Michael Cohen, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and longtime consigliere to Donald Trump, has a new gig: personal attorney to the incoming president of the United States.
The position means he’ll deal with legal matters that don’t pertain to the White House, but to Trump personally, Cohen confirmed to The Real Deal on Thursday. He wouldn’t specify where he’d be based, but said “If (Trump) wants me to sit in the Oval Office, I’ll be at the Oval Office. If he wants me in New York, I’ll be in New York.”
Cohen made the announcement with his daughter, Samantha, during an interview Thursday with Fox News on the balcony of K&L Gates’ Washington, D.C. office. Cohen was there for a pre-inauguration event at which he was honored by Amer-I-can — a charity started by NFL Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown — along with other Trump loyalists such as Omarosa Manigault and Bruce Levell.
The 50-year-old attorney and real estate investor, whose bets include a rental building on the Upper East Side and several apartments in Trump properties, has been with the Trump Organization since 2007, joining from law firm Phillips Nizer. He has a reputation of being Trump’s “pit bull,” often appearing on national television to do battle on behalf of his boss. Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle last year, he described his relationship with Trump thus: “To those of us who are close to Mr. Trump, he is more than our boss. He is our patriarch.”
After the interview, friends and admirers lined up to congratulate Cohen and to commiserate about his latest run-ins with the media– specifically: that a “Michael Cohen” had been named in the unverified Russian dossier.
(To read more of The Real Deal’s inauguration coverage from D.C., click here.)