Michael Cohen (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Desperate men do desperate things. There’s now hope — at least amongst the segment of Americans opposed to President Trump — that Donald Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen might be a little closer to striking a deal with federal prosecutors and spilling all the tea on the president.
Bloomberg has a new report that reveals, according to public filings, the taxi business owned by Cohen and his wife owes as much as $12.8 million on loans to Sterling Bank. That loan had been secured by taxi medallions, but with the success of Uber and other ride-hailing services, the value of that collateral has dropped 80 percent. Now the Cohens have placed their home as collateral on the debt owed to Sterling Bank:
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Cohen and his wife have now pledged their apartment in the Trump Park Avenue — a 10th-floor spread combining three units — as additional collateral to the bank, which valued it at $9 million, according to filings of the April 22 transaction.
The exact details of the transaction are unclear — indeed, in a text to Bloomberg Cohen puffed, “With all due respect, you don’t remotely understand my loan.” But the experts have some insight into what may be going on behind the filings:
“It looks to me like the lender probably said you have to guarantee these existing loans, and by the way you have to pledge your real estate to backstop your guaranty,” said Joshua Stein, a Manhattan real-estate attorney who reviewed the public filings.
The next best question is whether this new information about Cohen’s finances increases the likelihood he will cooperate with the government investigation. Certainly some commentators think this “fight for his family’s financial life” puts a lot more pressure on him:
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The reality is fighting the full resources of the federal government in court takes a lot of your own resources. Much has been made before about Cohen’s struggling taxi business and the financial strain he appears to be under. Now that we know Cohen doesn’t have the value of his home to leverage in his legal battle, well, the prospect of being a government witness seems a lot better.
Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).