Michael Cohen, a key witness in the trial involving Trump, embarks on a media spree amidst doubts about his credibility

Michael Cohen, a key witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money case against former President Donald Trump, has become increasingly vocal ahead of his anticipated testimony in the trial.

Cohen has participated in a string of recent media interviews in which he acknowledges that Trump’s defense team will attempt to undermine his credibility during the trial, including by showcasing Cohen’s felony convictions and incentives Cohen may have to lie about Trump.

His media blitz comes as Trump’s defense attorneys signal they plan to paint Cohen as an unreliable witness during the trial.

“One of the things that Donald and his legal team are trying to do is every day it’s to discredit me, and they think that that’s a winning strategy for getting an overturn of whatever conviction that the jury may or may not determine,” Cohen said in a television interview over the weekend. “That’s not the way that you run a trial. Have your own defense.”

Cohen added that the media’s portrayal of him as a “key witness” was not accurate and claimed that he was merely “the narrator of the story.”

While Cohen has been outspokenly criticizing Trump, the former president is restricted by a gag order from speaking about Cohen and other known witnesses in the case.

In yet another media interview, Cohen attacked Trump for complaining that he may miss his son Barron’s high school graduation because he is required to be present at the trial.

“Before I start shedding a tear for him, for Barron — and I’m sure Melania is extremely excited he’s not going to be there,” Cohen said on a podcast this week. “Rest assured I’m not losing any sleep, nor am I going to shed a tear that Trump can’t go to Barron’s graduation.”

Cohen, who once worked as Trump’s attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to a bank, evading taxes, and violating campaign finance laws. Later that year, he also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in prison and eventually blamed Trump for encouraging his criminal activity.

Part of Cohen’s crimes involved arranging payments for two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to silence them in the lead-up to the 2016 election to help Trump’s campaign.

Federal prosecutors declined to charge Trump at the time, in part because, according to the Department of Justice, it was against policy to charge a sitting president. Now out of office, Trump is facing charges brought by Bragg that he falsified business records to conceal the payments to the two women.

Trump’s defense attorneys indicated in pretrial court papers that they had received at the eleventh hour a wealth of exculpatory discovery from the U.S. attorney’s office that prosecuted Cohen, and they alleged Bragg had attempted to suppress it.

The attorneys also said in the documents that Cohen’s past criminal conduct was admissible as evidence at trial, signaling they planned to chip away at his credibility.

“His prior crimes provided him with a motive to curry favor with the People by fabricating claims regarding President Trump and a corresponding bias against President Trump,” they wrote.

Cohen also published books that were critical of Trump, and the attorneys said Cohen stood to profit from book sales by making salacious claims about his former client. Cohen’s 2022 book about Trump was titled Revenge.

“Cohen’s writings regarding President Trump and agreements with publishers … provide financial motivations for Cohen to make things up regarding President Trump to sell more ads on his podcasts and more books,” the attorneys wrote.

Despite Cohen saying in the television interview that he was not a “key witness” but a “narrator,” in an interview published by Politico magazine on Friday, Cohen lamented how critical his role is in the case.

“It’s a heavy weight. It’s a weight that is difficult, on a daily basis, to carry around,” Cohen told the magazine. “I wish I wasn’t involved in this at all. Not that I don’t want to see accountability; it is incredibly taxing on your heart, on your mind and on your soul.”

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Trump, meanwhile, is facing calls from Bragg, an elected Democrat, for Judge Juan Merchan to fine the former president after Trump called Cohen a “sleaze bag” and “disgraced,” noting in recent social media posts that Cohen is someone who was “prosecuted for LYING.”

Bragg has alleged those remarks were gag order violations, and Merchan has scheduled a hearing for next week to assess whether they were.