Michael Cohen Asked Me for President Trump's Phone Number
By June 2025, Cohen was already plotting a return to Trump’s good graces. Two months later, he revealed to me how he tried to quash a sexual assault allegation against Trump tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
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“Can I ask you for something?”
“Sure.”
It was June 11, 2025. I was in New York for a YouTube conference, standing on the deck outside Google’s St. John’s Terminal offices at five in the afternoon. Earlier that day I’d received a text from Michael Cohen.
“Whe[n] You get a second, please call me.”
I let it sit for a few hours before I called him back. Phoning Michael Cohen was always a wild card. I first encountered him as Trump’s rabid fixer, when I was a White House correspondent during the early days of the administration, a year before he dramatically turned on his boss. I’d call him for a comment on my reporting, and he’d scream into the phone — hurling threats and insults. Then, when he came to understand that I wasn’t submitting, he’d try to engage in awkward trades. Prepared for the worst, I inhaled and hit call.
“Do you have Trump’s phone number?” Cohen asked.
Nothing involving two felons — Donald Trump and Michael Cohen — ever stayed simple. If the two former associates-turned-antagonists started talking to each other again, would my exchange with Cohen somehow become evidence? Would text messages be subpoenaed? Would I find myself dragged into the latest chapter of their psychodrama?
Then I reminded myself of something obvious: if Michael Cohen wanted Trump’s number, he could get it from dozens of people. Besides, he already knew I had it. A few weeks earlier I’d published a video of myself trying to call Trump after midnight — the best time to reach him, when he’s usually alone. The president snapped at me and hung up.
So all I could think to ask was the simplest and most obvious question.
“Why?”
This story is an exclusive for our paid subscribers. BEYOND THE PAYWALL: The answer he gave me. And what he told me on tape a year before I understood what I was hearing.
The reason he gave me for wanting back in — before anyone knew he wanted back in
What he volunteered, unprompted, about a Jane Doe he described as “an infant,” and the instruction he says came down from Trump
The private investigator, the Bronx address, and the question that made him turn on me mid-interview
The FBI memo documenting what his lawyers offered prosecutors about Epstein, and the one sentence in it he has never explained to anyone
