Michael Cohen Testifies That Trump Tasked Him to ‘Reverse Engineer’ His Assets With His ‘Arbitrarily’ Inflated Number

Five years after their last time sharing a room, Donald Trump's ex-attorney and fixer Michael Cohen unceremoniously entered a New York courtroom on Tuesday afternoon to deliver testimony that could threaten his former boss's business empire.

Trump and Cohen did not lock eyes as Cohen quietly entered the ceremonial courtroom and slowly ascended to the witness stand. But Cohen's testimony before the lunch recess ended on a decidedly dramatic note.

"I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily selected," Cohen said. "And my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg, predominantly, was the reverse-engineer the various asset classes — increase those assets to achieve the number that Mr. Trump asked us."

Asked which number, Cohen responded: "Whatever Mr. Trump told us to."

Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's former chief financial officer, would later plead guilty to tax fraud and spend a brief stint in jail. The once top Trump loyalist testified against the former president's company in the corporation's criminal case and was called earlier by the state in the civil fraud trial.

Referring to his work with Weisselberg, Cohen said: "We would look at the assets and increase its values in order to achieve the number," referring to the one the former president wanted.

Providing an example, Cohen quoted Trump telling them: "I’m not worth $4.5 billion. I’m really worth more like [$]6 [billion]."

Cohen's testimony began with biographical details about his education, as a Cooley Law graduate, and his half-decade old convictions, some of which were tied to his work for the former president.

He did not hesitate to mention those connections, noting that he pleaded guilty to federal campaign violations and misleading congressional testimony "at the direction of, in concert with, and for the benefit of, Mr. Trump."

The ex-fixer said he lied to protect Trump, but he added that others were involved in creating the statement, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Alan Garten, and attorney Abbe Lowell.

That line drew an emphatic objection by Trump's attorney Christopher Kise.

"I don't know if that's from a book that he's writing," Kise snapped, referring to Cohen's two popular memoirs criticizing the former president.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron overruled the objection, finding Cohen's answers about his convictions responsive to the state's questioning.

Trump's attorneys are widely expected to use those admitted lies under oath to undermine Cohen's testimony.

Toward the start of her questioning, the attorney general's counsel Colleen Faherty asked whether Cohen made a public comment on his criminal history, and Cohen deadpanned: "More than one," slyly alluding to the books, podcasts, interviews, and testimony, in which he sharply criticized Trump's role in the events of his prosecution. Those experiences transformed Cohen from one of Trump's staunchest loyalists to his nemesis.

On the day of Cohen's testimony, Trump took to Truth Social quoting the star witnesses in less disenchanted times. Cohen extravagantly praised his former boss in left-leaning news outlets from HuffPost (then still called the Huffington Post) to the New York Times.

In 2011, Cohen insisted to HuffPost that Trump was worth "substantially more than what’s recorded in Forbes."

“Mr. Trump is more than just a boss to those of us who have been fortunate enough to be close to him, both professionally and personally,” Cohen was quoted telling the Times in 2016, a remark the ex-president shared on his website on Tuesday.

Those days are long gone.

In late February 2019, Cohen detailed allegations against the Trump Organization and its financial mismanagement to the Democrat-led House Oversight Committee. His testimony sparked the criminal and civil investigations that led to the fraud trial now playing out in Manhattan Supreme Court.

New York Attorney General Letitia James quietly began her probe days later, which became public in the summer of 2020.

Before Cohen took the witness stand, the court heard from Bill Kelly, the general counsel of Trump's former accounting firm, Mazars. In February 2022, Kelly had signed a letter disavowing a decade's worth of Trump's statements of financial condition, writing that they "should no longer be relied upon."

Trump stands accused of inflating his net worth by billions in financial statements to banks and insurers. Engoron already has found Trump, his sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr., and ex-Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney liable for fraud in a blistering ruling before the trial began. The judge's ruling is now on hold pending Trump's appeal.

Cohen's testimony in the civil fraud trial comes on the same day one of Trump's other former lawyers pleaded guilty in Fulton County, Georgia, to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings in connection with the 2020 presidential election.

Jenna Ellis' guilty plea is the third from a former legal advisor to Trump — Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro reached their own agreements last week — in connection with the Georgia probe. No trial date has been set yet for Trump and his 15 other remaining co-defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. They have all pleaded not guilty.