Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American former lawyer who served as an attorney for Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States, from 2006 to 2018. Cohen served as a vice president of the Trump Organization and personal counsel to Trump, often being described as his fixer. Cohen served as of Trump Entertainment. From 2017 to 2018, Cohen was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Trump employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections began. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts including campaign-finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Cohen said he violated campaign-finance laws at Trump's direction "for the principal purpose of influencing" the 2016 presidential election. In November 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to U.S. congressional committees about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine. In February 2019, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, disbarred him from practicing law in the state. In May 2019, he reported to the federal prison near Otisville, New York. In November 2021, he completed his sentence.
In early 2019, Cohen sued the Trump Organization for allegedly failing to reimburse his legal fees; in July 2023, the parties reached a settlement ahead of a planned trial. In early 2023, Trump sued Cohen for allegedly breaching his legal trust; in October 2023, Trump dropped the suit ahead of a planned deposition.
Early life and education Cohen was raised in the town of Lawrence on Long Island, New York. His mother was a nurse, and his father, a Holocaust survivor, was a surgeon. Cohen is Ashkenazi Jewish. He attended Woodmere Academy and received his BA from American University in 1988 and his JD from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 1991.
Career
Law Cohen began practicing personal injury law in New York in 1992, working for Melvyn Estrin in Manhattan.
In 2006, Cohen was a partner at the law firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. He practiced law at the firm for about a year before joining The Trump Organization. Following his 2018 felony convictions, Cohen was disbarred in New York.
Business In 2003, Cohen was a candidate for New York City Council when he provided a biography to the New York City Campaign Finance Board for inclusion in its voters' guide. The guide listed him as co-owner of Taxi Funding Corp. and a fleet of New York City taxicabs numbering over 200. At the time, Cohen was a business partner in the taxi business with "taxi king" Simon Garber. He was also CEO of MLA Cruises, Inc., and of the Atlantic Casino. As of 2017, Cohen was estimated to own at least 34 taxi medallions through 17 limited liability companies (LLCs). Until April 2017, another "taxi king", disbarred attorney and convicted felon Gene Freidman, managed the medallions still held by Cohen; this arrangement ended after the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission decided not to renew Freidman's licenses. Between April and June 2017, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance filed seven tax warrants against Cohen and his wife for $37,434 in unpaid taxi taxes due to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Dan Rivoli & Reuven Blau, Trump's personal lawyer owes New York State nearly $40G in unpaid taxi taxes , New York Daily News (August 8, 2017).
Cohen has been involved in real estate ventures in Manhattan, including the purchase and sale of four apartment buildings between 2011 and 2014. The total purchase price of the four buildings was $11 million and the total sales price was $32 million. Cohen sold the four properties at above their assessed values, in all-cash transactions, to LLCs owned by persons whose identities are not public. After this was reported by McClatchy DC in October 2017, Cohen said that all four properties were purchased by an American-owned "New York real estate family fund" that paid cash for the properties in order to obtain a tax-deferred (Section 1031) exchange, but did not specifically identify the buyer.
In 2015, Cohen purchased an Upper East Side apartment building for $58 million.
Politics Cohen volunteered for the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis. He was also an intern for Congressman Joe Moakley and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, although he later stated that he became disappointed with Obama.
In 2003, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for the New York City Council's 4th council district. (a Manhattan district). Cohen received 4,205 votes and was defeated by Democratic candidate Eva S. Moskowitz, who received 13,745 votes. In 2010, Cohen briefly campaigned for a seat in the New York State Senate. He was a registered Democrat until he officially registered as a Republican on March 9, 2017. On October 11, 2018, Cohen as a Democrat to distance "himself from the values of the current" administration.
Donald Trump Cohen joined the Trump Organization in late 2006. Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump, having read Trump's The Art of the Deal twice. He had purchased several Trump properties and convinced his own parents and in-laws, as well as a business partner, to buy condominiums in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his struggle with the condominium board at the Trump World Tower, which led Trump to obtain control of the board. Cohen became a close confidant to Trump, maintaining an office near him at Trump Tower. However, Cohen, who continued to serve as a lawyer for other clients, was not employed by the Trump Organization's legal department and instead answered directly to Trump as a personal lawyer.
In 2008, Cohen was named chief operating officer of mixed martial arts promotion company Affliction Entertainment, in which Trump held a significant financial stake.
While Cohen was an executive at the Trump Organization, he was known as Trump's "pit bull". In late 2011, when Trump was publicly speculating about running for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, Cohen the website "Should Trump Run?" to draft Trump into entering the race.
In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Cohen stated, "If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit. If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished."
In 2013, Cohen sent an email to the satirical news website The Onion, demanding that an article it had published mocking Trump ("When You're Feeling Low, Just Remember I'll Be Dead In About 15 or 20 Years") be removed with an apology, claiming it was defamatory.
In 2015, in response to an inquiry by reporter Tim Mak of The Daily Beast concerning rape allegations (brought up in the 1980s but later recanted) by Ivana Trump about her then-husband Donald Trump, Cohen said, "I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting."
In April 2016, along with Darrell C. Scott, Cohen was a of the National Diversity Coalition for Trump. Peter J. Gleason, a lawyer who filed for protection of documents pertaining to two women with sexual-abuse allegations against Eric T. Schneiderman, stated—without offering details or corroborating evidence—that Cohen told him that if Trump had been elected governor of New York in 2013, the latter would have helped bring the accusations to public attention.
In mid-2016, Cohen defended Trump against allegations of antisemitism. Later that year, part of a video interview of Cohen by CNN's Brianna Keilar went viral, in which Cohen said "Says who?" several times in response to Keilar's statement that Trump was behind in all of the polls.
In May 2024, Cohen testified that while he did not desire a job based in Washington D.C. and wanted to remain in New York, he did hope to become a personal lawyer to the President. He also testified that his relationship with Trump began deteriorating when he cut his 2016 bonus by two-thirds and kept refusing to make him a personal lawyer to the President after he took office. In further testimony, Cohen stated that he would remain loyal to Trump even after the FBI raid on his home and office, until his wife, daughter and son persuaded him to no longer lie on Trump's behalf. Soon after the family meeting occurred, Cohen entered a plea of guilty to campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress.
In July 2024, Cohen asked the Supreme Court to allow him to sue Trump. Cohen claimed that Trump had retaliated against him by having him sent back to prison after his 2020 release, following his announcement that he would write a book criticizing Trump. Lower courts had previously dismissed his lawsuit. In October, the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.
Regarding Russia In January 2016, according to The Washington Post, Cohen sent an email to Russian politician Dmitry Peskov which was the "most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin's government".
The January 2017 Steele dossier alleges that Cohen met with Russian officials in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2016 with the objective of paying those who had hacked the DNC and to "cover up all traces of the hacking". The dossier contains raw intelligence, and is thought to be a mix of accurate and inaccurate information. Cohen denied the allegations, stating that he was in Los Angeles between August 23 and 29, and in New York for the entire month of September. According to a Czech intelligence source, there is no record of him directly entering Prague by plane, although he ostensibly could have taken land transport from a neighboring country within the Schengen Area of the European Union (EU), the initial entry into which would have been recorded. On April 13, 2018, McClatchy Newspapers's Washington, D.C., bureau reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had evidence (including two sources) that Cohen travelled to Prague from Germany in mid-to-late 2016, which itself would not have required a passport stamp. Cohen again denied ever traveling to Prague or to the EU in August 2016. In December 2018, McClatchy reported that in mid-to-late 2016 a cellphone of Cohen's was detected around Prague and that an eastern European intelligence agency had intercepted a Russian communication saying that Cohen was in Prague. The 2019 Mueller report claimed that "Cohen ... never traveled to Prague and was not concerned about those allegations, which he believed were provably false".
In late January 2017, Cohen met with Ukrainian opposition politician Andrey Artemenko and Felix Sater at the Loews Regency in Manhattan to discuss a plan to lift sanctions against Russia. The proposed plan would require that Russian forces withdraw from eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine hold a referendum on whether Crimea should be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years. Cohen was given a written proposal in a sealed envelope that he delivered to then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in early February.
In May 2017, amidst expanding inquiries into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, two congressional panels asked Cohen to provide information about any communications he had with people connected to the Russian government. He was a subject of the Mueller investigation in 2018. Because of these investigations, Cohen and Trump signed a joint defense agreement allowing their attorneys to share information during the Mueller investigations and joint defense agreements were arranged between Trump and both Flynn and Paul Manafort. Cohen retained an attorney with Davidoff Hutcher & Citron who later also represented Rudy Giuliani.
Payment to Stormy Daniels