Donald Trump is wringing $1.8 billion out of his own administration and his disgraced former fixer wants a slice of the action.
Michael Cohen says he plans to ask for money from the Justice Department’s new slush fund for Trump allies who claim they were persecuted under the Joe Biden administration. Cohen is a former Trump lawyer who served jail time for tax evasion, lying to Congress, and making hush money payments to a porn star with whom the president is alleged to have had an extramarital affair.
He’s since reinvented himself as a staunch Trump critic. That effort would not seem to extend as far as snubbing the latest windfall for the president’s allies. “I am working through the process on my own and will submit the letter directly to the DOJ once completed,” he told CBS on Thursday.
“The basis for which Trump instituted the $10 billion action are the same causes of action that have affected me as well,” he went on. “[It] has cost me my law license, my businesses, finances, family happiness, business relationships and opportunities.”
Trump’s $10 billion suit against the IRS, alleging the agency failed to stop a former contractor leaking the president’s tax returns to The New York Times in 2020, landed in January. The IRS was under Trump’s control when the documents were leaked, and has been for the duration of his legal action.
His administration has now come up with a novel solution for the unprecedented puzzle of effectively defending itself from itself by seeing off the action with a pledge to create a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for payouts to Trump allies who claim to have been unfairly prosecuted under Biden.
Cohen’s catalogue of crimes was assembled across two cases in 2018. He pleaded guilty in August of that year to five counts of tax evasion tied to his taxi medallion business, one of making false statements to a bank, and two campaign finance violations covering hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels on the president’s behalf.
Trump’s former attorney also pleaded guilty separately that November to lying to Congress, in a case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, about the timeline of negotiations for the president’s abortive Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 election.
Cohen made no mention of persecution at his sentencing in December 2018. Instead, he accepted responsibility for his actions, while also heaping a large portion of the blame on the president himself.
“My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands,” he told a judge then.
It’s a line he’s cleaved to since, variously describing the president as a “cult leader,” an “organized crime don,” “poster boy for facism,” and a “master manipulator” since his release from federal prison in 2020.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Justice Department for comment on this story.
