Although Cohen was not a central part of the Trump family business, he was often at Trump’s side in the decade before Trump became president, including helping him sort out difficulties leading up to the 2016 election. Most famously, he helped arrange hush money payments to two women — including pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels — who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
His unflinching loyalty to his boss often went unreciprocated. And it was this imbalance that left the two men on perilous ground in April 2018, after the FBI raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room. The searches were part of an inquiry, in the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, that grew out of Robert Mueller’s examination of Russian election meddling.
Cohen would ultimately plead guilty to multiple crimes, and is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison term May 6. After months of indecision, he turned on Trump this past summer and has since spoken to the Southern District prosecutors about the Trump family business and more, as well as providing information to Mueller’s office.
A review by The New York Times of confidential emails, text messages and other communications suggest the men’s falling out could have been avoidable. Either way, its consequences have cast a shadow on the Trump presidency.
Here are five reasons the undoing of their relationship matters.
1. Cohen implicated the president in a crime.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan effectively characterized Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in the hush money payments, which violated campaign finance laws because they were made to influence the outcome of the election.
At his plea hearing, Cohen said he had made the payments at Trump’s direction, which was consistent with other evidence prosecutors had gathered.
Under current Justice Department policy, a president cannot be charged with a crime. But when a president is no longer in office, prosecutors are free to bring charges — a possibility cited in the Mueller report released Thursday.
2. He assisted criminal investigations into Trump’s business.
Cohen did not enter into a formal cooperation agreement with the Southern District prosecutors but voluntarily met with them about his knowledge of Trump’s family, business and inner circle.
If the prosecutors determine that he provided them with useful information, it is possible his three-year sentence could be reduced under federal sentencing rules. As such, Trump and others have dismissed his cooperation as a desperate play for leniency.
So far his information has helped several investigations, including one examining aspects of Trump’s inaugural festivities.
3. Cohen used the spotlight to attack the president’s character.
Since turning on his former boss, Cohen has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics, offering fodder for the president’s detractors.
Cohen laid into the president in testimony before Congress in late February, exposing what he described as the dark underside of the president’s business and political life. “He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a cheat,” Cohen testified.
During the hearing, Trump defenders repeatedly questioned the veracity of Cohen’s statements, especially because he had pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress during an earlier appearance about Trump’s dealings in Moscow.
But Cohen said he was coming clean.
“I have fixed things, but I am no longer your ‘fixer,’ Mr. Trump,” Cohen said.
4. He gave Congress a view into the president’s finances.
Cohen’s testimony has also provided something of a road map for congressional investigators looking into Trump’s finances. Last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed records from Mazars USA, an accounting firm that had for many years prepared Trump’s taxes.
Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he was seeking the records because of Cohen’s testimony that Trump had overstated his assets before he was elected.
Cohen had provided the panel with copies of financial statements that indicated Trump’s net worth skyrocketed to $8.66 billion in 2013 from $4.55 billion the previous year as a result of a line item identified as “brand value.”
But the committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, said no valid legislative purpose was served by the subpoena, suggesting it was meant to embarrass the president.
5. There is no clear endgame.
The status of several criminal investigations that grew out of Cohen’s interviews with federal prosecutors remains unclear. But as recently as February, a judge disclosed that the hush money inquiry focused on Trump Organization officials remained open.
In New York, several inquiries undertaken by state authorities in response to Cohen’s congressional testimony are still active. They include one by the attorney general into Trump’s real estate projects, and another by state regulators into his insurance practices.
And as Cohen’s May 6 surrender date nears, his lawyers appear to be making a last-ditch effort to keep him out of prison. They wrote this month to Democratic members of Congress, asking them to endorse a campaign to reduce his sentence or postpone his surrender. But the effort does not appear to have borne fruit.
Cohen’s three-year prison term is the longest yet from any case that grew out of the special counsel’s inquiry, after that of Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
Nonetheless, the redacted version of the Mueller report indicates that federal authorities were debriefing Cohen as recently as March.
The full range of topics discussed is not known. But footnotes point to an FBI document, dated March 19, based on an interview with Cohen. The document is cited in connection with statements he made about his conversations with the president after the FBI raid and about a Trump Tower project in Russia, as well as discussions with the president’s lawyer about a possible pardon.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.