President Donald Trump went off on an unhinged rant about Michael Cohen in a Thursday interview with Fox News, saying special counsel Robert Mueller was using Cohen to embarrass him.
"What happened is either Cohen or the prosecutors, in order to embarrass me, said 'listen -- I'm making this deal for reduced time and everything else, do me a favor, put these two charges on,'" Trump told host Harris Faulkner, opening the floodgates. "Let me tell you -- I never directed him to do anything wrong."
Trump insisted that Cohen, and only Cohen, was to blame for paying off pornography performer Stormy Daniels and the president's other mistresses, and added that he was dragged into it by overzealous prosecutors.
"He did some bad things: income tax evasion, I heard about taxi cab medallions, I heard about a lot of things," Trump said. "I'm not reading about any of that stuff, because what he did, he made a deal to embarrass me. In order to embarrass me, they cut his term down."
Trump speculated, without evidence, that Cohen turned on him to keep his wife and father-in-law out of prison.
"How many people when they say 'listen, if you embarrass the president of the United States, we will give you a deal. Your father-in-law, your wife, we'll cut your jail.' That's all it is," Trump said. "It's terrible system. It's going on right now with General Flynn. The FBI says he didn't lie."
Watch the video below.
