Michael Cohen says he believes Trump is ‘petrified’ over indictment

Michael Cohen, the onetime attorney of former President Trump and key witness in the Manhattan district attorney’s case, said on Thursday that he believes Trump is “petrified” over his indictment.

Trump was indicted on criminal charges Thursday over his role in hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. 

“I believe that Donald right now is petrified,” Cohen told MSNBC, just minutes after media outlets began reporting the indictment. “This is one of his biggest fears, that he would be called out for who and what he is.”

Cohen, who served as the former president’s personal attorney and longtime fixer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations in connection with the $130,000 payment that sought to buy Daniels’s silence about an alleged affair with Trump.

“What I did, I did at the direction of, for the benefit of, and in cooperation with Donald J. Trump,” Cohen said on Thursday. “And so, I ended being forced to plead guilty. I was charged, I was fined, and I was ultimately sentenced to several of these things that they’re looking at with Donald. What’s good for one has to be good for all.”

“This is an important day for America, and it’s a very important day for … justice and also for accountability,” he said, later adding, “I always believed that this day was going to come.”

Trump dismissed the charges as a “political persecution” in a statement on Thursday, accusing Democrats of “weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent.”

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” Trump said in the statement.