Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump

by Michael Cohen

When I started working for Trump, I had been a multi-millionaire lawyer and businessman, and now I was broke and broken; a convicted, disgraced, and disbarred former attorney about to testify against the President on live television before an audience of more than 15 million Americans.

I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life.

Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “There’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia . . . there’s no Russia.”

Apart from his wife and children, I knew Trump better than anyone else did. In some ways, I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.

He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse, but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes—will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything

Hyperbole was his instinctual method of communication, exaggerating his own talents and wealth and physical characteristics and achievements, as if by enlarging things he could make them real. The same was true for those around him, if you remained on his good side.

“Don has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met,” Trump would often tell me, adding that he’d been reluctant to bestow his first name on his first-born son. He didn’t want to share his name with a “loser,” if that was what his son turned out to be.

I knew I would go to law school, just as my parents wished, a typical well-mannered Jewish boy pleasing his family. Inside, though, I belonged to another tradition: the Tough Jew. I wanted to be like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and Roy Cohn—or Downtown Burt Kaplan hanging out by the pool at the El Caribe. I liked how wise guys moved, talked, thought. I liked how they resolved issues and commanded a room. I would practice law, I determined as a kid, but I’d practice it like a gangster.

That night our gang went out to a nightclub called Sprat’s on the Water, and I started talking to a young girl named Laura Shusterman. She was gorgeous, seventeen years old, a rising senior at Kew-Forest School in Queens, a prestigious prep school that had once educated a boy then called Donny Trump, until his father lost patience with his bad behavior and worse attitude and enrolled him in a military school upstate. There was nothing romantic between Laura and me at the time, but I liked her a lot. After that night, Laura’s best friend called and asked what I thought of her. I told her that Laura was the kind of girl you marry, not someone you just fool around with.

After my unsuccessful run for office, my brother and I moved our law practice to the white-shoe firm of Phillips Nizer, as I’ve said before, and I befriended a young real estate developer named Donald Trump, Jr. when Laura and I purchased three units in the new development, Trump Park Avenue, to consolidate into a single unit. That was life, as I knew it, and it was a great one, until the nondescript day in the fall of 2006 when my phone rang and the Trump family summoned me unto my destiny and my downfall.

The concept of “catch and kill” has now entered the vernacular, along with the #MeToo movement and a growing awareness of the ways that wealthy and powerful men bury the truth about their predatory sexual behavior, from the rapes of Harvey Weinstein to the depredations of Trump’s old friend Jeffery Epstein, who ran a sex ring for the rich and famous at his Manhattan mansion and Caribbean island—not to mention his Palm Beach cavorting with another self-styled playboy named Donald J. Trump. The root of the word conspiracy is literally “to breathe together,” and that was precisely what rich men and publications like the National Enquirer did to hide the truth about exploiting and abusing women. Those rich men included my Boss. The reality was far more brutal and awful than has previously been revealed, as I will demonstrate. The straightforward catch and kill is only the simplest form of the true endeavor, which is to find, stop, and spin or twist any story or rumor that could harm the interests or reputation of the rich and powerful. Sex was only part of the story, as Trump viewed anything that could hurt his brand or name as a mortal threat.

Saying he wasn’t as rich as he pretended to be was, in many ways, worse than calling him a sexual predator; calling out his buildings or branded products as third-rate was far more damaging, in his mind, than a story about grabbing women by the pussy. The task in a catch, kill, and twist operation was to bury the truth, and if that wasn’t possible, to distort it beyond recognition, to sow doubt and confusion and even fear.

Just one example was Trump’s call in 1989 for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of black kids convicted of the rape of a white female jogger in Manhattan’s famous park. The fact that the kids were exonerated years later, when it was proven beyond doubt that they were not guilty, didn’t prompt Trump to back down or admit a mistake; he’d understood instinctively that the racial anxiety and resentments then gripping New York City would provide a potent symbol that he hoped to ride to power. That was always Trump’s way, learned at the feet of Roy Cohn, his first attack-dog attorney: Never apologize, and never admit to error or weakness. Never. Ever. Not even in the time of Coronavirus, as the world would discover.

Trump is a master at getting otherwise seemingly sensible people to enter into his fantasyland because of the fear that failure to do so means banishment. This explains the behavior of many members of Congress and the Cabinet, as displayed daily in the news, terrified of facing a primary or a tweet or a tantrum. It was a huge part of a process that I fell victim to and know intimately. Once the small lies and delusions pass, then it became easier and easier to swallow bigger and bigger lies and delusions.

Scores of small contractors have had to sue Trump over the years to try to get justice against a billionaire who has absolutely no compunction about screwing the little guy. I know because I was often the one tasked with doing such lowlife things to innocent and honest business people providing goods and services to the Trump Organization. I hated myself for what I did, even as I did it, but that didn’t stop me, and I have no excuses to offer. But you might detect a theme that applies to the politics of today: Trump’s version of loyalty is one way, as I famously learned, just like so many others have—indeed, like the nation has. But loyalty to Trump means the willingness to do things you know to be wrong and that are harming others.

Silence was often the best response to Trump, I had learned, especially when it came to lewd remarks. There was really nothing to say, I knew, unless you wanted to confront Trump with a politically correct remark, and that would only result in ridicule and disgust and, in all likelihood, a steep decline in his regard. In this way, I could relate to Billy Bush in the “grab them by the pussies” video in which Trump boasted about how his celebrity status afforded him the privilege of being able to sexually assault women. It was offensive, to say the least, but I knew what Bush was doing when he giggled nervously and went along with Trump. The sexist swagger was part of life inside Trump’s bubble, a juvenile redoubt that was proudly, defiantly, and most definitely Neanderthal about women.

I should stop here to comment on the common perception of Trump as a sleazy womanizer, constantly having sex with strangers as some kind of sex addict. That wasn’t how the Boss operated, no matter the popular view he encouraged. As you will see in the pages to come, Trump did have affairs with people like a porn star and a former Playboy centerfold, and I was assigned the task of hiding those trysts from his wife and the public. But he wasn’t a lothario and many, many women weren’t attracted to him at all—in fact, in my experience, the most attractive and intelligent women were often both repulsed and, in a strange way, pulled towards his money and power and prestige.

The Agalarovs were classic Russian billionaires: connected to Putin, and self-evidently able to get things done in the former Soviet Union, qualities that mattered greatly to Trump. For decades, Trump had been chasing his personal great white whale—a Trump hotel in the center of Moscow—with no success until an initiative was begun in the months leading up to the 2016 election, a potential deal that I was in charge of and that would cause a nation-shattering controversy—but that was still years away.

“Look at that piece of ass,” Trump said. “I would love some of that.” I looked over and stopped cold. My fifteen-year-old daughter had just finished a tennis lesson with the club pro and she was walking off the court. She was wearing a white tennis skirt and a tank top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. I turned to Trump, incredulous. “That’s my daughter,” I said. Trump turned to me, now surprised. “That’s your daughter? When did she get so hot?” I said nothing, thinking to myself, or I should say allowing myself to think: What a fucking creep. Who talks about a man’s daughter in that way? All of the countless times I’d gone along with Trump’s crude comments swirled around my mind. Samantha waved and walked over, giving me a kiss. “Give me a kiss, too,” Trump said, and she complied with a tiny peck, glancing in my direction with unease. “When did you get such a beautiful figure?” Trump asked Samantha. “You’re really grown up.” Samantha blushed and said nothing.

Samantha said she was sick and tired of the way Trump demeaned and degraded me, as if he needed to keep me in my place. She wanted me to quit working for Trump because he was constantly doing things like threatening to cut my pay in half, as he actually did, or withhold my bonus or fire me. Our family had money independent of Trump, which he didn’t like, Samantha believed, because the Boss wanted me to be subservient to him in all ways, so when I bought a nice car or had a fun vacation Trump would use it as an excuse to ridicule me and make me feel small—again, as if an insignificant speck like me had no right to enjoy the good life he led. This was part of his cult-leader persona—his slow, incremental, relentless way of saying nasty things to me about my abilities and intelligence, things that weren’t true, until some part of me started to believe him. Samantha felt like I had Stockholm Syndrome, and I’m ashamed to say she was correct; she was fifteen years old and she saw Trump much more clearly than I could, which I was unable to grasp, let alone act upon. That was the sorry truth. I can admit I was being an idiot, but what is far more painful to know in hindsight is that my daughter thought I was an idiot.

The biggest influence by far—by a country mile—was the media. Donald Trump’s presidency is a product of the free press. Not free as in freedom of expression, I mean free as unpaid for. Rallies broadcast live, tweets, press conferences, idiotic interviews, 24-7 wall-to-wall coverage, all without spending a penny. The free press gave America Trump. Right, left, moderate, tabloid, broadsheet, television, radio, Internet, Facebook—that is who elected Trump and might well elect him again.

One thing I knew from long experience was that Trump didn’t want to pay retail, and he would never agree to pay for services he might not actually require. This was even truer when it came to politics, I was learning, despite Trump’s repeated brag that he would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to win the Presidency. In truth, he didn’t want to spend a dime of his own money, if at all possible, and any and all expenditures had to be the absolute rock-bottom minimum.

Trump stepped up on the makeshift stage we’d installed and he let rip in an hour-long tirade that was breathtaking in its lack of structure, compassion, or coherence. It was literally a rant, with frequent awkward silences in the press corps like they weren’t entirely sure if this was a publicity stunt, or if Trump was perhaps joking, or out of his mind. Trump was spewing things that I found repulsive. Mexicans were rapists, he said, even though there was a very nice Mexican man working in Trump Ice Cream on the other side of the atrium no doubt listening in horror. Stephanopoulos turned to me, a look of disbelief in his eyes as Trump’s nativist and reactionary views spewed forth: Mexicans are bringing drugs and crime to America, the American Dream is over, promising to self-fund his campaign, boasting about his wealth of $8.7 billion, lying about the size of the crowd. Trump was pure id.

No one ever tells Trump the truth about his behavior and beliefs, or the consequences of his conduct and ignorance and arrogance, in business or in his personal life and now in politics. Trump truly is the boy in the bubble, impervious to the thoughts and feelings or others, entirely and utterly focused on his own desires and ambitions.

When I got home, Samantha was furious. She knew I was friends with people from all walks of life, including different ethnicities and religions. She knew I knew better. She said that I was friends with lots of Muslims and Hispanics and there I was, cheering on a racist pig. How could I support Trump when he said such terrible things about Mexicans? “This is going to be really bad,” she said. “Your grandmother was born in Buenos Aires, for God’s sake,” my son Jake said.

“Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote,” Trump said. “Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump. They’re not my people.”

Reading reports, taking briefings, seeking context and background for professional encounters—Trump does none of that, trusting that he can fake his way through life. More than that, he preferred to be ignorant, as it allowed him to rely on his gut instincts.

To Trump, his voters are his audience, his chumps, his patsies, his base. Guns, criminalizing abortion—Trump took up those conservative positions not because he believed in them but because they were his path to power. That was what I meant when I told Congress that Trump is a con man.

Two weeks later, another story appeared that outraged Trump. This time Don Jr. was the subject of his fury. I knew the kids were always walking a tightrope with their father, fearing his temper and rage. I witnessed this at close quarters when photographs of the Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric turned up on social media in late December of 2015. The photos had been taken years earlier, appearing in an article with the headline “Donald Trump’s Sons Awesome at Killing Elephants and Other Wildlife.” The images were brutal. In one, Don Jr. was holding a knife and a dead elephant’s tail; in another, Eric held the limp body of a lioness as the pair grinned for the camera, looking for all the world like a couple of soulless morons. A dead crocodile in a noose, civet cat, kudu, waterbuck . . . the pair had been a two-man murder squad on their visit to Zimbabwe, but it was worse than that.

For months, it had amazed me that the national press investigated every accusation made against Hillary Clinton, as if she were the most devious and corrupt politician in history, while Trump’s long history of bankruptcies and infidelities and dubious business practices received relatively little scrutiny. I knew it was because no one really believed he would win, so the presumptive president deserved more attention, but giving Trump that kind of leeway seemed like lazy journalism.

That afternoon, I’d watched the President sitting at a long table in the White House talking to the press. Trump spoke about the FBI raid on my office and apartment. What worried me, knowing how he speaks and acts and thinks, was that Trump had described me as “one of my personal attorneys.” All of a sudden I didn’t have a name? All of a sudden I’m only one of his attorneys? This was how Trump distanced himself from people. I was still blind to the implications, unable to actually acknowledge and confront what I knew in my heart, but a sense of dread began to shroud my thoughts. That was the last time I ever spoke to Donald Trump.

After the raid, I had no choice but to continue to stay the course as we entered into a joint defense agreement. Trump, Jared, Ivanka, and I all collaborated using my attorney, Stephen Ryan, as the lead attorney. I never expected that Trump was going to do to me what I’d done to so many others over the years on his behalf: stiff me on the legal fees I owed to lawyers.

I’d never been away from my wife and children before, so that caused melancholy, along with the fact that I truly didn’t believe that I belonged there. Talking to family was difficult because we only got 300 minutes a month of phone calls, which diced down to ten minutes a day, and visiting was complicated because the meeting room often became overcrowded. There was a saying in prison: The days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast. Every Friday night, there was a Sabbath dinner, which I attended, so that was a good way to measure time. But there was another reality, as I developed serious hypertension problems, leading to my hospitalization twice, accompanied twenty-four-hours-a-day by two prison officers. The hospitalizations, along with pre-existing blood clotting conditions from years earlier, eventually provided the basis for my early release during the COVID-19 crisis. But first I had to go through the William Barr Department of Justice kangaroo-court process. As the virus spread throughout the country, including the petri dishes that constituted prisons in a time of plague, I was moved to solitary confinement to quarantine for release on furlough to convert to home detention. As the date for my release neared, though, Bill Barr changed the criteria for release and seventy inmates were returned to the camp, leaving a dozen of us in solitary. It felt like Barr’s sudden amendment of the rules was aimed at me, at the direction of President Trump, which speaks volumes abo...

Please remember what I testified to Congress, the second time: There is a serious danger that Donald Trump will not leave office easily, and there is a real chance of not having a peaceful transition. When he jokes about running again in 2024 and gets a crowd of thousands to chant “Trump 2024,” he’s not joking. Trump never jokes. You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November.

Without the immunity from prosecution granted to the president, Trump will also almost certainly face New York State criminal charges. He would likely be convicted on both the Federal and State charges and face serious prison time. That is Donald Trump’s greatest fear in life, believe me, and if he fails to get reelected, that will be his fate—and he knows it—so silencing me was an essential part of his overall plan to evade the law and avoid that outcome.

I was handcuffed and shackled and taken to the bowels of the building, where I was stripped naked and issued a brown jumpsuit. Within hours, I was returned to prison in upstate New York, placed in solitary confinement, and left to the mercy of the raging COVID-19 and the possibility of dying behind bars with my underlying heart and respiratory health issues.

In the beginning of this book, which I publish in full and with a full heart, I wrote that the President of the United States doesn’t want you to read my story. Now I have actual proof of how desperate he is to silence me and prevent the world from hearing this story and the truth about Donald J. Trump—the real real Donald Trump. Michael Cohen New York, New York August, 2020