Michael D. Cohen (lawyer)

Early life and education

Cohen grew up on Long Island. His mother was a nurse, and his father, who survived the Holocaust, was a surgeon. He graduated from American University and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.

Career

Cohen volunteered for the 1988 presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, was a legislative intern for Congressman Joe Moakley, and voted for Barack Obama in 2008, though he later became disappointed with Obama. He also ran for New York City Council in 2003 as a Republican and briefly campaigned for a seat in the New York State Senate in 2010. He was a registered Democrat, until he officialy registered as a Republican on March 9, 2017.

While an executive at the Trump Organization, Cohen was known as Trump's "pit bull." In late 2011, when Trump was publicly speculating about running for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, Cohen co-founded the website "Should Trump Run?" to draft Trump into entering the race.

He gained public prominence following an interview on CNN in 2016 when he replied "Says who?" when the interviewer stated that Trump was behind in all of the polls. Following the results of the 2016 United States presidential election, Erik Wemple wrote a column in The Washington Post discussing Cohen's response based on Trump's internal polling numbers. Wemple pointed out that Cohen was prescient later in the interview regarding minority polling numbers, saying "My statement to you is: I don’t care about those poll numbers. I have some very deep relationships into the African-American community as an example. And trust me, he’s doing a whole lot better than 1%. And the same pundits that are giving you this answer are going to be surprised the same way they were when Donald Trump ran away with the nomination... You’re going to all be very surprised when he polls substantially higher than what any of you are giving him credit for."

Cohen defended Trump against charges of antisemitism, claiming that they were spread by the media. He said that Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, was "highly recognized and praised by the Brooklyn/Queens Jewish communities." He claimed that Trump "treats all people exactly the same regardless of race, religion, creed or color," and that as the son of a Holocaust survivor, he was offended by those who characterized Trump as a racist. "Would a racist attend both of my children’s Bat and Bar Mitzvahs? Would he make a Jew an executive at his company and task that person to protect him, his company, and children? Anyone who believes for even a split second that this is true is too ignorant to engage in conversation."

On January 10, 2017, The Atlantic reported that Cohen, in a denial of some allegations, said "I'm telling you emphatically that I've not been to Prague, I've never been to Czech [Republic], I've not been to Russia. The story is completely inaccurate, it is fake news meant to malign Mr. Trump." According to REF/RL, "A Czech investigative journal quotes local intelligence officers as saying they have no evidence that a lawyer for President-elect Donald Trump traveled to the Czech capital last year, potentially dealing a blow to a claim at the center of an unverified text suggesting Russia had compromising materials on the billionaire developer."

In late January 2017, Cohen met with Ukrainian opposition politician Andrey Artemenko and Felix Sater at the Loews Regency in Manhattan to discuss a plan to lift sanctions against Russia. The proposed plan would require that Russian forces withdraw from eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine hold a referendum on whether Crimea should be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years. Cohen was given a written proposal in a sealed envelope that he delivered to then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn in early February.

Personal life

Before joining the Trump Organization, he bought several homes in Trump's buildings. Cohen lives in New York City with his wife, who is of Ukrainian descent.