President Donald Trump told Michael Cohen on Sunday that prosecutors forced his former fixer into false testimony — then told him that taking it back is the only reason they are speaking.
"They forced you to say things that you didn't want to say," Trump said on Cohen's WABC show When You Know, You Know. "They forced you to say things that were false, because they had the threat of jail hanging over your head."
A minute earlier he had set the terms flat: "Look, you took back, you recanted your testimony. They forced you to do that... I wouldn't even be talking to you right now if you didn't, to be honest."
Cohen has a pardon application sitting at the White House. He confirmed it last week — an update of the one Biden's clemency office denied. A White House official said the review team "is not tracking this request at this time."
Cohen recanted nothing. He pleaded guilty on August 21, 2018, to eight federal felonies: five counts of tax evasion, one false statement to a bank, two campaign-finance counts covering the $130,000 he wired to Stormy Daniels' lawyer. That November he pleaded guilty again, to lying to Congress. Judge William Pauley sentenced him to 36 months. He served them. In a Substack post in January, Cohen wrote that prosecutors "pressured and coerced" him — and never wrote that a word of his testimony was untrue. No court has withdrawn any of it. Trump still carries his 34-count Manhattan conviction, with three appeals pending and no ruling on any.
Cohen agreed with him anyway. He sat while Trump called the guilty plea a recantation, then called it bravery. "You're going to go down as a man with courage," Trump said. Cohen thanked him.
