Under oath in 2019, Michael Cohen told Congress he’d never ask Trump for a pardon. He’s since told CNN he’d already sent one, with a receipt to prove it.
“I have not received an acknowledgement that they have the application, which is on my to-do list, which I intend to call tomorrow to find out what happened,” Cohen said Thursday, ahead of a radio interview marking his first public conversation with Trump in eight years. “I did send it by FedEx, so I do have a receipt.”
The paperwork itself hadn’t changed much since he first filed it under Biden. “I took that same application with the same documentation, and I just rewrote the cover letter removing the name of President Joe Biden and inserting the name President Donald Trump.”
The interview aired in part Thursday on Cohen’s 77 WABC radio program, with the full conversation set for Sunday.
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It opened to the song “Why Can’t We Be Friends,” and the tone matched. “You and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together,” Cohen told Trump.
Trump, calling in by phone, offered him something close to vindication. “They weaponized you like nobody’s ever been weaponized,” he said, adding: “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said. And that’s a big, that’s a big thing that you did.” At one point Cohen slipped into old habits. “Because what’s happening, boss, remember when I was by your side? I literally used to analyze the polls.”
That question about polls sent Trump down a familiar path.
Asked what he made of people bringing up his numbers even though he isn’t pursuing an unconstitutional third term, Trump said: “I think that we’re doing really well in the polls, the real polls. If I were running today, I think I’d win by 25 points. I think we’d win by a lot. The economy has never been stronger. We’re doing numbers that nobody’s ever seen before.”
A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this month put his actual approval rating at 33%, the lowest of his presidency.
The reconciliation didn’t happen overnight.
Cohen has said it began with a text from what he called “a White House friend and an insider,” who relayed “the president’s genuine empathy for the hell that I was being dragged through.” The two have since met privately at Trump’s Bedminster golf club. Asked to describe the relationship now, Cohen told CNN it’s “being resuscitated.”
Trump’s side of the reconciliation has come with praise, while Cohen’s side has come with an unresolved application.
A White House official told CNN the clemency review team “is not tracking this request at this time,” adding pointedly that “the submission of a pardon request should not be interpreted to mean anything other than an individual has chosen to submit a request,” and that Trump alone remains “the ultimate decider” under his constitutional authority.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
