A former Trump insider – whose bombshell testimony helped secure the former President’s felony conviction – made the frightening claim that his old boss would use the military to round up political opponents.
Lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen turned on his former boss in spectacular style when the ex-president was charged with covering up hush money payments to ex-porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
Cohen, who was jailed in 2018 for his own role in the affair, claims Trump blocked his release from prison, and urged people to take the ex-president’s oft-repeated threats against his opponents seriously.
‘The big warning I want people to understand is when Donald Trump says something, stop sane-washing it,’ he told MSNBC. ‘Stop trying to make it into something which has some normalcy to it.
‘When he turns around and says the head of this network or other people who are critics, that he intends to use SEAL Team Six or the military to round up his critics or his opponents, he intends to do it.’
Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen claimed that his ex-boss will use the military top silence his political opponents if he wins power again next month
Cohen predicted that the ex-president would call on the services of SEAL Team Six – best known for assassinating Osama bin Laden – to pursue his vendettas
Cohen was the star witness at Manhattan Central Court as Trump became the first former president to face a criminal trial in April.
The GOP leader is still awaiting sentence after being convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a trial he dismissed as a ‘witch hunt’.
He will have the power to pardon himself if re-elected in November and has repeatedly called for the jailing of opponents including President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence.
And he extended his threats to election workers last month in a bid to prevent a repeat of what he claims was the ‘stolen’ election of 2020.
‘This legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials,’ he wrote on his Truth Social page.
‘Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.’
The former president is not known to have threatened the use of Seal Team Six – best known for killing Osama bin Laden – against his opponents.
But he has reposted calls for his GOP critic Liz Cheney, currently campaigning for Kamala Harris, to face a military court.
‘Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,’ he ‘retruthed last month’. ‘Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.’
The former president has a long history of calling for military action against political opponents including former GOP congresswoman for Wyoming Liz Cheney
He extended his threats to ordinary election workers in a post on Truth Social last month
And his legal team has argued that he would be immune from prosecution if he ordered the elite naval unit to assassinate his political opponents.
The question was aired in January at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals as it deliberated on whether he had immunity against charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
His attorney John Sauer was asked whether that immunity would extend to using SEAL Team Six to kill a political rival.
Sauer said the answer was a ‘qualified yes’ in so far as it would be for the Senate to impeach and convict him, but government lawyers pointed out that the president could resign to avoid a trial by either the Senate or the courts.
‘What kind of world are we living in if a president orders his SEAL team to murder a political rival and then resigns or is not impeached — that is not a crime?’ demanded James Pearce, a lawyer for special counsel Jack Smith.
‘I think that is an extraordinarily frightening future that should weigh heavily on the court’s decision.’
The case was taken up by the Supreme Court where justices ruled in July that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for acts which he can demonstrate are part of his ‘official responsibilities’.
Cohen, who admitted lying multiple times to Congress during an investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, said that his old boss’s grip on the GOP is helping mask deep antipathy from traditional Republicans.
Trump and Cohen in happier times, seen here together during a campaign stop in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in September 2016. Cohen worked for Trump for 10 years
Both men were convicted in court over Trump’s hush money payments of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election
Trump appeared to have his eyes closed throughout much of Cohen’s testimony
‘The Republicans that are demonstrating their fealty to Donald have something that they want as a result, if, God forbid, Trump ends up winning the election,’ he told MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday.
‘But there are also a slew of Republicans that are not asking for the same thing, that they do not want to just put this thing in the past.
‘They want to see unity in the United States and start getting rid of the chaos and the divisiveness so that we can all work together for mutual benefits.
‘This is very different than what Donald Trump is saying. Donald Trump continues with that bombastic with the rhetoric of divisiveness and hate.
Cohen who has said he is trying to secure a foreign passport in case his ex-boss returns to the White House, last week asked the Supreme Court for permission to sue Trump for allegedly blocking his release from prison in 2020.
He was released under house arrest in May of that year but claims he was recalled to prison after vowing to help prosecutors build a case against Trump himself.
‘That was a practice play,’ he said on Sunday.
‘And now he knows how exactly to get away with it I suspect that there’s going to be many many more people that will be incarcerated simply at Donald’s whim and simply because he deems them to be a critic.’