Michael Cohen says New York prosecutors coerced and shaped his testimony against President Trump, alleging political ambition drove both the civil and criminal cases.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney and a key witness in multiple New York cases against the president, has accused senior Democratic prosecutors of pressuring and coercing him into giving testimony designed to secure judgments and convictions against Trump, according to a new essay he released this week. Cohen’s claims were first reported when he has sensationally accused New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of forcing his cooperation.
In the essay, Cohen describes his interactions with prosecutors from both offices during their investigations and trials involving Trump. “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 judgment and convictions against President Trump,” Cohen wrote on his Substack.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges related to facilitating hush money payments to two women on Trump’s behalf, later became a central witness in both a civil case brought by James and a criminal prosecution led by Bragg. In the 2024 criminal trial, Trump was convicted on 34 state felony counts of falsifying business records.
The essay, titled “When Politics Blind Justice,” was published Friday and outlines what Cohen characterizes as behind-the-scenes pressure during both proceedings. “There are moments when silence becomes complicity. When letting the record stand without context feels less like restraint and more like consent. This is one of those moments,” he wrote.
Cohen said his cooperation was motivated in part by the hope of leniency. “After my release, I continued to meet with prosecutors and hoped that, in exchange for my cooperation, my home confinement and later my supervised release sentence would be shortened,” he wrote. He alleges prosecutors repeatedly asked leading questions and steered his testimony to fit what he described as a predetermined narrative.
Cohen further asserted that James and Bragg pursued the cases to elevate their public profiles rather than to serve justice, a claim that circulated widely after he publicized excerpts of his essay on social media, including posts shared on X here and here.
In response to Cohen’s allegations, President Trump posted a statement on Truth Social condemning the prosecutions. “These horrible Radical Left people, doing everything possible to destroy our Country, should pay a big price for this!” Trump wrote. “It was a SET UP from the beginning. New York Courts, with many fair and wonderful Judges, are embarrassed by what has happened! We cannot let this pass.”
Trump’s legal team continues to appeal the 2024 conviction, arguing that it should be overturned in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity issued later that year.