Cohen says he turned over cellphones to Manhattan prosecutors investigating Trump hush-money payments

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on Wednesday revealed that he recently turned over his cellphones to Manhattan prosecutors who are investigating hush-money payments paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 elections.

“Most recently, they asked for my cellphones because they want to be able to extract from it the voice recordings that I had had with Keith Davidson, former attorney to Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages and so on,” Cohen told Don Lemon on “CNN’s This Morning.”

The phones, which were previously taken by federal investigators in 2018, are “new to the district attorney,” Cohen said. He noted that his cellphone can serve as evidence if the investigation is moved forward, which he suspects will happen.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to eight charges, including bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. This also included one count of making an excessive campaign contribution on Oct. 27, 2016, the same date that Cohen paid Daniels in a nondisclosure agreement over an affair Daniels says she had with former President Trump.

The New York Times reported that the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is escalating his criminal investigation into Trump by showing evidence of hush-money payments to Daniels to a grand jury. The Times added that showing evidence demonstrates that Bragg is closer to making a decision for or against formally charging Trump with criminal charges.

When shown the newly released video of Trump pleading the Fifth more than 400 times in a deposition he gave in August, Cohen said that Trump could “not keep track of the lies” he tells.

“I mean, Donald cannot keep track of the lies that he tells,” he said. “And so what better way than to stop a fool from being deposed and hurting himself further than to come to plead the Fifth at least 400 times.”

Trump is also facing other legal challenges, including questions into actions he may have taken in Georgia’s 2020 election and an investigation into his handling of classified documents that were found in his Mar-a-Lago home last year.