Speaker 1: It's great to have.
Back on the program today, Michael Cohen, former personal attorney to Donald Trump,
also host of the May Culpa podcast and author of the forthcoming book Revenge How Donald
Trump Weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice Against His Critics.
It's out on October 11th and you can preorder it already on Amazon.
Michael, great having you on.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Good to see you, David.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I don't.
Speaker 3: Really by the way, just to let you know, you can actually preorder a signed
copy, a limited edition, signed copy.
If you go to revenge hyphen the book dotcom.
Speaker 1: Revenge hyphen the book dot com for signed copies.
Beautiful.
There are at least four investigations right now into the former president.
You've got the New York finance investigation, the Mar a Lago document scandal.
You've got January 6th and then you have the Georgia election results.
Given your knowledge of Donald Trump, is he genuinely rattled by this stuff or does he
think he's just sort of, you know, invulnerable?
Speaker 3: Well, this unfortunately, I can't give you the answer to that one, because Donald
is a narcissistic sociopath.
So how he expresses himself as it relates to any one specific issue.
It's very hard to get into his head from his body language.
I can tell you that this that this Mar-A-Lago read really got to him.
But so did the Tish James lawsuit that is now confronting him because that attacks his
you know, his ego.
It attacks what basically he's lived for his whole life, which is to be able to impress
upon others how rich he is and this 220 page indictment.
It negates all of that by simply showing that he's really nothing more than just a petty
con man.
Speaker 1: You explained during your testimony under oath years ago, I don't even remember
now exactly when it was.
It's all kind of been a blur.
But you explained this strategy of claiming that an asset is worth more if you want to
use it as collateral for a loan, but claiming that the very same asset is worth less if
you're trying to reduce your property taxes that that you owe.
How explicit was that strategy when you were Trump's personal attorney?
Was it openly discussed?
Speaker 3: So as I explained and I'd be I think you're referring to the 2018 testimony
before the House Oversight Committee with the late great Elijah Cummings.
God rest his soul.
Every year.
Allen Weisselberg and I would be called into Donald's office, at which point in time Donald
would say, after looking through the personal financial statement of the year before, how
much more money he believes that he is worth and how he wants the personal financial statement
to reflect that.
Now, one of the things was.
The reason why he was doing it.
And the initial reason was for Forbes magazine.
He is obsessed with being on that Forbes 400 list, but he didn't want to just be on the
list.
He, of course, wanted to be as high on the list as he possibly could.
And so, for example, in 2012, like he would say, I, you know, I'm not worth as in 2011,
$4 billion.
I'm actually worth six and a half.
And then the year after, he would say, I'm worth eight.
No, in fact, I'm worth nine.
And then it would go on and on like this.
And these are random numbers that Donald would just create in his head simply because he
would say the real estate market is good this year, meaning that my assets are worth more.
Well, again, one of the things that he testified to in the Tim O'Brien case was that appraisals
to him don't really mean anything.
It's all what he believes the value of the price to be.
It's selective pricing, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And so what's interesting about that is if he is just sort of deluded about
what these properties at Worth are worth, it's less overtly criminal in a sense, right?
Because he's not saying, I don't believe that this is the value.
He's deluded into thinking that it is.
Speaker 3: And I don't think so.
What happens is that he may be he may be deluded into the total net worth, but as we would
sit there, for example, the famous case of his triplex apartment and I don't care how
deluded you are in your mind, you know, that your house in this case, the triplex apartment
is not 33,000 square feet.
How do you know such a crazy thing?
Because you live there.
Not only in his case does he live there.
He actually built it.
So imagine you're building a house in whatever city state you know, that you live in.
And somebody comes over and said, oh, did you just build a house?
Yeah, you just built it.
And then you tell them it's 33,000 square feet when in fact it's 10,800 and change.
Clearly it's a lie.
Then on top of that, not only as the developer, not only as the owner, not only as the person
whose name is on the building, you know that no property has ever traded, not just in that
building, but anywhere in New York City for that price per square foot.
Coming up with, what, a $370 million valuation on his apartment.
That's not delusional, right?
That's a liar.
Speaker 1: That's fair.
That's fair.
One of.
Speaker 3: The things.
Thank you for saying that, David.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Donald Trump mentioned after the pictures were released
from the search warrant that was served at Mar a Lago was, you know, the pictures make
it look like my office is a mess and my office is not really a mess.
However, there are older pictures of Trump's office where there are, you know, books and
and papers stacked all over the place.
And it does sort of seem like a mess.
Was it typical that the offices were a mess?
Speaker 3: No.
In fact, his office was extremely it was extremely clean and organized.
There were times that his desk would have papers cluttered on it, but.
Remember something.
I'm talking about Trump Tower on the 26th floor.
What he would do is he would have stacks of magazines and papers in the front of the desk
whereby, of course, your chair, if you were in a meeting with him, would be that and those
magazines would have covers of him on it or articles of him.
And if you were, let's say, David Pakman comes in to Donald Trump for whatever the reason
might be, you could sometimes end up leaving with a little bag full of magazines and newspaper
clippings and, you know, a little piece of a silver or a gold trump chocolate bar, things
like that.
I mean, you walk out, they think that this was some sort of a carnival, that people are
ending things or a job fair.
That's really what it would look like.
But for the most part, his desk was rather organized.
Now, when the FBI raided Mar a Lago, what you looking at is the office, which is above
the catering hall, and all of these documents are on the floor.
I believe that they were placed on the floor by the FBI for the paper that they could so
that they could photograph it.
When the FBI raided my hotel room.
It was funny.
My wife had several thousand dollars that she had collected for, you know, from the
real, real on items that she had sold.
And she would do it so that she wouldn't have to tell me to buy it.
And it was in the safe with her money.
And in fact, on the envelope it said real, real money so she would know what she was
getting.
They sent it out.
It was something like $6,000 or something like that.
They figured it out like they just raided and found Escobar's billions.
And, you know, this is this is what they do.
But I do have to say that when they came in, they were professional.
They were respectful.
They did not destroy the place.
They they were they did their job and they did it the right way.
And I suspect that they did the same thing at Mar a Lago.
Now, why did they lay it out on the floor again?
Maybe it was just so that they could take the picture, but we have to thank them for
taking those pictures.
And the reason I say that is we see that there are dozens of top secret file folders.
And now we know that many of those file folders were empty right now.
Rest assured, he wasn't taking those folders so that he could make menus out of them for
Mar a Lago, you know, for their lunches and dinners.
There must have been documents in there.
And we know some of those documents were really top secret eyes only on the person who wrote
it, nuclear secrets about whether it's our adversary and our ally.
So we have to really thank them for doing their job professionally.
I'm sure it wasn't easy to go in and raid the home of the former president of the United
States.
But they they did what they needed to do.
Speaker 1: Without a doubt.
Without a doubt.
Speaking of representation in that matter and the others, what do you make of the lawyers
that show up on TV as Trump's lawyer like Eliana Haba and Christina Bobb, for example?
This is a very different cadre of lawyers than the folks that were photographed showing
up in court the other day.
Is it just that Trump says, Hey, I like the way that these women look, let's hire them
and make them more like a PR type.
People that talk for me on TV, but they're not actually representing me before a court.
Is it as simple as that?
Speaker 3: Well, that's not true, by the way.
So the answer is the visuals for him are extremely important, and he believes that it also gives
him a sense of strength and masculinity.
He's a very complex individual, a lean.
How about does go to court?
Oh, she does.
She's representing Donald in a lawsuit that I currently have against the United States
government, against the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Bill Barr, for the unconstitutional
remand of me back to Otis Ville because I refused to waive my First Amendment constitutional
right.
Speaker 1: So maybe what she meant, Michael, just to clarify, is she was not representing
him in court in the particular matter she was being interviewed about.
Maybe that's what she meant.
Speaker 3: That's that's correct.
Okay.
Just makes she just makes her statements.
I find her to be as unqualified in court as she is on television.
And the same thing goes with Bob, who I think is somewhat brighter than Elina in the fact
that she doesn't always open up her mouth and say what Donald wants her to say.
That's a.
Real problem.
However, what Bob did is she signed a document that the government, of course, is in possession
of that claimed that Donald is not in possession and that she has must have made some sort
of a thorough check.
But based upon the statements of her client, she signed an affidavit that no additional
documents exist in the possession of Trump at Mar a Lago.
And that's clearly a lie.
So is she in trouble for it?
She certainly could be.
I mean, it's a perjury charge.
But look at what Donald does.
It's who's going to be the next fool, who's going to be the next Michael Cohen fool to
fall on the sword for this orange crusted Mandarin Mussolini who doesn't care about
anyone.
And so you begin to see these various lawyers, especially the competent ones, walk away.
And they walk away for two reasons.
Because Trump strategy only benefits Trump, even if it hurts the lawyer.
And worse than that, he doesn't tell them the truth.
Let me make a third one.
He also doesn't pay.
Yeah.
Other than this recent one who took the money up front and good for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Save America PAC of reportedly paid something like 3.8 million to a West Palm Beach firm
in the last couple of months.
So it seems like now lawyers are demanding money upfront, which seems very, very smart.
Michael, if you had to handicap all of the different investigations going on right now,
which is the most likely to actually lead to charges?
Speaker 3: Well, we already know that the test, James case is the one that is the most
active and the most upfront.
Next up, this is like a ballgame.
Right.
Next up is the district attorney's case here in New York whereby Allen Weisselberg has
already pled guilty to various criminal charges, but they have intelligently held off in the
sentencing of his case post his testimony against the Trump Organization.
Now, let me just reiterate for your listeners that the Tish James case is a civil case.
This is the case that will ultimately wipe them out financially and again, in the 220
plus page document.
One of the things that Tish James puts in there is that her baseline number was 250
million.
And I want to draw people's attention to the word baseline.
That is not the that is not the cap.
That is the baseline.
Knowing the documents that they used and knowing the case as well as I do, I suspect the number
would be closer to 750 million to 1000000000.
That's what I think she will ultimately go after.
Now, the district attorney, the case that was originally brought by Cyrus Vance Junior,
now inherited by Alvin.
Brad, that's a criminal matter.
And that criminal matter is, as Weisselberg would like you to believe, is against the
Trump Organization.
How do you separate Donald Trump out from the Trump Organization, his eponymous company?
You cannot.
Let me just say one last thing that Tish James has already referred certain parts of that
220 page document on tax evasion to the IRS and to the DOJ.
So everything is beginning to come full circle.
I mean, I know that we always say that the wheels of justice, unless you.
Michael Cohen, that's a 48 hour ordeal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was quick turn slowly.
Speaker 3: But ultimately it does come full circle.
Speaker 1: In the book you write about, I mean, as the as the full title of the book
suggests, the use of the Department of Justice essentially as a as a tool, as an intimidation
tool, and as a weapon against those who criticized Donald Trump.
How much further did he want the DOJ to go?
And the DOJ was unwilling to do it because he made way more requests than they actually
agreed to, didn't they?
Speaker 3: Yes, they did.
Now, in my specific case, Jeffrey Berman just came out with a book.
And again, I have no regard for him or his book.
So I want to be clear about that.
I think Jeffrey Berman, his actions are either one of two things, unethical or illegal.
Donald Trump through Bill Barr.
Placed pressure on the Southern District of New York, the Department of Justice, to expunge
his name from anything related to the actions, the claims that were brought against me initially
that I ultimately pled guilty to.
And my book Revenge How Donald Trump Weaponized the United States Department of Justice against
His Critics.
It really takes a deep dove into everything.
And Geoffrey Berman is, of course, named in my book as well.
But what it does.
What Jeffrey Berman's book does is it validates everything that I say in my book.
It shows that Donald Trump's goal was to use the Department of Justice as his own private
law firm, his own private IT squad to go against people that he didn't like myself.
People like James Comey and, you know, and others.
Speaker 1: The book is an extraordinary exposé of Moore, as you say, the inner workings of
how all this was done.
The book is out on October 11th, but it is available for preorder now as well as signed
at preorder.
We've been speaking with Michael Cohen, the book's author.
And again, the book is Revenge How Donald Trump Weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice
Against His Critics.
Michael, always great having you on and best of luck with the book release.
Speaker 3: Thanks, David.
I will speak to you soon.