New York: Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he met for 2½ hours Tuesday with Manhattan prosecutors who have revived a years-old investigation into payments made to a porn star to keep her quiet about an alleged extramarital tryst.
Cohen said he had been “ordered not to disclose” any of the people present at the meeting or to discuss prosecutors’ area of interest in any detail.
“I have tremendous confidence in the team that I met with yesterday, as well as their depth and knowledge regarding this and other matters,” Cohen said.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges that he violated campaign finance law by arranging payouts to porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal to keep them from going public with claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan decided not to prosecute Trump personally over the hush-money payments. The Manhattan district attorney’s office then began investigating the payments to see if any state laws were broken.
No charges were brought against Trump during the tenure of former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who shifted the probe’s focus to the Trump Organization’s business practices. The company was convicted of tax fraud last month and fined $1.6 million.
