Michael Cohen, in Recorded Phone Call, Walks Back Parts of Guilty Plea
Trump’s former lawyer, set to go to prison in weeks, told actor Tom Arnold he wasn’t guilty of some crimes he pleaded guilty to
Michael Cohen Denies Some Crimes in Tom Arnold Call: ‘It’s a Lie’
By
Michael Rothfeld
Updated April 24, 2019 12:52 p.m. ET
Michael Cohen has disavowed responsibility for some of the crimes to which he has pleaded guilty,
privately contending in a recent recorded phone call that he hadn’t evaded taxes and that a criminal charge related to his home-equity line of credit was “a lie.”
As he prepares to begin a three-year prison term on May 6, Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, expressed dismay during the conversation that after testifying for more than 100 hours to federal and congressional investigators about his work for Mr. Trump—including the coordination of hush-money deals with two women—he remained “a man all alone.”
“You would think that you would have folks, you know, stepping up and saying, ‘You know what, this guy’s lost everything,’” Mr. Cohen said during the March 25 call,
recorded without Mr. Cohen’s knowledge by the actor and comedian Tom Arnold. Mr. Arnold, a vocal critic of President Trump who first made contact with Mr. Cohen in June, provided the recording to The Wall Street Journal for review.
“My family’s happiness, and my law license,” Mr. Cohen continued. “I lost my business…my insurance, my bank accounts, all for what? All for what? Because Trump, you know, had an affair with a porn star? That’s really what this is about.”
Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, said: “Michael has taken responsibility for his crimes and will soon report to prison to serve his sentence. While he cannot change the past, he is making every effort to reclaim his life and do right by his family and country. He meant no offense by his statements.”
A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In pleading guilty in August, Mr. Cohen explicitly admitted to his crimes before a judge, to make it clear he was acting knowingly. “I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to,” he said at his sentencing hearing in December. Since then, he has been attempting to have his sentence reduced by aiding congressional investigations.
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Mr. Cohen’s private comments are unlikely to help his cause with the federal prosecutors who would have to endorse a shorter term behind bars, legal experts said, adding that they wouldn’t lead to an increase in his sentence, either, unless the government were to bring new charges against him.
Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges brought by New York federal prosecutors, including campaign-finance violations in connection with hush-money payments to the two women, the former porn star Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy centerfold model Karen McDougal. Mr. Trump denies he had sex with either woman.
Mr. Cohen also admitted to five counts of
evading personal income taxes and one count of understating his debt and expenses in an application for a $500,000 home-equity line of credit, or Heloc.
Mr. Cohen testified in February in the House of Representatives that Mr. Trump committed crimes, including
directing the hush-money schemes during the 2016 presidential campaign involving the two women. “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter in December.
New York prosecutors have asserted previously that Mr. Cohen has been loath to acknowledge his false statements to banks. “This signals that Cohen’s consciousness of wrongdoing is fleeting, that his remorse is minimal, and that his instinct to blame others is strong,” prosecutors wrote in a December filing.
Before his sentencing, Mr. Cohen’s then-lawyer pushed back on the tax charges, telling the judge he had merely failed to identify all his income on bank records he gave his accountant. Prosecutors argued the tax evasion was willful.
On the March call, Mr. Cohen seemed to walk back parts of his admission. “There is no tax evasion,” he said on the call. “And the Heloc? I have an 18% loan-to-value on my home. How could there be a Heloc issue? How? Right?…It’s a lie.”
In the 36-minute recording, Messrs. Cohen and Arnold covered a range of issues, from the legal troubles of former Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti to Mr. Trump’s affinity for the leader of North Korea.
Mr. Arnold said he made the recording without Mr. Cohen’s knowledge. Mr. Cohen has himself surreptitiously recorded conversations. During a raid of his home, office and hotel room in April 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized recordings the lawyer made while talking to journalists, political allies, and others, including Mr. Trump. During the call last month, Mr. Arnold praised Mr. Cohen for standing against the president. “You are a hero and you’re not alone,” Mr. Arnold said.
Mr. Cohen’s lawyers
earlier this month sought help from the Democratic chairmen of four House committees in obtaining a reduced sentence for their client, asking them to send the legal team a letter saying that Mr. Cohen had “substantially cooperated with Congress” and that congressional investigators would need access to him to complete their probes. Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN he doesn’t involve himself in sentencing matters “as a practice.” There is no indication other lawmakers complied.
Speaking privately with Mr. Arnold, Mr. Cohen said he had pleaded guilty to the charges in August because “they had me on campaign finance” and prosecutors were targeting his wife. Mr. Cohen had failed to disclose to the Internal Revenue Service more than $2.4 million in interest payments he had received from loans, some of which were deposited in an account under his wife’s name, New York federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing. Mr. Cohen’s wife declined to comment.
“I love this woman, and I am not going to let her get dragged into the mud of this crap,” Mr. Cohen said. “And I never thought the judge was going to throw a three-year fricking sentence.”
Mr. Arnold, who has been on a yearslong search for unaired footage of Mr. Trump on the set of “The Apprentice,” said he called Mr. Cohen on March 25 to follow up on their interactions from last summer. In June 2018 Mr. Arnold tweeted a picture of himself with Mr. Cohen and said they were working together to take down Mr. Trump, though he later
walked that back after Mr. Cohen denied it.
In an interview, Mr. Arnold said he made the call to give Mr. Cohen moral support. He said he recorded the conversation because Mr. Cohen “tapes everything and I wanted to remember what we talked about.”
The two men spoke on the day that Mr. Avenatti was arrested in New York and charged in federal court with
trying to extort Nike Inc. and, separately, with bank fraud in California. Mr. Avenatti, who has since been charged with embezzling from clients, has denied any wrongdoing and said he has been targeted for his opposition to Mr. Trump. While representing Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Mr. Avenatti was sharply critical of Mr. Cohen.
“Look at what’s happening to Avenatti—it’s called karma boomerang,” Mr. Cohen told Mr. Arnold. “The guy lied about me every single day, right? And the world loved it.”
Asked for comment, Mr. Avenatti called Mr. Cohen “a convicted felon who tampered with an election for Trump’s benefit.”
“Everything I said about him was 100% true, including that he is ignorant as further evidenced by his use of the term ‘karma boomerang,’” he said.
Mr. Cohen also criticized the president. “I always knew, you know, who he was and what he was and so on, but it didn’t really matter because it’s—he’s a small microcosm of New York real estate.” Mr. Cohen suggested it was a “very different” matter to accept Mr. Trump’s behavior as president.
“They put sanctions on North Korea and he removes them because he likes Kim Jong Un, because he’s ‘my friend’?” Mr. Cohen said, alluding to how the president described the North Korean leader in a February tweet and to sanctions Mr. Trump decided not to apply in March. “What kind of nonsense is this?”
—Nicole Hong, Rebecca Ballhaus, Joe Palazzolo and Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed to this article.
Write to Michael Rothfeld at
michael.rothfeld@wsj.com
