Michael Cohen says that by launching a new podcast, he’s “seeking penance” and “seeking justice all at the same time.”
Joining him Monday on the premiere episode of Mea Culpa was Rosie O’Donnell, there to help with what he says is his side of his entanglement with Donald Trump, his former boss turned enemy.
(Cohen has called Trump a “cult leader” and a “mob boss,” and the president has called Cohen a "fraudster" and a "RAT.")
Cohen and O'Donnell — another Trump target — recounted meeting via an “eloquent and beautiful” letter the actress and television host sent late last year while Cohen, Trump’s disgraced personal attorney, was serving a federal sentence for lying to Congress, tax evasion and other crimes.
While the first episode largely focused on Cohen, 54, as a reborn figure in the anti-Trump movement, he also discussed his time around the first family.
The podcast is recorded while Cohen serves the remainder of his sentence from his Manhattan apartment.
Cohen describes the odd circumstances that, he says, led him to redirect the course of his post-Trump life, including a “most beautiful six-page letter” written to him by O’Donnell.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I sobbed when I read it and so did others that were reading it with me,” he said on his podcast. “Here was a woman who I had helped attack and vilify on behalf of Donald J. Trump. And she reached out to me full of kindness and empathy.”
O’Donnell, 58, and Trump have had a rivalry dating back to 2007, when O’Donnell mocked her celebrity counterpart during an episode of The View.
For years, Trump and O’Donnell traded public insults back and forth. Cohen said Monday he helped carry out Trump’s jabs at O’Donnell and that her “out of the blue” letter to him gave him the confidence to re-examine his life while behind bars and out of Trump's orbit.
“That letter was a turning point for me,” he said. “In Rosie, I saw a better way forward. A way to change and a way to grow as a human being.”
O'Donnell said she wanted to reach out to Cohen because she felt a personal connection to him throughout her feud with his boss.
She told Cohen that “ever since I saw you," she wanted to know more about him and how he became close with Trump.
"You sound like everybody I went to high school with," she said. "You look like all the people I grew up with on Long Island.”
“I kept thinking, who’s that guy with him?” she said.
On the night Trump was impeached in December, O'Donnell wrote to Cohen: "I thought, here he is impeached and here you are sitting in prison and how is this fair?” she said.
Cohen said the actress' letter had a great “effect" on him.
“It was really a kick to the gut," he said, "Where now I finally understood — even more so — just how much I had helped him to hurt people, yourself included going back to that massive first feud."
After corresponding, O'Donnell agreed to meet with Cohen at the Otisville prison in upstate New York, where he was being held until he was released under house arrest in May.
While there, it was reported that O'Donnell gave Cohen advice about writing his new book, Disloyal, about his time working for Trump.
Cohen is clear about his intentions throughout Mea Culpa, apologizing at points for his role in helping elevate Trump, 74, during his more than a decade as the president's self-described “fixer.”
Cohen, embracing his role as Trump critic, said Monday he was using his newfound platform as a way to warn voters.
“You see, I am the canary in the coal mine for millions of Americans mesmerized by Trump,” he said in the episode’s introduction, likening what he called “Trump-ism” to a kind of disease and regrettable choice.
“This podcast will serve as my penance,” Cohen said. “A way to right some of the many wrongs I committed at his behest.”
Cohen has emphasized his access to the Trumps — and their secrets — while promoting his new tell-all and his podcast. He writes in Disloyal that Trump had told him and his son, Jake, that “you’re family.”
