According to report, Michael Cohen said he believed that three of Mr Trump’s children, Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric, would be caught up in the tax controversy, in an interview with MSNBC.
Donald Trump’s
long-time former lawyer says the president’s whole “clan” could go to jail over
the alleged tax evasion scandal.
And Cohen
told the US news network that Mr Trump could become the “first sitting
president to go from the White House straight to prison.”
Mr Trump paid
just $750 in the year he won the White House and $750 in his first year as
president, according to a bombshell new report by the New York Times.
And Mr Trump
reportedly paid no income tax in 10 of the last 15 years as he reported huge
financial losses across his businesses.
“He may
actually be the first president to go from the White House to prison. And I
don’t think he’s by himself too,” Cohen told MSNBC’s Joshua Johnson.
“I think that
Allen Weisselberg, his chief financial officer, is complicit in it. As well as
Don, Ivanka, Eric. I believe that the entire Trump clan is complicit in all of
this tax evasion.”
Cohen pleaded
guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress, campaign violations and financial crimes
and was sentenced to three years in prison.
The campaign
violations are tied to money paid before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy
Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both claimed affairs with Mr
Trump.
The president
has denied all claims against him.
“These are
legitimately what Judge Pauley stated in my case,” said Cohen, who is currently
on home confinement following release from prison due to the coronavirus
pandemic.
These are
sophisticated schemes, within which to deprive the IRS of income, of taxes,
that are desperately needed. Not putting your money in either Capital One or
First Republic Bank as I did.”
Mr Cohen
added that the “whole thing is a scheme, and there is always a scheme when it
comes to the Trump clan.”
Cohen, who
wrote a tell-all book about his time with Mr Trump that was published earlier
this month, said he did not think the tax issue would bother the president’s
supporters.
“He’s got a
certain base where it truly doesn’t matter what he does,” said Cohen.
“And these
people, for whatever their crazy belief system is, and I was part of that
Donald Trump cult. And for whatever reason, it’s acceptable. But it’s
absolutely not.”
No comments:
Post a Comment