Michael Cohen, former attorney for former U.S. President Donald Trump, is leaving his New York City apartment in Manhattan, New York, March 10, 2021.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters
Senior officials in the Manhattan district attorney’s office this week asked ex-President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to return for what would be his eighth interview with the office, which is conducting a wide-ranging criminal investigation into the Trump campaign. organization.
A person familiar with the case said that Cohen, while being questioned for the seventh time by officials via video conference earlier this week, was asked to make himself available for a face-to-face interview shortly in DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office.
Cohen, who is now a recognized enemy of Trump, agreed to do so, the source said.
Cohen declined to comment on CNBC, as did Vance’s spokesperson, Danny Frost. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The interest in talking to Cohen comes repeatedly because Vance has bolstered his investigative team, recently gained access to Trump’s financial records, and reportedly expanded the scope of his investigation to look at longtime Trump chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and the sons of Weisselberg.
One of those sons works for the Trump Organization and runs the company’s ice rinks in Central Park. The other works for Ladder Capital Finance, a company that has lent Trump’s company nearly $ 300 million in connection with four buildings in Manhattan. Vance is known to monitor how the Trump Organization valued its buildings.
Those developments, as well as Vance’s much-anticipated announcement Friday that he will not be pursuing reelection this fall, have fueled speculation that the prosecutor will try to sue Trump or officials of his company in the coming months.
Vance’s investigation originally focused on how the Trump organization accounted for hush money payments Cohen made or facilitated to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen, when he pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other crimes in 2018, told a federal judge that he arranged those payments on behalf of Trump to keep the women quiet about their allegations of sex with Trump. The former president has denied the women’s claims.
Cohen later testified before Congress that the Trump Organization would inflate and deflate property values in order to obtain favorable loan and insurance terms, or reduce the amount of taxes owed on them.
Cohen’s allegations are now being looked at in both Vance’s investigation and a civil investigation by Attorney General Letitia James.
Court documents by Vance suggest that his investigation is looking into possible “insurance and banking fraud by the Trump Organization and its officials,” as well as possible tax crimes.
Vance last month recruited Mark Pomerantz, an administrative criminal defense attorney in private practice, as a special assistant district attorney for the sole purpose of working on the Trump investigation.
Among other things, Pomerantz served as chief of the criminal division of the United States Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, overseeing securities fraud and organized crime cases.
Pomerantz was one of the researchers who spoke to Cohen during the video call this week. Also on that call were Vance and other top officials in the office.
The district attorney’s office also retained the FTI consulting firm to analyze Trump’s financial records.
In February, just after Pomerantz’s recruitment, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to prevent Vance from getting his tax returns and other financial records from his old accountants through a grand jury summons.
Investigators promptly obtained those documents.
Cohen began collaborating with Vance’s investigation in 2018, before being sentenced to three years in prison for his crimes in 2019.
Investigators from the district attorney’s office visited him at the federal prison in Otisville, New York.
Cohen was released from prison last May because he feared he was at particular risk for Covid-19 due to multiple health issues.
He was jailed again in July after bombing at the request of federal probation officers not to publish a book about Trump or anyone else, while he is serving the remainder of the term in house arrest.
Cohen was released again about two weeks later after an outraged federal judge said he had been the victim of retaliation by the Bureau of Prisons for failing to meet that condition. Cohen later published his book on Trump entitled “Disloyal”.
Since then, Cohen has collaborated not only on Vance’s investigations, but also a podcast, Mea Culpa, whose guests have included fellow Trump critics such as Daniels, the porn actress, and Rosie O’Donnell.
Audio Up, which produces the podcast, hailed it Friday as “the fastest growing podcast in the world,” with “5 million downloads.”