Trump’s counterattack: a millionaire trial against his former lawyer for revealing his “confidence”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible witch hunt being carried out by the dishonest media!” wrote the then president of the United States, donald trumpon April 21, 2018, referring to the possibility that his lawyer, Michael Cohencollaborated with the authorities investigating the so-called Russiagate, the plot according to which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential elections in favor of the Republican candidate.

LOOK: Donald Trump sues his former lawyer Michael Cohen for more than half a billion dollars

In just five years, the situation between Cohen and Trump has changed dramatically, to the point that both will face each other in US courts after the lawyer gave a confession that ended up making Trump the first president in the history of his country to face charges. criminals.

This confrontation added a new chapter on Wednesday, when the former president filed a lawsuit against his former defender, accusing him of violating the confidentiality of a lawyer with his client, and demanding the astronomical figure of 500 million dollars as reparation.

But how did these former allies get to this point?

THE FAITHFUL SQUIRE

An avowed admirer of the New York tycoon from a young age, Cohen met Trump after buying apartments in some of his buildings in the late 2000s.

The relationship between the two consolidated to the point where Cohen became not only Trump’s personal lawyer but also became vice president of the Trump Organization, receiving a salary of about $500,000 a year and basically acting as the “fixer.” of your problems.

Among his duties, Cohen was in charge of threatening journalists who snooped into the dark financial corners of the New York magnate and, of course, silencing the voices that made Trump uncomfortable.

“If someone does something that Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to solve it for the benefit (of the magnate),” Cohen acknowledged during an interview with ABC News in 2011.

“If you do something wrong, I’m going to attack you, grab you by the throat, and I won’t let you go until I’m done,” he added who came to be nicknamed Trump’s pit bull.

It was precisely his work to silence uncomfortable voices that ended up leading Cohen first to jail and then to confront his former boss.

For a decade, Cohen was Trump’s personal attorney and staunch supporter. (Reuters Agency /)

COHEN’S TESTIMONY

It was during the 2016 presidential campaign, the same one that would end up taking Trump to the White House, that Cohen did the dirty work.

For five years it had been rumored that the former star of the pornographic industry Stormy Daniels was looking for a medium to tell about the affair she had with the magnate a few months after her last child was born.

With Trump’s candidacy, the intentions of talking about Daniels would have resurfaced, so Cohen had to solve that matter. In parallel, he had a very similar problem when he found out that the former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, had a similar story.

The lawyer then arranged a meeting with the representatives of both women, ended up paying Daniels $130,000 and arranged another $150,000 for McDougal, in exchange for them keeping quiet about the alleged affairs.

The deal was closed and, although the rumors continued to run, there was no greater certainty about it until 2018.

By that point, the relationship between Trump and Cohen was already cracked, mainly because the president had decided to do without his faithful squire during his time in the White House.

The search of his house and companies also ended up twisting the will of Cohen, who admitted in August of that year that he had made the agreements with the aforementioned women.

Cohen was in charge of paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about the extramarital affair she would have had with Trump. (HECTOR RETAMAL / AFP /)

THE TRUMP LAWSUIT

Cohen’s payments to Daniels and McDougal constitute a series of crimes – or at least misdemeanors in some cases – that are currently being evaluated by US justice.

Chief among them are that campaign finance laws prohibit a person from contributing more than $2,700 to a campaign; and the other is that the state of New York prohibits the falsification of commercial records, the latter because the Trump Organization would have deposited 360 thousand dollars, and an extra bonus of 60 thousand dollars for the lawyer, registering them as “legal services”.

Cohen ended up pleading guilty to the charges against him, which also included having lied -or omitted information- during a hearing in which he was summoned to the United States Congress, and in December 2018 he was sentenced to three years in prison, although he served much of his sentence under house arrest in his luxurious Park Avenue apartment.

Cohen pleaded guilty and served a three-year sentence for various charges, including lying to the US Congress. (AFP Agency /)

In 2020, shortly before serving his sentence, Cohen published “Disloyal: A memoir,” a book in which he called Trump a “cheater, liar, fraud, bully, racist, (sexual) predator.” and scammer.”

But, at the same time, he became the key piece that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg needed to put together the case against Trump under which the former president has been charged with 34 criminal charges, an unprecedented event in history. American politics.

Faced with this process, in which Trump has pleaded not guilty and which he has described as “an insult to our country”, in addition to “a persecution and not an investigation”, the former president has charged prosecutor Bragg, Judge Juan Manuel Merchan – whom he points out as “hating” him – and now against Cohen.

On Wednesday, Trump sued his former lawyer for violating his attorney-client relationship by revealing his “confidences” and “spreading falsehoods” in books, podcasts and media appearances.

In the document presented before a federal court in Florida, the ex-president demands a compensation of 500 million dollars.

Source: Elcomercio