For a good part of this past spring, Donald Trump spent his days in a drab Manhattan courtroom, reliving some of the more sordid aspects of his 2016 campaign. The past and future president watched as leading personalities from that micro-era—Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, Hope Hicks–testified while he looked on wordlessly, flanked by a new cast of trial supporters—Matt Gaetz, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy.
In May, at the close of the month-long trial, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up a hush-money payment to Daniels, who claimed to have had sex with him in 2006. (Trump has always denied the affair.) But his sentencing was delayed past this year’s election. In the weeks since his victory, the various charges against the president-elect from multiple indictments have all but dissipated. Special counsel Jack Smith, who oversaw the federal cases against Trump, plans to wind down his work and leave the Justice Department. The public appetite for continuation of any of the cases has largely disappeared. “End the Criminal Cases Against Trump,” read the headline of a recent New York Times guest essay.
Even Cohen—a veteran Trump antagonist, if no longer a central one—is now arguing for the hush-money case to be dismissed. On Tuesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office proposed delaying Trump’s sentencing past his term ending in 2029. Cohen, the president-elect’s former fixer who arranged for the payment to Daniels and who was the prosecution’s star witness, wrote in an email to Vanity Fair that he would go a step further.
It would be “judicious and cautious,” Cohen wrote, for Justice Juan Merchan, the judge in the case, to accept the recommendation.
Nonetheless, Cohen said, “The American people have spoken and re-elected Donald Trump. Accordingly, I believe we must all acknowledge and respect the office of the Presidency and dismiss the case forthwith.”
The hush-money payment to Daniels led to Cohen’s falling-out with Trump and turned him into a national character—he wrote a memoir on the subject and maintains a garrulous social media presence covering similar terrain. His testimony during the spring trial, penitent but firm, made for the most explosive viewing of the proceedings.
Along with the defense team, he was one of several lawyers in the courtroom whose fortunes have risen and fallen alongside Trump’s. The president-elect recently named two of his current attorneys, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, to top roles in the next administration’s Justice Department.