Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was facing enormous pressure before he decided to plead guilty to eight criminal counts – including from his Holocaust-surviving father.
Cohen was up against a wealth of evidence in the form of tax filings, bank loan applications, paperwork to set up corporations, and his own notes and tapes after the FBI raided his home and office in April.
Cohen also reportedly felt slighted after suffering years-old indignities at the hands of Trump, who neglected to bring him to Washington after his election win.
Michael Cohen’s Holocaust-surviving father told him not to ‘sully’ his name by defending Trump, according to an account of why he ‘flipped’
His own father, who survived the Holocuast and emigrated from Poland, ultimately weighed in, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The role of his father, Maurice Cohen, was a ‘turning point,’ the Wall Street Journal reported.
The elder Cohen urged his son, who had said publicly that he was determined to put his family first, not to protect the president.
He said he didn’t ‘survive the Holocaust to have his name sullied by Mr. Trump,’ a person familiar with the conversation told the paper.
Cohen was facing tremendous pressure after the FBI raided his home and office
Cohen invoked his father in June, during his transformation from loyal Trump ‘fixer’ who once said he would take a bullet for his longtime client, to someone willing to make public criticism.
He tweeted June 20: ‘As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart wrenching.” It then got deleted.
“While I strongly support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be used as bargaining chips,’ he wrote in a letter stepping down from the post of deputy finance chair at the RNC.
Cohen also invoked his father in an August 2017 tweet.
‘As the son of a holocaust survivor, I have no tolerance for #racism. Just because I support @POTUS @RealDonaldTrump doesn’t make me a racist,’ Cohen wrote.
The tweet included multiple photos of Cohen and African Americans, including Omarosa Manigault Newman, who is now trashing the Trump presidency in a new book.
As the Journal previously reported, Trump attended the bar mitzvah of Cohen’s son in 2012, only to arrive late and give a speech about getting nagged to attend.
He told guests ‘he hadn’t planned to come, but he relented after Mr. Cohen had repeatedly called him, his secretary and his children begging him to appear. The guests laughed because ‘everyone knew it was very realistic-sounding,’ according to the account.
Adding to the family pressure was Cohen’s Ukrainian-born wife. She had co-signed tax documents prosecutors found deprived taxpayers of $1.4 million in revenue – meaning the feds could prosecute her for some of the same tax evasion and banking crimes that Cohen was facing charges for.