Michael Cohen, 56, was President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and served as an executive at the Trump Organization. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations and served time at a federal correctional institution in Otisville, N.Y. He is the author of “Disloyal” (2020) and “Revenge,” which will be released in October. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.
Can you tell me about the title of your new book, “Revenge” — on whom, by whom?
So it’s “Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice Against His Critics.” Very much like my book “Disloyal,” you’re not sure who’s “disloyal.” So it’s one of those words that can go either way. I chose “Revenge” as a name, and to write the book in the first place, to explore what occurs when a corrupt and immoral president, along with a willing and complicit attorney general, weaponize the Department of Justice against his critics.
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In the foreword you say, “We should all be worried about government, because if we’re not, then what happened to me could happen to you.” How much do you think that what you call the weaponizing of the DOJ is a systemic issue versus to do with one particular administration?
It’s definitely systemic. But Donald Trump was the cancer. He was the person who figured out how to weaponize it and to go after critics like no one has ever done before.
The system is damaged because the better the prosecutor’s conviction rate is, the more desirable they become to these white-shoe law firms, and then the higher-paying jobs that they land. Like in my case, prosecutors from the very first time that they engaged with my counsel, gave me an ultimatum to either plead guilty within 48 hours — from a Friday at 5:30 p.m. to Monday morning — or to be served with an 80-page indictment that would include my wife. That’s something that I’d rather die [over] than let happen. So I pled guilty to charges that were untrue. Other than the Stormy Daniels [nondisclosure agreement] charge that I pled guilty to, the rest are all lies. Shoved down my throat by prosecutors.
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The tax evasion charges: completely untrue. I have never not filed a tax return in my 30-plus years of work. I have never been audited in my life. I had never even requested an extension. There was an error, which would make it not tax evasion, but rather a tax omission. I am currently suing my former accountant, Jeffrey Getzel, who was given some sort of an immunity deal to testify against me for mistakes that he had made. I never paid Karen McDougal the $150,000 to silence her via an NDA from discussing her affair with Donald. In fact, David Pecker of the National Enquirer made the payment. Somehow Pecker gets a limited immunity, and I get charged. All of this is covered in “Revenge” with specificity and also statements by agents, lawyers, former prosecutors, etc.
You worked closely with [Donald Trump] for many years as his personal lawyer, as his fixer, preceding his political phase. What do you see as parallels between his life in the business world and the way you allege he went after his enemies using the tools he then had at his disposal?
In the business world, he used his money and lawyers in order to achieve his goal. The power that he had as a businessman pales in comparison to the power of the presidency. His personal beliefs, his anger towards critics, remain the same. But his ability to effectuate harm and damage is unparalleled when you’re the president of the United States.
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You have urged his current lawyers to distance themselves as soon as possible because they will take the fall. When you were working for him, did you have others who counseled you the same, but you didn’t hear them?
Only my wife and children, who wanted me not to accept the job to work for him. And, over the course of my decade-long employment, had requested multiple times that I quit. In fact, if you go back to my House Oversight Committee hearing, the public hearing, in February of 2019, I cautioned not just Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and a slew of the Republicans who felt as though they needed to denigrate me repeatedly on behalf of Donald, I warned the entire world on who Donald Trump truly is: a con man. A thief. A liar. They didn’t heed the warning. And many of them are now caught up in significant litigation.
As you’ve thought back on your own experience in the role and about individuals subsequent to you who have played that role for him, what do you think it takes to be a good fixer?
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Someone who’s willing to go to the depth of hell to accomplish the task that Donald gave you. I was that person. I was well situated in many different areas. Which is why I was as effective for Donald as I was.
On the one hand, it’s a set of strengths — no matter what problem, you figure out how to get it done. But as you reflect, what are the dangers or the downfalls? What would you do differently?
Everything. I hate myself for what I did. I caused my family harm, unhappiness. It cost me my law license, my business, my reputation. The biggest mistake that I made was not listening to my wife and children.
You wrote that you helped create this Frankenstein monster and let it out of its cage, so you feel a moral duty, or that it’s your penance, to make sure that we re-cage the beast. Do you mean the individual, or the example of exploiting the system with impunity?
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I’m specifically speaking of the individual himself. Donald Trump never wanted to be president of the United States. The entire campaign originated from a desire to increase the visibility of the brand. And Donald was frequently heard saying, “This is going to be the greatest political infomercial in the history of U.S. politics.” Once he tasted power, I knew that he would never want to give it up. He always admired dictators, monarchs, authoritarians, supreme leaders. And when I stated that we need to put Frankenstein’s monster back in its cage, I believe it’s the only way to silence MAGA and the cult of Donald J. Trump.
You said that you hate yourself for some of the things that you did. Obviously, you’re speaking out now. You’re writing, you’re getting involved. What would you like your legacy to be?
I don’t think that far down the line. My goal is to ensure that the democracy that I grew up with and that I’m currently living with is inherited by my children, grandchildren and, god willing, great-grandchildren.
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What is your hope for the book, then?
Share this articleShareThe goal is to open up people’s eyes to several things. First, the importance of voting. And voting for people who share your democratic principles and value the Constitution. It’s also to hold those accountable who acted improperly, all at the direction of, and for the benefit of, Donald J. Trump, a wannabe dictator.
How optimistic are you that accountability will come to those who deserve it — and that there will be some sort of reform or greater fairness of prosecutorial goals?
I wish I can say that I was hopeful or even optimistic. This system is designed to protect itself. I talk about, for example, making a FOIA request over two years ago regarding the unconstitutional remand of me back to prison — because I refused to waive my First Amendment constitutional right. The response back from FOIA was that there are not documents in their possession that relate to the request. Unbeknownst to them, I actually had five documents that would have been responsive to my request. And so I brought on an attorney named Mark Zaid, who specializes in this area, and received back, thereafter, a response from FOIA claiming that they were initially wrong in their assessment, that there’s over 450,000 documents.
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Do you see that as an error or as intentional?
Intentional. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein determined that this was retaliation, plain and simple, by Attorney General Bill Barr to silence me and prevent me from putting out a book that was critical of his boss, the president.
You spent time in prison. Can you talk about what you learned, both as an individual, but also maybe what you learned from other people that you met there?
This country is in desperate need of prison reform. Many of my fellow inmates and I described prison as merely human warehousing of individuals to appease the public. To lure the public into a false state of security. And also to create jobs. While I was in Otisville, I was surrounded in the satellite camp by doctors, lawyers, accountants, businessmen, even an actor, all for some varying crime related to money and taxes. And as we would sit and have breakfast or lunch or dinners and engage in conversation, we used to always ask: Is there not a better public use for these people than prison? So instead of prison, how many impoverished communities could benefit from some of my fellow inmates, myself included, who were all — this is important — first-time offenders who felt a similar wrath as I did by overzealous prosecutors in desperate need of a conviction.
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As you tell your story, and you talk about what happened, you mentioned also the problem with credibility. How much do you struggle with that?
My credibility is an issue because that’s what Donald wanted it to be. Not because it’s true. Donald Trump figured out how to play the media and how to use members of his party in order to discredit me. In fact, when I spoke before the House Oversight Committee, before the world, I made dozens of allegations, the most prescient being that if Donald Trump lost reelection there would never be a peaceful transfer of power. I talked about the inflation of his assets for the purpose of increasing his net worth while deflating the same assets for tax purposes. Every single statement that I made — the ones that were beneficial to Donald and the ones that were detrimental to Donald — were all truthful. They were all accurate. In fact, when I spent 100 hours with the Mueller team, being the second-most quoted person in the Mueller report only behind Don McGahn, two members of the Mueller team came to my sentencing, where they stated that everything I told them was truthful, accurate and relevant to their investigation.
Once you began to testify, and in writing your first book and now this book, has it felt satisfying, freeing to just be able to speak openly and to get things off your chest, no matter how damning they be to you or anybody else?
The first book I wrote while I was in prison. And I used that time as a way of distracting myself from being where I was. I would imagine that I was in a library or my living room writing. The second book, “Revenge,” I thought would be cathartic. It was not. It was painful. It was painful to remember all of the things that I had to go through by individuals looking to advance their own careers, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune, and doing so by creating lie after lie after lie about me.
Do you ever wonder if things hadn’t ended the way they had, might you still be part of things? Might you still be in the center of the cyclone?
The easiest and most self-serving answer to your question would be to say that even had this not occurred, and even if my relationship with Donald had not disintegrated, I would never have been involved in all of his — what’s the right word for it — meshugas — you know, in all of his craziness? I’m not certain that that statement would be true. It’s the one thing that I humorously thank him for because it helped extricate me from the cult of Donald Trump and prevent me from doing things that would leave a stain on my family’s legacy and name.
As you ask me these questions, you refer a lot back to my time at the Trump Organization and doing bad things. Yes, we sued contractors. Yes, I strong-armed a paint company where Donald was angered that the paint was not adhering to the wall — it was his fault because he bought the cheapest paint possible. I was a sharp-elbowed New York lawyer working for a narcissistic sociopath that wanted every benefit he could attain. How does any of that [compare] to what people like Rudy Giuliani and others were doing?
So, in the end, are you grateful that things did work out as they did, and you weren’t involved in subsequent things that, as you say, would have been a lot worse?
Yes. Though I would have preferred not to have gone through this ordeal. I’ve been through hell. It is soul-crunching. Not just what happens to the individual, but their family as well.
I acknowledge I did things that were wrong. Not things that I pled guilty to, other than the Stormy Daniels matter. But I want to ensure that American democracy prevails. That my children will get to grow up in the country that my father, a Holocaust survivor when he first came here, calls the greatest place in the world. We’re losing that. And if I could do something to help to prevent it, even if it costs me my life, I’m willing to go that distance.
A lot of people in prison used to say this to me, and it used to anger me terribly, “Had you shut up, had you done nothing, had you avoided the subpoenas like everybody else did, not provided the information, documentation, the truth, you would have ended up, for the most part, incarcerated — exactly where you are. But, you would have been the first one on his list for a full pardon.”
But you have no regrets on that front?
You’ve theorized that the classified documents that were kept at Mar-a-Lago were probably a bargaining chip. I wanted to ask you about why you say that and whether you have examples from when you worked with him that lead you to believe that. What grounds that theory?
By Donald taking and retaining these top-secret papers, he truly believes — and, again, it’s my theory — he believes that he could extort the Justice Department to refrain from indictments and incarceration by threatening to have these documents released to our adversaries. Now, I believe it’s an ill-conceived Trumpian power play, but what other power play does he have?
It’s a pretty risky game, if that’s the game.
Well, for both sides, in his mind. Indict me, incarcerate me, I release top-secret information that places the national security of the United States of America in jeopardy. You see, you asked a good question, which is: Why would I make that statement? Because working for him for more than a decade and seeing what he has done to so many people, myself included, Donald Trump doesn’t care about anyone or anything. And he’s willing to burn down the establishment in order to protect himself.
I also don’t believe that Donald is actually going to run in 2024. Because I believe that he knows that he cannot win and that, even if he did choose to run, that he will face opposition for the Republican nomination. He also knows very well, statistically, that he cannot win the general election. He’s lost those independents now, based upon Roe v. Wade, climate, student relief, etc. So what he’ll do is he will seek to remain relevant in the party by becoming a power broker and believing that whichever nominee he backs and endorses will owe him a duty of loyalty so that, in the event that his day of reckoning comes, they will terminate or pardon him from the plethora of litigation and consequences that currently plagues him.
A lot of people would say, “Well, you haven’t worked with him for so many years. How can you know this?”
As the old adage goes, a leopard never changes its spots.
This interview has been edited and condensed. KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the Magazine. For a longer version, visit wapo.st/magazine.
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