Michael Cohen Sues Trump Organization Over Unpaid Legal Bills
Donald Trump’s former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, has sued his former boss for $1.9 million in unpaid legal bills, CNBC is reporting.
Cohen had been with the Trump Organization since 2006, but the disputed legal fees date from 2017 and beyond, according to NBC News.
Cohen, in his lawsuit filed on Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court, claims that he and Trump had an agreement whereby the organization would pay any legal fees incurred by Cohen as he did work “with and on behalf of” organization officials. Although it’s not clear, as of this writing, what that work was exactly, NBC News notes that this work occurred as FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was in full swing.
“As a result of the Trump Organization’s unfounded refusal to meet its indemnification obligations under the indemnification agreement, Mr. Cohen has incurred millions of dollars in unreimbursed attorneys’ fees and costs.”
Specifically, Cohen claims the Trump Organization owes him $1.9 million in unpaid legal fees alone. Further, he says he’s due another $1.9 million that he was paid, but that he was forced to forfeit “as part of his criminal sentence arising from conduct undertaken” at the alleged direction of the Trump Organization.
According to The Guardian, the organization stopped making payments to Cohen after it became clear that he was going to cooperate with investigators looking into his activities.
JUST IN: Michael Cohen files lawsuit against Trump Organization, accuses it of failing to indemnify him for attorney fees, costs he incurred by working on its behalf pic.twitter.com/qUlv65whs4
— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) March 7, 2019
Cohen was, at one time, one of Trump’s most loyal and stalwart employees.
In 2017, he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee, during which time he made several false statements about his involvement in a deal to get a Trump-branded property built in Moscow. Those false statements earned him a conviction for perjury, for which he was given a two-month sentence — to be served concurrently with a three-year sentence for tax fraud.
However, Cohen’s willingness to go to bat for his boss appears to have soured after April of 2018, when the FBI raided his home and offices. Since that time, Cohen has instead turned the tables on Trump, giving damning testimony before the House Oversight Committee last week. He called his former boss a “racist” and a “con man,” among other things.
On Thursday, Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, announced that Cohen wasn’t necessarily telling the whole truth last week when he testified before Congress — when Cohen said that he had never asked Donald Trump for a pardon. As reported by The Inquisitr, Davis says that Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, did in fact “dangle” a “disingenuous” offer of a pardon — after Cohen directed his attorney at the time to ask about one.
However, Davis says that Cohen didn’t perjure himself, because Cohen did not ask Trump directly for a pardon — further alleging that the entirety of the discussion consisted of a single meeting with no follow-up.
