U.S. President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., January 16, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, penned a column on Friday that detailed coercion from the New York Attorney General's Office.
Writing on his Substack, Cohen said that he has witnessed firsthand being "leaned on."
"I experienced a similar dynamic in the Attorney General’s civil case. Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump. 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," said Cohen.
He added that James and New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg share the same playbook to pressure and coerce witnesses. He was also pushed into providing "information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump."
"Both used their platforms to elevate their profiles, to claim the mantle of the officials who 'took down Trump,'" Cohen continued. "In doing so, they blurred the line between justice and politics; and in that blur, the credibility of both suffered."
He commented that he's speaking out about it now because he's seen that prosecutors pick a target first and then search for the evidence to justify that opinion.
"I have lived inside that process. I have suffered from that process. My family has suffered from that process. And as courts now reconsider where the Bragg and James cases belong, how they were brought and how they were tried; that experience is relevant. More today than ever before," he added.
In November, Cohen noted, the three-judge panel at the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to begin another discussion about Trump's effort to erase the hush-money convictions. If U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein agrees to revisit the ruling to keep the case in state court. Trump wants the case in federal court because he thinks he could argue he has presidential immunity.
Cohen closed by saying that the most important thing to gather from Hellerstein's decision is that "Justice must be more than effective; it must be credible. When politics and prosecution become indistinguishable, public trust erodes; not just in individual cases, like mine and Trump’s, but in the system itself. That erosion serves no one, regardless of party, personality, or power."