Michael Cohen says Trump won't pursue a 2024 White House bid, calls his 'Big Lie' fundraising appeals 'the greatest grift in US history'

• Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the former president won't run for president in 2024.
• "This should become a documentary, and it should be called the greatest grift in US history," Cohen said of Trump's efforts.

Former President Donald Trump's ex-lawyer Michael Cohen on Sunday said that the former president would not run for the White House in 2024.

During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Cohen, a former Trump confidant-turned-critic, told host Chuck Todd that the ex-president's efforts to secure political donations as he dangles another campaign in front of his supporters was being done "to keep the grift growing and to keep the grift going."

"This should become a documentary, and it should be called the greatest grift in US history," he said. "Donald Trump has made it very clear, right, that he is grifting off of the American people, these supporters, these individuals that are just sending money to him at record levels."

"It's really amazing that people don't see exactly what the guy is doing," he emphasized.

Cohen goes on to describe what he perceives to be Trump's calling card.

"I talk about his sociopathy throughout 'Disloyal,'" he said, referencing his memoir that was released last year. "I talk about it on my podcast, Mea Culpa, ad nauseam."

He continued: "Please understand ... and this is really important for all of the viewers as well. One of the things Donald Trump has done is grift off of the 'Big Lie' that the election was stolen from him in 2020. It was not stolen from him."

Cohen said that Trump is using the specter of a campaign to continue airing his debunked election-related grievances, but contended that if the former president lost a 2024 bid, then his claims wouldn't stand up.

"If he loses, which he will in 2024, what happens to the 'Big Lie?' The big lie disappears. He can't now be like the boy who cried wolf. 'Oh, they stole it from me in 2020 — they now stole it from me in 2024.' Right? Now, that goes out the door and there goes his money," he said of the former president's claims.

"There goes the big grift. So like I said before, it's not going to happen. He's going to run it like he did in 2011, right to the very, very last second," he added.

Trump has not yet indicated if he'll run for the presidency in 2024, but earlier this month, he said that he would "probably" reveal his decision after the 2022 midterm elections.

The former president is playing an usually active role for an ex-president in 2022 Republican primary campaigns, seeking to prop up preferred candidates in Senate races while in some instances pushing other candidates to pursue other elected positions.

In a September interview with Insider's Sonam Sheth, Cohen said that Trump would continue to soak up his time in the spotlight while continuing to rake in money from devotees of his presidency.

"His insatiable need for attention is one reason he continues to flaunt this disingenuous 2024 run," he said at the time. "The other is he's making more money doing that than anything he has ever done before."

The New York Times reported in July that Trump had raised over $100 million in the first six months of the year, a total that surpassed every other Republican during that time frame.

Cohen, who was once part of the former president's inner circle, was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2018 after pleading guilty to financial crimes and lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project.