NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Michael Cohen, the prosecution’s key witness in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial, said that justice was served while reacting to the former president being found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a scheme that illegally influenced the 2016 presidential election.
“Thirty-four counts. One, after the other, after the other, after the other, of guilty,” Cohen told Rachel Maddow in an exclusive interview with MSNBC on Thursday night. “It’s accountability, it’s exactly what America needs right now. We need for accountability to be had by all those that break the law.”
Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, gave testimony connecting him to all aspects of the hush money scheme that suppressed stories about sex, including an interaction with adult film star Stormy Daniels, which would have affected his 2016 campaign.
“The facts speak for themselves, the documents speak for themselves,” Cohen said before criticizing pro-Trump political pundits and supporters.
“I just don’t understand; how come they don’t see the same things that we’re seeing? I understand that, yeah, it makes great headlines and so on, but the facts are the facts, and at the end of the day, the facts are what prevailed here,” he told Maddow.
Cohen previously pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the payments in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in federal prison, paid a $50,000 fine and was quickly disbarred.
“This has been six years in the making. Remember, the very first time I met with the district attorney’s office … was while I was an inmate in Otisville,” he said.
In his interview, Cohen laid out a message that was shared by prominent public figures, like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in the wake of Thursday's conviction: The law should be applied fairly to all.
“It’s an important case, it’s a relevant case, it is an illegal act that any one of us would have already been prosecuted for,” Cohen said.