President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen has sued the Trump Organization for nearly $2 million he says is owed to him to cover the cost of his ongoing legal fees, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
Cohen, who served as vice president of the Trump Organization, alleges that his former employer broke its contract with him after it stopped paying his legal fees in 2018, which it had promised to do the previous year. Per his suit, filed on Thursday before the New York State Supreme Court (emphasis mine):
the Trump Organization agreed to indemnify Mr. Cohen and to pay attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by Mr. Cohen in connection with various matters arising from Mr. Cohen’s work with and on behalf of the Organization and its principals, directors, and officers. These matters included multiple congressional hearings, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and others. As a result of the Trump Organization’s unfounded refusal to meet its indemnification obligations under the indemnification agreement, Mr. Cohen has incurred millions of dollars in unreimbursed attorneys’ fees and costs, plus additional indemnifiable amounts, and continues to incur attorneys’ fees and costs in connection with various ongoing investigations and litigation.
The suit goes on to claim that Cohen had been counting on the Trump Organization to cover his mounting legal expenses, and that when they stopped fulfilling invoices in 2018, McDermott Will & Emery—the firm representing him at the time—dropped him as a client. As a result, the withdrawal “prejudiced Mr. Cohen’s ability to respond to the Mueller investigation, the SDNY investigation, and other matters,” the suit alleges.
In other words, it sure seems like Cohen is, at least in part, blaming the Trump Organization’s refusal to pay for his lawyers for his eventual cooperation with the various investigative entities that have since secured his testimony against the president. That, my friends, is chutzpah.