Trump’s Former Lawyer Is Now Trying to Get Out the Vote For Democrats

Michael Cohen’s pitch: Vote or you’ll have years more “of this craziness.”

Go Nakamura/ZUMA

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In one of the stranger twists of the midterm cycle, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who once said he’d “take a bullet” for Trump, is now trying to get out the vote for Democrats. 

“Listen, here’s my recommendation,” Cohen told CNN outside his home on Friday. “Grab your family, grab your friends, grab your neighbors, and get to the poll, because if not, you are going to have another two or another six years of this craziness. So, make sure you vote. All right?”

It’s been a while since we’ve heard directly from Cohen. He pled guilty in August to eight federal charges of tax and bank fraud, as well as violating campaign finance law, and has since cooperated with prosecutors investigating Trump’s family businesses and presidential campaign. CNN also reported that Cohen met with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and the New York State attorney general’s office in recent weeks. 

A longtime fixer and personal attorney for Trump, Cohen’s relationship with the president has soured considerably as Mueller’s probe has advanced. Cohen has testified that Trump ordered him to funnel 2016 campaign payments to silence women alleging affairs with Trump.

Trump kept up his end of the feud in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, accusing Cohen of “lying,” downplaying the work he has done as just “a PR person who did small legal work.” 

Until he resigned in June 2018, Cohen was the deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. Now, according to his lawyer, Cohen is changing his registration back to the Democratic Party.

There is no sign that Democratic leadership have wanted or needed any help from the new recruit, but Elle might appreciate his efforts. 

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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