hard worker, never afraid, prepared to be brutal and heartless in pursuit of my ambitions. I already had wealth but I wanted it all: power, the good life, public acclaim, fame, big deals, fast cars, private planes, the excess and glamor and zest for life that Trump appeared to personify so effortlessly.
Walking up Fifth Avenue, I had an inkling what the meeting might be about. In recent weeks, as Don Jr. and I had discussed progress on the renovation of my TPA apartment, he’d told me about a fight that was brewing at another Trump property in midtown near the United Nations, this one called Trump World Tower, or TWT. I also owned an investment unit in TWT, which I rented out for $15,000 a month, and I’d encouraged my parents and mother- and father-in-law to also buy into the building, meaning that together my family owned more than half a dozen apartments in the East Side skyscraper that had boasted celebrity residents like Harrison Ford and the New York Yankee Derek Jeter. The 72-story tower (which claims to have 90 floors on the elevator push button, classic Trump) was in turmoil because the condo’s board of directors had gotten into a blood feud with Trump, the elder, about disputed fees and who should get the benefit of a city tax abatement of $100 million.
Both the board and Trump had engaged lawyers as the fight grew more and more bitter and personal, the younger Trump had told me. Now the board was trying to remove the Trump name from the building, on the grounds that it was more valuable to the owners without the association with The Apprentice reality TV star. The threat was not only an affront to the elder Trump but also a real and serious threat to the brand—and the Trump name was basically all that the Trump Organization had left to sell by 2006. If the TWT disassociated itself from Trump, what would happen next? Who else might see the name as a liability? The name Trump was attached to a seemingly endless string of golf courses and products, and any threat to the brand was taken to be existential.
I’d sympathized and expressed outrage at the offense to the Trumps, even offering assistance, if desired. I believed in the Trump brand and the value it brought to real estate and that he was rightfully due a payment of nearly $15 million for securing the tax abatement. Don Jr. knew of my reputation as a tough-guy attorney, so I figured that was why I’d been called.
Entering the revolving doors of Trump Tower, with an appointment with the proprietor, I was in awe at the majesty of the famous atrium: the grand escalator, the pink marble walls, the brass of the place, literally and metaphorically. The sheer scale and class of the building were incredible, at least to my way of thinking. The building had been designed to create such an impression, of course, but it worked on me.
Presenting myself at the security desk, I was told that Mr. Trump was expecting me. This acknowledgement of my existence by the great man provided a jolt of excitement. Escorted to the 26th floor, headquarters of the Trump operation, I was greeted by a beautiful young blonde woman who also said that Mr. Trump was expecting me—giving me another moment of pleasure. I was immediately ushered through glass doors into a large office with a sweeping view of Fifth Avenue and Central Park.
Sitting behind a large, cluttered desk was the elder Trump, talking loudly on a call on speakerphone. To me, the hulking Trump was even larger in life than he appeared on television. His presence filled the room, as I surveyed the office, an homage to Trump, with a vanity wall boasting scores of magazine covers with Trump’s image, along with shelves packed with glass awards and deal mementoes and sports memorabilia, including a garish and glittering version of Mike Tyson’s heavyweight world champion belt. Three red-velvet executive Egg chairs were arranged in front of Trump’s desk, with Don Jr. seated in one and the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, in the other. I was directed to sit in the middle seat, where I waited as Trump conducted what seemed to be a private conversation with us all listening in.
The call over, Trump yelled out for a Diet Coke, stood, and offered his hand to me. Like all New Yorkers, I had followed Trump in the tabloids for years and knew about his foibles and idiosyncrasies, but as an ardent fan and true believer, I knew more than most, including reports that Trump was a germophobe, so I reluctantly offered my hand in reply as he gave me his power grip.
“Don tells me great things about you,” Trump said, as half a dozen employees of the company filed into the office and arranged themselves behind me, standing at attention. “You do know I gave you a great deal on your new apartment,” Trump continued.
I blinked. I didn’t know what to say in reply. This was Trump’s first tell, if I’d had the ability to see what was unfolding, but events were moving so fast and in such a tantalizing way that I didn’t have the presence of mind to consider what had just occurred. I had paid the asking price on the Park Avenue apartment; there had been no discount or special consideration—it had never even come up. But there it was: within the first few seconds of our meeting, Donald Trump had lied to me, directly, demonstrably and without doubt. What was I supposed to do, if I had possessed the wherewithal to gather my wits and take on the implications? Call Trump on it? The lie seemed silly, harmless, and childish, the kind of fib that was pointless to contest; it occurred to me that Trump might actually believe it, too. In a matter of a couple of sentences, with no conscious thought or understanding of what was actually happening, I had given my unspoken consent to start to play along in a charade that I would come to learn was all-devouring and deadly serious.
For now, I parried with a joke, of a kind. “Would you like to buy the units back?” I asked.
“No, no,” Trump said quickly. “You made a great decision to buy at TPA, just like you did at TWT.”
The blonde assistant entered with Trump’s Diet Coke, and she offered me one. Trump took a sip of his soda and revealed what the meeting was really about.
“There is an issue I would like your help with,” he said. “I have a rogue board at TWT. We’re in litigation and they’re looking to take the Trump name off the building.”
Trump smiled.
“You more than anyone understand the value of the Trump brand, as you own apartments in a few of my buildings. You had your parents and in-laws and friends buy as well, and you all have made a lot of money.”
“Yes, yes, that is true,” I replied. “Tell me why the board is doing what it’s doing at TWT.”
Trump replied by way of introducing me to the employees now crowding i
nto his office. The top executives and lawyers for the Trump Organization were all in the room and, it seemed, astonishingly, that they were now to be put at my disposal—a perfect stranger to Trump, a relatively small-time attorney, and someone with no apparent connection to the matter other than my unit in Trump World Tower and whatever Don Jr. had said to recommend me.
“All of these individuals will walk you through whatever questions you may have and will provide you with any support you need,” Trump said.
I was incredulous, excited, overwhelmed. I was a graduate of the University of Western Michigan’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School, perhaps the least-prestigious institution in the nation from which to receive a legal education, and I was being asked to assess a serious situation and determine strategy on a critical business matter on behalf of billionaire celebrity Donald J. Trump? Don Jr. had evidently suggested that I might be able to help, but it appeared that I was being put in charge of a project that clearly was of great importance to the older Trump. I sensed that the issues involved had to be much larger than I’d anticipated, just as the opportunity appeared to be much larger, a chance I wasn’t going to let pass me by. I had my own work to do back at my office, but all that could wait for now, however long this new venture took. Internally I resolved that I was going to succeed for Trump, come what may.
“I will let you know my thoughts after I review the materials,” I told Trump in a serious tone. Turning to the staff, I said, “Is everyone ready to get to work?”
Trump glowered at his team, leaning back in his chair, as my question hung in the air.
“I mean right now,” I said.
The yes-sir executives leapt into action. I was taken to a conference room and I was soon reviewing invoices from Trump World Tower to see if there was any substance to the allegations of wrongdoing by the Trump Organization leveled by the condo board. With the Trump team at my disposal, I spent six hours that day, and then the next four days in succession, doing nothing but intensively searching the financial records; I was an attorney with an hourly rate, but payment was never mentioned, and I knew better than to rock the boat by raising the question of my fees. I calculated that working for free was a way to ingratiate myself and offer Trump no reason to complain or get rid of me.
Disloyal: A Memoir Page 2