President-elect Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, said Tuesday that he does not want his old boss jailed after he leaves the White House in 2029.
Speaking on his podcast, The Michael Cohen Show, Cohen said he had been in prison with men who were over the age of 80 and didn’t want to see that for Trump, too.
“I never thought that Donald Trump was going to be incarcerated; in fact, you’ve heard me say I don’t think he should be,” Cohen said. “I thought it was very debasing to the former president or the office of the presidency.
“Plus, I was more concerned about what he may say to people inside. I always made the joke about how he would trade nuclear secrets for a bag of tuna and a book of stamps.”
Cohen’s episode came after Judge Juan Merchan postponed a decision on Tuesday on whether to dismiss the president-elect’s conviction in his New York hush money trial. The decision is now due to be made on November 19.
Both sides agreed to delay existing deadlines, with Trump’s attorney saying dismissing the charges was necessary to avoid “unconstitutional impediments” to his ability to govern.
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Trump became the first former president convicted of a felony when a jury in May convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a plot to influence the 2016 election through a $130,000 payment to former adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who had alleged they had an affair years earlier.
He denied any wrongdoing and the allegation of the extramarital sexual encounter, saying the prosecution was a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at harming his 2024 presidential campaign. Cohen, a key witness in the trial, had paid Daniels the money, which Trump reimbursed him for.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to crimes, including campaign finance violations related to the hush money payment.
“I don’t believe, especially now, that Judge Merchan will have any choice other than to say: ‘The decision is the decision; you can’t go back in time,'” Cohen said, adding that he thinks that Merchan would honor the 34 counts but not issue a sentencing higher than a fine if anything.
“I think they will push it off to after the four years, at which point in time he will be 82-plus years of age,” Cohen continued. “When I was away in Otisville [Correctional Facility], we had one guy there. He was 82 years old; it was a crime. We had an 80-year-old guy there, too. It was horrible.”
Cohen suggested Trump be given a work detail or community service instead.
Trump still faces other civil cases, including his appeal over the judgment handed to him in the sexual abuse and defamation case related to writer E. Jean Caroll, along with a defamation lawsuit from the group known as the Central Park Five.
The criminal cases against him, relating to classified documents and alleged election fraud, are crumbling following his presidential election win last week.
