Sam Nunberg first realized the extent of Michael Cohen’s loyalty to Donald Trump when he met with the president’s longtime attorney in August 2015, a week after he was fired from the Trump campaign for posting racist sentiments on Facebook.
“I complained to him about the way Trump treated Corey [Lewandowski] and Hope [Hicks] versus me. He said, ‘Do you think Trump allowed you to be fired?’ And his face just fell when I said yes,” Nunberg recalled.
Fast forward two years and Cohen is now said to be feeling just as disposable as Nunberg did on that hot August day.
As federal investigators itch to dig through thousands of documents, emails, and text messages seized during an FBI raid on Cohen’s office, and he faces mounting pressure to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia probe, the president has sought to distance himself. “I haven’t spoken to Michael in a long time,” he told reporters this month.
“I think Michael has finally come to realize that Trump is capable of doing this,” Nunberg said, suggesting the president is now perceived as someone who demands unquestioning loyalty while rarely displaying it himself.
WIth the exception of some business deals and his taxi medallion holdings, Cohen’s current legal troubles are widely seen as being linked to Trump. A court filing in April indicated the Manhattan attorney, who White House allies describe as the president’s “fixer,” has spent months under criminal investigation reportedly for possible campaign finance violations, and bank and wire fraud. Cohen was the primary person responsible for arranging a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the election, so she wouldn’t go public with details of a decade-old affair she claims to have had with Trump.
Cohen’s decision last week to hire Guy Petrillo, former chief of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s criminal division, the office that is now reviewing his finances, may have sent a signal to Trump that he is open to providing information to the government as needed.
“He knows a lot of things about the president and he’s not averse to talking in the right situation. If they want information on Trump, he’s willing to give it,” a friend of Cohen’s told CNN on Wednesday.
[Michael Cohen open to spilling details on Trump to investigators: Report]
However, a source close to Cohen suggested the Manhattan attorney could stonewall the special counsel for the right price. This person declined to say whether Cohen has told friends that legal assistance would compel him not to flip on the president, but did confirm that he has vented about the soaring costs and the absence of any offer to help.
Federal Election Commission records show the Trump campaign previously paid nearly $230,000 to McDermott, Will and Emery LLP, a law firm Cohen parted ways with in early June.
But that sum went exclusively toward Cohen’s representation in the Russia probe and did not cover the cost of legal fees associated with the investigation into his business dealings by the Southern District of New York, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, the Journal reported that a portion of the costs related to the latter probe, including a review of materials confiscated during the FBI raid on Cohen’s office and hotel room, was paid for by the Trump family.
Senior partners at New York City law firms often charge “between $1,200 to $2,000 an hour and sometimes more,” said one Manhattan-based criminal defense attorney, who requested anonymity out of respect for his clients’ privacy.
It’s not as though the Trump campaign, which has raised $36 million for the president’s re-election since 2016, is incapable of covering a portion of Cohen’s legal fees. Or the Republican National Committee, which paid $451,000 to a D.C. law firm representing former White House communications director Hope Hicks in the Russia investigation.
“Hope Hicks is less of a threat to Donald Trump than Michael Cohen,” said a former Trump campaign adviser, who claimed the president “is very selective on these legal fees and seems to favor anyone who’s in the Jared Kushner cabal.”
Some former Trump aides, whose pleas for assistance with their own legal fees have gone unanswered, said they wouldn’t be offended if party officials or the president agreed to help Cohen out.
“I support assistance to all Trump associates caught up in the bogus Russia investigation,” Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who also worked on the presidential transition, told the Washington Examiner.
Caputo said he was “disappointed” not to have received help himself from the RNC or Trump campaign, but remains grateful for the funds he was able to raise from 6,800 Trump supporters who contributed to a crowdsourcing effort.
“I think Hope, Jared, Brad [Parscale], and Michael deserve financial support as much as anyone else. It’s not about whether they truly need it, it’s about backing them up,” Caputo said. “They’re only incurring costs because they helped elect the President of the United States.”
Nunberg said refusing to pay Cohen’s legal fees “could be seen as one of the dumbest missteps in this entire process, though he declined to explain why the president should help.
But others who remain close to the White House worry that offering Cohen assistance beyond what he’s already received would place Trump at risk of looking guilty — like he is “trying to buy the silence of someone who knows more about him than almost anyone,” one former administration official said.
“If Cohen doesn’t have anything that could implicate President Trump, as Rudy [Giuliani] and the President’s lawyers have repeatedly said, why help him? It would just give the media one more reason to go nuts,” the official said.
Cohen, meanwhile, has taken a series of actions that could be perceived as signs that his loyalty is waning. In addition to hiring Petrillo, he resigned as the RNC’s deputy finance chairman on Wednesday and blasted the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant children from their undocumented parents at the border in an email declaring his resignation.
“As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy is heart wrenching,” Cohen reportedly wrote to RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. “While I strongly support measures that will secure our porous borders, children should never be used as bargaining chips.”
The president’s outside legal team did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the legal costs Cohen has incurred.
