NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters) – U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORTMichael Cohen, a former lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, was granted permission on Tuesday by an appeals court in the state of New York to sue the Trump Organization for millions of dollars in legal fees related to fighting investigations into the work he did for the former president of the United States.
Cohen, a former lawyer for Trump who now criticises him, claims that the real estate company stopped paying him after he assisted with various investigations.
Cohen was formerly employed as a lawyer for Trump. Among these were inquiries into whether or not Russia attempted to influence the outcome of the presidential election in the United States in 2016, as well as inquiries into whether or not Donald Trump attempted to prevent women who claimed to have had affairs with him from speaking out.
It was decided by a vote of 5 to 0 in the Manhattan Appellate Division that the judge in the lower court who had dismissed Cohen’s lawsuit had erred in her decision.
According to the court’s statement, it was not quite apparent if Cohen, who had previously worked for the Trump Organization, was eligible to have his legal bills covered by the organisation.
Cohen’s compensation “arises from his (sometimes illegal) service to Mr. Trump personally, to Mr. Trump’s campaign, and to the Trump Foundation, but not from his service to the business of the Trump Organization, which is the only defendant,” the trial judge, Justice Joel Cohen, ruled in November last year.
In March of 2019, Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit in an effort to recoup the $1.9 million in fees he had previously paid as well as the $1.9 million he was ordered to hand over as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
According to the records filed in the case, the payments were made in increasing amounts over the course of time, and some of them were paid by the Trump Organization.
Company representatives and Cohen’s legal representatives did not immediately reply to demands for comment. To put it another way, there is absolutely no connection between Michael Cohen and Justice Cohen.
After pleading guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance regulations and not paying taxes, Cohen was handed a prison sentence of three years for each of the two charges. Because of the COVID-19 virus outbreak, he was forced to spend some time at home during that period of time.
The case that Cohen had filed was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan on Monday. As a form of retribution for the promotion of his tell-all book, he said in it that Trump and the government will send him back to prison for a period of sixteen days in the month of July 2020.
The memoir titled “Disloyal: A Memoir” attracted a lot of interest, and it eventually became a best-seller in the New York Times.
