March 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, is suing the Trump Organization, alleging it failed to pay his legal bills.
The suit, which was filed Thursday in the New York State Supreme Court and obtained by CNN, Cohen said the Trump Organization owes him $1.9 million in unpaid legal fees and costs.
Cohen was known as Trump’s “fixer” for real estate deals, including shelved plans for a Trump-branded property in Moscow, and hush-money payments to cover up alleged affairs prior to Trump’s election as president, the complaint alleges.
The 22-page filing said the Trump Organization agreed to pay his legal bills “in or around July 2017,” nearly a year before the April 2018 FBI raid on his home and Park Avenue hotel room, related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign’s potential role in that effort.
The Trump Organization hasn’t paid Cohen’s legal fees since May of 2018, a month after the raid, the suit alleges.
He is owed $1.9 million in unpaid legal fees and costs as of Jan. 25, according to the complaint.
Cohen called Trump a “con man” in his testimony last week before the House oversight committee and said he was ashamed of his “misplaced loyalty.”
In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the timeline of plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
A month later, he was sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty earlier to federal charges that included five counts tax evasion and one count each of excessive campaign contribution, unlawful corporate contribution and false statements to a bank.
He is scheduled to begin his prison sentence on May 6.
