President Donald Trump says his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen has recanted the testimony that helped convict him last year, and Trump is now calling for New York prosecutors to drop what remains of the cases against him.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that Cohen was the “Prosecution’s Star Witness and, in actuality, only Witness in the New York State Attorney General and Manhattan DA Witch Hunt Cases brought against me,” and claimed Cohen “has just fully RECANTED his testimony.” Trump said Cohen “was ‘pressured’ and ‘coerced’ to say things that were not true.”
“I would like to thank Michael for having the Wisdom and Courage to step forward and do the right thing!” Trump wrote. “His Act of Bravery is a Great Credit to the Justice System in New York City and State. I am sure it was not easy for him!”
Trump also called for prosecutors to drop any remaining proceedings against him. “Now we are asking that any remnant of those Politically Weaponized Cases against me be immediately terminated and dismissed,” he wrote. “Their Star Witness said everything they did was WRONG and UNLAWFUL!”
Trump’s post points back to statements Cohen made in January, when he wrote in a Substack article that he had been “coerced and pressured” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office and New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office as they investigated Trump. Cohen also noted at the time that a federal appeals court had revived Trump’s effort to undo his May 2024 conviction, and that a lower court had been ordered to reconsider whether the case should be tried in state or federal court.
“From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgement and convictions against President Trump,” Cohen wrote in that January Substack post.
Background on the case
Cohen was the central witness in Trump’s business records trial, in which a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Those charges stemmed from payments made through Cohen to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s Truth Social post is the latest instance in which he has publicly tied Cohen’s January statements to a call for New York authorities to drop the cases entirely. The source material reviewed for this report does not include any new, separate statement from Cohen beyond what he wrote in January.
