Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer and star witness for the prosecution at his hush money trial, celebrated the former president’s historic felony conviction on Thursday.
“Guilty On All Counts! #TeamCohen,” he posted on X just moments after the verdict was announced.
The disbarred attorney’s celebration comes after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records for reimbursements to Cohen over payments he made to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up the story of her affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
The jury unanimously convicted the former president of all 34 felony counts on 30 May.
“Today is an important day for accountability and the rule of law,” Cohen said, in a later social media post. “While it has been a difficult journey for me, the truth always matters.”
Cohen provided key testimony tying Trump to the hush money payment. During their nine-and-a-half-hour deliberations, the jury asked Justice Juan Merchan to re-listen to Cohen’s testimony transcripts.
The former lawyer testified that Trump directed him to pay $130,000 to Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 presidential election so she wouldn’t go public with a story about having sex with Trump a decade earlier in 2006. Trump has denied the affair.
Cohen’s four-day testimony bolstered the prosecution’s argument that Trump had warned the former fixer to “be prepared” for stories about women when he launched his 2016 campaign; instructed him to pay them off; then signed the checks that reimbursed him - all as part of a plan drawn up by his accountants and finalized from the White House.
Trump’s reimbursement payments to Cohen were covered up across 34 business records - 12 ledger entries, Cohen’s 11 invoices, and 11 checks, most of which included Trump’s signature.
Trump’s defense sought to discredit Cohen’s testimony by depicting him as an aggrieved, selfish and fame-hungry opportunist and a convicted liar.
Cohen has not been shy about his hatred for the former president, and he at least partially blames Trump for his own prison sentence. Cohen spent three years in federal prison and paid a $50,000 fine after pleading guilty to lying to Congress and campaign finance and tax violations in 2018.
