NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen met with Manhattan prosecutors probing Trump again on Friday and expects to testify before a grand jury soon.
Leaving District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office after a significantly longer meeting than four sit-downs he’s had with his office this year, Cohen and his attorney told The New York Daily News that the years-long probe appears to be in the home stretch. He described the level of specificity of prosecutors’ questions as “extraordinary.”
“It’s really progressing. It’s moving very, very quickly now,” Cohen said. “This was a very, very in-depth set of questions that the DA’s team posed, and there’s more to come.”
Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said he expects prosecutors will call Cohen to testify before a panel of New Yorkers hearing evidence against Trump “very soon.”
“We were at the granular level today. I’ve talked about 50,000 feet, 30,000 feet; we’re at 10 feet,” Davis said. “Michael did a great job in walking through very detailed questions and answer format today.”
Cohen has met with the prosecuting team 18 times since their criminal investigation into Trump and his business dealings began. He started cooperating in 2019 while incarcerated at Otisville Correctional Facility. Cohen went to prison for making hush money payments to women to buy their silence about Trump cheating on his pregnant wife, Melania. Trump denies the sexual trysts took place.
Cohen said the purpose of the payments made in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election was to influence its outcome. He referred to Trump as “Individual 1″ when he implicated him in his 2018 guilty plea.
The state grand jury Bragg impaneled in January is believed to be hearing evidence about how Trump and his namesake real estate business classified the expense to porn star Stormy Daniels when they paid Cohen back, sources told the Daily News.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the grand jury is in its final stages and has recently questioned Trump Organization employees, Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, and David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer and close confidant of Trump. Pecker was granted federal immunity in Cohen’s case to testify about Trump’s knowledge of the payments.
Trump has pilloried the DA’s probe as a “witch hunt,” and Cohen as a “SleazeBag disbarred Lawyer From Hell.”
Reacting to his ex-boss’s criticisms, Cohen said, “it just goes to show that he’s nervous and he’s scared.”
“And that’s what Donald Trump does when he’s nervous and he’s scared, he then attacks,” Cohen said. “It’s just typical Donald deflection.”
