NEW YORK: In a courtroom showdown five years in the making, Donald Trump‘s fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen testified Tuesday that he worked to boost the supposed value of the former president’s assets to “whatever number Trump told us to.”
It was a fraught and long-awaited face-to-face encounter between Trump and the now-disbarred lawyer who once pledged to “take a bullet” for him. Cohen eventually ended up in prison, and became a prominent witness against his former boss in venues from courthouses to Congress.
Now, Cohen is a key figure in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit alleging that Trump and his company duped banks, insurers and others by giving them financial statements that inflated his wealth.
“I was tasked by Trump to increase the total assets, based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected,” Cohen testified, saying that he and former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg labored “to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve a number that Trump had tasked us.”
Trump denies James’ allegations, and he dismissed Cohen’s account outside court as the words of “a proven liar” who served prison time after pleading guilty to tax evasion, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations. “I’m not worried about his testimony,” he said. “You see what his record is. ”