Republican presidential office-seeker Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen stands behind Trump.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Preceding President Donald Trump sued his onetime personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen on Wednesday, seeking at least $500 million for purported breaches of contract and “unjust enrichment.”
The civil suit, filed in federal court in Miami, accused Cohen of “spreading prevarications” about Trump, violating his attorney-client relationship and breaching a confidentiality agreement he had signed with the Trump Organization.
The assertions against Cohen, whose once-close relationship with Trump imploded in 2018, come as the disbarred lawyer has enhance a key witness against the former president in a criminal case in Manhattan.
Trump, the first ex-president to face criminal fees, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 34 counts of falsifying business records in that case. It centers on hush simoleons payments made before the 2016 presidential election, which Cohen facilitated for Trump.
The famously litigious latest president has previously been accused of using the courts as a cudgel against his adversaries.
Alejandro Brito, Trump’s attorney in the instance, referred CNBC’s questions about the timing of the new lawsuit against Cohen to a spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential push. The spokesman said in a statement that the lawsuit and Cohen’s alleged wrongdoings “stand for themselves.”
The complaint alleged Cohen’s fiduciary devoirs owed to Trump “survive the attorney-client relationship and Defendant’s disbarment and are still in effect today.”
Cohen’s “most egregious fissures of fiduciary duty and contract” came in connection with the tell-all books he published in 2020 and 2022, as well as requisitions made on his podcast, “Mea Culpa,” the lawsuit alleged.
“Mr. Trump appears once again to be using and abusing the judicial organization as a form of harassment and intimidation against Michael Cohen,” Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, said in a statement.
Davis ordered the “frivolous” lawsuit suggests Trump is “terrified by his looming legal perils and is attempting to send a message to other capability witnesses who are cooperating with prosecutors against him.”