Meet Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's Jewish Wingman
By Josh Nathan-Kazis
The Forward,
July 20, 2015
Donald Trump has been losing friends fast since he called
Mexican immigrants “rapists” at his campaign kickoff in June:
Television networks, a department store and a mattress company
have all “fired” the bronze-haired developer.
Amid the defections, though, one Trump buddy is standing by
his man: Trump confidante Michael Cohen has been nearly as
visible as Trump himself in recent days, defending his boss
before increasingly frustrated CNN talking heads.
On July 11, Cohen told CNN weekend host Michael Smerconish
that Trump “has a great relationship with Latinos.” On July 12,
Cohen asked CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter, “Why does
it matter?” when Stelter pressed him on Trump’s claim to have
drawn a crowd of 20,000 to a venue in Phoenix that holds only
4,000. And on July 13, Cohen insisted to a deeply annoyed CNN
weekday morning host Chris Cuomo that Trump “never made any
derogatory or disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants.”
Cohen, who is Jewish, has been Trump’s most loyal ally for
nearly a decade, standing up for the real estate mogul in the
media and filing lawsuits when Trump perceives he’s been
wronged. A 2011 ABC News profile
reported that within The Trump Organization he’s called the
boss’s “pit bull.”
“If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab
you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m
finished,” Cohen, now 48, told the TV network.
To wit: When New York State Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman filed a fraud suit against Trump’s for-profit
college in 2013, Cohen threatened Trump’s vengeance: “The damage
to the attorney general is going to be very significant,” Cohen
told
The New Yorker. “So significant that he will possibly have
to resign.” (Schneiderman has not resigned. The case is
ongoing.)
And in February 2011, when Trump was mulling a 2012
presidential run, Cohen twisted himself in knots to defend
Trump’s newfound to abortion, telling National Journal, “People
change their positions all the time, the way they change their
wives.” (Trump has changed his, twice.)
Cohen, who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for
this story, has been tied to Trump since at least February 2007,
when the New York Post
reported that he had been snapping up apartments at Trump’s
properties like a hoarder at a flea market. He owned two at the
time, was buying two more, and had talked his parents and his
wife’s parents into buying another four between them.
“Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real estate
market,” Trump told the Post at the time. “In short, he’s a very
smart person.”
Cohen was a partner at the law firm Phillips Nizer at the
time of the Post story, but he joined The Trump Organization
three months later as an executive vice president and as Trump’s
special counsel, according to Cohen’s LinkedIn page. No word on
whether he’s bought more Trump apartments since then.
Cohen himself is something of a cipher. We know from the 2011
ABC profile that he grew up on Long Island and that his father
is a Holocaust survivor. A Democrat, Cohen voted for Barack
Obama in 2008 and volunteered for former Massachusetts governor
Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign in 1988. (Cohen told ABC
in 2011 that over time he grew disappointed with Obama.) He
favors Dolce & Gabbana and Hermes, and once went sailing off
Cape Cod with Ted Kennedy.
The real estate newspaper The Real Deal
reported in February that Cohen had made a New York real
estate play of his own, buying a $58 million rental apartment
building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side from Israeli-born
developer Ofer Yardeni.
Beyond those spare, if colorful, details, Cohen’s entire
public profile is entangled in the Trump galaxy. He’s a member
of the board of the Eric Trump Foundation, a children’s health
charity named for Donald Trump’s 31-year-old son. He was chief
operations officer of Affliction, a mixed martial arts promotion
partially owned by Trump. And in 2011, during Trump’s last
flirtation with presidential politics, it was Cohen who led the
charge.
Along with Stewart Rahr, the 68-year-old Jewish drug
distribution billionaire who
calls himself “Stewie Rah Rah Number One King of All Fun,”
Cohen created a website in early 2011 called “Should Trump Run?”
and visited Iowa in a private jet with Trump’s name on the side
to discuss a potential Trump candidacy. A Ron Paul
backer charged that Cohen and Trump were breaking campaign
finance laws by taking the trip without filing disclosures with
the Federal Elections Commission. (The FEC
eventually found that no law had been broken, as Trump never
actually became a candidate.)
This time around, Cohen has fully embraced his attack dog
role within the Trump apparatus. During the contentious morning
interview with Chris Cuomo, Cohen was relentless in defending
his boss.
“You’re making the same problem [Trump] is, which is odd,
because you’re here to kind of clean it up for him,” Cuomo
said. “He shouldn’t have said they’re rapists, they’re this,
they’re drug dealers, and some are good people. He shouldn’t
have said it. True or false?”
“No, I disagree,” Cohen said, speaking in a voice that sounds
like Trump’s, but with the volume turned down from 11 to around
7. “I really believe that Mr. Trump was making his voice heard.”
As Cuomo grew increasingly frustrated, Cohen refused to back
off. “It was wrong, and you haven’t admitted that yet,” Cuomo
said.
“And I will not,” Cohen said as the interview ended.
Author
Josh Nathan-KazisJosh Nathan-Kazis is a
staff writer for the Forward. He covers charities and politics,
and writes investigations and longform.
