Trump: I’m not worried about Cohen cooperating because ‘I’m an honest guy’
President Trump said that he’s not worried about his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleading guilty to federal crimes, including campaign finance law violations.
“I’m not, because I’m an honest guy,” Trump said in an interview on “Geraldo in Cleveland” on WTAM radio that is set to air on Monday, according to The New York Times.
{mosads}“And that stuff is unrelated to me. And that was — Michael did that stuff. And Michael, I mean, you know, you know I have many, many lawyers. I have very big law firms I have that do my work.”
Trump added that he was unsure if Cohen could tell authorities anything that could be potentially problematic for the president.
“I don’t know anything because, I’ll be honest, I do everything straight,” Trump said. “I do everything straight.”
His comments come after Cohen, one of Trump’s closest associates in the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud, as well as violating campaign finance law, in federal court in Manhattan last month.
The campaign finance violations stemmed from payments seeking to buy the silence of two women claiming they had affairs with the president more than a decade ago. Cohen implicated Trump in those crimes.
Trump has denied knowledge of the payments at the time they were made and has also said he did not break the law.
Cohen’s guilty plea did not include a cooperation agreement. But ABC News reported last week that Cohen has sat for interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into Russia’s election interference and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
The discussions have mainly focused on Trump’s business dealings with Russia and Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election, according to the report.
Trump has repeatedly railed against Mueller’s probe as a “witch hunt,” and previously claimed that flipping to cooperate with investigators “ought to be illegal” when Cohen pleaded guilty.
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