Michael Cohen reached a settlement with the Trump Organization on Friday over a dispute surrounding nearly $1 million in unpaid legal fees.
Lawyers for Cohen and the Trump Organization announced they reached a settlement in which the terms were "confidential," avoiding a civil trial that was set to begin Monday.
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Cohen's lawsuit was filed in 2019 and accused former President Donald Trump's family business of failing to follow the terms of a deal and refusing to pay more than $1 million in legal costs. The jury selection had already begun earlier this week.
Court filings cited fees Cohen owed to several legal firms, including $350,000 owed to Petrillo Klein Boxer, $297,000 owed to the firm Monico and Spevack, and $515,000 owed to Davis Goldberg & Galper.
Cohen, a longtime employee of the firm and of Trump, became a staunch critic of him and testified that Trump had instructed him to break the law. He pleaded guilty in 2018 and was sentenced to prison for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to women, including porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to help Trump's 2016 election campaign, as well as lying to Congress about one of Trump's projects in Russia.
The settlement of the case means that the public will miss out on key testimony that was set to take place in the trial, including testimony from Donald Trump Jr. regarding his “personal knowledge of facts relevant to Mr. Cohen’s claims,” including invoice approvals and legal payments, according to court filings.
Trump's other son, Eric, and former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg could have been called as rebuttal witnesses for Cohen, according to court filings.
Attorneys for Trump's family real estate business argued that Cohen's agreement was voided when he pleaded guilty and began cooperating with investigators for self-serving purposes. They had also planned to call Cohen as one of their witnesses if several others, including attorneys from the law firms that Cohen owed money to, did not testify.
Cohen is expected to be one of the key witnesses in the Manhattan district attorney's case regarding the hush-money payment, which is headed to trial in March.
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Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money that Cohen made to Daniels ahead of his 2016 campaign. The payments were intended to prevent Daniels from going public about an alleged affair she had with the former president in 2005. He pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts in that case.
Bragg's case accuses Trump of orchestrating a "catch and kill" scheme during the 2016 presidential cycle to bury negative stories about him.