Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen released from prison over coronavirus concerns
Michael Cohen, the former attorney for President Trump who was imprisoned last year after pleading guilty to several charges, was released to home confinement amid concerns over the coronavirus.
Michael Cohen offered a taste of what to expect in his anti-Trump tell-all book "Disloyal, A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump."
The book, which is set to be released in September, makes several provocative and salacious claims about his time as Trump's go-to fixer and lawyer before he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over hush payments made to women during the 2016 election who alleged having affairs with the then-GOP candidate.
"The President of the United States wanted me dead," Cohen boldly declared in the forward of his book released on Thursday. "Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn’t mind if I was dead. That was how Trump talked. Like a mob boss, using language carefully calibrated to convey his desires and demands, while at the same time employing deliberate indirection to insulate himself and avoid actually ordering a hit on his former personal attorney, confidant, consigliere, and, at least in my heart, adopted son."
Cohen wrote that "the death threats had come by the hundreds" from Trump supporters after he agreed to cooperate in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, writing "All rats deserve to die, I was told. I was a lowlife Judas they were going to hunt down."
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"For more than a decade, I had been at the center of Trump’s innermost circle. When he came to my son’s bar mitzvah, a generous gesture that I found touching, he told my then thirteen-year-old boy that his Dad was the greatest and that, if he wanted to work at the Trump Organization when he grew up, there would always be a position for him. 'You're family,' Trump said to my son and I. And I f---ing believed him!" Cohen exclaimed.
The former Trump fixer acknowledged he himself used to be a "demented follower" of the celebrity businessman and how he was "willing to do anything for him, including, as I vowed once to a reporter, to take a bullet."
Cohen recalled the "enormous weight" he felt when he testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2019 and how responsible he felt playing "a central role in creating this new reality" that allowed "a clear and present danger named Donald Trump" to become president. However, he argued that both sides were wrong about whether or not Trump was "Russia-controlled" or that the entire investigation was a "witch hunt."
"I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to 'win' has always been his business model and way of life," Cohen explained. "Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “there’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia…there’s no Russia.”
With his book, Cohen is hoping to "reintroduce" himself to the rest of the country.
"For more than a decade, I was Trump’s first call every morning and his last call every night. I was in and out of Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower as many as fifty times a day, tending to his every demand. Our cell phones had the same address books, our contacts so entwined, overlapping and intimate that part of my job was to deal with the endless queries and requests, however large or small, from Trump’s countless rich and famous acquaintances. I called any and all of the people he spoke to, most often on his behalf as his attorney and emissary, and everyone knew that when I spoke to them, it was as good as if they were talking directly to Trump."
He continued, "Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man... He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them."
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He vowed as he wrote serving his sentence at Otisville Federal Prison, "This is a book the President of the United States does not want you to read."
Cohen was released from prison last month amid coronavirus concerns and was ordered to serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. His sentence was supposed to end in November 2021.
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