President Donald Trump’s legal team blasted New York Attorney General Letitia James and demanded she hand over all records of her office’s communications with Michael Cohen.
Cohen, a former Trump lawyer turned anti-Trump political activist, said he was “pressured and coerced” by James into testifying against the president.
The 25-page court filing from Trump’s legal team calls for every communication between Cohen and James’ office, including interview transcripts, notes, emails, letters, and recordings be turned over.
Trump’s lawyers say the communications are vital as they prepare to file a motion to vacate the civil fraud judgment against the president. Trump’s team must submit a brief to the New York State Court of Appeals within the month.
Cohen dropped the coercion bombshell in a January 16 Substack post, accusing James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of pressuring him to deliver testimony designed to convict Trump.
“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 judgment and convictions against President Trump,” Cohen wrote.
“I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking. Letitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook.”
Trump’s lawyers argue Cohen’s communications with prosecutors “would have been vital for Defendants to use in cross-examining” him at trial, but say James’ office “never produced any of the Cohen Records concerning its meetings with Cohen about President Trump and his businesses, despite Defendants’ documented demands that the NYAG do so.”
Since Cohen’s claims went public, Trump’s team says they have contacted James’ office multiple times asking for the records but have been ignored.
Trump’s attorneys demanded James confirm her office has taken steps to preserve all Cohen-related records before they are “automatically deleted and purged.”
“In sum, the NYAG is blocking any discovery into, and possibly even preservation of, evidence of the ‘pressured and coerced’ testimony that it used to convince the trial court to enter a wrongful judgment against Defendants,” the filing reads.
Cohen’s testimony was central to James’ civil fraud case against Trump, which accused him and his family of inflating asset values on financial filings to secure favorable loan terms. Cohen told the court he worked with former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to inflate those figures. James’ office won a $464 million judgment in the case, which grew to more than $500 million with interest before it was thrown out, ruling the penalty was an excessive fine barred by the U.S. Constitution.