WASHINGTON — After years of criticizing Donald Trump, the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is admitting that he was “pressured” and “coerced” by Alvin Bragg and Letitia James to testify against Donald Trump.

In an astonishing Substack post published Friday evening, Cohen writes that he “felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.” He said the feeling began from his very first meetings with the lawyers working with Bragg and James, New York’s attorney general. 

Specifically regarding James, he said he felt “compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking.”

“Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump,” Cohen writes in the post. “Her office made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony that would help them do just that. Again, I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking.”

Cohen writes about the two trials in which he testified against Donald Trump: the first, a civil action brought by the New York attorney general’s office accusing Trump of fraudulently inflating his assets to get favorable loans. The second case was a criminal action by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alleging that Trump falsified business records related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to influence the 2016 presidential election.

The jury found Trump guilty in both cases.

Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump, prepares to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill, February 27, 201,9 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Cohen served prison time after he plead guilty in 2018 to multiple crimes, including lying to Congress. He also admitted during Trump’s hush money trial that he stole tens of thousands from the Trump Organization in 2017.

In his Substack article, Cohen notes that a federal appeals court just revived the president’s effort to undo his hush money conviction. He reflects that silently letting the record stand without proper context feels like complicity, prompting him to speak out.

“I am not writing this to defend Donald Trump, nor to relitigate his conduct,” he writes. “That ground has been plowed endlessly, often loudly, and rarely thoughtfully. I am writing because I have seen this system from the inside, not as an observer or analyst, but as a central subpoenaed participant. When courts now revisit questions of jurisdiction, immunity, and evidentiary boundaries, they are not engaging in sterile procedural debates. They are exposing how justice is pursued, how power is applied, and how outcomes are shaped well before verdicts are rendered.” 

Cohen writes that he first met with prosecutors from the Manhattan DA’s office in August 2019, three months into his three-year prison sentence. He was released in September 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and for good behavior and allowed to serve out the rest of his term at home, until November 2021.

Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump is sworn in before testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill February 27, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

He says he kept meeting with prosecutors after he was released in hopes that his home confinement and supervised release would be shorter because he was cooperating. He also writes that the reason he cooperated with the prosecutors from the Manhattan DA’s office was that he wanted to get out of prison and home to his family. 

“During my time with prosecutors, both in preparation for and during the trials, it was clear they were interested only in testimony from me that would enable them to convict President Trump,” he wrote. “When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative.” 

Cohen says that he also felt coerced and pressured into giving answers that supported the narrative from James, as her office made it very clear to him that they wanted testimony that would help them go after Trump.

“Letitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook,” he writes. “Both used their platforms to elevate their profiles, to claim the mantle of the officials who ‘took down Trump.’ In doing so, they blurred the line between justice and politics; and in that blur, the credibility of both suffered.”

As for why he is speaking out now, Cohen says he has “witnessed firsthand the damage done when prosecutors pick their target first and then seek evidence to fit a predetermined narrative.” 

“I have lived inside that process,” he wrote. “I have suffered from that process. And as courts now reconsider where the Bragg and James cases belong, how they were brought and how they were tried; that experience is relevant. More today than ever before.” 

“When politics and prosecution become indistinguishable, public trust erodes; not just in individual cases, like mine and/or Trump’s, but in the system itself,” he concludes. “That erosion serves no one, regardless of party, personality, or power.”

The State Department will officially terminate foreign assistance to Somalia after the African nation’s government demolished a warehouse containing 76 metric tons of food donated by America, a senior administration official told The Daily Wire.

On January 3, “at the direction of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) and the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), authorities at Mogadishu Port demolished the World Food Programme (WFP) Emergency Response Warehouse with no prior notification or coordination with international donor countries, including the United States,” a diplomatic cable from the United States Embassy in Somalia dated January 6 said.

The move “likely resulted in the destruction of these emergency food supplies,” and was approved by Somali’s president over the objections of the World Food Programme, the cable said. The apparent cause, it said, was corruption: the Mogadishu Port is managed by a Turkish company that wanted to expand, and Somalia’s Minister of Ports “acts as [Turkey’s] primary agent in Somalia.” Turkey has increasingly plated a large role in Somalia industries, “often operating under corrupt contracts that uniformly favor Turkish interests,” the cable said.

An additional 1,650 metric tons of additional commodities were scheduled to arrive in early January, and had to be stored in an alternative warehouse. The World Food Programe, a project of the United Nations, said it will notify Somalia that the “demolition constitutes a breach of UN diplomatic protocols,” the cable said.

The embassy in Somalia requested that the Secretary of State “strongly consider pausing, canceling, or postponing U.S. assistance to [Somalia] until it returns or compensates the United States and other international donors for the stolen food assistance items,” the cable said.

The State Department announced on January 7 that it has “paused all ongoing U.S. assistance programs which benefit the Somali Federal Government. Any resumption of assistance will be dependent upon the Somali Federal Government taking accountability for its unacceptable actions.” But the administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, went further, saying that all aid will be permanently and officially ended by May.

The ports minister issued an eviction notice to the WFP in December, but the Somali government had later said the warehouse could still be used while a final decision was pending. The port manager claimed that the food was moved to two containers and remained accessible, but WFP said that was not true, and that it is likely ruined because it requires specialized storage.

The food was donated by Americans under the Title II “Food for Peace” program and International Disaster Assistance, while the World Food Programme administers its distribution. Hunter Biden served as chairman of the World Food Program USA, which supports its work, from 2011 to 2015.

The disappearance of the Food for Peace food due to apparent Somali corruption comes as Somalis who migrated to the United States by claiming refuge status have themselves defrauded the U.S. government, including by asking to be paid by the government to watch their own children or their neighbors’ children, and plunged cities like Minneapolis into their own instability.

A member of Somalia’s parliament and its Foreign Affairs committee, Abdillahi Hashi Abib, wrote to United States officials saying that 90% of Somalia’s humanitarian assistance comes from America, and that the Somali Disaster Management Agency (SoDMA) has been “defrauding” it because “the funds have been captured and monetized by a single-family network and its clan affiliates.”

For example, three brothers of the agency’s chairman, Mohamud Macallin Abdulle, each receive $15,000 a month salaries, paid through their wives, he said, and the Finance Department and Training Unit are both run by the his uncles.

He said that “food donations from the US, EU, UAE, Qatar, and China are systematically sold in Magadishu markets after staged photo-ops,” in which starving people are paid $5 to pay for photos with the food, before it is taken away from them.

By diverting aid for 8,000 to 12,000 families, the clain generates half a million dollars a month for itself, he said. Foreign aid money has also been wasted as Somalis inflate the cost of items, charging $300,000 for ambulances and fire trucks that cost only $100,000, he said.

“The President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, and his extended family are beneficiaries of a system that has systematically looted U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance” by “installing a close relative… at the apex of Somalia’s humanitarian system,” he wrote.