Michael Cohen Wants Trump To Pay His Legal Fees — They’re ‘Bankrupting’ Him
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and longtime fixer, has complained to friends about his growing legal fees, lamenting his frustration over his former boss not paying them off, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Cohen is currently under investigation for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations, related to a $130,000 payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels as hush money to keep secret her alleged affair with Trump just weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen has reportedly said that he feels the legal debts are “bankrupting” him and that Trump owes him for his years of service, unnamed associates told the Journal.
Several people said Cohen has hired a new lawyer as his case enters a critical phase, according to a story in HuffPost. The new attorney, Guy Petrillo, is a former chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
Cohen has also told friends that he’s “willing” to give investigators information on Trump under the right circumstances; one said that Cohen “feels let down” by the president.
But, the Journal reported that Cohen has, at times, told his confidantes that he’d rather “eat a bullet” than work with investigators.
Until January, the Trump campaign paid for some of Cohen’s legal bills. Those payments were only related to his legal representation as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian interference in the last presidential election, according to the Journal.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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