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

by Michael Cohen

Trump supporters vowed to kill me,

I was exactly the person Trump was talking about when he said he could shoot and kill someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

The United States was being torn apart, its political and cultural and mental well-being threatened by a clear and present danger named Donald Trump, and I had played a central role in creating this new reality.

Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors.

doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life.

He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated

all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them.

If you want to know how the mob really works, you’ve got to talk to the bad guys. I was one of Trump’s bad guys.

the Trump name was basically all that the Trump Organization had left to sell by 2006.

within the first few seconds of our meeting, Donald Trump had lied to me, directly, demonstrably and without doubt.

he is not a forgiving person. Once he sours on you, you are done.

now viewed the elder Trump as a pathway to the corridors of power in the city and beyond.

the Trumps were actually racist, scheming to keep African Americans out of their rental properties.

my attraction to Trump—or as I described it, my “obsession”—seemed to have its roots in money and power and my lust to possess these attributes, if even only by proxy.

Around Trump I felt excited, alive, like he possessed the urgent and only truth, the chance for my salvation and success in life.

because I would actually benefit in any way, of course, but that it was part of a performance meant to draw me into Trump’s centrifugal force, precisely in the way a con man draws a mark into his world.

My father Maurice was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. As a kid, aged six, he’d had to hide in the woods with his family during the German occupation of the Second World War, which had a formative impact on him.

my character harkened back to my days at the El Caribe watching wise guys from the Gambino and Lucchese crime families and how they behaved.

During the slow times in the summer, I would be invited to sit with Gaspipe or gangsters like Roy DeMeo, Anthony Senter, Joey Testa, and Frank Lastorino, a kind of Murderer’s Row of gangsters, like the 1950s Yankees batting lineup, only these guys really were murderers.

Pecker’s considerable power emanated from a virtually complete lack of morality or basic decency or shame, compounded by a brazen willingness to cover up rapes and assaults and despicable acts of all varieties, provided he was benefitting a powerful man and that he would receive a favor in return;

I had no second thoughts or scruples, and it never occurred to me that there was no way to reconcile what I was doing with how I wanted my daughter to be treated, or my son to behave.

Trump presented his son with an ultimatum: work for the family business or be cut off entirely—in effect disowned and disinherited if he didn’t serve at the beck and call of his father.

his form of leadership revolved around anger, fury, rage, and always chaotic blaming and shaming.

knew Trump would do whatever was necessary to win. I just lacked the imagination and moral purpose to actually think about what that would mean for America, the world, for me, and for my family.

Barack Obama’s victory in many ways was the defining event of Donald Trump’s rise. There were really no words to describe Trump’s hatred and contempt for Barack Hussein Obama—always all three names and always with a disdainful emphasis on the middle.

Trump didn’t despise Obama. It was much, much stronger than that.

he very rarely laughed—in fact, he almost never laughed, unless it was at a crude sexual comment, or at someone else’s misfortune.

Trump had the innate ability to access the deepest prejudices and fears of people and exploit them for his benefit.

“But soon I will make a major announcement of the findings and, trust me, you will be shocked.”

you actually give up your common sense, sense of decency, sensitivity, even your grip on reality. It was like having a mental illness: the reality was hard for outsiders to grasp, in all of its dimensions.

The lengths to which Trump would go to goad Obama had no bottom, as I saw when Trump started questioning his academic record, making it appear that the President had been the beneficiary of affirmative action instead of a brilliant student who had been the first black Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude, especially as compared to the Boss’s mediocre record as a student.

life was indeed a reality TV show to Trump.

We got around the pesky federal election laws as we usually did: by way of deceit.

Donald Trump hadn’t darkened the door of a church or chapel since the age of seven, as he would openly admit in his past incarnation.

He could lie directly to the faces of some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country and they believed him—or

I really had become what I wanted to be as a kid: a gangster lawyer, working for a New York organized crime don and Donald.

He constantly referred to himself in the third person, a trait that I saw as a quirk at the time, but in hindsight was the indication of dissociative egomania that should have served as a warning.

“friend” approaching Trump for assistance in a time of need was making a mistake of epic proportions. Trump doesn’t help people, he preys on them,

think about it like being under the spell of a cult leader. I don’t mean that as a cliché or an accusation: I mean literally.

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.

Trump was constantly making errors, large and small, like pretty much any human being. The difference was that Trump would never acknowledge his errors.

buck didn’t stop at Donald Trump’s desk: it never got there.

I would be fired if I didn’t somehow resolve a situation he had created to his satisfaction.

what Trump displays so often: rage.

The lie turned into a delusion turned into a supposed reality and then a grievance, followed by more lies, more bullying, and ultimately the ruthlessness of New York real estate—where lying and cheating and stealing are the order of the day—unleashed on folks with no clue about the depravity and dishonesty of the TV star and self-styled mogul.

loyalty to Trump means the willingness to do things you know to be wrong and that are harming others.

Trump legal strategy: to make it impossible for the little guy to stand up for his rights.

the lack of ethics applied equally to his three children, despite Ivanka’s carefully tended image—all them are like jackals when it comes to harming innocent businesspeople.

Boss had an unerring eye for sycophants:

Plausible deniability wasn’t just a strategy for Trump—it was his way of life.