Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s one-time personal lawyer, said he met with prosecutors from the DA’s office in Manhattan for the seventh time on Wednesday.
The meeting, which, according to Cohen, took place over Zoom and lasted two and a half hours, comes as the extensive investigation into the former president’s taxes and finances intensifies.
Trump denied any wrongdoing and called the Manhattan DA investigation a witch hunt.
Cohen says he spoke to lead investigator Mark Pomerantz, an expert on white-collar crime, who chased away John Gotti and other organized crime figures. According to Cohen, Manhattan District Attorney General Carey Dunne and DA assistant Solomon Shinerock also responded to the call.
Earlier this week, Trump paid a quick visit to Trump Tower in New York and left with boxes of files before returning to Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
On March 1, the Supreme Court ruled that the DA of Manhattan could obtain Trump’s tax records from its accountants in Mazars USA, and shortly thereafter, millions of pages of documents were handed over to the DA.
Vance sought the eight-year tax returns for a major jury investigation into cash payments and other financial transactions. The investigation began after it was revealed that Cohen, while Trump’s attorney, Stormy Daniels, paid $ 130,000 to remain silent about her allegation that she had an affair with Trump, an allegation he denied.
Cohen also claimed to Congress that the Trump organization sometimes lied about its financial condition of evading taxes or obtaining favorable loan terms.
Cohen was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison after pleading guilty to making secret payments to women who claimed to have affairs with Trump, and Congress lied about the president’s business relations in Russia. He was released from his sentence last year due to concerns about the coronavirus.
A Manhattan DA spokesman declined to comment Wednesday.