Cohen: I Was Coerced to Frame Trump

Ex-legal fixer Michael Cohen on Friday accused New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of forcing him to testify against his former client, Donald Trump, as part of their civil fraud and “hush money” cases against the now-sitting president.

“I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking,” Cohen wrote in a Substack post. “Letitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook.”

Cohen took to the independent journalists’ platform to reveal his thoughts about participating in the legal proceedings, as Trump seeks to have his appeal to overturn Bragg’s conviction heard by a federal appeals court.

The president’s attorneys are also still seeking to have the $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump for inflating his real estate empire tossed.

“From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves,” Cohen wrote on his new platform, “I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.”

“During my time with prosecutors, both in preparation for and during the trials, it was clear they were interested only in testimony from me that would enable them to convict President Trump,” he noted of Bragg’s case.

“When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative.”

For the James case, Cohen also alleged that the Empire State attorney general’s team “made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony” that “would go after President Trump.”