Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney to Donald Trump, issued a shocking walk-back Friday, sharply criticizing New York prosecutors while weighing in on the legal battles still surrounding the president’s hush money conviction.
The remarks came in a Substack post titled “When Politics Blind Justice,” where Cohen framed the latest appeals court decision in the case as more than a procedural development. A three-judge appellate court panel recently reopened Trump’s effort to move the case from state to federal court, Cohen wrote, which would allow a judge to scrutinize whether some evidence implicates acts taken while Trump was president.
Cohen, who testified in both civil and criminal trials against the MAGA leader, said his perspective comes from experience.
“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,” Cohen wrote Friday.
He went on to accuse Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Leticia James of blurring the lines “between justice and politics” to boost their own profiles.
"I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump," he wrote as he recounted his experiences with both offices.
“Whatever the outcome,” Cohen added, “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.”
He added: “That erosion serves no one, regardless of party, personality, or power.”
The appellate panel instructed U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to review his earlier ruling that kept the hush money case in state court instead of removing it to federal court. According to Cohen, Trump has long viewed the federal court system as “more favorable” to him.
