Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal counsel, has come out as one of Trump’s most outspoken critics in the years since he broke ranks with the former president. While speaking on “The Katie Phang Show” Saturday, Cohen doubled down and warned Special Counsel Jack Smith to be aware of threats to his personal safety.
On Tuesday, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to blast Smith, who’s overseeing the former president’s second indictment regarding confidential materials at Mar-a-Lago and a potential third regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump wrote, “Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a target of the Jan. 6 grand jury investigation and giving me a very short four days to report to the grand jury, which almost always means an arrest and indictment.”
Later in the week, Trump said that if Smith’s indictments sent him to jail, it would be “very dangerous,” in what many have determined was a veiled threat against the special counsel.
Asked about that discourse on Saturday and whether or not he’d witnessed previous “threats of physical harm and physical violence” during his time as Trump’s personal counsel, Cohen said that such tactics are old hat for his former boss and that “the man just knows how to speak mob-like.
“Remember, it was a little different when I was working for Trump. It’s a myopic real estate development company, it’s not the power of the presidency of the United States of America. But as they say, a leopard doesn’t change its spots,” he said. “I certainly experienced it when he was president.”
Cohen also added that he believes there is a compelling reason to be concerned about not only Trump, but also his MAGA constituency. As he put it, “Donald had a way of doing things, which we see every single day now. I certainly experienced it when he was president. What he does is he uses words in order to entice others to do his bidding… The man just knows how to speak mob-like so he gets his MAGA base riled up and the problem with them is you never know what they’re going to do. You never know how unhinged they’re going to be and how they’re going to react.”
To illustrate his point, Cohen called to mind Trump’s pushing of conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Lori Klaustis, an aide of former Congressman and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, as well as Trump’s treatment of Megyn Kelly during the 2016 election, which sent her into hiding in New Jersey.
When it comes to the potential dangers Smith could be up against, Cohen also said that he thinks there’s reason to be concerned.
“I see a lot of television now, ‘Oh, Jack Smith, he shouldn’t be worried or concerned about Donald Trump making these overt threats against him,’ and so on. I would say I disagree. I disagree wholeheartedly, and I’ll tell you, I don’t care what anybody says: It’s sitting in the back of Jack Smith’s head because I know… You never know what one of these MAGA maniacs are going to do.”
Watch the video of the full segment, including Cohen’s assertion that Ivanka and Jared Trump are likely cooperating with the DOJ, in the video above.
