President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, says he is “not interested” in one presidential pardon – and claims that Mr Trump will face legal troubles soon after his departure from the White House.
“It has to do with his finances, it has to do with his tax returns, it has to do with his properties, it has to do with the personal financial statements he made and provided to get loans,” Cohen said. on CBSN Thursday.
A number of studies could cause legal trouble for Mr. Trump after he left office in January, including possible congressional investigations and investigations by the attorneys general of New York and Washington, DC and the Manhattan district attorney.
Cohen said he had been questioned by the attorney general’s team and the district attorney’s office and claimed the investigators are “well prepared” with their evidence to “act relatively quickly” in their investigations.
“I really believe there is an increasing body of evidence that they will be prosecuted,” Cohen said. “Some of it is civil, of course, and other parts are criminal.”
Cohen pleaded guilty to charges against him in 2018 fraud, campaign violations and lie to Congress and was sentenced to 3 years in prison. He got permission home confinement because of the pandemic earlier this year. President Trump has repeatedly identified Cohen as one known liar, but Cohen says he has documents to back up his claims.
There is currently only one publicly known research that could lead to criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump, led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. It initially focused on hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, but Vance’s office has since indicated in lawsuits that it has expanded to look at potential crimes as widespread as fraud and tax evasion.
However, the timeline of Vance’s investigation is unclear. His seat is up for grabs in 2021, and the case is unlikely to be resolved until a new prosecutor is in office.
Cohen declined to comment on the details of what he told the investigators, but said “I know what they are looking for” and claimed that they have already built up a “multitude of evidence.”
When asked about the president’s mindset, Cohen, who worked for years as Mr. Trump’s ‘fixer’ to their public divide, said: Joe Biden will be sworn in, and that’s when there will be a plethora of lawsuits and subpoenas flying around that he has no control over. ‘
Cohen admitted to lying to the president to cover up what he now calls Mr. Trump’s “dirty deeds”.
“When I started to realize that I was being used by Trump and the administration as his scapegoat, I didn’t want to be remembered in history as the villain of Donald Trump’s story,” Cohen said on CBSN.
in contrast to Mr. Trump’s employees Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Michael FlynnAmong other things, Cohen has not been pardoned by the president – and he “did not expect one”.
“I truly believe that those who accepted Trump’s filth will have the stench of corruption after their names and the names of their families for decades to come,” he said. “It’s just another outrageous Trump act.”
The president began promulgating various pardon and surrender arrangements on Wednesday evening. Among the first was Flynn, who previously served briefly as a national security adviser plead guilty to lie to the FBI, and former Trump campaign executive George Papadopoulos. Pardons for Stone and Manafort were announced the following evening.
All four of those Trump allies, such as Cohen, were charged on allegations stemming from the Mueller investigation.
Graham Kates contributed to the reporting.