Donald Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, has no intentions of moving out of his apartment at Trump Park Avenue, even as his relationship with the former president continues to sour.
Cohen addressed his unit at the Lennox Hill residential apartment on X, formerly Twitter, Friday, responding to another user asking if he and his family had plans to move from the building amid Trump's civil fraud trial.
"I do own in a Trump property that I purchased several years before working for him," Cohen said. "The building currently has [Trump's] name on it; though he does not own it and is not subject to any fines or penalties he may owe as a result of his legal issues. So no. I will move when I'm ready."
Cohen confirmed to Newsweek that he has no plans to move from the building at this time and reiterated that although the building bears Trump's name, it is owned by all the condominium tenants, including Cohen.
"He is merely the developer of the property, not the owner," Cohen told Newsweek.
Trump owns several units within the building but not the building itself, so should his legal troubles result in some liquidation plan, it would only be his units and not the entire building that would be subject to penalties. The Trump Park Avenue is also home to several members of the Trump family.
Cohen, who bought his apartment at the Trump building in 2005, has had a tumultuous relationship with Trump over the last decade-and-a-half.
He joined the Trump Organization in March 2007 and quickly became a close adviser to Trump. He was a key figure in Trump's 2016 presidential election, often seen vehemently defending his boss. At one point, he famously proclaimed that he'd "take a bullet" for Trump.
But their relationship took a turn after he flipped on Trump in the early years of the administration as investigators targeted Cohen's personal finances. In 2018, he 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 Trump, Cohen has been a vocal critic of the former president. Most recently, he criticized Trump for backing out of his scheduled Monday testimony in the New York fraud trial, telling CNN that Trump is "scared, and he's rightfully scared."
"Everybody's talking about how, you know, potentially, 'The lawyers gave him the right advice, that he finally took the right advice.' Knowing Donald for a decade-and-a-half, I can assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with advice of counsel," Cohen said.
Cohen testified in the civil trial in October, telling the court that he inflated the values of Trump's real estate properties to "whatever number Mr. Trump told us."
Ahead of his court appearance, Cohen told reporters outside the courthouse, "This is not about Donald Trump vs. Michael Cohen or Michael Cohen vs. Donald Trump. This is about accountability, plain and simple, and we leave it up to Judge Engoron to make all the determinations on that."
Update 12/15/23 11:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated to state that Cohen resides at Trump Park Avenue, not Trump Tower.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
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