Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen warned that there's a serious risk to the former president that his co-defendants could cooperate with Georgia prosecutors.
Trump and 18 other defendants were charged in a broad racketeering case in Georgia this month, alleging that the former president led a scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
“If any one of them ends up turning, it’s destruction for the rest,” Cohen said in an MSNBC interview Saturday.
Cohen himself turned on Trump, cooperating with New York prosecutors investigating falsified business records related to hush money payments for Trump’s alleged affairs. Once one of the former president’s closest confidants, he has since become one of his loudest critics.
The former attorney had a message for the co-defendants — especially Trump’s attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
“Donald doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about you one bit," he argued. "He will use you as the scapegoat and the system will use you as the scapegoat in order to get somebody."
Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion as part of his cooperation, receiving a three year prison sentence which was shortened by the COVID pandemic. He spent over two weeks in solitary confinement, he said, an experience he warned could become reality for the former president’s co-defendants as well.
“[Prosecutors] will get them to turn, because these three could easily end up in the same situation that I ended up," Cohen said. "And I can promise you something, it’s not fun.
“Exactly what happened to me is going to happen to all 18 of the co-indicted defendants," he added.
Cohen has also repeatedly criticized Trump for opting not to pay his co-defendants legal bills, saying it encourages them to flip. Giuliani has reportedly asked Trump several times to pay his bills, and former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, also a co-defendant, has done so publicly.
“Donald’s an idiot,” Cohen said in a CNN interview Monday. “Let me just be very clear: When it comes to paying money, he is truly an idiot."
"He has not learned yet that … three people you don’t want to throw under the bus like that: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic," he continued. "Because one way or the other, you’re going to go down the hill and there’ll be no brakes.”
