A Historic Criminal Conviction and Trump’s Ex-‘Fixer’ (2024)

Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen once famously said he’d take a bullet for his boss.

He ended up helping to make Trump the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.

Cohen’s testimony was a key part of the trial in New York that ended May 30 in the historic conviction of former President Trump, who is also the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee. The jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a “hush money” payment Cohen made to an adult film star to prevent a sex scandal from circulating during the 2016 presidential campaign.

FRONTLINE has reported in multiple documentaries on the role that Cohen played in Trump’s life and rise to power, from real estate mogul to reality TV star to president — including how Cohen worked to protect Trump’s image.

“Michael is very good at killing stories,” Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political adviser, told FRONTLINE in the 2018 documentary Trump’s Showdown. “He’s gotten Trump out of a lot of issues, I would say. And that was his job, and he’s done a good job out of it.”

In the documentaries, FRONTLINE examined how the targeting of Cohen by law enforcement risked exposing the work he did for Trump.

“Something clearly happens with the president after Michael Cohen comes under scrutiny from the Department of Justice,” Matthew Miller, director of the office of public affairs at the Department of Justice from 2009 to 2011, told FRONTLINE in Trump’s Showdown. “The president views that very much as a threat to him.”

“It’s a whole other avenue of potential exposure, criminal exposure, to the president,” Jack Goldsmith, a U.S. assistant attorney general from 2003-4, told FRONTLINE in the film. “This was clearly someone who was a very close adviser and attorney to the president, and he was especially involved in what might be seen as the president’s shady business.”

In October 2016, Cohen made the $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels that was at the heart of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. In the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign, Daniels had threatened to reveal what she said was a sexual encounter a decade earlier with Trump, who denied the affair and said the payment was not campaign-related.

No charges were filed against Trump during an earlier, federal investigation of the payment to Daniels. But Cohen ultimately cooperated with investigators and pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance charges related to the payments to Daniels and another woman alleging an affair, which Trump has also denied. Separately in 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about a prospective Trump Organization project in Moscow.

Cohen went on to become a controversial figure at the New York trial. Trump’s lawyers sought to paint Cohen as an unreliable liar, echoing the former president’s own description of Cohen as “a convicted felon, disbarred lawyer, with zero credibility.” The prosecution said, “We didn’t choose Michael Cohen to be our witness. We didn’t pick him up at the witness store. The defendant chose Michael Cohen to be his fixer because he was willing to cheat and lie on his behalf.”

The prosecution argued that Cohen’s testimony was corroborated by a high volume of email, text and phone records that were presented as evidence. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, former Trump adviser Hope Hicks and Daniels were among the other high-profile witnesses called at the trial.

During the trial, Cohen testified that Trump directed him to make the payment to Daniels to prevent the release of material that could damage his campaign, and that Trump later took part in a plan to record his reimbursem*nt of Cohen in business records as legal expenses. The prosecution made the case that Trump’s actions amounted to an effort to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

The impact of the unprecedented May 30 verdict on American politics remains to be seen. Trump, who is expected to appeal, said after the verdict that he was a “very innocent man,” called the trial “a disgrace,” and said, “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5, by the people.”

Trump faces three additional criminal cases at the federal and state level involving efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the handling of classified documents. He has denied any wrongdoing and called the criminal cases against him politically motivated “witch hunts.” The Supreme Court is also considering Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken as president.

Read more: A Guide to the Criminal Cases Against Trump

To learn more, revisit FRONTLINE’s deep archive of coverage of Donald Trump’s campaigns and his presidency, which ended with him refusing to concede his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and his supporters’ Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Democracy on Trial

With the presidential race for 2024 underway, this January 2024 documentary from Michael Kirk and his team examines the roots and implications of the criminal cases against former President Trump stemming from his 2020 election loss.

Lies, Politics and Democracy

From Michael Kirk and his team, this September 2022 documentary investigates how Trump and other American political leaders fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to political violence.

American Insurrection

An investigation of how the threat of far-right extremist groups evolved during Trump’s presidency, from the deadly 2017 white supremacist Charlottesville rally to the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. From a team led by Rick Rowley and A.C. Thompson, the documentary, updated in January 2022, is a collaboration with ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program, with support from the WNET Group’s Exploring Hate initiative.

United States of Conspiracy

How trafficking in conspiracy theories went from the fringes of U.S. politics into the White House — aided by an alliance among Trump, his longtime advisor Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. From Michael Kirk and his team, the documentary was updated in January 2022.

Plot to Overturn the Election

An investigation of how the myth about widespread election fraud made its way to the center of American politics. From FRONTLINE and ProPublica, this March 2022 documentary by Samuel Black and A.C. Thompson traces how a handful of people had an outsized impact on the current U.S. crisis of democratic legitimacy.

Trump’s American Carnage

Made in the weeks following the attack on the Capitol, this January 2021 documentary from Michael Kirk and his team examines the road to January 6. The documentary investigates Trump’s siege on his enemies, the media and even the leaders of his own party, who for years ignored the warning signs of what was to come.

The Mueller Investigation

For two years, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election dominated headlines. Drawing on interviews with U.S. officials, Trump advisers, legal experts and journalists, this 2019 documentary, an updated version of the 2018 documentary Trump’s Showdown, offers an inside look into the investigation that Trump deemed a “witch hunt,” and examines Trump’s battle against Mueller, the FBI and even his own attorney general.

Trump’s Takeover

In this April 2018 documentary, Michael Kirk and his team went inside President Trump’s high-stakes battle for control of the GOP, examining how Trump attacked fellow Republicans and used inflammatory rhetoric that rallied his base and further divided the country in his first year as president.

Trump’s Road to the White House

From January 2017, this documentary by Michael Kirk and his team examines how Donald Trump defied expectations to win the presidency in 2016.

The Choice 2020: Trump vs. Biden

Ahead of the 2020 election, FRONTLINE’s critically acclaimed series The Choice offered interwoven investigative biographies of both major-party candidates. This documentary from Michael Kirk and his team examines President Trump’s approach to power and how he responded in moments of crisis.

President Trump

Drawn from The Choice 2016, this 2017 documentary from Michael Kirk and his team offers an examination of key moments that shaped Donald Trump. Interviews with advisors, business associates and biographers reveal how Trump transformed himself from real estate developer to reality TV star to president.

These and hundreds of additional FRONTLINE documentaries are available to stream on our website, in the PBS Video App and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.
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