Politics
Michael Cohen Suing Trump Organization Over Unpaid Legal Bills
Michael_Cohen | Circa March 2011 | By IowaPolitics.com [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump Organization, alleging that the real estate firm breached a contract to pay legal expenses that the former Trump fixer accrued during congressional and federal investigations.
Cohen alleged that the Trump Organization reneged on a deal to cover his legal bills, which amounted to $1.9 million dollars.
“The Trump Organization agreed to indemnify Mr. Cohen and to pay attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by Mr. Cohen in connection with various matters arising from Mr. Cohen’s work with and on behalf of the Organization,” reads the complaint, according to Bloomberg.
“These matters included multiple congressional hearings, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and others.”
Cohen alleges that the Trump Organization agreed in July 2017 to cover his legal expenses but ended that arrangement in June 2018, when Cohen began contemplating cooperating with prosecutors. He said that his lawyer, Stephen Ryan, withdrew as counsel in June 2018 over more than $1 million in unpaid legal bills.
The lawsuit, filed in state court in Manhattan, is likely to fuel an already-bitter dispute between Cohen and his former boss. At a congressional hearing on Feb. 27, Cohen accused Trump of several crimes and called him a “racist” and “conman.”
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on Dec. 12 after pleading guilty to charges in the special counsel’s investigation and in federal court in Manhattan. The most serious charges that Cohen pleaded guilty to stemmed from a taxi medallion business he operated separately from his Trump work.
But Cohen also pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions in the form of a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims she had an affair with Trump.
Cohen paid Daniels out of his personal account and was later paid back by Trump and executives at Trump Organization.
Trump claimed on Twitter on Thursday that the payments to Daniels were personal expenses and not campaign-related.
It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me. Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2019
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