Attorney Michael Cohen raised his own concerns about a lack of transparency in former President Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York.
Cohen entered the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently in pretrial hearings for the case. He appeared Saturday on The Weekend to share his takeaways from the experience and cast doubt on the Department of Justice.
“I’d like to know what’s going on,” Cohen said. “I’d like to know what’s going on with the SDNY, which is problematic. I’d like to know what’s going on at the DOJ.”
The attorney went on to explain that he had filed his own Freedom of Information Act request in order to receive the documents related to this case. Trump, whom Cohen once represented, is facing 34 felony counts over allegations of paying hush money to multiple women in 2018 who claim they had an affair with him. His request was met with silence for three years. Then, when Trump’s current lawyers made a request for similar documents, several thousand were presented all at once.
“What’s going on here? Those documents belong to the people, and they should have been released under FOIA because I’ll tell you what those documents are going to show,” Cohen said. “It’s going to show that Donald Trump, through a willing and complicit bloviated Attorney General, went ahead, weaponized the United States Department of Justice and unconstitutionally remanded a United States citizen.”
Trump’s lawyers initially asked for a 90-day delay to review the copious number of documents handed down by federal prosecutors, but they settled with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for a 30-day delay.
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Jury selection in this case was initially slated for Monday, but a new date will be set during a hearing on that day instead.
Notably among Bragg’s list of witnesses alongside Cohen is porn star Stormy Daniels. She has said she is among the women who received hush money payments from the former president.
