Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump‘s former personal lawyer, offered a technology firm and its owner $50,000 to rig two 2016 online polls in Trump’s favor, it was reported Thursday.
According to The Wall Street Journal, longtime fixer Cohen gave John Gauger — the owner of Red Finch Solutions — a bag that contained between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash when the two met at Cohen’s Trump Organization office in 2015. In the bag, Cohen also reportedly placed a boxing glove he claimed belonged to a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter. However, Cohen never paid Gauger the rest of the $50,000 he offered.
Cohen commented on the Journal’s article on Twitter Thursday morning, writing: “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” after saying Trump directed him to rig the polls.
Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter!
A week of political news in your in-box.
We find the news you need to know, so you don't have to.
Cohen, 52, previously implicated Trump — who was his client for more than a decade — in another scandal. Last year, Cohen said the president ordered him to make hush money payments to women with whom he had extramarital affairs, like porn star Stormy Daniels. After taking a plea deal in August and drawing charges of campaign finance violations and bank and tax fraud, Cohen was sentenced last month to three years in prison. He also pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about his involvement in a Trump Tower real estate deal in Moscow in 2016.
SLIDESHOW: DONALD TRUMP’S 30 CRAZIEST TWEETS
The Journal also reported that Cohen asked Gauger — who is Liberty University’s chief investment officer — to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen and demanded it be run by a female friend of Gauger’s who could depict Cohen as a “sex symbol” and thus benefit Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The profile was formed in May 2016 and its last tweet was seven months later, just weeks before Trump took office:
On Feb. 7, Cohen will testify before the House Oversight Committee about work he performed for Trump.
https://youtube.com/shorts/YVrfbMZSVRE?feature=share US President-elect Donald Trump drew cheers as he arrived in Texas on Nov. 19 to watch…
After President-elect Donald Trump selected Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, as his nominee for…
President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be his pick for Department…
https://youtube.com/shorts/6CUvTmS87UM?feature=share President-elect Donald Trump arrived to cheers at an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in…
President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) as his attorney general has sent shockwaves through…
https://youtube.com/shorts/TD8RNJl-NBk A fight broke out in one of the stands at the Stade de France…