Government

Is Donald Trump Admitting To Campaign Crimes In His Lawsuit Against Michael Cohen?

The OG vexatious litigant strikes again!

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Donald Trump yelling

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Yesterday, Donald Trump filed a breach of contract lawsuit against his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump demands $500,074,000, an oddly round and oddly specific number which somehow manages to be the most normal thing about this exercise.

As regular readers of this column know, filing garbage lawsuits is Trump’s main occupation these, along with golf and grifting. So he fulfilled this week’s quota with a complaint filed in the Southern District of Florida’s Miami Division, the better to keep it away from Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who recently imposed a million dollars in sanctions on Trump and his lawyers.

But why is Trump, a resident of Palm Beach, suing New Yorker Michael Cohen in Miami?

Well, you can download Michael Cohen’s podcast and buy his book in Miami, plus “upon information and belief, Defendant traveled to Miami, Florida to engage in services for the Plaintiff.” And isn’t that how venue works?

It should be noted that this complaint is unverified.

As for the statement of facts, it begins with years-old statements by Cohen praising Trump’s amazing glory:

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Defendant stated that Plaintiff was “smart,” and “the greatest negotiator on the planet,” and described his own role as the one “who protects the President and the family,” and strongly stated that he “would take a bullet” for Plaintiff.

This is followed by a section captioned “Defendant’s Personal and Professional Downfall” which contains mostly hearsay from Cohen’s former lawyer Robert Costello calling him a congenital liar:

Mr. Costello has further completely discredited Defendant’s subsequent accounts implicating Plaintiff’s involvement in any violation of law surrounding the payment, and on the basis of his interactions with Defendant, calls Defendant a “serial liar,” and a “totally unreliable” individual who “has great difficulty telling the truth.”

This would be odd even if this weren’t in a lawsuit claiming Michael Cohen breached his fiduciary duty to his former client. But then Trump, who was referred to in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Michael Cohen as “Individual 1,” attempts to use said indictment to dirty Cohen up, even citing his conviction for lying to Congress. Trump fails to admit that the lie was about Trump’s own concealed effort to build the Trump Tower Moscow and give Vladimir Putin a free apartment. Awkward!

But what does any of this have to do with any cognizable legal claim?

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Well, nothing. But neither do New York Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys, and Trump goes on for several pages about them, as well as the Trump Organization’s confidentiality agreement, although that has been ruled unenforceable because of its breadth. Also Cohen was already disbarred, and NYRPC creates no private right of action, but … hey, knock yourself out.

The alleged torts are almost an afterthought and amount to little more than “he said mean stuff about me,” with alleged breaches of contract that include hosting “guests who have historically been hostile towards Plaintiff, [such as] Norm Eisen, Elie Honig, and Glenn Kirschner” on Cohen’s podcast and calling Trump a “racist.”

“Plaintiff refutes the truth of any and all disclosures made by Defendant,” Trump complains, just a paragraph after complaining that Cohen “improperly disclose[d] Plaintiff’s confidences.”

Most hilariously, Trump actually seems to admit the truth of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment, conceding that he did, indeed, reimburse Cohen for rigging an online poll in 2015, paying it back it through business expenses disguised as a “retainer.” This would appear to be unambiguously a campaign contribution in excess of the $2,700 limit.

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He is apparently so intent on proving that Cohen overcharged him that he’s willing to admit that he paid Cohen “additional money as the Trump Organization officials found sufficient to “gross[] up . . . to make up for taxes” on the original expenditure.”

Maybe DA Bragg’s office won’t notice! Or maybe it’ll be worth it Trump gets that $74,000 he overpaid Cohen, plus half a million dollars to make him whole. Or maybe he’ll wind up with Rule 11 sanctions and the admissions from the Florida civil suit cited in his New York criminal prosecution.

As for whichever jurist he was hoping to get in front of in Miami, it’s a safe bet that Judge Darrin Gayles, an Obama appointee, wasn’t it.

Ah, well, better luck with next week’s garbage lawsuit.

Trump v. Cohen [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.

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