“Disloyal A Memoir” by Michael Cohen
You actually can tell a book by its cover, at least when it’s one entitled “Disloyal, A Memoir” and written by Michael Cohen, who for years acted as President Donald Trump‘s former personal lawyer and fixer for problems such as talkative alleged sex partners.
Cohen on Thursday tweeted out a photo of the cover of his forthcoming tell-all about working for Trump.
The tweet came weeks after the Manhattan resident Cohen was re-released from a prison after a legal dispute over federal Probation officials’ efforts to bar him from publishing a book, speaking to reporters or posting on social media while serving the remainder of a three-year criminal sentence under home confinement.
Cohen declined to comment to CNBC on the book, whose publisher was not disclosed.
But the title of his book, which Cohen has indicated he plans to publish before the November presidential election when Trump will face presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, is likely a play on the word “disloyal.”
Trump has considered Cohen disloyal to him because the former fixer cooperated with federal and state prosecutors in investigations of the president. One of those probes is by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office which could be eyeing Trump and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud.
Trump said that Cohen was “lying to reduce his jail time.”
But Cohen, who since last year has publicly condemned the president in heated terms, considers Trump disloyal to his oath of office, among other infractions.
In testimony to Congress before he entered prison in early 2019, Cohen called Trump a “racist” and a “con man.”
The White House had no immediate comment on the book, which would come on the heels of damning books about Trump by the president’s niece, Mary Trump, and by his former national security advisor John Bolton.
Legal efforts by Trump’s brother Robert to block Mary Trump’s book and by the Justice Department to block Bolton’s book failed.
In May, Charles Harder, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, sent Cohen a letter warning him that he would be at legal risk if he wrote a book about his time working for Trump.
The letter came nearly two weeks after The Daily Beast reported that Cohen had been “writing an explosive tell-all book about his stint” as Trump’s lawyer “and plans on releasing it before the election.”
The actor Tom Arnold, who had been in contact with Cohen while he was in prison, told The Daily Beast “the book would pull no punches.”
Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives at his Manhattan apartment after being released from federal prison to serve the remainder of his sentence under home confinement in New York, May 21, 2020.
Mike Segar | Reuters
Cohen originally was furloughed to his Upper East Side home from a prison in Otisville, N.Y., in late May under a Bureau of Prisons program designed to limit the spread of the coronavirus among inmates by releasing people who might be eligible for home confinement.
But on July 10, Cohen was sent back there a day after balking at restrictions Probation officials attempted to impose, which would have prevented him from publishing his book, some of which he had written while in prison.
Cohen sued in an effort to reverse his re-incarceration.
His lawsuit said that in his book he describes “first-hand experiences with Mr. Trump, and it provides graphic details about the President’s behavior behind closed doors.”
“For example, the narrative describes pointedly certain anti-Semitic remarks against prominent Jewish people and virulently racist remarks against such Black leaders as President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela,” the suit said.
An angry federal judge in late July ordered Cohen’s second release after finding that federal prison authorities were acting in retaliation for him writing the book.
“I’ve never seen such a clause, in 21 years in being a judge and sentencing people,” Judge Alvin Hellerstein said at a Manhattan federal court hearing held on Cohen’s suit.
“How can I take any other inference but that it was retaliatory?”
Federal prosecutors and BOP officials strongly denied that Cohen had been locked up again because of the dispute over the book condition.
They said Cohen had been antagonistic and argumentative at a meeting with U.S. probation officials and had refused to agree with a number of other conditions, including being subject to electronic monitoring.
The conditions of home confinement that were agreed to after Cohen’s most recent release contain no restrictions related to a book, contacts with journalists or social media.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple crimes, some of which related to Trump.
Among them were campaign finance violations related to his facilitation of hush money payments before the 2016 presidential election to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence about their alleged sexual trysts with Trump.
Trump denies having sex with either woman, but he and his company reimbursed Cohen for the payment the lawyer made out of pocket to Daniels.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the details of an aborted plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. His other crimes related to tax evasion and lying in connection with bank loans.
