Disloyal

by Michael Cohen

  After researching the issues, I concluded that the board had indeed wrongly accused Trump, and I recorded that conclusion in a three-page memorandum outlining the allegations, the controversial issues, and the way to proceed, as I saw it. The board was alleging false, petty, and disingenuous infractions, I wrote, and the real victims were the owners of the condos who were being forced to pay exorbitant legal fees to pursue a pointless feud. Worse, I concluded, the board had awarded sweetheart deals to landscapers for their own benefit.

  Finishing reading my memo the next day in his office as I watched in anticipation, Trump looked up, elated, as if he had finally been vindicated and now he had proof that he was in fact the true victim. I knew I was trying to please Trump, but in this dispute the billionaire really was being wronged, I believed. Over time, as Trump became a patriarchal figure to me and I fell under the trance-like spell of the real estate tycoon, I would come to understand that questions of right and wrong didn’t matter to Trump in the slightest—all that counted to him, and then to me, was winning and displaying blind loyalty.

  “This bullshit can’t stand,” I said, Trump’s chin tilting and chest swelling with self-righteous delight and I, in turn, puffing out my chest in indignation. “I will lead a coup to take over the board of directors and rid the building of these animals.”

  Trump leapt to his feet, exclaiming, “Michael, you’re great. Whatever you need in terms of help, you got it. Go get ‘em.”

  Let me stop for a moment to point out that I’m not making up Trump’s nearly constant use of the word “great” to make myself look good. That was how he talked. Hyperbole was his instinctual method of communication, exaggerating his own talents and wealth and physical characteristics and achievements, as if by enlarging things he could make them real. The same was true for those around him, if you remained on his good side. I called it the “flatter lie,” the untruth aimed at inflating my ego, which I knew really wasn’t entirely true but that he knew I wanted to be true, so the dynamic was circular in nature and mutually reinforcing. I saw this all the time in Trump, as he sought praise and then offered praise in return, as if the act of bestowing his half-true approval lent the observation more gravitas. Huuuggeee, great, fantastic, the best—that’s how he talks, and thinks, like he’s starring in his own ongoing major motion picture.

  With access to the Trump Organization’s records, I had the contact information for all of the more than 300 owners in Trump World Tower. A small group of Trump’s advisors and owners started circling the names of the owners we knew, including my parents and in-laws, and we started an underground campaign to gather signatures and proxy voting rights, the process rippling out as more and more residents heard our version of events and quietly agreed to support our effort to oust the board. Some of the residents were prominent, like the lawyer George Conway, the husband of President Trump’s future spokesperson Kellyanne, but the effort was covert in the beginning, in order to blindside the board in the forthcoming condo board meeting. As the effort proceeded, the elder Trump displayed an intense interest in the matter, as he viewed the peril to his brand to be serious, and a variety of advisors and attorneys got involved, but I was the most avid and active advocate and point man.

  The turnout for the condo meeting in March of 2006 was expected to be so large it was moved to the Church of the Holy Family opposite the United Nations on East 47th Street. More than 300 people attended the meeting, with beefy security guards hired by the board of directors checking IDs at the door to ensure that no outsiders were able to enter. The room bristled with tension and animosity.

  Stepping outside, with the line stretching down the block, I grinned in appreciation as Trump glided up in a black limousine right on cue, as if he were in the middle of an episode of The Apprentice, with his executive team in two trailing SUVs. Also accompanying Trump was a gang of muscle-bound men, looking like the forward line of an NFL team as the namesake of the building waved a hand and the bodyguards parted the sea of people, sweeping away the supposedly tough security guards the board had hired to prevent precisely such a show of intimidation. I was delighted by the performance.

  Watching the spectacle, all I kept thinking was that this guy’s got game. For weeks the board had planned for that moment, only to be completely destroyed by their opponent. That was real power, I thought. Not just physical power, but the cash type of power, and the ability to mentally dominate your adversary. For me, this wasn’t some event I was watching as a spectator. I was right in the thick of it. It was irresistible, intoxicating, thrilling.

  Inside, Trump saved me a seat in a pew next to him, a small gesture that defied belief to me, like I was becoming part of his intimate circle. Trump was agitated, angry that he’d been put to all this trouble by this ungrateful board of directors who understood nothing about real estate or the value Trump brought to the project, he told me. He waved his arms and expressed red-faced outrage as he stood and shouted out his indignant reasons for the board to be replaced and his fee to be paid, aiming his worst contempt for the chairman, a former executive with US Airways—before it went bankrupt.

  “What does he know!” Trump bellowed. “He ran his airline into the ground!”

  The crowd gasped in shock at Trump’s aggression, but I loved it. It incited me to go even further. As I rose to speak, all eyes were on me, but the only pair that I really cared about was Trump’s. The allegations against Trump were false, I thundered, as the room began to stir in even deeper partisan division. I had prepared my speech in great detail, outlining the perfidy of the former airline executive and exonerating Trump. We had a stack of proxy votes we had the power to exercise, and the outcome of the vote was a foregone conclusion, but I poured myself into the speech. I had run twice for office, once for New York City council and once for state senate—both attempts dire failures, I’m sorry to say—but I had a taste for public speaking and the spotlight, especially with the admiring gaze of Donald Trump looking up at me.

  Then it came: the applause.

  “What a great speech,” said Trump, offering the praise that I was quickly learning had an aphrodisiacal impact on me. “Man, you are a great speaker.”

  Still worked up, I sat and took my printed speech from my breast pocket, autographed it and handed it to Trump with a flourish. “Here, Mr. Trump, now you will remember me forever,” I said.

  “I will,” Trump said, pocketing the speech. “I will.”

  A few days later, I received a package containing my speech, now in a gilt gold frame, with a note from Trump in his usual dense handwriting on the page saying, “You are a great speaker and a great friend. Donald.”

  After the excitement, days and weeks passed quietly as the renovations on Trump Park Avenue continued and I wondered if I’d ever again have the chance to work for Mr. Trump. Then, one day, Trump’s longtime assistant and occasional The Apprentice co-star Rhona Graff called asking if I had time to talk to Trump. I did—of course I did. I could think of nothing better than talking to Trump, helping Trump, pleasing Trump.

  “Michael, my man, did you get my gift?” Trump boomed on the speakerphone a second later.

  “I did,” I replied, thanking him profusely for such a thoughtful gesture.

  We congratulated each other and ourselves on our glorious victory, the mutual reinforcement serving as a way for our newly forming bond to strengthen.

  “Listen, I need you to handle another issue for me,” Trump said. “Actually, it’s cleaning up a mistake Don made. Are you free to stop by today, at around noon, say?”

  “For you, I will make myself available,” I replied, again giddy at this further indication of Trump’s belief in me, inviting thoughts of where this might eventually lead for someone who’d occupied the role of fan and onlooker to Trump, but was now on the way to becoming an advocate and intimate.

  “Donald Trump just called me again for another project,” I called out proudl
y to my younger brother, Bryan, also an attorney with an office next door, as I pulled on my jacket.

  “Very nice,” Bryan replied, sardonically. “But maybe this time see if he intends on paying you for your time.”

  As I headed out the door, I had absolutely no intention of charging Trump for my time, no matter how many billable hours were consumed. I’d spent weeks on the Trump World Tower dispute and received no money in return, but I’d been compensated in an intangible way that was more valuable. I believed that I had to succeed completely and utterly to remain in Trump’s good graces, and I knew I had to be on time as I again hustled up Fifth Avenue to the gilded golden tower. Trump hated tardiness, I knew, and I was going to do nothing to displease him.

  Walking into the fabled concourse for my new assignment, I was again greeted warmly at reception and on the 26th floor, now as a potential regular, a feeling I enjoyed immensely. Shown into Trump’s office once more, I sat in the middle red-velvet Egg executive chair, next to Don Jr. and an attorney named George Sorial, another young lawyer who had become one of the new members of the board of directors at Trump World Tower, like me. The Trump Organization’s Chief Operating Officer, Matt Calamari, was also in attendance, signaling that a consequential matter was at hand.

  I was given a rundown of the situation. Trump Mortgage Services had been founded in 2003, at the suggestion of Don Jr., and its name had been changed to Trump Mortgage LLC in 2005. But the enterprise hadn’t proved successful, despite the housing boom then zooming along at supersonic speed. In Trump’s telling, the whole fiasco was his son’s fault. Don Jr. had brought him a “shit” deal, he said, and introduced him to a supposedly highly qualified mortgage broker named E.J. Ridings. Don Jr., who oversaw development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization, sat quietly as his father demeaned him. Over time, I would come to learn that his father held him in extremely low esteem.

  “Don has the worst fucking judgment of anyone I have ever met,” Trump would often tell me, adding that he’d been reluctant to bestow his first name on his first-born son. He didn’t want to share his name with a “loser,” if that was what his son turned out to be.

  Trump Mortgage appeared to be an example of exactly that: a losing proposition that was tarnishing the Trump name. When Trump re-launched the company in April 2006, with a gala in the concourse of Trump Tower, he had predicted huge success. CEO E.J. Ridings claimed he had fifteen years’ experience as a broker and promised $3 billion in mortgages originated in the first year alone. Trump Mortgage would “own New York,” Trump had said, and that in time it would dominate the country and the world.

  “I think it’s a great time to start a mortgage company,” Trump had told Maria Bartiromo on CNBC only months before the global financial crisis struck, collapsing the market. Supposedly a great prognosticator, Trump had predicted, “the real estate market is going to be very strong for a long time”—only days before the global economy crashed.

  I learned that the company didn’t actually lend money; it was a brokerage that aimed to find clients and match them to banks willing to take on the loans. Hiring a group of aggressive salespeople, some rejects from other brokers, with little background checking, the company operated out of 40 Wall Street, another Trump property. The Trump Mortgage floor was divided in two: On one side were salespeople devoted to high-end residential and commercial mortgages; on the other was a boiler room filled with high-pressure hustlers making cold calls to unsuspecting home owners trying to convince them to refinance their mortgages—the kind of liar loans and sub-prime borrowers that were rapidly turning the mortgage industry into a toxic pit.

  According to what Trump now told me, Ridings had inflated his credentials, as revealed in a Money magazine article that had just been published. Ridings wasn’t “a top professional at one of Wall Street’s most prestigious investment banks,” as he’d claimed. Instead, he had had a three-month run at Morgan Stanley, with only six days working as an actual broker. But Ridings had fooled the gullible Don Jr., and, in turn, the elder Trump. The company didn’t broker $3 billion in mortgages in 2006, nor did it manage the downwardly revised estimate of $1 billion; only $25 million in loans had been originated. Brandishing the magazine, Trump again cast himself as the victim of other people’s failings, particularly his son and his pal E.J. Ridings.

  I honestly didn’t consider the possibility of Trump’s own gross negligence and incompetence contributing to the collapse of the company as I sat in the red Egg chair and listened to Trump, believing every utterance, or, more accurately, not caring about the truth. Trump told me he had a job for me to do, and that was all I cared about. It was a strong-arm operation, it appeared. Trump told me I was to go downtown to 40 Wall Street unannounced and shut down Trump Mortgage. I was tasked with throwing Ridings out of the office, closing the business, and collecting all the files so that Trump’s lawyers could start liquidating the company.

  Trump looked me directly in the eye. “Michael, this is really important,” he said. “This guy is damaging the brand, and you of all people appreciate the Trump brand. Go do this for me and be rough. Be rough. And I mean really rough.”

  Slipping downtown in Trump’s ultra-luxury limo, along with the attorney George Sorial and COO Calamari, I considered what Trump meant by “rough.” It was something like a mobster order, it appeared, an instruction for me to take matters under control and make it crystal clear to Ridings that the decision was final, nonnegotiable, an offer he couldn’t refuse. I also believed I’d been told to do it in as humiliating a way as possible. Not for a business purpose, of course, but for the pleasure of inflicting harm and exercising raw power—a cocktail I would come to find alluring.

  In fact, Trump didn’t actually own Trump Mortgage. Like many of “his” businesses, there was a licensing agreement, paying Trump royalties for the use of his name, a structure which shielded him from liability, but also meant he had no equity in the business. But I wasn’t going to let legal niceties bother me.

  Arriving at 40 Wall Street, we made our way up to Trump Mortgage, where a crooked logo was hanging on a glass door. The COO Calamari was from Brooklyn, with a thick ‘dems and ‘dos accent, so he spoke first, instructing the receptionist to fetch Ridings immediately and tell him to come to the conference room. Now, as in: right now.

  “It’s show time,” I said, all of us now smiling.

  Ridings arrived, looking chipper and grinning. I ordered him to sit.

  “Michael is Mr. Trump’s lawyer, as is George, and you know who I am,” Calamari said.

  “What’s going on, gentlemen,” Ridings said, the grin disappearing.

  “Nothing good,” I said coldly. “Trump Mortgage is now closed. Mr. Trump wants all the files and records. You need to tell your staff to go home right now. They can take nothing, except their personal belongings. Everyone is to leave except for the computer guy. Do you understand?”

  Ridings seemed stunned. “I need to call Don Jr.,” he said.

  “Don’t bother,” Sorial replied. “Don’t waste your time. He already knows. Mr. Trump has directed us to do this and we don’t want this to be harder than it has to be.”

  But I did want to make it harder—much harder. Some primal instinct reveled in the power I possessed, if only by proxy and proximity to Trump. “What are you doing still sitting there?” I demanded of Ridings, not allowing a minute for the new reality to sink it. “Get up now, tell all your employees to go home, and wait for further instructions.”

  As Ridings started to argue, I departed to track down the IT person. Finding him, I demanded the password and log-in details for the server, which were given over reluctantly as the techie watched Ridings and Sorial shouting in the conference room.

  Fighting against an apparent coup de grace, much like the one I had orchestrated at Trump World Tower, Ridings again demanded to talk to the Trumps, which was agreed to.

  I knew it was u
seless. One thing I had learned from my limited interactions with Trump was that he is not a forgiving person. Once he sours on you, you are done. Watching the staff depart in confusion and disarray, Ridings was witnessing his world collapse by the fiat of a single man and his enforcers, which included me, with no right of appeal.

  The job done, riding back uptown in the limo, we giggled recalling how hard-ass we had been to an essentially defenseless man taken by surprise and literally ordered out of his own business in an extra-legal and abusive manner. These were the permission slips I was starting to issue to myself. I was an officer of the court, sworn to uphold that law, which did not include staging a raid on a company and firing all the employees immediately and posting a security guard to ensure they couldn’t return. Nor did I consider the plight of someone like Jennifer McGovern, a single mother of three who was owed $238,000 in commissions she had legally earned and which she has never received to this day; the liquidation was arranged to insulate the Trump Organization, no matter the impact on the completely innocent. And I was a willing accomplice—more, I was an eager participant.

  Back at Trump’s office, Calamari told Trump all the supposedly glorious details about the encounter, aggrandizing how rough I had been on Ridings. Trump was beaming. Ever helpful, I then offered the password and log-in digits for the server, advising that Trump should change them to protect the data and files.

  “Damn good thinking,” Trump said.