Michael Cohen, a former attorney for President Donald Trump, says he felt "pressured and coerced" by prosecutors to provide information and testimony designed to help build cases against his client.
"From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA's Office and the New York Attorney General's Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government's desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump," Cohen wrote in an extensive Substack post Friday.
His comments came after a federal appeals court ordered a lower court to reconsider whether Trump's New York hush-money case should have been moved from state court to federal court.
Cohen said he was writing to add context about how he believes high-profile prosecutions are constructed.
"There are moments when silence becomes complicity. When letting the record stand without context feels less like restraint and more like consent. This is one of those moments," he wrote.
Cohen said he was speaking out now because "I have witnessed firsthand the damage done when prosecutors pick their target first and then seek evidence to fit a predetermined narrative," adding, "Justice must be more than effective; it must be credible."
He added that he wasn't speaking out to defend Trump or "relitigate his conduct."
However, Cohen said that he has seen the system "from the inside, not as an observer or analyst, but as a central subpoenaed participant."
Cohen testified in two trials in which Trump was the defendant and that "government lawyers made me the key witness."
One was the New York attorney general's civil fraud case; the other was the Manhattan district attorney's criminal hush-money prosecution.
In the civil fraud case, the state claimed that Trump inflated assets to obtain favorable loan terms. The court ordered a $454 million penalty, which was later overturned on appeal.
The hush-money case alleged Trump falsified business records tied to payments to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election, with the jury finding Trump guilty.
Cohen said his first meeting with Manhattan prosecutors occurred in August 2019 while he was serving a federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal crimes.
"One of the very first questions I asked those prosecutors was how I would benefit from cooperating," he wrote. "The reason was simple: I wanted to do whatever I could to obtain my Rule 35(b) motion (to reduce his sentencing), return home to my family and resume my fractured life."
Cohen said that after being released from prison in September 2020 and placed in home confinement, he continued meeting with prosecutors and hoped cooperation would shorten the remainder of his sentence.
However, he said that the prosecutors were focused on testimony that supported their case against Trump.
"When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative," he claimed.
Cohen said he experienced a similar dynamic in the attorney general's case, pointing to public comments by Attorney General Letitia James during her 2018 campaign.
"Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump," Cohen wrote. "Her office made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony that would help them do just that. Again, I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking."
Cohen criticized James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, writing, "Letitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook," and saying they "blurred the line between justice and politics."
Cohen tied his comments to the appeals court decision reopening questions about jurisdiction and evidence in the hush-money case, with the panel directing U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to revisit whether evidence at trial involved "official acts" during Trump's presidency, an issue reshaped by the Supreme Court's July 2024 presidential immunity ruling.
Cohen wrote that the appeals court was not deciding the case on the merits.
"The appeals court's ruling is not an exoneration, nor is it an endorsement," he wrote. "It is a signal; a reminder that procedure matters, that evidentiary boundaries matter, and that the rush to secure a conviction can come at a cost to institutional credibility."