Michael Cohen

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.

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 re-registered 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 co-founded 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 co-founder 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.

Involvement in Falwell scandal

In 2015, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. reached out to Cohen and asked him for a personal favor. Falwell had told Cohen that a third party had obtained compromising nude photos of Falwell's wife Becki Falwell. Cohen met with the third party and after the meeting the person destroyed the photos. Shortly after Cohen did this favor for Falwell, Falwell endorsed Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. In August 2020, Cohen told CNN that there was no link between the favor and the endorsement, saying, "There is absolutely no connection between the photos and my personal request to the Falwells to assist the Trump campaign".

Payment to Shera Bechard

In an April 2018 court proceeding, Cohen said he had given legal advice to only three clients in 2017: Trump, Sean Hannity, and Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy. The Wall Street Journal reported that Shera Bechard, a former Playboy Playmate, had an affair in 2017 with Broidy, who was married. She became pregnant by him, had an abortion, and was to be paid $1.6 million hush money. Broidy was a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee along with Cohen and DeJoy.

In late 2017, Cohen arranged the $1.6 million payment by Broidy to Bechard as part of an NDA requiring Bechard to keep silent about the matter. Cohen was Broidy's attorney and Keith M. Davidson represented Bechard. Davidson had previously been the attorney for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. The Bechard NDA used the same pseudonyms—David Dennison for the man and Peggy Peterson for the woman—as in the Daniels agreement. The payments were to be made in installments.

On July 6, 2018, Bechard filed a lawsuit against Broidy, Davidson, and Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti, claiming the three had breached the agreement in relation to the cessation of the settlement payments.

Essential Consultants LLC

Essential Consultants LLC is a Delaware shell company created by Cohen in October 2016 to facilitate payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels. For many months thereafter, Cohen used the LLC for an array of business activities largely unknown to the public, with at least $4.4 million moving through the LLC between Trump's election to the presidency and January 2018. In May 2018, Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti posted a seven-page report to Twitter detailing what he said were financial transactions involving Essential Consultants and Cohen. Avenatti did not reveal the source of his information, which was later largely confirmed by The New York Times and other publications. The data showed that hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Cohen, via Essential Consultants, from Fortune 500 firms such as Novartis and AT&T, which had business before the Trump administration. It was also revealed that Essential Consultants had received at least $500,000 from a New York-based investment firm called Columbus Nova, which is linked to a Russian oligarch. The firm's largest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, a Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch. Vekselberg is a business partner of Soviet-born billionaire and major Republican Party donor, Leonard Blavatnik. A spokesperson for Columbus Nova said that the payment was a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Vekselberg.

Questions were raised about many of the payments, such as four totaling $200,000 that AT&T paid to the LLC between October 2017 and January 2018, while at the same time the proposed merger between the company and Time Warner was pending before the Justice Department. AT&T claimed that the money was paid to the LLC and other firms that were used to provide insights into understanding the new administration, and that the LLC did no legal or lobbying work for AT&T.

On May 11, 2018, the CEO of AT&T stated that in early 2017 it was approached by Cohen to provide "his opinion on the new president and his administration". Cohen was paid $600,000 ($50,000 per month) over the year, which its CEO described as "a big mistake". Novartis was also approached by Cohen and was offered similar services.

Novartis, a Switzerland–based pharmaceutical giant paid the LLC nearly $1.2 million in separate payments. Novartis released a statement May 9, 2018, that it hired the LLC to help the company understand the "health care policy" of the new administration, but it actually did not receive benefit for its investment. The statement continued that Novartis made a decision to not engage Essential Consultants further, but it could not terminate the contract for "cause", raising concerns on why the company did not pursue reimbursement.

Investigations

As of April 2018, Cohen was under federal criminal investigation by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

On April 9, 2018, the FBI raided Cohen's office at the law firm of Squire Patton Boggs, as well as his home and his hotel room in the Loews Regency Hotel in New York City, pursuant to a federal search warrant. The warrant was obtained by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the SDNY, whose public corruption unit was conducting an investigation. Seeking the warrant required high-level approval from the Department of Justice. The Interim U.S. Attorney, Geoffrey Berman, was recused. Deputy Attorney General (AG) Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray—both of whom are Trump appointees—had supervisory roles. The FBI obtained the warrant after a referral from Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, although underlying reasons for the raid were not revealed. Following the raid, Squire Patton Boggs law firm ended its formal working relationship with Cohen.

Agents seized emails, tax records, business records, and other matter related to several topics, including payments made by Cohen to Stormy Daniels, and records related to Trump's Access Hollywood controversy. Recordings of phone conversations Cohen made were also obtained. According to Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti and civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom, some of the recordings may have included participants located in California, which would make the recordings illegal, as California is a "two party consent" state.

Since Cohen is an attorney, the search included the seizure of materials normally protected by attorney–client privilege, which is subject to a crime-fraud exception if a crime is suspected. Some legal scholars opined that Trump's denial that he had knowledge of the Daniels payment, combined with denials by Cohen and his lawyer David Schwartz, meant both sides had effectively said that matter did not involve attorney–client communications. Cohen and his lawyers argued that all of the thousands of items seized during the FBI raid should be protected by attorney–client privilege and thus withheld from the prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood, appointed a special master, former federal judge Barbara S. Jones, to review all of the seized materials for attorney–client privilege. She found that only 14 of the 639 paper documents were privileged, and out of the 291,770 electronic files seized, only 148 files were withheld from the prosecution. The search warrant itself has been sealed, making it unavailable to the public. The FBI also sought documents pertaining to Cohen's ownership of taxi medallions. Cohen's taxi fleet is operated by Gene Freidman, who is facing legal trouble for alleged tax evasion.

Conviction on campaign finance, tax evasion, and other charges

In August 2018, it was reported that investigators were in the final stages of their investigation. Cohen officially surrendered to the FBI on August 21, 2018. That afternoon, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges: five counts of tax evasion; one count of making false statements to a financial institution; one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution in breach of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971; and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate (Trump) for the "principal purpose of influencing [the] election".

After Cohen's conviction, his personal lawyer Lanny Davis stated that Cohen was ready to "tell everything about Donald Trump that he knows". Davis alluded to Cohen's knowledge that could be used against Trump, and hinted that Cohen had knowledge of whether Trump knew in advance about the computer hacking that was detrimental to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, as well as knowledge of the meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. He later added that he believed Cohen would agree to testify before Congress, even without immunity.

Responding to speculation that President Trump might issue a pardon for Cohen, lawyer Davis said on NPR, "I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the oval office. And [Cohen] has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump." In his interview to Sky News, Davis said the turning point for his client's attitude toward Trump was the Helsinki summit in July 2018, which caused him to doubt Trump's loyalty to the U.S.

The New York Times reported on August 22, 2018, that Cohen court documents revealed that two senior Trump Organization executives were also involved in the hush money payments, and that Cohen "coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls" about the payments.

By mid-October 2018, Cohen had sat for at least 50 hours of interviews with Mueller's investigators and other investigators, although he had no formal cooperation agreement with prosecutors. Cohen also cooperated in a separate investigation by New York State investigators regarding the Trump Organization and Trump Foundation.

Conviction for perjury in congressional testimony

On November 29, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee in 2017 regarding the proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal that he spearheaded in 2015 and 2016. Cohen had told Congress that the deal ceased in January 2016 when it actually ended in June 2016, and that he had not received a response about the deal from the office of a senior Russian official when he actually had. Cohen said that he had given the false testimony in order to be consistent with Trump's "repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia" and out of loyalty to Trump. Cohen received a two-month sentence, to be served concurrently with his three-year sentence for tax fraud, for the false testimony.

This charge was brought directly by Robert Mueller's investigation, rather than the United States Attorney for the SDNY, who brought the previous charges against Cohen. In a sentencing memorandum filed the following day, Cohen's attorneys stated he kept Trump "apprised" of the "substantive conversation" Cohen had in January 2016 with a Russian official, and discussed with Trump traveling to Russia to advance the project during the summer of 2016. The filing also stated Cohen "remained in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel" as he prepared to provide false testimony to Congress.

According to a BuzzFeed report on January 17, 2019, which cited anonymous sources and which CNN was not able to corroborate, Trump personally directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. A spokesperson for Trump denied the Buzzfeed allegations. A spokesman for the Special Counsel investigation took the unusual step of issuing a rebuttal which stated: "BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate." CNN reporters responded by stating: "The special counsel’s office did not go into detail about which parts of the BuzzFeed story they were calling untrue. The BuzzFeed story made several other claims that remain uncorroborated by other media outlets regarding Cohen’s lies to Congress and communications with Mueller."

On February 26, 2019, Cohen was officially disbarred by the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division.

Defamation lawsuit

In 2018, Stormy Daniels sued Cohen for defamation, citing a statement he made to the media in which he said "Just because something isn't true doesn't mean that it can't cause you harm or damage." Daniels's lawsuit alleged that Cohen's comments were meant to convey that Daniels was a liar about her relationship with Trump, and that the lie caused Trump harm. The case was dismissed in 2019.

Prison and house arrest

Cohen reported to FCI Otisville, on May 6, 2019. He was released from prison early on May 21, 2020, due to concerns regarding COVID-19, in order to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest.

On July 2, 2020, Cohen was photographed dining at a Manhattan restaurant, which according to his lawyer Lanny Davis was not a violation of his prison furlough since he had not yet transitioned to house arrest. A week later, he was taken back into custody after federal officials asserted he had refused to sign an agreement stipulating that he would have no engagement of any kind with the media—including publishing his "tell-all" book—for the remainder of his sentence, which encompassed the November 2020 elections. The previous week he had announced on Twitter that he anticipated releasing a book on his experiences working for Trump in late September 2020. He also tweeted on June 26 that a recent New York Times article entitled "Inside Barr's Effort to Undermine Prosecutors in N.Y." had revealed "only a part of the full story," using the hashtag #WillSpeakSoon. After being sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, he was returned to FCI Otisville and held in solitary confinement 23 hours each day, which prevented him from working on his manuscript on prison library computers. Cohen denied he refused to sign the agreement, asserting his attorney had simply asked questions about it, at which point US marshals escorted him back to prison.

On July 20, 2020, Cohen filed suit against AG Bill Barr and two federal prison officials, asserting his First Amendment rights were being violated. Cohen claimed his return to prison was retaliation "because he is drafting a book manuscript that is critical of the President of the United States". Cohen requested he be immediately released to home confinement. The government denied on July 22 that Cohen had been re-imprisoned in an effort to block publication of his book. On July 23, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered Cohen be returned to home confinement because the government had retaliated against him and violated his First Amendment rights. Hellerstein said Cohen would be released to home confinement on July 24. Hellerstein remarked, "I've never seen such a clause in 21 years of being a judge and sentencing people and looking at terms of supervised release." One week later, the government informed Hellerstein it would not challenge his ruling and would remove the restrictive clause from Cohen's home-confinement agreement.

Cohen was released from FCI Otisville on July 24, 2020. Days later, Cohen's attorney informed Hellerstein that Cohen hoped to accept a job offer with an unnamed political action committee to consult and make media appearances on its behalf.

In New York

The Manhattan district attorney (DA) and the New York AG opened investigations into Trump. The Manhattan DA's office decided in 2022 not to pursue charges, in part because the new DA, Alvin Bragg, worried that the case relied too much on Cohen's testimony. Investigators at the Manhattan DA's office continued to speak to Cohen, interviewing him 15 times by February 2023.

These were separate from the investigation by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance which, on August 22, 2018, announced it had subpoenaed Cohen in connection with its investigation into whether the Donald J. Trump Foundation had violated New York tax laws. The department also said in October 2018 it would review allegations that Trump had evaded gift taxes in his inheritance of hundreds of millions of dollars from his father.

By U.S. Congress

On January 10, 2019, Cohen agreed to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee to give a "full and credible account" of his work on behalf of Trump. On January 12, Fox News contributor and legal analyst Jeanine Pirro took a 20-minute, on-air phone call from Trump in which he claimed Cohen had fabricated stories to reduce the length of his expected sentence. Trump suggested that investigations should instead focus on Cohen's father-in-law, saying "that's the one people want to look at". The father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, owned condos both at Trump Tower and in a Trump development near Miami. According to former federal investigators, Shusterman introduced Trump to Cohen. On several subsequent occasions Trump hinted publicly that Shusterman, or possibly Cohen's wife, could be tied to criminal activity. On January 20, Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested on CNN that Shusterman "may have ties to something called organized crime".

On January 23, Cohen announced through his attorney that he would postpone his testimony to a later date, citing "ongoing threats against his family from President Trump" and Giuliani. Some legal analysts asserted that these comments by Trump and Giuliani constituted intimidation and witness tampering. House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff said that threatening a witness's family is "textbook mob tactics".

After several scheduling delays, Cohen testified before three congressional committees in late February 2019. First was a February 26 closed-door hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He testified for more than seven hours.

Also on February 26, Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz directly threatened Cohen via Twitter, hinting about unspecified disclosures to Cohen's wife and father-in-law. The Florida Bar Association investigated the incident, but only issued a "letter of advice".

On February 27, Cohen gave 10 hours of public, televised testimony before the House Oversight Committee, during which he described Trump as a "racist," a "con man", and a "cheat", and expressed remorse and shame for the things he had done for Trump. He said the president had reimbursed him for illegal hush money payments, suggested that he should lie to Congress and the public about the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, and filed false financial statements with banks and insurance companies. Republicans hammered on his previous false testimony, asking why he should be believed now.

Disloyal: A Memoir

Cohen's memoir on Trump, Disloyal: A Memoir, was released in September 2020. In the foreword, Cohen characterizes Trump as "a cheat, a mobster, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man".

Personal life

Cohen married Ukrainian-born Laura Shusterman in 1994. They have a daughter, Samantha, and a son, Jake. Shusterman's father, Fima Shusterman, left Soviet Ukraine for New York in 1975. He was the person who introduced Cohen to Trump, according to a Trump biographer.

Cohen has been friends since childhood with Felix Sater, a Moscow-born real estate developer with links to the Russian mafia and a convicted felon. Both men worked together on the Trump Tower Moscow deal.

Cohen served as chairman of the board of directors of Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School through late 2016.

Before joining the Trump Organization, Cohen had purchased several homes in Trump's buildings. A 2017 New York Times article reported that Cohen is known for having "a penchant for luxury"; he was married at The Pierre luxury hotel, drove a Porsche while attending college, and once owned a Bentley.

In January 2019 documents that were released after the prosecution of former police officer Paul Dean revealed that Cohen, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and others had obtained handgun carry permits after making donations to the Police Athletic League or the New York City Police Foundation despite not having the proper credentials on file. Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis did not comment on the allegations against Cohen.

Cohen hosted the podcasts Mea Culpa and Political Beatdown. These were once part of the MeidasTouch Network, but MeidasTouch fired him and quit producing his podcasts on January 17, 2026.

In popular culture

As the Mueller investigation concerning Trump was in the daily news headlines, it became fodder for parody on Saturday Night Live, with Cohen being portrayed by Ben Stiller and Trump by Alec Baldwin.