Michael Cohen says an unexpected text repaired his relationship with Trump

Michael Cohen talks to reporters before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024. (Paul Sancya / AP / File via CNN Newsource)

Michael Cohen said he and U.S. President Donald Trump have buried the hatchet.

Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer testified against the president during his trial involving a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Trump, who called Cohen a “liar” at the time, pleaded not guilty to the charges of falsifying business records and denied having an affair with Daniels.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison over charges connected to that incident, including campaign finance violations.

But Cohen said on 77 WABC’s the “Cats & Cosby” show that the two men began to reconcile about half a year ago. He told CNN on Monday that the current state of their relationship is “cordial and growing.”

It started with an unexpected text from someone Cohen described as a “White House friend and an insider,” who relayed a message from the president, Cohen said on the radio show. He declined to name the insider, but said the person “expressed to me the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged through, yet again, and I deeply appreciated that text.”

“I thanked him, expressed my sincere hope that this long exhausting feud between the two of us could finally end, and what was, I found, even more interesting is that he replied almost immediately, agreeing that it was actually time for us to meet,” Cohen said, adding he was “very surprised” by the text.

That meeting doesn’t seem to have happened yet. When asked by CNN if it had occurred, Cohen said he would ask Trump’s permission and hopes “to return to the White House for a one-on-one visit in the next few weeks.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for Trump’s side on the status of the two men’s relationship.

“I had put in the text: ‘We both knew the cost of this war,’ and in that moment, the ice between us, it didn’t just melt, it broke, and that’s how it all happened,” Cohen said on the “Cats & Cosby” show.

Cohen described experiencing a “media onslaught” from the “left,” which he said the president identified with: “The president knew exactly what it felt like to be at the centre of that kind of partisan target practice, plain and simple.”

It started with a post he published on Substack in January, Cohen said, describing how he “felt pressured and coerced” by New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.”

Cohen told CNN the message from the intermediary came after the Substack post but did not specify exactly when.

Kit Maher, CNN