Former President Donald Trump filed on Wednesday a civil complaint against his former lawyer Michael Cohen for more than $500 million in damages resulting from Cohen’s alleged breach of his attorney-client duties with Trump, unjust enrichment, and other causes, a Trump spokesperson confirmed with The Epoch Times.
“The lawsuit and the many wrongdoings by Michael Cohen—a convicted felon—stand for themselves, and have been admitted to by Cohen himself through his falsehood-filled books, podcasts, and constant media appearances,” a Trump spokesperson wrote to The Epoch Times in a statement. The lawsuit (pdf) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Tuesday.
Cohen’s conduct after his 12-year attorney-client relationship with Trump ending in 2018 consisted of “multiple breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, conversion, and breaches of contract,” as well as “spreading falsehoods” about Trump that would likely be “embarrassing or detrimental,” the lawsuit alleges.
Trump’s lawsuit seeks relief that is “expected to substantially exceed” $500 million in damages and requests a jury trial.
The civil lawsuit is legally unrelated to the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal case against the former president, but Cohen’s public statements about the case leading up to Bragg’s indictment against the former president are cited as supporting facts in the complaint. Bragg’s indictment is centered on a payment Trump allegedly made to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress, via Cohen.
Cohen was Trump’s attorney from 2006 to 2018 and was a vice president of the Trump Organization. He was convicted of federal charges related to campaign finance violations in 2018, in connection with arranging payments to Daniels and another woman claiming to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen served a prison sentence from May 2019 to July 2020 for these charges. Trump denied having an affair with either woman or making the payment.
After the relationship between Trump and Cohen ended, Trump’s Tuesday filing states, Cohen committed “an onslaught of fiduciary and contractual breaches against [Trump] by making numerous inflammatory and false statements” about Trump.
For example, the filing states that Cohen breached fiduciary duties when he revealed Trump’s confidences and spread falsehoods about Trump via “public statements, including the publication of two books, a podcast series, and innumerable mainstream media appearances.”
Cohen’s 2020 book titled “Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Formal Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” is another example of this breach of duty, the filing reads, as the book revealed confidential information about the plaintiff and thereby violated a confidentiality agreement between Trump and Cohen
