Following the Manhattan lawsuit that resulted in the indictment of former President Donald Trump, he is now suing his former lawyer Michael Cohen for more than US$500 million, alleging a breach of their attorney-client relationship, illicit enrichment, and defamation.
Trump’s legal team filed a 30-page document Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida suing Cohen and the Democrat prosecutors involved in the 2018 complaint that led to his indictment.
“This is an action arising out of Cohen’s multiple breaches of fiduciary duty, illicit enrichment, and breaches of contract under Cohen’s prior service as an employee as Trump’s attorney,” the complaint says.
The lawsuit alleges that Cohen breached his attorney-client relationship by “disseminating falsehoods” about Trump that “would likely be embarrassing or damaging, and engaged in other misconduct” while breaching the contractual terms of a confidentiality agreement he signed as a condition of employment with the Trump Organization.
The lawsuit alleges that Cohen spread falsehoods about Trump “with malicious intent and wholly selfish purposes of enriching himself and getting out of his legal troubles.”
It should be recalled that Cohen was indicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison in 2018 for having paid US$130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels two years earlier, in 2016.
The woman had publicly threatened that she would release a book telling that she had an affair with Trump shortly after his marriage to Melania Trump.
Daniels signed a confidentiality agreement with Michael Cohen a few months before the election that year and ultimately did not publish the book.
But in 2018, Democratic lawyer Michael Avenatti convinced Daniels to press charges against Trump, given that the payment had been made amid the presidential campaign and could be considered a political bribe.
The case could only find Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, guilty, as there was no evidence that Trump had ordered or reimbursed him for the money.
The court ruled that Cohen acted of his own free will without the knowledge of the then-presidential candidate.
The situation was sealed when Avenatti went to prison in 2019 after it was proven that he had defrauded Daniels and stolen money from her.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted not to charge Trump with the alleged undercover money payments in 2019.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) dropped its case in 2021.
However, after Trump departed from the administration, the case was revived by Democratic prosecutor Alvin Bragg, who decided to continue the investigation.
After two more years leading the case, the prosecutor announced that he had obtained all the evidence necessary to file charges against Trump, which he did last week.
Cohen managed to reduce his sentence by “turning in” Trump, even though he had filed a document informing the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that the money paid to Stormy Daniels came entirely from his funds and had never been reimbursed.
This establishes a blatant misrepresentation.
Either he lied to the FEC, or he lied to US Attorney Alvin Bragg.
In addition, the lawsuit filed by Trump details Cohen’s “plethora of public statements, including the publication of two books, a series of podcasts, and countless appearances in the mainstream media,” while ignoring “cease and desist” orders.
It states that Cohen, in recent months, “increased the frequency and hostility of the wrongdoing” and “appears to have become emboldened and repeatedly continues to make erroneous and false statements about Trump” across various platforms.
“Such continuing and escalating misconduct by Cohen has reached a proverbial crescendo and has left Trump with no alternative but to seek legal redress through this action,” the lawsuit states, adding that Trump “has suffered great reputational harm as a direct result of Cohen’s wrongdoing.”
Although the lawsuit does not include them in the complaint, it mentions that Democratic prosecutors in charge of Cohen’s case “may have abused their power to extract a false statement,” convincing him to change his statement and use his new position to make money.
Trump demands that Cohen pay “actual, compensatory, incidental and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial, but expected to substantially exceed US$500 million.”
With information from La Derecha Diario