The Trump Organization and former fixer Michael Cohen settle his lawsuit over unpaid legal bills
Associated PressJuly 21, 2023
Donald Trump’s firm and his former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen have settled a lawsuit over Cohen’s claims that he was unfairly saddled with hefty legal bills after getting entangled in investigations into the former president.
Lawyers for the two sides announced the settlement during a video conference with the judge on Friday, three days before Cohen’s 2019 lawsuit was due to be tried in a Manhattan court. Details of the agreement were not made public.
Cohen said on Friday that the matter “has been resolved in a satisfactory manner to all parties. Messages requesting comment were left with attorneys from Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.
The legal fees lawsuit was one of the more obscure branches of the thicket of legal trouble surrounding Trump and his company. Still, the trial was designed to provide a platform for Cohen, a staunch Trump loyalist who became an outspoken opponent, and to put the ex-president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., on the witness stand.
Cohen claimed in his lawsuit that the Trump Organization promised to pay his legal fees and did so for a while, paying more than $1.7 million in legal fees.
But, Cohen said, the company reneged after it began cooperating with federal prosecutors in their investigations into Trump’s business dealings in Russia and attempts to silence women with embarrassing stories about his personal life.
Cohen’s lawyers are no longer representing him after the company stopped paying. His lawsuit said this impaired his ability to respond to the federal investigations.
In court documents, the Trump Organization has disputed that it made certain promises and has said it has fulfilled all obligations. The company also argued that Cohen’s involvement in the federal investigations was not an outgrowth of his former job, but rather a personal decision to try to reduce his own criminal exposure as an indictment loomed.
Jury selection in the case began Monday, with a trial scheduled for next week. More than half of the prospective jurors said they had strong opinions about Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Several said their feelings toward him were intense enough that they wouldn’t be able to fairly review the evidence.
While the former president would not have testified at the trial, Donald Trump Jr., who is a leader in the family business, was expected to testify.
Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple charges in 2018, admitting to lying to Congress, violating campaign finance laws through excessive political contributions, lying to multiple banks to obtain financing, and evading income taxes by not reporting more than $4 million in income. He was sentenced to three years in prison, although he served nearly two-thirds of that time at home.
and what
released after the COVID-19 outbreak overwhelmed the country’s prisons.
He subsequently became a star witness in the New York Grand Jury proceedings that led to Trump’s April indictment on charges of falsifying Trump Organization records to protect his 2016 candidacy by suppressing claims that he had engaged in extramarital sexual encounters.
Trump denied those meetings and pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. He pitched the case as an attempt by a Democratic prosecutor to blunt his ongoing campaign to return to the White House.
Trump has now sued and charged Cohen with violating a company confidentiality agreement, violating ethical standards for lawyers and maliciously spreading untruths about Trump. A spokesman for Cohen, attorney Lanny Davis, responded that Trump was abusing the legal system to harass Cohen.
While Friday’s settlement settles the lawsuit over Cohen’s legal fees, a trial is scheduled for October in New York Att.
or
j
.
gene
. eral
Letitia James corporate fraud lawsuit against Trump’s company and the businessman-turned-president.
Trump also faces a trial date in March in the silence of New York
–
money charge; a May trial in Florida in the federal criminal case involving his handling of classified documents; and the second federal civil suit involving writer E. Jean Carroll’s claim that he defamed her by denying her sexual assault charges.
He also disclosed this week that the Justice Department had told him he was the target of an investigation into efforts to unravel his loss in the 2020 presidential election, a report that could point to impending charges. Separately, Georgia prosecutors plan to issue indictment decisions within weeks in their investigation of efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election there.
Trump has denied wrongdoing on all counts and says prosecutors are pressing charges to harm his ongoing presidential campaign.
Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak, Jake Offenhartz and Jill Colvin in New York and contributed to this report.

Fernando Dowling is an author and political journalist who writes for 24 News Globe. He has a deep understanding of the political landscape and a passion for analyzing the latest political trends and news.