Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, said that on Wednesday he met with prosecutors from the Manhattan prosecutor’s office for the seventh time.
The meeting, which Cohen said took place at Zoom and lasted two and a half hours, is taking place at the time when the ex-president’s extensive investigation into taxes and finances is intensifying.
Trump denied any wrongdoing and called the Manhattan prosecutor’s investigation a witch hunt.
Cohen said he spoke with Chief Investigator Mark Pomerantz, a white-collar crime expert who expelled Mafia boss John Gotti and other organized crime figures. Also on the call were Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, General Counsel Carey Dunne and Assistant District Attorney Solomon Shinerock, according to Cohen.
Earlier this week, Trump paid a quick visit to the Trump Tower in New York and left with boxes of files before returning to Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
On March 1, the Supreme Court ruled that the Manhattan DA could obtain Trump’s tax records from its accountants at Mazars USA, and shortly thereafter millions of pages of documents were delivered to the DA.
Vance sought tax returns covering eight years for a grand jury investigation into secret money payments and other financial transactions. The investigation began after it was reported that, although he was Trump’s lawyer, Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $ 130,000 to keep quiet about his claim that she had an affair with Trump, an allegation he denied.
Cohen also claimed to Congress that the Trump Organization sometimes lied about its financial condition to evade taxes or obtain favorable loan terms.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to making secret payments to women who claimed to have affairs with Trump, and lying to Congress about the president’s business relations in Russia. He was released last spring from his sentence because of concerns about the coronavirus.
A Manhattan DA spokesman declined to comment on Wednesday.