President Donald Trump demanded the immediate dismissal of his New York fraud and falsifying business records convictions on Tuesday, citing testimony from Michael Cohen that he was “pressured and coerced” to provide evidence against him.
In a Truth Social post released shortly after midnight, Trump argued that Cohen’s recantation undermines the legal foundation of both the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit.
Trump maintained that Cohen served as the central witness in the prosecutions and that his allegations of prosecutorial pressure warrant the cases being thrown out. “When a star witness totally recants, and in every way reveals that he was pressured and coerced to give testimony, and when the Prosecutor admits that this Witness was the single reason that the case was brought, there was no other, how can that Case not be immediately dismissed?” Trump wrote.
He characterized the prosecutions as “Political Witch Hunts” and called for those responsible for “lawfare” to be held accountable.
In a January Substack article, Cohen claimed he felt pressured by prosecutors in both the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the New York Attorney General’s office to provide testimony that would secure judgments against Trump.
Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer-turned-critic, wrote that government lawyers were interested only in testimony supporting their cases and that prosecutors sometimes used leading questions to advance their narrative. “In both trials, government lawyers made me the key witness,” Cohen stated, adding he felt “pressured and coerced” throughout.
Cohen further accused James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of blurring “the line between justice and politics.”
The New York Daily News noted in January that Cohen’s claims appear to conflict with his years of public statements praising cooperation with investigators and prosecutors.
In a 119-page filing with the New York State Court of Appeals in April, Trump’s attorneys requested that the remaining findings in a civil fraud case be overturned. They appealed a lower court ruling that had eliminated a roughly $500 million financial penalty but upheld the underlying fraud determination.
For Trump and his supporters, Cohen’s statements are evidence that the cases were politically motivated from the start. Critics, however, point to Cohen’s long record of anti-Trump statements and cooperation with prosecutors as reasons to question his sudden change in position.
