Michael Cohen was once a ubiquitous presence on MSNBCs airwaves, but his recent claim that he felt "pressured and coerced" to help secure criminal convictions against President Donald Trump has been met with conspicuous silence from the network now known as MS NOW.
For years, Trumps former personal attorney was a staple of the left-leaning channel, celebrated as a high-profile member of the anti-Trump #Resistance and booked repeatedly to denounce his former boss. Yet, according to Fox News, the same network that eagerly amplified Cohens attacks on Trump has declined to cover his explosive admission that prosecutors allegedly pushed him to tailor his testimony to fit a predetermined narrative.
Cohen served as a central prosecution witness in two New York cases targeting Trump, one criminal and one civil, led respectively by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James. In a Substack essay published Friday, he accused both offices of pursuing only the kind of evidence that would damage Trump while disregarding anything that did not serve that objective.
"During my time with prosecutors, both in preparation for and during the trials, it was clear they were interested only in testimony from me that would enable them to convict President Trump," Cohen wrote. "When my testimony was insufficient for a point the prosecution sought to make, prosecutors frequently asked inappropriate leading questions to elicit answers that supported their narrative."
Cohen further alleged that the same pattern emerged in the states civil fraud case, which James campaigned on as a vehicle to pursue Trump personally. "I experienced a similar dynamic in the Attorney Generals civil case," Cohen continued. "Letitia James made it publicly known during her 2018 campaign for attorney general that, if elected, she would go after President Trump. Her office made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony that would help them do just that. Again, I felt compelled and coerced to deliver what they were seeking."
The accusations are particularly striking given Cohens long-standing role as a go-to guest for MSNBC, which rebranded as MS NOW late last year. Over the past five years, he appeared on flagship programs including "The Beat with Ari Melber," "The Rachel Maddow Show," "Inside with Jen Psaki," "The Weekend," "Deadline: White House" and "PoliticsNation," and his name was routinely invoked even when he was not on set.
After Trumps 2024 conviction in New York on charges of falsifying business records, Cohens first television interview was with MSNBC, underscoring the networks reliance on him as a star witness against the President. According to media database Grabien, his most recent appearance on the channel came in November, when he joined weekend host Alex Witt to discuss Trump and the Epstein files.
The networks saturation coverage of Trumps New York criminal trial in 2024 left little doubt about its editorial priorities. Grabiens transcript search shows that "Michael Cohen" was mentioned 10,906 times between the trials start on April 15, 2024, and May 31, 2024, the day after the guilty verdict was announced.
Yet when Cohen publicly claimed he felt "coerced" into delivering testimony that advanced the prosecutions case against Trump, MS NOW went quiet. Instead of revisiting the credibility of a witness it had heavily promoted, the network in recent days has devoted airtime to topics such as the Trump administrations crackdown in Minnesota and speculation over possible U.S. interest in purchasing Greenland.
From the time Cohens Substack post went live on Friday through Monday morning, MS NOW did not mention him once, according to a transcript review using Grabien Media. His admission was likewise absent from the networks website, suggesting a deliberate editorial choice to sidestep a story that undercuts the narrative it spent years reinforcing.
MS NOW also declined to engage when pressed directly about the omission. The network "did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment," leaving viewers without any explanation for why such a significant development involving one of its most prominent anti-Trump voices has been ignored.
Cohen, for his part, insists his motive in coming forward is rooted in a broader concern about politicized prosecutions. "The intention of the Substack post was to expose my feelings, how I feel toward the corrupt practices of the Department of Injustice. No one, not me, not Donald Trump or any Donald Doe should ever be prosecuted for political purposes. That is the essence of our democratic republic and why Lady Justice wears a blindfold," Cohen told Fox News Digital.
The controversy unfolds as MSNBC undergoes a corporate and branding transformation, having been spun off by Comcast into a separate entity called Versant and reintroduced as MS NOW. The new name, an acronym for "My Source for News, Opinion, and the World," underscores the networks self-styled role as a primary information hub for its progressive audience.
Cohens own legal history remains checkered, a fact often cited by critics who question his reliability as a witness. He pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple federal offenses, including campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress, convictions that made his later rehabilitation as a media favorite of the left all the more politically convenient.
His latest claims raise uncomfortable questions for prosecutors who built high-profile cases around his testimony and for media outlets that treated him as a trustworthy narrator so long as he was attacking Trump. For conservatives who have long warned about lawfare and the weaponization of the justice system against political opponents, Cohens description of feeling "compelled and coerced" will be seen as further evidence that blind justice has been replaced by partisan prosecution.
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