By Karen Freifeld
(Reuters) -Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, is expected to testify on Monday afternoon before a Manhattan grand jury investigating hush money payments he has said he orchestrated to porn star Stormy Daniels on behalf of the former president.
“This is all about accountability. He needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds,” Cohen said of Trump outside a Manhattan courthouse on his way to the grand jury.
Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, confirmed earlier that Cohen was scheduled to testify in the closed door proceeding at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT).
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Grand jury proceedings are not public.
The renewed interest in Stormy Daniels and the $130,000 payment she received before the 2016 presidential election comes at a critical time for Trump, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Daniels has said she received the payment in exchange for not discussing a sexual liaison with Trump, who denies it happened.
Trump has been given a chance to testify before the grand jury as a person subject to an investigation, Susan Necheles, an attorney for the former president, told Reuters last Thursday, a sign the grand jury may be close to deciding whether to bring criminal charges against him.
The Manhattan District Attorney “now threatens to indict former President Trump for payments made to Stormy Daniels seven years ago,” Necheles’ said in a statement on Friday. “For the DA’s office to charge former President Trump, a victim of extortion, with a crime because his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, a convicted liar, paid the extortionist, would be unprecedented and outrageous selective prosecution.”
Cohen was sentenced to prison in 2018 in Manhattan federal court in connection with his arranging hush payments to Daniels and another woman during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“This is not revenge,” Cohen told reporters on Monday. “My goal is to tell the truth.”
It is doubtful Trump, who has called the investigation a witch hunt, will agree to testify.
“I did absolutely nothing wrong, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels,” he said on Truth Social last week.
Joseph Tacopina, another Trump lawyer, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday there were no plans to participate in the grand jury, though a decision had not been made.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by Douglas Higginbotham; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
