Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen

Author:Michael Cohen [Cohen, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile, nobody—not Jeff, not Lanny Davis, or Laura and the kids—knew where I was.

They told me I was going to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, marched me to the basement parking lot, and placed me in a car. Then they left me handcuffed and shackled in the back seat of the parked car for about twenty minutes. Then they removed me from the car, still in handcuffs and shackles. I was dazed and confused. They paraded me from one location to another, telling me to face the wall or stand for a photograph, more fingerprinting…I felt like a blindfoldeded kid being spun around in a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game from hell. I believe this was all in the subterranean depths of Pearl Street, but I couldn’t tell you where. Eventually I found myself back in the detention facility.

They made me put on a paper-thin jump suit and stuck me in a holding cell that was like a refrigerator—I’m guessing it was around 40 degrees—and left me there for hours. No food. No water. I was so cold. The air conditioning left the top of my head frozen, and my teeth chattering so uncontrollably I thought they were going to fall out of my mouth. Everything hurt. Finally after several hours they brought me a frozen peanut butter sandwich.

Eventually they took me out of the refrigerated cell and brought me outside the holding area into the hallway. It was warmer there and I was so thankful for that. I was dazed and confused from the chain of events as well as from the air conditioning. Then I see these two guys, correctional officers, who looked familiar. I thought I was hallucinating until one of them said, “Michael, come over here.”

I looked at them.

“Cohen, come here, we’re taking you back to Otisville.”

That’s where I knew them from.

We reached the prison at 10:45 p.m. that night—45 minutes after the evening head count, so I had to be held in the “SHU”—a segregated housing unit.

The next day they put me back in solitary confinement.

I share this story with you not to make you feel sorry for me, but to illustrate the depths the DOJ can be manipulated into sinking to in an authoritarian presidency.

Needless to say, I did not take this lightly. I didn’t accept it at all. But…like I had a choice?

My wife Laura found the perfect attorney to attack the remand. Danya Perry is a marathon runner and runs a high-powered law firm on the side. For 11 years she worked as an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. Few lawyers know their way around the system like Danya. (By coincidence, a year later she would also be Michael Avenatti’s attorney in his first criminal trial—the Nike extortion trial.)

For her part, Danya was struck by my conditions when she heard about my situation at Otisville.

“I remember his description so clearly,” she recalled later. “It was 100 degrees. Michael was in horrific shape. He wasn’t allowed out of his cell and he had significant underlying health problems.

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