Trump’s ‘Jewish Wingman’ Joins GOP Fundraising Team

Michael Cohen Image by Getty Images

By Josh Nathan-Kazis April 4, 2017

President Donald Trump’s bulldog lawyer Michael Cohen will serve as a deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee, the party announced.

Cohen, for years one of Trump’s most staunch and loyal defenders, remains the president’s personal lawyer. He has stepped down from his former position as an attorney at The Trump Organization.

In its announcement, the RNC listed Cohen as among a group of “longtime friends of the Party.” But Cohen has only been a member of the Republican Party since March 9, according to his Twitter feed.

The New York Times reported in February that Cohen helped facilitate a backchannel communication from a pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker to General Michael Flynn, then the National Security Adviser. The Times reported at the time that Cohen is “one of several Trump associates under scrutiny in an F.B.I. counterintelligence examination of links with Russia.”

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]

Josh Nathan-Kazis is a staff writer for the Forward. He covers charities and politics, and writes investigations and longform.

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