Disloyal: A Memoir

by Michael Cohen

  I could see Allen’s deviousness at work and I knew where things were heading: he was calculating how to put the onus on me. I was like the kid, Little Mikey, in the 1970s commercial for Life cereal. I was the one that inevitably got the shit sandwich placed in front of him to consume, like Mikey eating the new cereal. I was the cliché: Mikey Will Eat Anything. This was the nadir of my time with Trump, at least up to that point, with the Presidency fading away and me stuck with the tab for Trump’s sex romp in a hotel room in Utah a decade ago; I could foretell Trump stiffing me on the money, too, a further indignity and outrage.

  This was the job I loved? He was my hero? Was I out of my mind?

  Yes.

  “Michael,” Allen said, pretending to be an earnest colleague trying to solve an urgent problem in the fairest way possible. “You have money. You’re the richest guy in the office. What about you?”

  “Allen,” I replied, reciting his name as a way to keep myself calm and not start screaming at him. “Laura does all the banking in our house. She’s the CEO of the household. When she sees a withdrawal of $130,000 from our account she will no doubt ask me about it. I can’t tell her, obviously.”

  Our conversation was going nowhere, I could see, and a solution had to be found. I knew of one way I could find that amount of money and stay under the radar with my wife: we had a home equity line of credit for $500,000 for our apartment at Trump Park Avenue. We owned the property almost outright, and we had no real need for the line of credit, but it made sense to have access to a good amount of cash in the event of an emergency; especially at a ridiculously low interest rate. Trump’s roving eye wasn’t my emergency, of course, but under the pressure of the moment I felt obligated to fix the problem; a fixer fixes things, I reasoned, and a lawyer like me is needed when things are broken.

  There was nothing inherently wrong about using the home equity line in this manner, apart from the stupidity and dubious morality of the situation. I had $2.5M in cash in the same bank, and I’d never, ever been behind on any payments or transactions. In the end, as you’ll discover, I was forced to plead guilty to a count of lying to the bank about what I was going to do with this money, but that was a fantasy of the federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York. I didn’t lie for the simplest reason: the bank never asked what I wanted the money for. I’d fill in a form and wire the money to the account of the Delaware company I’d set up for the payment and that would be the end of it. With a heavy heart, I made the suggestion to the weasel, Weisselberg.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “But I can only do it from my equity line. The interest on a hundred thirty K will be $500 a month. Let’s say we figure out how I get repaid the money in the next two months.”

  “One hundred percent the Boss will pay you back,” Allen said, relieved. “I give you my word on it.”

  “Please make sure,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he replied.

  Weisselberg and I went to Trump’s office to report our solution. I told the Boss that I would make the payment personally and we’d figure out the repayment in a couple of months—after you’ve lost the election, I could have said.

  “Wow, Michael,” Trump said. “That’s great. Perfect. Right after the election, when things calm down, we’ll figure this all out.”

  So there is your answer: Did Donald J. Trump know that I paid off Stormy Daniels to catch and kill her story?

  Of course he did.

  On October 27, I wired $130,000 to the trust account of Keith Davidson, and in return I received a signed NDA the following day. I called Trump to confirm that the transaction was completed, and the documentation all in place, but he didn’t take my call—obviously a very bad sign, in hindsight. Instead, my old pal Kellyanne Conway, from the Trump World Tower board dispute, when I’d first met Trump, called and said she’d pass along the good news.

  Paying off the porn star was an open secret in the Trump campaign, one of countless lies and deceptions that his acolytes agreed to hide, always in service of the greater good. That was how cheating and lying were perceived by otherwise reasonably honorable and sensible people, without pausing to consider the context or the consequences of enabling Trump: the greater good and beating Clinton and MAGA were all-consuming obsessions.

  The only person who seemed to have some perspective was Trump, despite his public performances and seemingly endless store of energy for insult and bombast and fury. The election was now one week away, but he knew how it was going to go. Trump telling me that we’d sort out the money when things would “calm down” after the election sounded to me like a confession that he knew he was going to lose. All of this would have blown over then, no doubt, in that eventuality. But the Gods and James Comey had another outcome in mind, as we all know.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Election Night

  I had waited five years for election day, and I had long pictured how the night would go: Laura, Samantha, Jake, and I would all go together to watch Trump win, and the world—and my family’s world—would be transformed forever. But reality wasn’t going to match my imagination on November 4th of that year. Laura had no interest in going, for a start, and Jake had a school assignment to complete, so he was out, as well. That left Samantha and me, a situation that wasn’t that unusual, as she often came with me to campaign cocktail parties and fundraisers. Sami, as we call her, is a pistol, a dynamic and funny and socially adept young woman who is at ease mingling with older, sophisticated wealthy people. In the way she makes and keeps friends, and adapts to any environment quickly, she resembles me, I thought, and the two of us are very close.

  The only thing that really separated us was Trump. The reason Samantha was coming, she made clear, was to watch Trump lose and suffer the indignity of being humiliated in front of the world. She had watched the campaign with a combination of dread and disgust, like many Americans, constantly barraging me with complaints about Trump’s racism and nativism, as I offered excuses and justifications and evasions. But she agreed to come on election night and dressed to the nines, in a black dress, with her hair and makeup done like she was going to the Oscars. I wore a black suit and pink tie, a classic Trump signifier, putting a triangular pink pin on my lapel that the Secret Service had given me to indicate I was a senior staffer. Whatever happened, we both figured it was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

  On the West Side of Manhattan, the Clinton campaign had taken over the entire half-a-million-square-foot Javits Center, a project that Trump had been involved in developing in the 1980s and tried to have named after his father, Fred. The Clinton people had spared no expense, with a giant stage shaped like a map of the United States and tons of green confetti ready to be unloaded to look like a shattered glass ceiling—but the shattering wasn’t going to be in a ceiling that night.

  In sharp contrast, Trump had hired a drab ballroom at the Marriot, in recognition of the fact he expected to lose, but also a reflection of his congenital stinginess. Walking into the party that evening was when I got the first inkling that my status in Trump’s inner circle might be changing. It came in small signs, but they were the kind of unmistakable and miniscule symbols and snubs that indicated you were being downgraded by Trump, for whatever reason. Like a mobster being hugged too hard by the boss, or not being hugged at all, sensing that he was going to get whacked, I was a wise guy wise to the ways of Trump as I received an envelope with my name on it and a VIP placard inside. The real action was upstairs, I knew, with the true insiders, watching the results in suites near Trump and his wife.

  We went to the VIP room as the crowd filed in, the names and faces of folks who’d worked on the campaign familiar by now. There were two giant TVs on, one tuned to CNN, the other to Fox. The early results weren’t good for Trump, as the commentators speculated on a big Clinton win. Still, the atmosphere in the VIP room was positive, if resigned, with remarks exchanged in amazement tha
t Trump had gotten as far as he had. He was now a political force to be reckoned with, all agreed, and he would remain one for years to come. Speculation was widespread about what he’d do next, from starting a Trump TV station to rival Fox, to a life as a power broker and kingmaker. Whatever happened, I’d already had the ride of a lifetime and I’d been at the white-hot center of an unprecedented national campaign, so everything from here on was gravy to me.

  Watching the dueling TV coverage, the disparity between the two cable stations was incredible to see. John King was on CNN working his “magic board” and predicting that Clinton would win, with the early contested states seeming to go her way. As an insider, I knew that the numbers were closer than the pundits were saying, as the internal polls showed the race tightening at a rapid rate after James Comey announced his renewed investigation into Hillary Clinton, looking for all the world like he was deliberately throwing the election for Trump. That was how it looked inside the campaign.

  I tweeted out a split-screen shot with my observation: “Is this the same election?”

  After many hours of watching the screens, I received a phone call from a friend who was a New York Times analytics expert. He expressed to me that he’d run an analysis and that they’d call Trump’s win in Florida within fifteen minutes. I replied to him, “Are you kidding? If that’s true, Trump just won the election.”

  He responded, “I’m one hundred percent certain.”

  And, as we all know, Trump won, becoming the 45th President of the United States.

  I didn’t know where the real celebration party was happening. I wasn’t summoned to the rooms upstairs in the hotel, to hug the president-elect and share our amazement at this incredible journey we had started together, just the two of us. Sami and I didn’t discuss what was transpiring, but I could tell she felt it too, and that she felt for me.

  In the weeks that followed, I watched in amazement as the chaos of the campaign morphed into the exponentially larger chaos of the so-called transition. There was absolutely no plan, as countries and corporations connived to find a way to get a message through to Trump. Russia, Canada, Britain, IBM, Microsoft, Ford, every lobbyist and diplomat was trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube of Trump, and in record time. . . .

  I had tried to get Trump to think about the possibility of having to lead a transition team in the weeks before the vote. I took a copy of the contingency plans drawn up by the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012 from the office of Anthony Scaramucci and brought it to the Boss’s office. I begged him to look at the book, to at least open the effing thing, but Trump refused. He wouldn’t even touch it. There were a few reasons for this unwillingness to prepare for victory in the way any sane politician would when faced with the prospect of becoming the leader of the free world in a matter of days. The biggest was that he thought he was going to lose. Next, Trump never, ever prepared or studied or planned, instead trusting his instincts, a practice that seemed certifiably insane to me. He considered that kind of effort a waste of time and beneath his stature. The last reason, improbably, was that Trump thought it would be a jinx to actually anticipate a victory, preferring not to tempt fate in a way that was beyond reckless.

  “Get out of my office,” Trump said. “That’s bad luck.”

  Kushner was suddenly the global dauphin, an inexperienced and totally unqualified figure acting as the gatekeeper to the president-elect, who was equally inexperienced and unqualified. The voters had decided to blow up the establishment—or drain the swamp, if you prefer—and suddenly Kushner, an aristocratic man-child possessed of supreme arrogance and a completely amoral will to power, like his father-in-law and wife, was going to simultaneously bring peace to the Middle East and somehow navigate a looming global trade war? The cliché about sending a boy on a man’s errand had never been truer than in Trump Tower in the days after the election, as Prime Ministers and CEOs and diplomats tried to insinuate themselves with the simpering boy with the voice of Alvin Chipmunk.

  I thought about a big job in DC, like anyone would. Chief of Staff? Hell yeah, I’d take that job. How about White House Counsel? A graduate of the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law in that position was beyond preposterous, I knew, but who wouldn’t let their imagination run wild at the possibilities? The idea that I was begging for a position, as has been claimed repeatedly, was silly and unfounded. I was a sycophant to Trump, like so many then and now, but that doesn’t mean that every dumb rumor or piece of revenge gossip was true. I have precisely no reason to try to hide any effort to land some top job. I knew that there was really only one job that was appropriate for me, and I knew it was to be the Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.

  I really discovered where I stood with Trump when I received my 2016 annual Christmas card from his assistant, Rhona Graff. She did this every year, giving out the season greetings, the envelopes containing the staff’s annual bonus. I figured that Trump would use this check to reimburse me for the Daniels payment, so I was anticipating a number around $500,000, with my bonus $150,000 from the prior year increased because of my loyalty and secrecy and sacrifice. But I should have known better when I saw Trump take off for Mar-a-Lago before the checks were distributed.

  To say I was surprised and dismayed by the number on the check would be an understatement. I was astounded. My bonus was $50,000? I thought there must be a typo for a second, as I confirmed the number and muttered in disbelief. My bonus was cut by two-thirds? I was outraged, as I marched over to Allen Weisselberg’s office.

  “What the fuck?” I asked the CFO.

  Allen pretended to be surprised, but of course he knew exactly what was going on. With the election as a huge distraction, the company’d had a bad year.

  “Sit down,” he said, trying to reassure me. “You know better than anyone that the company lost a lot of money over the past year and Trump spent a lot of his own money on the campaign.”

  “What the fuck, Allen?” I replied. “The man is a billionaire who is now the president-elect. What does any of the money lost have to do with me? I worked my ass off for him, both corporate and campaign shit. I laid out $130,000 of my own money for him to get laid. The Boss knew exactly what he was doing. That’s why he got out of town.”

  Weisselberg was searching for weasel words, I could see, some way to justify Trump’s disrespect, or to mollify my justified anger.

  “You know the Boss loves you,” he said. “He will make it right when we all come back in January. You know this is the game he plays. He does this every year, and then he makes it right. Let me speak with the Boss or maybe Don or Eric and see where we come out on the bonus. Don’t worry. You know how much he values you. Now, go and enjoy your vacation. This will be sorted out when you return.”

  “It better be,” I said to Allen, my anger self-evident.

  Something in me was broken by this disrespect and presumption at the whim of now President-Elect Trump. I was going to eat the $130,000, just like Pecker had eaten the $150,000, as a way to provide deniability to Trump, adding insult to injury? I had seen firsthand how Trump justified screwing people and the terrible consequences it provoked. The reason I’d had to pay Daniels in the first place was solely because he’d screwed David Pecker out of the $150,000 paid to silence Karen McDougal. Consider that fact. My payment, and all the hellfire and damnation that ensued, up to and including my circumstances as inmate number 86067-054 in Otisville federal prison, stemmed from that ingratitude and dishonesty. If Trump had repaid Pecker, chances are high none of the nonsense and idiocy that ensued would have happened. As with so much, in business and in politics, Trump was the author of his own troubles, though of course this reality was completely lost on him—a side effect of the shallow and childish world he inhabits.

  There was no way I was going to tolerate Trump fucking me like this, I thought. No fucking way. As I walked back to my office in a fury, I was calculating what I could get for selling the Daniels stor
y to the press, though not the National Enquirer, of course. I was the owner of her rights, after all, through my Delaware company Essential Consulting LLC, so the story of the newly elected President cheating on his wife with a porn star only weeks after she’d given birth to Barron was sure to fetch a pretty penny. Millions, I figured, maybe multiple millions, as I cursed inwardly and swore I wouldn’t allow myself to be treated in such a shabby way. Two can play this game, I thought, as I imagined the headlines that would turn the nightmare that constituted his transition to the White House into a biblical-level sex scandal.

  The next day, my phone rang. It was Trump, talking as if nothing had happened and all was fine between us. I figured that Allen Weisselberg must have told him how pissed I was, and he was trying to put out my flaming temper before it turned into a wildfire.

  “Michael, my man,” he began as usual. “Don’t worry about that thing. We will fix it when I get back.”

  I wanted to shout at him for treating me with such slimy contempt, after all I’d done for him, not just with the Daniels deal, but over the years stretching back a decade. I’d disappointed my wife and children. I’d lied, cheated, and bullied on his behalf, over and over again, behaving like a heartless jerk in the service of the great and mighty Donald J. Trump. My wife and kids had wanted me to quit, this time for real, and reminded me that I’d had the opportunity to partner with Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who’d become a friend of mine and whom my family respected enormously. I’d stayed loyal to Trump and that drove them crazy, mostly because he drove me crazy—and treated me terribly.