Former President Donald Trump filed a $500 million lawsuit against his former attorney Michael Cohen for allegedly violating their attorney-client bond and spreading “embarrassing or detrimental” lies.
(Bloomberg) — Former President Donald Trump filed a $500 million lawsuit against his former attorney Michael Cohen for allegedly violating their attorney-client bond and spreading “embarrassing or detrimental” lies.
Cohen, whose falling out with Trump has led to exchanges of insults between the men, also was accused of violating a non-disclosure agreement with Trump and fraudulently misrepresenting a $74,000 business expenditure, according to the suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Miami.
Public statements by Cohen helped form the basis for last week’s criminal indictment of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as a $250 million civil fraud suit brought by the New York attorney general. Cohen pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations and bank fraud, and he’s now a full-time critic of Trump.
Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis accused the former president of abusing the judicial system in an attempt to harass and intimidate his client.
“It appears he is terrified by his looming legal perils and is attempting to send a message to other potential witnesses who are cooperating with prosecutors against him,” Davis said of Trump. “Is there anyone in America, aside from a shrinking minority base of believers, who takes Mr. Trump seriously when he files these frivolous lawsuits?”
Trump has a long history of suing his accusers, but his track record in Florida isn’t good. His complaint against 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton and dozens of other Democrats, accusing them of conspiring against him with fake Russia-collusion claims, was tossed out by a judge who fined the former president and his lawyer a total of almost $1 million for bringing frivolous and unfounded claims. Trump has appealed that ruling.
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In his suit against Cohen, Trump alleges his former fixer “committed these breaches through myriad public statements, including the publication of two books, a podcast series, and innumerable mainstream media appearances.”
One of Cohen’s books, Disloyal, was criticized in the complaint as being “replete with mischaracterizations, falsehoods, and flat-out misrepresentations” about Trump. The former president’s suit also singles out Cohen’s popular podcast.
“In the more than 250 episodes of the podcast produced to date, defendant repeatedly and consistently reveals, or purports to reveal, confidential information gleaned by nature of his prior attorney-client relationship with plaintiff, as well as information pertaining to plaintiff’s personal and private life,” according to the suit.
Trump alleges Cohen violated a confidentiality agreement that barred him from publishing any secret information about Trump’s personal life and business affairs, even after his term of employment ended.
Not long after Trump and Cohen parted ways in 2018, the lawyer “committed the first of an onslaught of fiduciary and contractual breaches” by making “inflammatory” remarks about Trump, according to the suit.
Seeking Damages
Trump seeks $500 million in damages plus the return of the $74,000 Cohen allegedly obtained through fraudulent misrepresentation, according to the suit. The complaint refers to a section of Cohen’s book that describes paying $13,000 to rig online polling ahead of Trump’s first presidential run and how he billed the Trump Organization for a larger sum.
In the years after Trump was elected president in 2016, Cohen went public with details about a $130,000 hush-money payment the lawyer paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 election. The indictment in Manhattan alleges Trump falsified business records to hide his payments reimbursing Cohen.
Trump’s suit incorporates statements made about Cohen by another lawyer, Robert Costello, who spoke extensively with Cohen after Cohen’s office was raided by FBI agents in 2018. Costello, who reportedly testified to the Manhattan grand jury in an attempt to cast doubt on Cohen’s claims about the hush-money payment, recalls that Cohen told him in 2018 that he didn’t “have anything” on Trump and that the payment to Daniels was his idea, was intended to protect Melania Trump from being hurt and wasn’t reimbursed by the Trump Organization, according to Trump’s complaint.
“Mr. Costello has further completely discredited Defendant’s subsequent accounts implicating Plaintiff’s involvement in any violation of law surrounding the payment,” Trump’s lawsuit says. “Costello called Cohen a ‘serial liar’ and said he is ‘totally unreliable.’”
Cohen also testified to Congress about alleged financial wrongdoings at the Trump Organization, triggering a three-year investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James that culminated in a $250 million civil suit that’s set to go to trial in October.
The case is Trump v. Cohen, 23-cv-21377, US District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).
–With assistance from Zoe Tillman.
(Updates with comment from Cohen’s lawyer in fourth paragraph.)
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