Everything we know about the president and his relationship with his former attorney and fixer, in chronological order.
On 21 August, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and breaking campaign finance rules. In a stunning revelation, he directly implicated the president in criminal activity, saying that he acted “at the direction of and in coordination with” Trump to make illegal campaign payments to silence two women who say they had affairs with the president.
He said the payments were “for the principal purpose of influencing the election”.
Faced with a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison, Cohen is believed to be cooperating with the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for leniency.
On 22 August, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said in an interview with MSBNC that Cohen has “knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that information to the FBI”.
Cohen was one of Trump’s closest and most loyal aides, once telling Vanity Fair that he’d “do anything to protect Mr. Trump”, but under legal mounting pressure he has turned on his former boss.
The result could be spectacularly damaging to the president.
The Long Island-born personal injury lawyer, taxi fleet owner, and businessman with ties to a number of convicted fraudsters and Russian mobsters, served for over a decade as Trump’s deals guy before becoming the president’s personal attorney. His legal troubles are shedding light on the dark underside of Trump’s presidential campaign and the Trump Organization’s business practices. Now he may prove a crucial witness to the Russia Inquiry.
Here’s a full timeline tracking Cohen’s murky business history and how it intersects with Trump. We’ll be updating the story as it progresses.
1991
Cohen graduates from Cooley Law School in Michigan.
1992
Cohen begins working for a personal injury lawyer named Melvyn Estrin, who later pleads guilty to bribing insurance adjusters. (Cohen was never implicated in this.)
1994
Cohen marries Laura Shusterman. Her father Fima is a Ukrainian émigré and taxi fleet owner who was charged in 1993 with conspiring to defraud the IRS. Over the years, Fima Shusterman helps Cohen build ties with numerous Russian and Ukrainian businessmen, among them convicted fraudsters and mobsters.
1997
With his father-in-law’s help, Cohen enters the taxi business, registering five new cab companies that year.
2000
Cohen sets up a series of medical companies in New York. According to the New York Times, “the ventures were noteworthy, in part, because they were created at a time when countless phony companies were cropping up to exploit so-called no-fault auto insurance laws in New York and other states.”
The Times reports that the only two people listed in the incorporation papers as having roles in the businesses are two doctors who were later accused of insurance fraud in relation to different medical practices they operated. There is no evidence that Cohen or the companies were involved in fraudulent schemes, or that he did anything other than register the companies.
At the same time, Cohen also becomes involved in numerous car insurance lawsuits, according to ProPublica reporting .
2001
Cohen buys property in Trump World Tower, a residential complex close to the United Nations in midtown Manhattan. His parents, in-laws, and a man called Symon Garber (more about him shortly) later purchase apartments in the same building. Cohen purchases several more Trump properties.
2003
Cohen runs for New York’s City Council and loses.
2006
Cohen sides with Trump in a dispute between the reality TV star and apartment owners at Trump World Tower.
Cohen joins the Trump Organization as an executive vice-president and legal counsel.
Cohen turns over management of his taxi fleet to the taxi kingpin Symon Garber. (Garber’s company was fined $1.6m in 2014 for ripping off drivers. He has also been convicted of assault in New York and pled guilty in New Jersey to charges of criminal mischief after breaking into three neighbour’s homes, shattering glass doors, smearing blood everywhere and then taking a shower.)
2010
Cohen launches a failed bid for New York’s senate.
As Trump considers a presidential bid, Cohen sets up a website called shouldtrumprun.com and travels to Iowa to explore the political terrain. A complaint was filed to the Federal Election Commission alleging that Cohen’s work on shouldtrumprun.com should be considered an “excessive” campaign contribution, but both Trump and Cohen were cleared of wrongdoing.
2011
InTouch magazine spikes an interview with the porn star Stormy Daniels in which she says she had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006 after Cohen allegedly threatens to sue the magazine’s parent company.
2012
Cohen cuts business ties with Garber after a dispute. Cohen’s fleet is now managed by Evgeny Freidman, another Soviet-born taxi baron. (Freidman has been charged with threatening to kill a former business partner’s family and with stealing $5m in state fees.)
2015
June: Donald Trump formally announces his candidacy for president
August: Cohen threatens a Daily Beast reporter who was writing about claims that Trump raped his first wife, Ivana. He tells the reporter Tim Mak “I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.”
September: Cohen reportedly solicits a $150,000 donation to the Donald J Trump Foundation from the Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk in exchange for a 20 minute speech delivered via a video link to a conference in Kiev. This payment is later investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is leading the inquiry into Russian interference in the general election.
2016
May: Cohen is working on a deal with to build a Trump tower in Moscow. Brokering the deal is Cohen’s old friend Felix Sater, a Russian born businessman and convicted stock swindler turned FBI informant. (Sater also spent time in jail for smashing a martini glass in someone’s face). In a series of emails sent in 2015, Sater brags of his close ties to Putin, writing in one message to Cohen: “buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins [sic] team to buy in on this.”
Cohen later tells Congress that he stopped working on the Trump tower project in January 2016. But Yahoo reports that communications seized by FBI prosecutors in April show that Cohen was working on a deal to build a Trump tower in Moscow as late as May 2016.
July: Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination.
August: According to court filings, Cohen helps broker a “catch-and-kill” agreement with the media company AMI to prevent the former Playboy model Karen McDougal from discussing her 2006-2007 affair with Donald Trump. Under the agreement, McDougal is paid $150,000.
17 October: Cohen sets up a shell company called Essential Consultants LLC and opens up a business account for the company.
27 October: Cohen uses Essential Consultants’ business account to wire $130,000 to a lawyer acting for Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she had sex with Trump (according to documents provided by Daniels’ lawyer.)
28 October: Daniels signs a non-disclosure agreement under which she is paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence over her 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump. The NDA is signed by Michael Cohen, who describes himself on the document as an attorney for Essential Consultants LLC.
9 November: Donald Trump wins the presidential election
December: Cohen meets the head of Qatar’s $100bn investment fund, Ahmed Al-Rumahi, at Trump Tower and according to the Daily Mail asks him to send “millions” through Cohen to Trump family members. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2018 Al-Rumahi confirms that Cohen solicited him and says he refused.
2017
9 January: Video footage shows that Cohen meets with the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who has close ties to Putin, at Trump Tower. In 2014 the FBI warned that a foundation controlled by Vekselberg might be acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence services.
19 January: Cohen quits his job with the Trump Organisation to become the president’s “personal attorney”. Curiously (or not) most of Trump’s legal affairs are handled by lawyers other than Cohen and he does not relocate to Washington DC.
20 January: Donald Trump is sworn in as 45th president of the United States.
Shortly after the inauguration, Cohen’s Essential Consultants LLC is awarded a $1m contract by a US company controlled by the Vekselberg.
February: Cohen delivers a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia to national security adviser Michael Flynn. The proposal, also backed by Sater (remember him from the Moscow tower deal?) and a Ukrainian lawmaker, outlined a way Trump could lift sanctions on Russia. (A week later Flynn resigns after lying about his contact with the Russian ambassador.)
June: According to BBC reporting, Cohen is paid at least $400,000 to secure a meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. (Cohen denies this.)
October: Cohen’s Essential Consultants LLC receives the first of four payments of $99,980 from the pharmaceutical giant Novartis. The following January, Trump has dinner with Norvartis’ CEO at Davos.
