In yet another scandal to emerge regarding the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Michael Cohen, a former personal attorney for President Donald Trump who played a key role as a key witness in both the controversial criminal “hush money” case brought by Bragg and the similarly controversial fraud case brought by James, has revealed he was “pressured and coerced” to testify against President Trump.
As background, Cohen was the key witness in Alvin Bragg’s 2024 hush money case against President Trump, in which he alleged that the president falsified business records related to payments he made to Stormy Daniels to, during the 2016 election, silence her claims of his alleged affair with her.
Cohen, during that case, was the one who testified about the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, saying that Trump directly instructed him to handle it. Further, he testified, in an attempt to add credence to the idea that the payment was a campaign expenditure rather than a business expense, that the payoff had been made “to ensure the story would not come out, would not affect Mr. Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States.”
Further, Cohen testified about the business practices of the president and his organization during the civil fraud case that Letitia James brought against the president, helping Letitia James support her claim that the Trump Organization had inflated asset values to secure better loan terms.
Cohen has since revealed that he made his testimony not because he thought it was the right thing to do, but because he was “pressured and coerced” into the testimony by both DA Bragg and AG James, saying that they pushed him into making claims on the witness stand that would help them attack the then-former president in court.
“From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump,” the former attorney wrote.
That wasn’t all. He also claimed that when his honest answers about the then-former president were insufficiently indicting, he was then pressured to give answers that would push the exact story they wanted him to, saying they used “inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative.” He added, “I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking.”
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And, commenting on why he is speaking out, the former Trump attorney said, “You may reasonably ask why I am speaking out now. The answer is simple. I have witnessed firsthand the damage done when prosecutors pick their target first and then seek evidence to fit a predetermined narrative. I have lived inside that process. I have suffered from that process. My family has suffered from that process. And as courts now reconsider where the Bragg and James cases belong, how they were brought and how they were tried; that experience is relevant. More today than ever before.”
Watch Letitia James freak out over the charges she is facing here: