Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Michael Cohen Says Legal Woes Are Ruining His Family’s Life

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, is struggling to go about his life as usual in the month since a dozen federal agents raided his home, office, and hotel room, Vanity Fair reported.

Cohen, who is under investigation over his $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump, is reportedly most distraught over the impact on his family.

“I live for my wife and my kids,” Cohen told friends, according to Vanity Fair. “I’d die for my wife and my kids. And this is all ruining their lives.”

An NBC News report on Thursday inaccurately claiming that the government had wiretapped Cohen’s phone — which the network corrected later that day — was particularly difficult on his children.

While Cohen once said he would take a bullet for the president, the sudden spotlight has taken a toll on him as well. Cohen told friends that he and his wife have lost a collective 20 pounds since the raids.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s new lawyer, told ABC News on Sunday that he expects Cohen to cooperate with authorities, though he does not think they will find what they are looking for because, as he said it, Cohen does not have “any incriminating evidence.” He also said that a pardon “obviously is not on the table,” though he added “that’s not a decision to be made now; there’s no reason to pardon anybody now.”

“None of this is normal, but he’s trying to keep it as normal as he can,” a friend of Cohen’s told Vanity Fair.

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.