Michael Cohen predicts 'liar' Trump won't testify as Manhattan hush-money indictment looms

• Cohen took a shot at 'liar' Trump before meeting Friday with Manhattan 'hush-money' prosecutors.
• Trump's ex-lawyer is the key witness linking Trump to the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Donald Trump's fixer-turned-nemesis said Friday that the former president is too much of a "liar" to ever agree to testify in his own defense before a state grand jury now hearing evidence in the Manhattan district attorney's hush-money probe.

"I have to applaud District Attorney Alvin Bragg for giving Donald the opportunity to come in and to tell his story," Michael Cohen said, responding to a New York Times report that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before the grand jury next week, as a decision on a possible indictment looms.

"Now knowing Donald as well as I do, understand that he doesn't tell the truth," Cohen, the hush-money probe's key witness, told reporters.

"It's one thing to lie on your 'Untruth Social,'" Cohen added, taking a shot at his former boss's social media company before stepping inside the DA's office for what he called a "long" meeting with prosecutors working the hush-money case.

"It's another thing to turn around and lie before a grand jury," Cohen said. "So I don't suspect that he's going to be coming."

Cohen has predicted that Trump will be indicted "soon."

Trump would face anywhere from probation to four years in New York State prison if convicted of what former Manhattan financial crimes prosecutors have called the most likely charge, first degree falsifying business records, a low-level felony under the state criminal code.

The grand jury has since January been hearing evidence that could link Trump to the 2016 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to published reports and independent reporting by Insider.

Cohen was the payment's admitted "bag man," admitting in federal court in 2018 that he arranged for Daniels to get $130,000 just weeks before the 2016 election.

Cohen was sentenced to three years prison for what federal prosecutors called an illegal campaign expenditure, for lying to Congress about plans to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow, and for a series of financial crimes.

The $130,000 was paid in exchange for Daniels' agreement to not go public with an affair she alleged she'd had with Trump in 2006, and was an illegal campaign expenditure because it was meant to keep voters in the dark about the salacious allegations, Cohen admitted and federal prosecutors alleged at the time.

Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and has contested that the money was a campaign expenditure.

Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, who was accompanying Cohen on his visit to the DA's office Friday, said the timing of Trump's invitation shows that Bragg's decision on whether to ask the grand jury to vote on an indictment is close.

"You don't ask a former president of the United States, after all this time of criminal investigation, to come in to testify, unless you're ready to move forward," with a possible indictment, Davis said.

"Donald Trump, as a private citizen, right before the election, directed Michael Cohen to pay hush money that Michael Cohen went to prison for," Davis said.

"Now there's no dispute that it was Donald Trump's Justice Department that wrote that in a sentencing memo and in their information filed against Michael Cohen," Davis said.

"So if he directed Michael Cohen to do a crime, according to his Justice Department — go look it up it's a public document — then how is it possible that he's not guilty, if he directed Michael Cohen to pay the hush money."

Former Trump advisors Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway have also met with prosecutors in recent days. They were major players in the 2016 presidential campaign and could link Trump directly to the Daniels payment.

Lawyers for Trump have not responded to Insider's requests for comment on the story. The Manhattan DA's office has not commented on the ongoing probe and grand jury.