Michael Cohen and President Donald Trump have apparently patched up their differences in private. Now, they can do it in public.
The president is scheduled to do a phone interview Thursday with Cohen on the New York City radio show that Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” began hosting last month.
Cohen said in an interview ahead of the broadcast that he and his former boss have met privately three times and reconciled since a bitter and very public falling out during the president’s first term.
“I suggest you listen to the show. You may find it extremely interesting,” he told POLITICO.
Cohen, who made a stunning conversion from pro-Trump bulldog to fierce critic, said he wasn’t sure if during the interview he and the president would discuss presidential clemency for the conviction that landed him a three-year prison sentence.
He isn’t sure he will even push for clemency from the president.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Will I make that request down the road? I don’t know. Maybe maybe not.”
That the president’s erstwhile attorney is even considering asking Trump for a pardon is somewhat remarkable.
Cohen was the star witness in New York prosecutors’ 2024 hush money case against Trump, which saw the then-candidate become the first ever former president to become a convicted felon when he was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records to keep word of an affair with former porn star Stormy Daniels from public view.
Cohen, who testified that he lied and bullied for Trump during his years working for the Trump Organization, later turned on his former boss. He told POLITICO in an April 2024 interview, for example, that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “grotesque” and predicted “there will never be another election again in America” if he was reelected.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 on charges related to hush money payments to help conceal his boss’ affair with a porn star.
He said he sent pardon applications to former President Joe Biden’s administration and the Trump White House but doesn’t consider clemency, which would enable him to recover his law license, critical to his life at this point.
“I’m turning 60 next week. What am I going to go start practicing law again?” he said. “What has the loss of my law license prevented me from actually doing? Though I do believe I’m deserving of it, that’s a whole nother story.”
Thursday’s interview will mark the culmination of a months-long effort by Cohen to get back in the president’s good graces. He told a New York radio station this summer that they had a text exchange that started their reconciliation.
Teasing the interview, Cohen said people will be “interested to hear two individuals that were friends for a decade and a half who have not publicly spoken in eight years” talk about their long shared past. “What could they talk about?” he said.
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