Attorney Lanny Davis, who represents ex-President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, warned current Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina against “building his whole strategy on personal attacks” against Cohen as Trump faces an indictment in New York City.
A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump in relation to a hush money payment made in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels, to silence her claims of an affair with the former president, which he denies.
Cohen, then Trump’s lawyer, admitted to setting up the payment and was sentenced to three years in prison. He testified last month before the Manhattan grand jury and is expected to be a key witness for the prosecution if the case goes to trial.
However, Davis said it would be a mistake for Trump’s attorneys to focus too much on attacking his client.
“My old friend Joe Tacopina — we were colleagues in the same client matter, and I helped him on his own matter — it’s a wrong strategy if he thinks he’s building his whole strategy on personal attacks on Michael Cohen,” Davis said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Tacopina appeared ahead of Davis on the CNN Sunday program and called Cohen “a pathological, convicted liar, perjurer” and “someone who is constitutionally incapable of telling the same story the same way twice.”
Davis on Sunday said Cohen gave Manhattan prosecutors “substantial documentation” to back up his testimony, including some concerning an alleged hush money payment to another woman who claims to have had an affair with the former president, which he has also denied.
“Michael Cohen submitted a lot of documentation, not only to this group of prosecutors, but to the earlier group. And there are other documents from other people and other testimony from other people, some of it direct, involving conversations with Mr. Trump, concerning the Karen McDougal crime. Remember, there are two crimes here,” Davis said.
CNN’s Dana Bash later pressed Davis on his mention of McDougal.
“So you’re saying that your client, Michael Cohen, also gave documentation, evidence that will show that there was hush money paid in maybe in an illegal way to Karen McDougal, who was a former Playboy model?” Bash asked.
“The answer is yes,” Davis said.
The exact charges in Trump’s sealed indictment are still unknown, so it remains unclear what the Manhattan district attorney’s case entails, or whether it includes the allegations concerning both Daniels and McDougal.
The former president is expected to appear in court in New York on Tuesday for arraignment. Tacopina on Sunday said he hopes Trump’s surrender will be “painless and classy.”