The Fixer: Inside Loyalty, Power, and Prison

Welcome back to the Fairfax Files. Our next conversation is going to get interesting, so let's welcome our guest who doesn't really need much of an introduction, but I'm going to give him one anyhow. He was once known as the man who'd do anything to protect Donald Trump, his personal attorney, his fixer, the guy who made problems, not people, but problems, disappear. Then he became the man who helped bring some of those very same secrets into the light, testifying before Congress, cooperating with federal prosecutors, and eventually serving time in federal prison for it. One thing's for sure, nobody can say he doesn't know what really happens behind closed doors in American politics and power. He's written best selling books, hosts his own podcast, and has become one of the most talked about and most polarizing voices in political media today. Michael Cohen, thank you for joining us today in the Fairfax Files. It's good to see you.

Last time I think you saw me, I had jet black hair.

Indeed. Although I tell you, I like this look. It's a very mature look. It's, you got that movie star sort of quality about you.

Well, there you have it.

Yeah. So look, you've had your ups and downs over the last 10 years.

You're being kind.

Being kind. What keeps you awake at night right now?

Everything. I'm so concerned for my children and for the future generations of this country. There's so much taking place right now every single day. The chaos. And when I talk about chaos, I'm talking about chaos from both extremes of the aisle. You know, I don't limit it. And it caused me more angst and more chaos in my own personal life. But the far left who despise me probably even more than the far right, which I find both comical and disturbing.

Are you suggesting that the middle don't despise you?

Correct. I call the middle, actually, which I'm going to be talking about a lot on my upcoming radio show on WABC 77 called when youn Know, you Know.

And this starts this Sunday.

This Sunday at 5pm.

And you're doing a podcast as well.

That's going to come after it. That's for Monday. Called when youn Know, you know, unleashed, Completely unfiltered, which is my way. It's our New York way, E for explicit, where the FTC is not going to end up finding John Katsamentides and wabc, you know, because John can afford the fines. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of have a foul mouth and each and every fine starts adding up. So I promised John that I would behave. But what keeps me the most secured is that center. And I call us all the tired majority. We're tired of the nonsense to the left. Everything Trump does is the absolute worst. You can attack him if he breathes. If Donald Trump, according to the far left, created the cure for cancer, they would turn around and attack him. But you didn't come up with the cure for the common cold. And then there's the far, far right. Nothing that he does is wrong. They agree with anything and everything you said, which kind of reminds me of like Ed Koch, our famous old mayor. Ed Koch.

Yeah. How am I doing today? Remember?

I sure do. But I also remember and I quote it all the time. If you agree with me 6 out of 12 times, you should support me. If you agree with me 12 out of 12 times, you should seek a psychiatrist. Nobody should agree with Donald Trump. 12 out of 12 times. In fact, when I used to work across the street from this studio on the 26th floor, just feet away from Trump's office, probably in his office, I don't know, 90% of the time that I was there with him, we used to engage in a multitude of conversations. Trump actually likes people who don't agree with every single thing he says. He's not looking for yes men. I know a lot of people think that. He does. He doesn't. He wants your honest opinion so that he can make an evaluation based upon his gut instinct, his knee jerk reaction, and then couple it, if he wants to, with what your advice is. Especially if he trusted you as he did me.

I want to give him a shout out because while you were giving him that advice at Trump Tower, I was living in Trump Tower residences for seven years. And he builds the best buildings and runs the best.

The management is fantastic. The management is fantastic. I was an owner, which I still live in a Trump building, but I was an owner in multiple Trump properties from Trump World Tower to Trump Palace, Trump Park Avenue. You know, I agree with you. They are always. Matt Calamari, the chief operating officer, does an amazing job.

His former bodyguard. He started out as a bodyguard.

Trump does that a lot. He takes people who you would never expect to rise to the level. And you know where he met Matt Calamari?

I have no idea.

At the US Open, Matt was security. At the US Open, two guys wouldn't stop. They kept screaming and yelling. Matt went over, took the two, banged their heads together. Trump was like, I like this guy. Hired him as his security, his personal bodyguard, and then ultimately saw Matt's a whole lot smarter than being a bodyguard. He has innate instincts that Trump liked other than the fact he took two guys and banged their heads together. And he ultimately became the COO and still is.

Trump, like every human being, has moods, good days, bad days.

Not me, of course not. I'm always in a bad mood.

Of course. So what's the best way to give him advice when he's in a bad mood?

Carefully, carefully. He actually accepts the contrarian advice. Again, people don't understand Trump, which is what? When you know, you know is all about. When I watch, for example, these pundits on television who sit there and they talk about, well, Donald Trump, this. No, you're absolutely 100% wrong. They all think. They're all television psychiatrists. It's all become now opinion television. They have no knowledge of Donald Trump. They've never spent five minutes with him. They don't understand the true Donald Trump. I write about it in my substack all the time. I talk about on my YouTube channel. I mean, I've had major, major success with this. But over the course of time as I sit there, and it's not defense of Trump, it's being factually accurate. And the far left has no interest in accuracy. All they want is dangerous, dopamine, rage, hate. Because the more that you dopamine rage, hate to them, the more they subscribe to you, they click, they compensate you for it. That's what they want. But that group is really small. They don't realize how inconsequential they are. They're insignificant. Their numbers are so small, by the way, it's almost like maga. The numbers are relatively small. As far as the voting bloc is concerned, it's us, the tired majority, that constitute, you know, that 54% of Americans now don't even ascribe to either Republican or Democratic Party. They are registered independents. And there's a reason why. Because like I talk about on my will be talking about on my WABC show, we're tired. It's the tired majority that I want to speak to.

It's interesting you say that because when you think about it, you know, we've had debates over whether there should be a third party. Third parties have never been successful in our country. But if someone were able to organize the independence. Watch out. I want to go back. I asked you what keeps you awake. You talked about your children.

You worry about them. What About Generation Z? 38% of Generation Z young folks don't believe that patriotism is important.

How scary is that it's almost as scary as what I'm watching taking place here in New York, in Colorado and elsewhere with this democratic socialism movement? I'm petrified of it, to be honest with you. I think that they are radical. I don't think they'll last. I believe they will ultimately fail, just as the Tea Party failed. But unfortunately, when you have Gen Z who want things for free. You know, my father used to always say, nothing comes for free. There's no free lunch in this world.

We're going to have free buses here eventually. Right?

Good luck. You know, years ago, Governor Pataky put me onto the board of the mta. I was on the Inspector General's management Advisory Board. Sounds very impressive. It was nonsensical. But I can tell you the MTA is a combination of ownership of New York and New Jersey. So are you now going to, as mayor of New York, think that you're going to be able to dictate to New Jersey whether or not because it gets shared as part of the Port Authority? That's not how it works. How about, for example, free groceries? They're going to now open up a grocery store. Here's something that you know as well as I. Any time government gets involved in private industry, what happens?

It fails.

It fails because of theft, waste.

But the difference is, if private industry fails, it goes out of business.

Correct.

The government fails. They just throw more money at it.

And they throw more money at by overtaxing you. I mean, New York, right? New York City. I live here. City, state, and federal taxes, we're taxed to the nth, to the teeth. And yet every time they screw up.

So you're now paying your taxes?

I've always paid my taxes. By the way, if you want to talk about that, you know I pledge to five counts of tax evasion.

You know, I've never filed a late tax return in my entire life. Except for that one time in 2017. I've never been audited. I've never received a letter from the irs. Now, I acknowledge that there was about hiding revenue. There was no hiding of revenue. That's not what it was about at all. Here's the scenario, and you tell me what you would do for four and a half months after the raid. We called my lawyer and I called the prosecutors every day. What's this case about? Do you want Michael to come in? Queen for a day, the whole nine yards. We're not ready to speak to him. Four and a half months later, I was going nuts. Said to My lawyer. You got to reach them. He was the former head of the criminal division for the Southern District of New York. You would think he had all the ability within which to get a meeting. No, finally, finally, after sending an email to them, a letter, they said, fine. That was on a Thursday. You have till tomorrow to come in and to meet with us. All of a sudden everything is rushed. You have till tomorrow. Okay. So he goes, let me speak to my client. No, no, no, he's not invited to the meeting. Unusual, right? I thought so. He said, at least we'll get some understanding of what they want. Great. He meets with these two numbnuts, this guy, Tom McKay and Nicholas Roos, the two prosecutors. He calls me up at 5:30pm on that Friday. I was with a buddy of mine who had just had Achilles surgery. He hurt himself playing tennis and we went there, my wife and I, to have dinner with him. I get a phone call at 5.30pm you have till Monday to come in to plead guilty of the filing an 80 page indictment that, that includes your wife. I said, on what? He goes, they want to hit you with tax evasion, with HELOC violation and some other stuff. I said, what tax evasion? I've paid millions in taxes over the years. My CPA, my tax return's like 1800 plus pages long. I had a CPA, whatever the CPA told me to pay, I paid my books because I'm obsessive compulsive. I can show them to you. My books are in. My tax documents are in a three ring binder tabulated by account in descending order. Even the IRS agent, when he saw it from the federal side saw it. He said, do you really do this?

Now? I'm getting the impression that as a kid you kept your baseball cards in a plastic wrapper.

I never opened them. I have them to this day.

That makes sense.

Yeah, I still have my comic books. Plastic.

I really wasn't going to get into the criminal charges.

How did you know that? You didn't just guess that?

No, because I know you're compulsive of substance. You just told me. So I figured that.

I have every baseball card tops. Baseball card from like 1978.

And how many Spaldings do you still have?

Oh, you mean the tennis balls?

No, I'm talking about stickballs. Oh, no, you're from Brooklyn. You need.

I moved out of Brooklyn when I was two years old. Moved to the five.

Yeah, they had stick. Had a lot of.

We did, actually, we didn't play stickball as much as we played asses up and so we used the same ball. Right. Well, asses up was more like it.

Yeah. So, look, but what? I want to go back to your childhood. When did you decide you wanted to become a lawyer?

I didn't. I wanted to go to Wall Street. My grandmother was insistent that I go to law school.

And I said, and you can't say no to your grandmother.

Everyone in my family is either a doctor or a lawyer. And I tried going pre med, but

I didn't imagine the arguments.

You had no idea. That's why half the family doesn't talk to each other. I have three siblings. They're all lawyers. My father is a head and neck reconstructive surgeon. My mom is a surgical nurse. My mom's two brothers. One was a doctor, the other one just passed away. He was a lawyer. Their kids are all doctors and lawyers. My cousin's in Toronto. Are all doctors and lawyers married to doctors and lawyers? My sister, who's a lawyer, is married to an orthopedic surgeon.

Given what happened to you, are you sorry you didn't go through medical school?

Damn straight. I yell at my grandmother all the time. She doesn't talk back to me anymore, but.

So she told you to go to law school?

Demanded it.

Where'd you go to law school?

I was Michigan State, a place called Eastern Michigan.

And was there a course in law school called Fixer 101?

No. No, that. I've always been good at that, at resolving problems.

What's your definition of a fixer? Is it like Ray Donovan?

Do you know I was supposed to be in an episode of Ray Donovan. I got a phone call from Brian Zurif, who's the creator of Ray Donovan. He goes, I wrote an entire script around you. And he goes, it's the funniest script. You're going to love it. Unfortunately, I was going before the judge on this matter, and my lawyer turned and said, I, I don't think that that's going to actually inure to your benefit. And so I was like, yeah, but I want to be in Ray Donovan. Ray Donovan was having problems and he needed a fixer. And so, lo and behold, who does he come to in New York? Remember, they did the whole season in New York, Me. And so on.

So what's your definition of a fixer?

Somebody who can think out of the box, who can resolve issues to the benefit of the person who needs it.

With or without consequences?

I never thought about the consequences.

But you went to law school. They taught you to think about Consequences?

Did you miss that class?

Probably. Well, in fact, I don't think I've ever missed a class in law school or in college for that matter either.

Obsessive compulsive.

Sure. The problem with what you're asking in terms of consequences depending upon the individual, sometimes you step over the line. Most times you don't. You come up to the line. I don't believe that my case should have been prosecuted. I never received a letter. You know, if you have an issue with your taxes, I acknowledge that there was a mistake in the taxes, which, by the way, I paid before sentencing was 1.3 million. I had the money in the bank. It wasn't like I took anybody's money. I paid it before sentencing. Got no credit for that either. 0. Depending upon the client. You bring yourself right up to that line and sometimes you step a little bit over it. But my case was very, very different. I never would have pled but for the fact they threatened to indict my wife. I'm married 31 years to the same woman. There was no chance. I said, fine, I'll see you on Monday. They're like, we'll send a car for you. I said, go to hell. I'll show up on my own. They're like, no, no, we're going to send somebody. I'm like, sure you will. I jumped into a cab and I went down to the courthouse, 500 Pearl Street. They were like, we told you. I said, don't speak to me like that. I said, I'm not here because I did something. I've never received even a letter saying, Mr. Cohen, there's a problem with your taxes. Please bring your tax advisor or a lawyer to it. I was never afraid. The same opportunities that everybody else was afforded in order to resolve a tax case. I'm a first time offender.

Was the tax case really a way to get you to testify in the Stormy Daniels?

No, I believe it was to put as much pressure on me as possible to go after Trump. They never wanted me. The hell am I? Let's be serious about this. Who am I? Lawyer. One of a Trump soldier, so to speak. Right. I was with the man for almost a decade and a half. As close to him as any two people.

How did you meet him in the first place?

Don Jr. Actually invited me. Don was building my apartment and they had an issue, a problem over at Trump World Tower with the board. He asked me if I can help to resolve it. I did. He sort of liked my style. It's Aggressive. Then again people say, yeah, but look at all the bad things that you did. Wait, hold on a second. How do you know I did anything bad? Right. Because I was a sharp elbowed lawyer. Because I'm a little bit better than the next guy. Right. You have a legal issue. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to hire the worst lawyer that I can find. Pay him to lose. Right. When you bring a lawyer on, the goal is to win. Am I not right about that?

Of course it is.

Trump. That's what Trump liked with me because we managed to win a lot.

What didn't he like about you?

I don't know. We have to ask him that. I think we'll have to ask him that.

Will you ask him that? Of course I will. And then I'm going to have to invite you back to talk about that.

Be my pleasure.

You spent a little time in prison? I did in.

I got a six year sentence. Three years in three. Three is supervised release, minimum security. Yes.

Tell me about that experience.

Terrible.

By the way, did you find God?

No. What I found was a lot of very good people sent me books. I had a chance. I'm a voracious reader as well. It's the OCD. I read 97 books in my 13 months of being there. I will say, did you meet anyone interesting? A lot of people. I read a lot of very interesting people.

You make friends?

Of course. I still speak to many of them. State Senator Dean Skelos was with me. Billy McFarland from Fyre Festival was with me. Joe Pericoco was with me. He was the former chief of staff to Andrew Cuomo who show him taking over. We had Mike the Situation from Jersey Shore. We had a lot of very interesting guys there. The place is interesting in and of itself. Otisville, 50% of the camp, which is 120 people in total, 50% are Jewish, 25 are Hispanic, 25 black. And I gotta be honest with you, I got along better with the Hispanic and the black guys than I did with the Jewish guys.

What do you think that is?

Because Jewish people have a lot of opinions, you know. You ever hear the old expression, you know.

Really?

Yeah, everyone's a rabbi. Everyone's got not one, but two opinions. So if you got, you know, 60 of them, you get 120, maybe sometimes 180 opinions unsolicited. But everybody had advice for me.

So if you got up one morning and you decided, this is the day I'd like to argue, you hang out

With Jewish prisoners, of course, you know, we would go off to the. They had an in house temple there and you would go there and, you know, many of them were major Trump supporters and, you know, to argue with me for them, gave them something to talk about on their phone calls and their visits.

Was any of them guilty? Did they ever anyone say they were guilty?

Yeah, there were people who said most, of course, tell you how innocent that they were. It's very interesting. Like, Joe Perakoco's case was overturned. Several cases that I know of, people that were there were overturned. Joe's case, I had read it. Soup to nuts with him. He's also a lawyer. I never understood the case against him. It made no sense. But that's the problem. So when Trump talks about the weaponization of the Department of Justice, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. This case against me, do you know how it started?

Well, now wait a second.

Do you know how it started?

No, I have no clue.

The Steele dossier. It all started with the Steele dossier. The Russia hoax.

The Russia.

The Russia hoax. I'm mentioned more than anybody else in the Steele dossier, even more than Trump. Thirteen times, allegations that I went to Prague. I've never been to the Czech Republic, never been to Prague. That I went with $10 million in cash to go pay off Russian Kompromatz for Paul Manafort, who I don't even like that I'm going to go off to Prague with $10 million in cash to pay off Russian compromise for Paul Manafort. Why not? True that I own a dacha in Sochi directly next door to Putin. I've never been to Russia. Like, of course you've been to Russia. You were on the board of the Miss Universe organization. You did the deal in order for the Miss Universe in like 20, 2015 or 2013 to have it at the Crocus center in Moscow. I said, I never went. Was my nephew's bar mitzvah. I never went. I've never been to Russia. I've never been to the Czech Republic. They didn't care.

So I can't use your taka? No.

My dacha.

So this is where it all started. The Steele dossier was initially opposition research, paid for or supposed to be paid for by the Clinton campaign. Absolutely. Fair and legitimate candidates do opposition research on one another. Okay? She took one look at Christopher Steele's work and she goes, this is garbage. It's pure and total nonsense. Like, well, I want money for it. I did the work. It's Unverified. It's nonsense. It's like not even a good script. If you tried to sell this to Hollywood, they laugh you out of la. Okay. Wasn't enough for him. So what does he do? He meets with John McCain and he sells it to John McCain. John McCain, automatically, this has to be an investigation. But John McCain's on the same side as Donald Trump. He was never on Trump's side. He never wanted to see Trump in politics. Many of the Republicans didn't want Trump in politics. So what ultimately happens? They turn around and McCain gives it to James Comey. Comey then runs this as an investigation. Well, where were you on August of whatever in that year? I was in Los Angeles. Prove it. I was meeting with my son, the baseball coach for the USC Trojans, where he was looking to go play baseball for. He was a big lefty pitcher. Okay. They're like, prove it. Go ask the baseball coaches. And they did. They went down. They said, do you know who this guy was here? He was here with his son for a baseball tryout. Well, maybe they got the day wrong. Where were you the next day? I was with Harvey Levin on tmz.

They didn't accuse the baseball coach being a Russian spy.

Of course not. No, because.

So you're talking about weaponization.

The whole goal was to get trouble.

Then they tried to weapon. Weaponize. Then the Trump administration tried to weaponize against you when they tried to keep you silent. Yeah, so.

So I got it from both sides.

You got a man.

I was a man without a country. I was basically on an island. The Trumps made a big mistake in terms of refusing to continue to pay for my lawyers. I never wanted to testify. People like. Well, you were. You know, you're a bad actor. Right. You were a rat. You went ahead, you testified. I was subpoenaed. I did what I'm legally obligated to do when you're hit with a subpoena, especially when the other side's not even protecting you, which nobody could understand. Why, interestingly enough, Trump actually felt abandoned. I was abandoned. Not. I felt. I knew I was. But Trump actually. Trump actually. Turns out, I thought you were being protected. Guys like Jay Sekulow would tell him, we've got this, we've got him, he's good.

They would lie to him.

They lied to him. Why that? You'd have to ask Jay Sekulow and the others. Why? I don't know.

Because maybe J. Sekulo now know that they lied to him.

Yes. Maybe Jay Sekulow, as an Example wanted to be me. A lot of people wanted the relationship, they wanted the closeness, the proximity. Here's the difference.

But when you were put under house arrest.

House arrest? You mean that's after I was released.

After you were released, and they were going to put an ankle bracelet on you, they presented an agreement and they wanted you to sign it.

Right.

And that agreement would have prohibited you from speaking out, from writing or essentially everything. Everything. And you had. You had.

There's no way we were going to do that.

Well, I couldn't, because my first book, Disloyal, was already with the publisher. It was already out for print, so I could not do that. On top of that, it's obviously a clear violation of the First Amendment. What's interesting, and we found it out much later, is that there's something called a Federal Home Monitoring Agreement. I forget the exact acronym. There's a specific government designation form onto it. It's a Federal Location Monitoring Agreement, an flma. And it's standard. Every person who comes out signs an flma. I got a copy of it. It's not the one that they wanted me to sign. The one that they wanted me to sign was manufactured specifically for me. In fact, if you look at it, the font even goes on an angle. They did it and rushed it so fast.

Who did it? Whose idea was that?

That I don't know. I would suspect it was Bill Barr. In fact, I said to the two agents from the Bureau of Corrections, tell Bill Barr I say hello. They're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, you really don't think that Bill Barr wrote this because you two are so stupid you couldn't possibly do it. And I said, and by the way, there's Covid. Put your mask on. It's like, this is my office. You don't tell me what to do.

And so you went to court and you fought.

Oh, I didn't go to court. I was told to wait outside in the hallway. I was with a friend of mine who's a lawyer for a long time from high school, junior high school. We were waiting in the hallway, and they were going to reach out to their senior supervisors to see if they can't tamp down the language that was so violative of my First Amendment. Next thing I know, three of the biggest human beings I've ever seen. Marshals. Mr. Cohen, stand up and face the wall. I said, what are you talking about? Like, stand up and face the wall. You're being remanded. I said, for what? I'm here to sign an agreement. They do it, sir, I'm not going to tell you again. Take off your cufflinks, your shoes, your belt. Give it to your lawyer. Give him your wallet and everything that you want to go back to your house. You're coming with us. With that, you understand just how bad they treated me. To really teach me some lesson, they put me in a freezer for three and a half hours as I sat in this paper jumpsuit to the point I understand what cold in Siberia must feel like where you're so cold, you shiver so hard, your teeth are banging so hard you think it's going to fall out of your jaw.

That's at the point. You did go to court.

There was no court. No, no. They ultimately removed me from the freezer and they had me transported back up to Otisville, where they put me back into solitary confinement. No food for three days.

But at least it was warm.

No food for three days. It wasn't just warm. It was 105 degrees. In that. In that cell wasn't just. There's no ventilation. On top of that, one of the windows, the panels were broken. So at night, when it would rain, it would rain in on me. All I did is ask for a piece of plastic and some Scotch tape so I can cover it up. Nope. Nope to that, too. Three days, no food, they left me. I did 51 days in total of solitary confinement until ultimately my lawyer filed a habeas petition, a habeas corpus petition, which was granted. And here's what most people aren't aware of. They're like, oh, yeah, we filed a motion. So that was another 15 days that I was in solitary confinement until the judge, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, was on the bench at the time, about 28 years or 30 years, turned around and said, in my entire career, not only have I never seen anything, I've never even heard of anything like this. That Bill Barr, the Department of justice, and others violated my First Amendment constitutional right. In fact, he even warned them that any additional action that could possibly be brought against Mr. Cohen has to go to him and this courtroom because he was so certain that they were going to try to do something again.

Did you sue them for that?

I did. We took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court turned around, denied it, interestingly enough, because of the Dobbs decision. The Dobbs decision, what everybody knows is that it canceled out Roe vs. Wade. But the Dobbs decision has much greater impact than what people know. The case that you use to sue the government for violating your First Amendment, violating any constitutional right. Your first, your fourth, your eighth, which is what I was suing them on, was overturned by the Dobbs decision because it overturned what's called the Bivens case. It overturned it. And so the lower court turned around and said, as much as it pains me to say, based upon the facts and circumstances surrounding what happened to you, a clear and present violation of your First Amendment. You, sir, are the first American to ever be held to literally be held by your own country because you refuse to waive your First Amendment constitutional right. But unfortunately, the Dobbs decision takes away our power to grant this case, and so they rejected it. We took it to the Court of Appeals. Three judges unanimous, turn around and said, lower court's correct. The Dobbs decision negates the Bivens case, except for one specific line, and that specific line was done by Chief Justice Clarence Thomas. It says, unless of the most unusual of circumstance qualifies. That's what we took to the Supreme Court. What could be more unusual than the Attorney General of the United states violating a U.S. citizen's First Amendment constitutional right, remanding that person to prison. And the treatment that I got there was beyond horrific. Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. Maybe one of the most important cases that could have come down over the course of the last hundred years.

So I want to talk to you a little bit about politics. When Donald Trump decided to run for office.

I love politics.

Did you have any hopes that you might join his administration?

No. So that's another lie that was told about me. In fact, all along, I'll never forget. Trump literally balled out Reince Priebus, who he made the chief of staff. Why? Because Trump wanted Reince to sit with me and find me a position. They wanted to make me assistant White House counsel under Don McGahn. I said, no, sir, I don't want that. My daughter was graduating college at the time and coming back home. My son was graduating high school and going off to college. I didn't want it. I wanted to be personal attorney to the President of the United States. In that way, I can actually use that title to go out and to do what I wanted to do, which is not lobby, but I wanted to consult.

Well, you know, if things had turned out differently, given all the legal expenses he's incurred over the last 10 years or so, if you were his personal attorney, you'd be very, very wealthy by now.

Correct. But I did very well my first year out. Very, very well. I had major, major multinational companies who put me on retainer. Because nobody understood. In fact, I hate to say it, nobody still understands Trump, despite the fact he's now into year seven, Right. Just about. Of his presidency. They still don't get him. They don't understand him.

One of the things they don't understand, and you and I would agree on this, they don't understand his sense of humor. Of course, he's from Queens, and people from Queens have a very distinct and sometimes very strange sense of humor.

My wife's from Queens.

Okay. So you know what I mean.

I sure do. He's not funny like us in the Five Towns.

He tries to be funny. It just doesn't go over right with a lot of people.

It's also because his Persona, his public Persona has never been of a comedic nature. It's always the businessman Donald Trump, hard.

But he tries. He tries to be funny. Yeah, he does, sometimes.

Well, look, we've had some good belly laughs. We've also had some fake belly laughs in order not to insult him. But he has my father, who's European. They have a dry sense of humor, so I get it.

Actually, you can tell when he says something that is supposed to be funny, he does believe it's funny. He just said a lot of people don't understand that sense of humor.

They do understand it. They don't want it to be funny because it gives them more fodder to be negative to him. You know, I don't want people to think for a second that when, you know, you know, is a. Is a show and then the podcast is a pro Trump podcast. I've now switched. I've changed all my positions. I have not. In fact, I was a Democrat my entire life.

Wait a second. You ran for office as a Republican?

Yes. Governor Pataky switched my. They didn't have Athey didn't have a Republican to run against Eva Moskowitz for city council, and so he switched my party affiliation so that I could run. As soon as I lost, I ended up switching back. By the way, I did very, very well. I did very well. But again, it was a heavily.

What was the percentage you lost?

I think I had almost four. I had almost 40% of the vote.

Well, that's not bad for Republicans.

What are you talking about? Not only that, I only had six weeks to do it, but I ran a vicious campaign. I mean, it was funny, but it was vicious, too. And, you know, she had a nice lady, don't get me wrong. But I was running to win.

So you know how to be Vicious when you have to.

Yeah. You know, for example, I'll never forget when the National Enquirer, for example, had Ted Cruz's father right, with Lee Harvey Oswald. And the headline was, Ted Cruz's Father Assassinated jfk. I don't know if you remember that one. That one, that was my idea. And I remember sitting with David Pecker from the National Enquirer and the two of us showing it to Trump. And he looked and he's like, you two are crazy. You two are crazy. Crazy. You have no. So he goes, but I love it. Let's do it. And we did it. That thing went viral because it's one of those things where you cannot argue, oh, it's not true. Now you seem defensive. If it's true, you're done. So it was one of those things where you put somebody between the proverbial rock and hard place. And that's what we did. That's how Trump ended up knocking out each one, one by one by one.

We talked about.

Because we play to win. New Yorkers, especially real estate. New Yorkers. We play.

There's no in between. No, no, no. You always play to win. Of course it's a rough game. New York real estate is the toughest environment you could ever imagine.

I think now South Florida, too, is sort of becoming that. Because all the New Yorkers went down to Florida.

Well, not all of them, but a good number have done that. Yeah. In part to avoid the taxes, the state income tax. We talked about Generation Z. We talked about the left wing. We talked about the right wing. We talked, briefly touched on the Democratic socialists. We're in a very strange era in our country. A lot of division. We've had division before.

Not like this.

Not like this. But a lot of people are just unhappy. And all they want is change for the sake of change, ignoring possible consequences. How do we educate them a little bit better about what government really can do and what it can't do?

Listen to my radio show. That's what it's going to be about. People are so. There's like three terms that I use for it. Misinformed, disinformed, and malinformed. And then you take the three of them, you smash them together like a smash burger, and what do you end up getting? A stomach ache worth of nonsense. Because the lies, the lies that come out. I watched the two various stations on the left and then I watched the station on the right. You would think that we're living in alternate universes. It's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. You know, I always say, what happened to the days of, like, the Walter Cronkites or the Barbara Walters? When they told you something, you believed it. Today because of technology, maybe it's AI, It's a fake, or somebody claims it's a fake. There's so much misinformation, and sometimes the administration's responsible for it, too. Why not just. I'll give you an example, right? So you understand that. That when you know, you know is not a pro Donald Trump show or the podcast. Take, for example, this reflection.

But it's not a very conservative radio station.

Could be it is, but doesn't mean that my program has to ascribe specifically to the far, far right. It's just not my nature.

By the way, you're never going to be like Sid.

No, no. I sat with Sid the other day. He's funny as hell, but we don't agree on a lot. But here's the funny thing. We agree on more things than we disagree. And that's the part that most people don't understand. I'll give you the best example on that one. Take immigration. I think you would acknowledge that a country without borders, quite frankly, isn't a country. You agree with that?

I agree with that.

That's Trump's line, by the way. Would you agree that our immigration policy is horrible? We've never had an immigration policy and needs massive revamping. I think the answer is yes, too. Both sides of the aisle agree. You know, where we disagree on how ICE is behaving. Okay, fair. I give you the right to have your disagreement to the left. I absolutely acknowledge that. So let's sit down. Let's sit down and figure out how do we create a policy that's fair and equitable because America is and has always been the place for immigrants to come.

You can't. And the reason you can't is because the responsibility lies with Congress, and Congress doesn't have the fortitude to do it.

Then they need to all leave. Then they all need to leave. And you know what the problem is?

A good number of them will be leaving in November.

Yup. And you know what? Who's replacing them?

That's the problem.

Amen. These Democratic socialists, Because they're making changes. You're not making any changes. All right? They're not going to make any changes. By the way, historically, as we know, the party that controls the White House generally loses the House of Representatives.

Look, I worked in the Senate. I worked in the House.

I did, too. I worked for Congressman Joe Moakley in 87 and 88.

I was, I was a senior investigator with the Senate Watergate Committee.

I was appealing.

You were a kid at the time watching me on screen.

Probably.

Washington poisons the mind, unfortunately. People may have the purest motives when they run for office. When they get to Washington, it becomes a matter of survival. And then we have something that the writers of the Declaration of Independence never anticipated. We have a political profession.

A class of politicians.

And they're making so much money. They're making. So they've realized that this is a way to make real serious money. Take Nancy Pelosi, somebody. And I'm very good with numbers. Very, very good. Trump will tell you I'm probably the best when it comes to budgets and making sure, you know, we finished on time or early and under budget. That was just a forte. One of the things that these guys have figured out, and somebody has to tell me how Nancy Pelosi managed to figure it out, that you could take a $250,000 a year salary and after even 25, 30 years after taxes and so on, that you could, I don't know, retire with $170 million in the bank.

Well, now, wait a second, Michael, come on.

Look, somebody, please. President.

To me, the president has made over a billion dollars in the last year, and he's done it by selling everything except Tupperware.

And I will acknowledge that it is. The perception wise is terrible. It's terrible. By the way, I was trying to also explain to you regarding where I believe messaging comes in wrong. And this is the problem with the yes men. Not everything that he'll say should be said, and he doesn't even believe it himself. Like the reflection pool. Do you really think that somebody went into the reflection pool with a box cutter and that you were able to cut up this, I don't even know, latex polymer that's God knows how many thick J.J. caffaro, who has done thousands of pools. I know J.J. caffaro does great work. For whatever the reason may be. It didn't work. No problem. Drain the pool, fix it. It's not an indication of Trump's presidency. You know what it is? It's a maintenance issue.

You're absolutely right.

But it's a Trump issue. Why turn around and say there's seven people now who have been arrested? That's not true.

When does, when does he ever admit he's wrong, he's made a mistake?

It's not often, not often.

And in some, in some ways, he's his Own worst enemy. He's done some terrific things.

He's done some great things. And he's done some terrible things.

NATO. What? He's terrific.

Terrific. But can we talk about that for a second?

Of course.

Okay. I write in my sub stack. And again, it sent the left into. I don't even know, an epileptic fit. Why? Because I turned around and I said two truths can exist at the same time. Truth number one, there's an agreement. It's 5% of your GDP. Spain decides they don't want to pay the 5%. Well, you broke the agreement. So Trump got angry and he said, fine, we won't trade with you unless you do what you're obligated to do. Why should the American taxpayer be obligated to pay for your defense? You as a taxpayer. I don't want to pay for Spain. Actually, I've never been to Spain. I don't want to pay for their defense. Pay what you're obligated to, plain and simple. I think he was right.

I agree with you.

However, here's where the left turns around and says, trump is wrong. They're an ally. You don't just cut them off and so on. You know, you need to engage in diplomatic conversation. Trump's not diplomat. Trump's a businessman. He's a real estate branding guru, plain and simple. You break the deal, somebody doesn't pay you rent. You send them flowers or you send the lawyers. They can't accept that. Nope. I'm only going to look at the part that's negative to Trump, and we're just going to keep. That's going to be the top of the hour, and that's going to every show. And then you have all these Talmud khachims, right? These geniuses, these scholars that sit there and they have all the fancy titles in the Kyron.

Michael, you said them on both sides. I mean, that's the divide we talked about.

And that's where I was going with this.

A lot of angry people, you know, families broken apart, split apart by politics. If you don't agree with me, you're my enemy. This is not the America that I grew up in.

Well, isn't that what happened with me and Trump? But families can reconcile. And to those who right now have the disagreements with their family, I would say if Donald Trump and Michael Cohen can actually reconcile, so can you.

Do you feel like you reconciled?

I do, and I think he does as well.

Are you afraid of Donald Trump?

No. No, I wasn't afraid of him when I Was.

I'm afraid if you say something wrong or do something that's against his interests.

You'll be attacked.

I'll be what?

Locked up again? No, no, because weaponization works both ways.

It does. Listen, it was my second book, Revenge.

Yeah. I mean, you talked about the reflecting pool. This poor ex Olympic athlete is facing six months, six years in jail and no one believes he really did that.

And he'll probably. Well, you hope that, you know, the justice system holds. Not like it did for me. But I do hope that matters gets dismissed summarily, because it should. Guy picked up a piece of floating garbage in the pool. All of a sudden he went into the pool and he took a box cutter. First of all, you would need a whole lot more. You probably need a, I don't know, a chainsaw or something. And things like the length of it is like five football fields. So would somebody put a snorkel on and go under there? The whole thing is.

So why did the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia go after room weaponization?

That was the point of my lawsuit, that no American should ever have the Justice Department. And that stands for Trump too, by the way. No American should be weaponized by the Department of Justice. And that's what we fought all the way to the Supreme Court to get. And unfortunately I failed on that because the system failed. I so desperately wanted my day in court. I wanted to be able to prove that I was remanded back to prison in the worst of circumstances solely because I refused to waive my first amendment constitutional right. The first political prisoner ever held by this country.

Tell me a little bit about your family and how they coped while you were in prison.

Really hard, you know, it was very hard for my wife. It was the first time that we've ever been away from one another, married, as I said before, 31 years. I've never taken guys trips. We don't take trips away from one another. You know, she. I was fortunate. I found the right woman. She's beyond supportive, especially knowing that because she was there on speakerphone when the attorney said, you have till Monday, which was 48 hours to plead guilty or we file an 80 page indictment that includes your wife. You say, well, you know, how. What are they going to get your wife for? You want to know what it was about? The craziest thing. I was the subject of identity theft not once but twice. Capital one. The teller sold my information or gave it to her blood boyfriend. They made driver's license with that person.

This wouldn't have happened if you didn't have such a common name. Michael.

Right. Interestingly enough, the guy was a Nigerian. Photo of him on my driver's license with all my proper information on it. He went to Capital One banks. He started cleaning out the bank accounts. So they said, in order to protect us and you and so on, we're gonna need to take your name off the bank accounts. That way he can't do it anymore. And then we'll get to it because there was an investigation, police were involved, the whole bit. Okay. I was receiving the $35,000 a month checks from Trump, the repayment on the $130,000 to Stormy Daniels. I gave it to my wife. She endorsed it, put into her bank account. She's now a co conspirator to the hush money payments. And so I turned around and I said, I'll see you on Monday. So my wife knows exactly who I am, knows I never took a dollar from anyone in my entire life.

And your kids, did they face challenges at school?

Terribly. Yeah, terribly. Well, interestingly enough, my daughter's big in. I can't call it a sorority. It was more like a secret society. She went to University of Pennsylvania was Naomi Biden. And her friend, who actually lived in the same complex as her was Tiffany Trump. So, yes, it was somewhat a complicated scenario, but my son, who then just started after, like, for example, the fraternity didn't want to take him because they were afraid that, you know, if they do something and all of a sudden it's, you know, Michael Cohen's son, that there would be more repercussions, more eyes on him and so on. So it was wrong. They obviously sufferedhis roommate, as an example, was a major Trump supporter. And it got to the point where they had to separate the two of them and live separately. Nobody should start college that way. If you take a look even at Barack Obama's book, the Sins of My Father, whatever I did wrong is noand should not be a reflection on my children. So. So, yeah, they've suffered and then not having me, because I've always been the constant. I'm always around for them. It's the one thing. And I always respected Trump for a comment that he made. My son was a major baseball player. He, in fact, he played for the high school travel baseball team for the New York Yankees. When he was 16, he had tryout with the Chicago White Sox, big lefty pitcher. I told Trump, my son has a baseball game. He said, go. He goes, if I need you, I'll just call you. He goes, if not. And then come in when you get back if it's not too late. He always wanted me to ensure that I was there for my son's athletics. Trump loves sports, by the way. By the way, he's like a walking encyclopedia. People don't realize that, but he's a walking encyclopedia for all sports. He didn't know what red card was, not soccer.

So the encyclopedia ends at soccer.

But you could. I mean, here's statistics when it comes.

He's a baseball player in himself.

He played baseball. In fact, I'll tell you a very funny story on that, too. I'm filled with funny stories, which is what the show is going to be about. To give you a better understanding of what's going on here, I met Trump's baseball coach from Nima New York Military Academy. He was like a sergeant and so on. He was a rough guy. And Trump used to tell stories about this guy. And you know how he was so rough with him? He used to hit him. In those days, you were allowed to hit the students. I didn't know that, but you were. I met the guy one time, and Trump is, you know, it's like six, three, he's tall. This guy is maybe five, seven. And I was like, wait, this is the guy that you were so petrified of? And someone not a big, muscular guy, thin, kind of like, reminded me a lot of, like, Michael Flynn. All right, Just to give you a visual on this. But Trump was like, no, he was brutal. He was the meanest guy around. He goes, one time, I didn't stand up fast enough. He was whacked me across the side of the head. And he's like, I did. I did. He was his baseball coach. He told me that Trump was one of the best players that he ever actually played.

First base or first base, I believe.

Yeah. And he was also a fantastic hitter, which makes sense because you find baseball players are also good golfers and vice versa. It's a hand eye coordination thing.

And by the way, people will turn around and say, oh, yeah, now you're flattering, Trump. I'm telling you a true story on what the guy said. Now, mind you, he also wanted Trump to buy the school, Right? So maybe he was just being extra flattering, but that's what the coach said, that he was a fantastic. And I had heard even from his sister, Judge Barry, that he was a very good baseball player.

Trump has said, look, Trump knows he's not going to be in office after the next three years or so, and he said the other day that anyone who comes within 250 yards of the White House, I'm going to pardon. What do you think of his pardon policies?

I wish he would have done a pre pardon for me going back before all this, but he's so important you. I already did my time. I did six years. Six years. I've lost an amount of money that would. You'd fall off the chair if I told you how much money I actually lost. People like, oh, Trump made you. I was semi retired at the age of 39. I had 107 apartments in Manhattan, 58 taxi medallions. I had my consulting business stop. I was not some broke kid who went to work for Trump. I was only able to go work for Trump because I was financially secure. They turned us. I'm not a rags to riches story. To the contrary, it's the exact opposite. It's a riches to rags stories. I lost everything that I built over like 36 years of hard work from 4 in the morning to 11 in the morning. You wouldn't, wouldn't want a pardon. So if I get the pardon, what do I do? I get my law license back. Great. I get the felony conviction off. Okay, I'll take it. You know when I would have liked it?

You're allowed to carry a gun again?

Sure. I'm allowed to do many, many things.

Things.

Right. By the way, interestingly enough, as the former personal attorney to the President of the United States, I couldn't get a job driving an Uber or a Lyft. I can't. Felons aren't allowed to drive. Your ability to work, to do banking. Banking. I mean, banks, they turn around, they say, no, sorry, you're a felon. They have the right. Mind you, it's my tax dollars that is supporting your bank, considering they make some of the worst decisions of all time. Right. But it's my tax dollars that go into it. And I can't even have a savings account in a world now that's basically cashless. Not easy. So I would take it. But I would have liked it before all this nonsense took place.

Of course. But he wasn't going to pardon you back.

You know, here's the interesting thing. If, if what took place then is taking place now, none of this would have happened. He understands the power of the executive office much better. He was being guided by some of the worst people on the planet. People who, despite the fact in 2011, you know, Trump started the campaign in 2011 when we were contemplating the presidential run. It all started with a newspaper article. Who would you vote for to be president that nobody would think would be, would run? And the answer, 5% of the people said Donald Trump. So I ripped it out. I knock on the door, hey, boss, you want to see something really cool? And I showed it to him. He goes explore it. And so I did. I hired this lawyer from Texas who, who produced for me. And I still have it. It's like the Bible. It's a leather bound book, has every district, every name, everything broken down. It's like this thick. I'm going to put it in the presidential library because that's where it belongs. And we use that. I started a website on my own. I didn't even tell Trump called should trumprun.com and all of a sudden 10 million people join into this, this. And it just became this viral thing. Well, that's Wordle side. He chose not to run. It would have been against Obama too, because not for fear of Obama, but because we just closed on the Doral. He just bought two golf courses, one in Scotland, one in Ireland. And as co president of Trump Productions, he got another for another season of the Apprentice that netted him more than $65 million. So his comment was, you don't walk away from Hollywood. Hollywood walks away from you. So we did it again. But he said to me, I swear to you, 2015, we're doing this. If you're with me, shoulder to shoulder, we're doing this, right? And I said, yeah. And from 2011 through 2015, every day we would spend a few minutes talking, talking about plotting this out. The campaign existed amongst two people, me and Donald Trump. So when all of these folks came in and started giving him advice, oh, no, you got to let Cohen swim on his own. You got to stay away from him, he's toxic. And so on. He was like, whoa, whoa, you know, and he said, we got him, but you have to stay away. As president today, Trump would turn around and laugh at them, throw them out of the Oval Office altogether for bad advice.

Trump prided himself on hiring good people, but in his first term, he didn't.

How did that happen?

It was a new world for Trump. He was not a politician and he wanted to be the most effective. He wanted to fit in to Washington. And so by bringing on, for example, Reince Priebus, he then brought on establishment people from the Jeff Sessions all the way down the road. Wrong people for Trump now.

So he stepped out of character.

He sure did. He did. And he vociferated on it. Always back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He did. It's actually one of the reasons why Ivanka and Jared went as special advisors to the President. It's because he didn't want to lift his head up from the desk and not recognize anybody, not have somebody there who he can trust from an emotional standpoint, not from a political or a legal.

Is that weakness?

I don't think it's weakness. It was mistake, but mistakes aren't weakness. You know, the old adage, to err is human, to forgive is divine. Trump has forgiven me. I have forgiven him A little harder for me. I mean, Otisville sucked, man. I got to be honest with you. The food was horrific. The conditions there were horrific. The guards, to me, many of them were horrific.

The clothing wasn't great either, I assume.

No, no. I'm not a big fan of green.

They don't match your eyes?

No, no. It makes me look pale, doesn't it?

Michael, it's been a great conversation, but. And I know you've been through a lot of tough times, but you're still a young guy. You got your whole life in front of you.

I'm not young.

Michael, you look young.

I'm 60 years old. It's not young in today's terms.

That's a teenager. I mean, people living today to be 100, people who are 60. What do you want to be 10 years from now?

Alive. You know, the bad part about prison, even though I was at a low, low facility, is you develop PTSD from it. And I suffer terribly from ptsd. There are things that trigger. Where it scares my wife and my children, that something will happen.

Well, give me an example. What triggered you?

If you have a bad meal in a restaurant, it takes you back to a type of food, a commercial that was constantly playing when I was there, and then you sort of go into a trance where you're not. You're not where you are. You're someplace else. Or just a memory will just pop up. You never had a memory just pop up into your head out of nowhere. Nowhere. You look at something, and it just. It triggers something. Like the green in the painting behind you. It's the color of the. Of the clothing, you know, that we. That ugly great artist.

Do you think you'll ever get past that?

So it's funny you asked that, because there was someone who I know, whose father was actually in Otisville in the late 80s, and I asked him about it because it's something. I'm trying to figure out how to stop it. It's Very, very tough when you lose perspective of where you are and you transform someplace else. And it's not a good place. Whether it's when it's cold out, like, really cold, it triggers that memory of being in that freezer or in certain restaurants. When they put me into a table that seems like enclosed, I feel trapped like I was when they put me back into or into solitary confinement for 51 days. It's not like Shawshank Redemption where you spend an hour out in the yard. There was no movement at all. Zero. You're just in there, and you don't know what time it is. It's not like you have a clock, nothing. He turned around, he said to me, it never goes away. So I'm just trying to every day figure out how to live with it. And I use things like my podcasts or my substack or my YouTube. I'm gonna use things like WABC and my show and the podcast from that in order to keep myself so active that I don't have time to fall back into that trap. It's painful, you know? I'll tell you, when I say cold. The building that we lived in, that we were dormed in, was a butler building. There's no insulation. It's aluminum over steel. The building over the 40 years had warped. So you have massive gaps underneath during the winter because you're 3,000ft up in the air. My bed would be 40 degrees. 40 degrees. You know how we would sleep? Two pairs of socks, thermals, sweatpants, your outdoor pants, thermal T shirt, a shirt over it, a sweater, your heavy jacket with a hat, a scarf, and also gloves. That's how you used to sleep in order to try to stay warm. So when it gets really cold out like it was this winter, it's again, a trigger.

So as you knew you were getting out, other than hugging your wife and your children, what is the thing you wanted the most upon release?

A slice of pizza.

There you go. From Brooklyn.

From Brooklyn. And a friend of mine brought over three pies.

Michael, thank you so much for being with me.

It's really great to see you, Mike.

The Fixer: Inside Loyalty, Power, and Prison

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