Once a Trump loyalist, now a Trump foe.
“I’m the guy who protects the president and the family. I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the President,” Cohen told Vanity Fair in an interview published two weeks after Cohen lied to Congress. Cohen said in court Thursday he lied “out of loyalty” to Trump.
Reacting to the news, Trump bashed his former attorney, telling reporters that Cohen is a “weak person and not a very smart person.”
“Michael Cohen is lying and he’s trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me,” he said.
The tough words from Trump are the latest in a feud between the President and his former fixer.
Cohen, 52, worked for Trump for nearly a decade as Trump’s legal counsel and an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, which he joined in 2007.
Cohen’s tasks in the organization ranged from running a Trump-backed mixed martial arts company to real estate branding deals. At one point, he even arranged an engine repair for Trump’s plane.
Before he met Trump, Cohen had been a New York attorney. He first came to Trump’s attention after buying apartments in Trump’s developments and lobbying for Trump in a dispute with other residents, impressing Trump with his win.
“They say I’m Mr. Trump’s pitbull, that I’m his right-hand man. I’ve been called many different things around (The Trump Organization). What I am is a loyal employee. I like the man. A lot,” Cohen said in 2011.
The relationship was more than an attorney-client relationship, according to David Schwartz, Cohen’s attorney and friend since the 1990s.
“It was something much deeper, almost father and son kind of kind of thing,” Schwartz told CNN.
