Michael Cohen and Donald Trump Finally Agree on Something

Neither former President Donald Trump nor his former attorney Michael Cohen is happy with the justice system in New York.

A flurry of documents turned over to Trump's legal team as part of a last-minute request in a hush-money case has angered Cohen, who had been pursuing similar records for years. Newsweek has emailed the Trump 2024 presidential campaign team for comment.

Trump's upcoming Manhattan trial related to the hush-money payments by Cohen made to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election was delayed last week. Federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York (SDNY)—which worked on a previous version of the hush-money payment investigation before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg took over—handed the former president hundreds of thousands pages of evidence at his request.

"The Southern District of New York believes themselves to be above everyone and everything. They refer to themselves grossly as the 'Sovereign' District of New York. They're not obligated to. They threaten. They're coercive. They lie," Cohen told The Daily Beast. "Then they get seven-figure jobs with the top law firms."

Cohen, whom Bragg is relying on as a key witness in the hush-money trial, has been demanding records from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI since December 2021. Cohen gave journalist Brian Karem the go-ahead to file a Freedom of Information request for records related to the investigation. While the FBI in New York promised to begin sending documents in August 2022, it wasn't until March of this year that Cohen finally received the first batch of 32 pages.

That same week, SDNY had sent Trump 73,193 documents about the same probe. U.S. Attorney for SDNY Damian Williams authorized the prompt release of those records at the request of the former president's attorneys.

"Trump put in a request for the documents in January, so that orange piece of s*** in 45 days gets documents that I've been waiting on for years," Cohen said.

Cohen was a key figure in Trump's 2016 presidential election. He was one of the Republican's fiercest defenders, having once said that he would "take a bullet" for his boss, but their relationship soured after he flipped on Trump in the early years of the administration.

In 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for various crimes, including campaign finance violations related to the hush-money payments made to two women in exchange for their silence about their personal relationships with Trump. Since severing ties with his former boss, Cohen has since become a vocal critic of Trump.

"When Donald Trump says there's a two-tiered justice system, that stupid motherf***** is exactly right! Here's the problem: He's on the top tier, and the rest of us aren't," Karem told the Beast.

Trump has long vocalized his frustrations with both the justice system in New York and the DOJ, accusing state and federal prosecutors of politically motivated charges against him, while slamming judges in New York for being "true Trump Hater[s]."

He said at a rally last month that "we have a sick and corrupt, two-tiered system of justice in our country," after the investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents concluded without charges. "Do I know better than anybody," Trump said from Pennsylvania.

The former president has been posting on his social-media site Truth Social this week. He raged at New York Attorney Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron over the bond he would need to pay to stop the enforcement of the $454 million judgment against him in a civil fraud case while he appeals the order. He was found to have falsely inflated the values of his properties to get better loan deals, something he has continually denied.

"This is the first time something like that has ever happened in New York State," Trump wrote on Tuesday. "[Engoron] is a Crazed, Trump Hating, Rogue Judge, has ZERO respect for the Appellate Judges, and has torn apart the Legal System in New York State, making it impossible for outside businesses to want to come there."