Asked by a reporter whether he would grant Cohen’s appeal for presidential clemency, Trump said: “If everything is checking out, it’s something I would consider.”
The president’s comments came as he departed for the Republican National Committee’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas, a gathering he requested and which places him at the center of the party’s campaign ahead of the November elections. Cohen was also on hand at the convention, broadcasting live for his radio show.
In an interview with CNN last month, Cohen said he had not personally asked Trump for a pardon, but had submitted a pardon application to the White House after he was denied one by Joe Biden’s administration.
Cohen wrote in January he “felt pressured and coerced” into testifying against Trump. But he has not fully recanted his testimony, despite the president’s repeated claims that he has. Cohen has instead said that he wants to move past his bitter, years-long feud with his former boss.
“I appreciate that at least he came out, although late, he came out and rectified the situation,” Trump told reporters, speaking on the tarmac before departing for Dallas.
The remarks followed unexpected rapprochement last month, when Trump joined Cohen’s radio show. At the beginning of the interview, Cohen acknowledged that he and the man he continued to call “boss” had “traveled a pretty rocky road together”.
It was a striking turn in the Shakespearean saga of Cohen’s fixer-turned-foe relationship with the US president.
For many years and throughout the 2016 presidential election, Cohen was one of Trump’s most loyal defenders, working as his personal lawyer and self-styled fixer. But then he flipped. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to federal crimes that included facilitating a $130,000 hush payment to the pornography star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election and lying under oath to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in prison and served more than a year behind bars.
After leaving prison, Cohen remained a vocal critic of Trump, using his podcast and social media to assail the president as a “cheat” and a “conman”. In 2024, Cohen emerged as a key witness at Trump’s criminal trial in New York state court, where he testified about the hush money payment – and acknowledged that he had probably described his former boss as a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain” and a “boorish cartoon misogynist”.
The jury ultimately convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump has denied the encounter with Daniels and all wrongdoing. He is appealing his New York conviction.
A presidential pardon could wipe away some of the federal consequences of Cohen’s past convictions.
