Two years later, he invited his old boss onto his radio show instead.
WASHINGTON—Michael Cohen said before the last presidential election that if Donald Trump ever returned to the White House, he would change his name and flee the country.
“They weaponized you. The former lawyer didn’t dispute that characterization from his old boss. He was never invited onstage. He quickly teased the possibility of hosting the president for an interview.
It was Cohen who served as the star witness in the successful 2023 New York criminal trial against Trump, testifying that the then-former president had falsified business records to hide a secret $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels. Cohen spent more than a year behind bars after pleading guilty in 2018 to tax and campaign-finance crimes and lying to Congress about Trump’s plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, among other federal charges. The MAGA exile showed up at the 2024 Democratic National Convention to lend his support to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Cohen landed an on-air gig at 770 WABC last month but only after billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis, the owner of the Trump-friendly radio station, said publicly that he sought approval from the White House for the new hire.
They weaponized a lot of people,” Trump told Cohen at the beginning of the conversation, adding that “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said, and that’s a big thing that you did. Inside the Manhattan courtroom, a stone-faced Trump listened in-person to the testimony of his former lawyer whom he subsequently, and repeatedly, condemned as a “liar” and a “rat. Asked if he would speak, Cohen said, “Only if they let me” and “of course I would.
Cohen said he first reached out to Trump to make peace after hearing from an intermediary that the president regretted their fallout. Trump texted him back, Cohen said during a July radio interview with Catsimatidis, and said it was “actually time for us to meet. Earlier, Cohen told CNN that he had submitted an application for a pardon to President Joe Biden but was denied. He said on Thursday that he has since resubmitted that application to the White House, rewriting the cover letter and “removing the name of President Joe Biden and inserting the name President Donald Trump.”
