Former US President Donald Trump would happily turn his back on his own family if it helps him avoid conviction on a case, such as the one New York State Attorney General Letitia James, reclassified from civil to criminal on 19 May, Michael Cohen has claimed.
Cohen, who used to work as the former president's lawyer, claims that Trump "only cares for himself" and will easily try to shift the blame once he realises that "his goose is cooked". The lawyer then went on to rant about how this alleged trait of Trump landed him in prison:
"It's never Donald. It's always somebody else. It wasn't Donald Trump who had the affair. It wasn't Donald Trump who directed me to make the payments to Stormy Daniels. It wasn't Donald Trump who got the benefit of the relationship and the actions. It was Michael Cohen. And I'm the bad guy into it. Why? Because I didn't take the fall", Cohen said.
He went on to suggest that now the New York attorney general, who is inquiring into the Trump Organisation's activities, including taxes, has shifted its probe to a criminal one, Trump is going to try to blame his accountant, or even his own children for any misdeeds the investigation unearths. Cohen did not elaborate how exactly Trump, in his opinion, is planning to cover up alleged malpractice using his offspring.
"He's going to turn on his accountant and point the finger. He's going to say 'Don Jr. handled that.... Ivanka handled that.... Melania... Don't take me. Take Melania!'", Cohen claimed in an interview with the TV show The ReidOut.
Cohen himself ended up in prison in 2018, after a court found him guilty of tax evasion and campaign finance violations. Not long before conviction, the lawyer surrendered to the FBI and pleaded guilty on several accounts, including tax evasion and unlawful corporate and campaign contributions, related to Trump's 2016 presidential bid.
Trump's ex-lawyer claimed that the former POTUS directed him to commit the crimes, including the ones related to campaign financing. He further rejected the possibility of accepting a pardon from Trump, calling him "corrupt and dangerous", but, in reality, Cohen has never been offered any.