Michael Cohen’s attempt to 'play both sides' leads judge to believe he 'likely committed perjury': report

20 March 2024

Editor's note: A previous version of this article's headline stated that Michael Cohen was charged with perjury. Cohen was not charged with perjury. A federal judge said that Cohen "likely committed perjury."

Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's request to have his supervised release lifted was rejected Wednesday by a federal judge who concluded the Trump New York civil fraud trial witness "'likely committed perjury' in past testimony," according to CNN.

Noting that Cohen is expected to be a lead witness in Trump's upcoming hush money trial, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin wrote, Judge Arthur Engoron — who presided over the MAGA hopeful's civil fraud trial — deemed Cohen "a comfortable, credible witness," while he characterized former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg — "who was both witness and defendant' during the trial — 'as evasive and strangely forgetful,' and his testimony as 'highly unreliable.'"

Rubin wrote "with much of Trump’s pre-presidential activities and his early White House behavior, the two people best equipped to say what Trump knew and intended with his allegedly criminal conduct are once again" Cohen and Weisselberg.

According to CNN, Engoron "did not directly address questions about Cohen’s tax evasion plea, but noted: 'This factfinder does not believe that pleading guilty to perjury means that you can never tell the truth. Michael Cohen told the truth.'"

However, another judge sees Cohen differently.

According to The Daily Beast, the "exchange" that "came back to haunt Cohen" was one that he had with Trump lawyer Alina Habba during his October 25 testimony in the civil fraud trial, when Habba asked about "his 2018 guilty plea before U.S. District Judge William Henry Pauley III, forcing him to either admit he had a shady past or engaged in a false confession back in federal court."

'Did you lie to Judge Pauley when you said that you were guilty of the counts that you said under oath that you were guilty of? Did you lie to Judge Pauley?' she asked that day.

'Yes,' Cohen shot back.

When she later pressed the matter again, Cohen doubled down.

'But you earlier testified today that you omitted, you didn’t evade, isn’t that right?' she asked.

'I did say that,' he replied.

'Right. So you lied when you said that you evaded taxes to a judge under oath; is that correct?'

'Yes,' he said, later adding that he did indeed mislead a federal judge.

The news outlet reports, "U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman tore into Cohen for the high wire act" in his court order, "saying that he either lied at his August 2018 guilty plea hearing or at the recent bank fraud trial." Furman "concluded that Cohen severely undermined the argument that his lawyer, David M. Schwartz, was trying to make to justify reducing the sentence."

Furman wrote, "It gives rise to two possibilities: one, Cohen committed perjury when he pleaded guilty before Judge Pauley or, two, Cohen committed perjury in his October 2023 testimony. Either way, it is perverse to cite the testimony, as Schwartz did, as evidence of Cohen’s 'commitment to upholding the law.'"

CNN reports, "Cohen asked to lift his supervised release, which ends in November, based on his testimony in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Trump." The news outlet notes Cohen's lawyer — E. Danya Perry — "at the time said Cohen’s testimony had 'been widely lauded and publicized' and that he showed remorse by testifying." The news outlet also notes the ex-Trump lawyer "has tried three prior times to lift the supervision and told the judge now there had been a 'substantial change in circumstances.'"

Furman, according to the Beast, "reasoned that Cohen can’t play both sides now, trying to rewrite the past while also feigning remorse. And he slammed Perry for 'her zealous efforts at spin,' rejecting the notion that Cohen was merely trying to describe being unfairly pressured by the feds into a guilty plea."

CNNs full report is available at this link. The Daily Beast's full report is here (subscription required).

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