Michael Cohen, once the personal attorney to President Donald Trump, has dropped a stunning claim that could shake the legal battles surrounding the former president.
Cohen, writing in a Substack article, alleged that he was pushed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James to provide testimony against Trump during their investigations.
He also noted that a federal appeals court has revived Trump’s bid to overturn his conviction on business records charges, with a lower court now tasked to decide if the case should remain in state jurisdiction or shift to federal court.
These developments stem from a May 2024 jury verdict finding Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records tied to payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
The issue has sparked intense debate over the integrity of the legal processes targeting Trump. While Cohen’s claims of coercion raise questions about prosecutorial conduct, the ongoing court rulings add another layer of complexity to an already contentious saga.
Cohen’s allegations paint a troubling picture of his interactions with prosecutors starting in August 2019, when he was early into a three-year prison sentence for federal crimes. He insists that the pressure to turn against Trump was palpable from the outset, Breitbart reported.
“From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgement and convictions against President Trump,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen’s motivation, by his own admission, wasn’t purely altruistic—he wanted a reduction in his sentence via a Rule 35(b) motion to get back to his family. That self-interest doesn’t negate his claims but does remind us to weigh his words with a grain of salt.
Turning to the legal timeline, Cohen was sentenced in December 2018 to three years in prison for his role in hush money payments and misleading Congress about Russian business dealings. By July 2020, a federal judge ordered his release to home confinement, a move that kept him in the spotlight as investigations into Trump ramped up.
The first trial Cohen testified in was a civil action by the New York Attorney General’s Office, alleging that Trump inflated asset values for better loan terms. The court slapped Trump and others with a $454 million penalty, though that was later overturned on appeal—a small victory in a sea of legal woes.
The second trial, a criminal action by Bragg’s office, centered on falsified business records linked to payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, allegedly to sway the 2016 election. Bragg argued these were mislabeled as legal expenses when they should have been campaign costs, hinting at a hidden conspiracy. Trump, for his part, pleaded not guilty.
Legal scholars like Jonathan Turley have pointed out that the case against Trump may lack a clear crime at its core. If the foundation is shaky, why the relentless pursuit? It’s hard not to see this as more about headlines than justice.
Cohen himself admitted to asking prosecutors early on how cooperating would benefit him. “The reason was simple: I wanted to do whatever I could to obtain my Rule 35(b) motion, return home to my family and resume my fractured life,” he stated. That raw honesty shows a man caught between personal gain and immense pressure, but it doesn’t excuse any overreach by those in power.
Breitbart News reported that Cohen was expected to detail his role in the alleged falsification of records to influence the election. That testimony, pivotal as it was, now comes with an asterisk, given his claims of being strong-armed by prosecutors.
