NEW YORK – donald’s company Trump and his ex-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen have reached an agreement on a demand about Cohen’s claims that he was unfairly charged legal fees after being embroiled in investigations into the former president.
Lawyers for both sides told the judge they had reached a settlement during a video conference Friday in Manhattan, just as Cohen’s 2019 lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial Monday in state court. Details of the deal were not disclosed publicly.
Cohen said Friday that the matter “has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.” Messages seeking comment were sent to lawyers for the Trump Organization.
The lawsuit over legal fees was one of the darker branches of the tangle of legal problems surrounding Trump and his company. Still, the trial would give Cohen — an ardent Trump supporter who became an outspoken opponent — a platform and bring the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to the witness stand.
Cohen claimed in his lawsuit that the Trump Organization had promised to pay his legal costs and did for a time, covering more than $1.7 million in legal fees.
But, according to Cohen, the company stopped making the payments after he began cooperating with federal prosecutors in their investigations into Trump’s business dealings in Russia and attempts to silence women with allegedly embarrassing stories about their personal lives.
Cohen’s lawyers stopped representing him after the company stopped paying. His lawsuit says it “impaired his ability to respond to federal inquiries.”
In court documents, the Trump Organization has denied making certain promises and maintains that it fulfilled its obligations. The company has also argued that Cohen’s involvement in federal investigations was not a consequence of his former job, but rather a personal decision to try to reduce his own criminal legal exposure in the face of imminent prosecution.
Jury selection began Monday, and the trial was scheduled to begin next week. Among potential jurors, more than half said they had strong opinions about Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Several said their feelings for him were strong enough that they were unable to assess the evidence impartially.
Although the former president would not have been a witness at the trial, his son Donald Trump Jr. was expected to testify.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple charges, admitting he lied to Congress, violated campaign finance laws through excessive political contributions, misled multiple banks to obtain funding and evaded income taxes by underreporting more than $4 million in income. He was sentenced to three years in prison, though he served almost two-thirds of that sentence at home, released after the COVID-19 outbreak overwhelmed the country’s prisons.
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FUENTE: With information from AP
2023-07-22 02:05:14
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