Michael Cohen said he would advise President Trump to consider resigning two months before the 2020 election.
Trump’s former fixer, who is beginning a media tour for his new memoir, titled Disloyal, recommended that his old boss step down so Vice President Mike Pence could sign a pardon protecting him from any potential prosecution.
“I would tell him he should resign now. Let Mike Pence pardon you from any and all potential crimes that will come out against you. … That would be my recommendation to you,” Cohen said during an interview with NBC Nightly News’s Lester Holt that is set to air Tuesday evening.
Trump and his company appear to be under investigation in New York for bank and insurance fraud.
Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in December 2018, is serving the rest of his three-year sentence in home confinement. He was briefly sent back to prison in July following his original release in May due to concerns related to the coronavirus.
He pleaded guilty to several criminal charges in 2018, including lying to Congress, bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign finance violations related to facilitating hush-money payments to two women who alleged romantic affairs with Trump. The president has vehemently denied those relationships.
Cohen said that he had heard the president use racial slurs “all too many times.”
In his memoir, Cohen writes that he became “more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully” during his time in prison, and he speculated during a recent interview that Trump “would even go so far as to start a war in order to prevent himself from being removed from office.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the book’s claims “lies,” attacking his credibility by invoking his criminal record.
“Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies,” McEnany said in a statement.
