Michael Cohen admits to ‘The Apprentice’ writer that he was Trump’s new Roy Cohn

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has confirmed long-held suspicions about his role in Trump’s inner circle.

During a recent episode of his podcast, My faultCohen acknowledged that he consciously filled the late Roy Cohn’s role for the former president. The revelation came during a conversation with Gabriel Sherman, writer of the recently released film the learnerwhich explores Trump’s rise to power and his relationship with Cohn, the infamous fixer-upper lawyer.

Asked by Sherman if he thought he ended up filling Cohn’s role for Trump, Cohen replied unequivocally: “One hundred percent. And I actually met Roy as a kid when I was working at a place in Brooklyn.”

Cohn, who first gained notoriety as a senior adviser to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the anti-communist congressional hearings of the 1950s, later became a powerful New York lawyer with ties to politicians, mobsters and celebrities.

He mentored the young Trump in the 1970s, teaching him aggressive legal and public relations tactics that would become hallmarks of Trump’s political and business career.

The timing of Cohen’s admission is particularly remarkable, in the wake of Trump’s recent legal troubles.

On May 30, a jury convicted Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Daniels claimed that she and Trump had sex in 2006 and that she accepted $130,000 in money from Cohen before the 2016 election.

Trump has consistently denied any sexual relationship with Daniels, who detailed her alleged encounter with the former president in a 2018 CBS News interview. The conviction came while Trump was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, before his confirmation at the Republican National Convention.

Cohen’s legal troubles ended his role as Trump’s lawyer and personal fixer. He pleaded guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations related to hush money payments, and served three years in federal prison.

His fall from grace in some ways mirrors the fate of Cohn, who was disbarred six weeks before his death in 1986 for ethical lapses including stealing money and defrauding clients.

In a recent development, Cohen is now seeking damages from Trump and other federal officials who allegedly conspired to keep him in prison as punishment for writing about Trump in his memoir. Cohen’s attorney, Jon-Michael Dougherty, filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Oct. 2, asking the justices to accept the case.

The brief says Trump blocked Cohen’s release from prison, arguing that the government revoked Cohen’s approved release from house arrest as punishment for his speech criticizing the president.

“The issue is whether the government can revoke the approved release of a prisoner to home confinement as punishment for his speech criticizing the president and to prevent further speech,” Dougherty wrote. He compared the importance of the case to the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage Obergefell v. Hodges case

The legal action comes after a federal appeals court rejected Cohen’s attempt to revive his lawsuit against Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr and other Justice Department officials for allegedly retaliating against him for promoting his anti-Trump memoir.

Meanwhile, the learnerpublished on October 11, has angered the former president. Trump attacked the film on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling it a “FAKE and classless movie” and a “cheap, defamatory and politically disgusting piece of work.”

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said in an email to Newsweek that the film was “pure malicious libel” and accused the filmmakers of fabricating scenes and creating false stories.

Sherman maintains that every scene in the film is based on records of real events.