By Althea Champion
Michael Cohen, former attorney for President Donald Trump, released the first episode of his podcast, “Mea Culpa,” yesterday. The episode features Rosie O’Donnell, who discusses the attacks from Donald Trump she braved over the years, and why she reached out to Cohen when he was imprisoned.
The release of this podcast comes in the latter half of a three-year sentence, which he was granted medical furlough from on May 20, citing, “medical conditions that might be worsened by the virus’s spread in prison,” according to Maggie Haberman, William K. Rashbaum and Nicole Hong of the New York Times.
More than two years after Cohen took a plea deal in 2018, admitting guilt to eight counts of financial crimes in federal court, “Mea Culpa” recounts his experience working for Trump.
The prospect of parole had been complicated by what was the prospective publication of Cohen’s tell-all memoir.
According to Benjamin Weiser and Alan Feuer of the New York Times, Cohen was asked to sign a document that would have allowed him to stay at home, but would have concurrently disallowed him to finish and publish his book. When he refused to sign it, he was sent back to prison.
More recently, Weiser and Feuer reported that, “a federal judge ruled that the decision to return Mr. Cohen to custody amounted to retaliation by the government and ordered him to be released again into home confinement.”
It is now that he is back home to serve the rest of his prison sentence that this episode is released not more than a week after his book, “Disloyal: A Memoir” hit markets.
“Trumpism is a disease of the mind, every bit as virulent as COVID, only the host is a willing participant, in his or her own demise,” said Cohen in the episode’s introduction. “Trumpism insidiously preys upon the psychological makeup of the individual, probing the moral compass for weakness, and I was its patient zero… So this podcast will serve as my penance.”
Stream the episode here:
Find previews here:
