Michael D. Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s longtime fixer, who was due to appear in court next week against his former boss’s company in a legal fees dispute, has agreed to settle his lawsuit with the Trump Organization, lawyers for both sides said Friday at a brief hearing.
Mr. Cohen’s lawsuit, filed in 2019, accused the Trump Organization of failing to abide by the terms of a deal and refusing to pay more than $1 million in legal fees. Jury selection for the trial began earlier this week and opening arguments were scheduled for Monday.
But at the hearing Friday, Mr. Cohen’s attorney, Hunter Winstead, and a Trump Organization attorney, James D. Kiley, said they had agreed on the terms of a settlement. The settlement has not yet been finalized and details will be kept confidential. The judge in the case, Joel Cohen – who is not related to Mr Cohen – said he would postpone the trial pending a final agreement.
A separate lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump against Mr. Cohen in Florida federal court remains active, and Mr. Cohen is expected to be the key witness against the former president in a Manhattan criminal trial next year.
Mr. Cohen had argued that the Trump Organization had agreed verbally and in writing to cover all attorney fees he incurred during multiple congressional hearings and investigations in 2017 and 2018, including the criminal investigation conducted by Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III. Mr Cohen has said the Trump Organization initially paid these bills, but stopped payments after agreeing to cooperate with the investigation.
Mr. Cohen was once a close ally of Mr. Trump — a trusted lieutenant whose job it became to clean up his boss’s mess. One such situation occurred during the 2016 election, when Mr. Cohen learned that a porn star, Stormy Daniels, wanted to sell a story about having sex with Mr. Trump years earlier.
Soon after, Mr. Cohen paid Mrs. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. The following year, Mr. Trump repaid Mr. Cohen in installments that are now the subject of the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case against the former president.
In 2018, as part of a federal investigation into the hush money payment, FBI agents searched Mr. Cohen’s home, office and a hotel where his family had stayed. The legal pressure strained his relationship with Mr. Trump and the men got into a fight. In August of that year, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including some involving the hush money payment, and several months later reaffirmed his role as a Trump antagonist when he testified about the then president in a high-profile congressional hearing.
Mr. Cohen has been a thorn in Mr. Trump’s side ever since. He is a key witness to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, who indicted the former president on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to Mr. Cohen’s fees. In April, Mr. Trump filed his own lawsuit against Mr. Cohen, accusing the former fixer of betraying his confidentiality and “spreading untruths about him”. That lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida, was not part of the settlement talks.
While the settlement between Mr. Cohen and the Trump Organization will almost certainly sink the planned trial, Mr. Trump has no shortage of legal commitments on his agenda. A lawsuit filed against him by the New York Attorney General is expected to go to trial in October, and the criminal trial related to the hush money payments is scheduled for March next year. There are also two civil trials scheduled for January, including a second trial over whether he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll.
Mr. Trump has also been charged by federal prosecutors for his handling of sensitive material and for obstructing their investigation. On Friday, the judge in that case scheduled a trial date for May 2024. And two more possible charges against Mr. Trump are looming: one from federal prosecutors in connection with the former president’s actions leading up to the January 2021 attack on the Capitol and one by Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis in connection with possible election interference in the state.
Mr. Trump was not expected to appear in Manhattan in the trial that resulted from Mr. Cohen’s lawsuit. But a settlement would prevent a courtroom confrontation between Mr Cohen and former president son Donald Trump Jr. Cohen subpoenaed earlier this month to testify about his approval of legal fees in his capacity as executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He was due to take the stand early next week.
