President Donald Trump is set to record an interview Thursday with Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer turned public critic, according to a White House official granted anonymity to describe plans that had not been publicly announced.
The interview is scheduled to air later Thursday on Cohen’s radio program, with additional excerpts running on his Sunday show. Cohen confirmed the sit-down after MS NOW first reported it, telling CBS News that he initiated the conversation.
“I reached out to the White House, reached out to the president, and he kindly agreed,” Cohen said.
Cohen said the call would be recorded Thursday morning and air in parts that evening and Sunday on When You Know, You Know… with Michael Cohen, which he hosts on New York’s 770 AM WABC. He described the exchange as the first public conversation between the two men in eight years and said it would mirror the tone of their long working relationship.
“Two friends for 15 years,” Cohen told Newsweek.
Cohen has the slot only because Andrew Cuomo stepped away for the summer. The former New York governor’s WABC show went to Cohen after station owner John Catsimatidis, a Trump ally, ran it by the White House. The administration “had no objection,” Catsimatidis told the New York Post. He said he made the call after Trump “expressed empathy” over the criticism Cohen had taken.
In a January Substack post, Cohen claimed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James had pressured him.
“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,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen served as the star witness in the Manhattan hush-money case that ended with Trump convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax and campaign-finance violations tied to payments made to silence women who alleged affairs with Trump, and spent more than a year in prison.
At trial, Cohen was cross-examined by Todd Blanche, then Trump’s defense lawyer and now his attorney general. Blanche noted in court that Cohen had called him a “crying little s—” on TikTok.
Trump posted at the time, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”
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