President Donald Trump's lawyers filed a 25-page request Wednesday seeking a court order that would compel New York Attorney General Letitia James to hand over every record of communication between her office and Michael Cohen, the former Trump attorney whose testimony anchored the AG's civil fraud case against the president.
The move comes after Cohen, in a Jan. 16 Substack post, claimed he was "pressured and coerced" by both James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to deliver testimony targeting Trump. Cohen's own words are striking in their specificity.
From the time I first began meeting with lawyers from the Manhattan DA's Office and the New York Attorney General's Office in connection with their investigations of President Trump, and through the trials themselves, I felt pressured and coerced to only provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government's desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump,
Cohen wrote those words voluntarily. No subpoena. No cross-examination. He put them on Substack for the public to read. And he went further, alleging that James' team "made clear that the testimony they wanted from me was testimony [that] would go after President Trump."
He also took a direct shot at both officials.
ffLetitia James and Alvin Bragg may not share the same office or political calendar, but they share the same playbook.
That is the state's key witness publicly accusing the prosecutors who relied on him of manufacturing a case against a sitting president. If even half of what Cohen now claims is true, the entire foundation of the civil fraud judgment crumbles.
The 25-page filing, as reported by the New York Post, seeks an order requiring production of "all records of all communications between Michael D. Cohen" and the Democratic AG and her staff. That includes interview transcripts, notes, emails, letters, and recordings. Trump's legal team also demanded that James confirm her office "has taken necessary steps to preserve all Cohen Records until the conclusion" of the civil fraud litigation.
The filing argues that Cohen's communications with prosecutors "would have been vital for Defendants to use in cross-examining" Cohen at trial. According to Trump's lawyers, James' office "never produced any of the Cohen Records concerning its meetings with Cohen about President Trump and his businesses, despite Defendants' documented demands that the NYAG do so."
That allegation alone raises serious due process concerns. If the AG's office withheld records showing how its star witness was handled, coached, or directed, the defense was denied material that could have altered the outcome at trial.
Since Cohen's Substack post went public, Trump's lawyers contacted James' office to demand production of all Cohen-related records. According to the filing, they have received nothing.
The filing describes the AG's response as an "untenable position." Trump's lawyers stated that in emails and a meet-and-confer, the NYAG claimed it "doesn't know" whether such records exist, meaning it professes ignorance about whether it even has records of communications with its own key witness. The AG's office further refused to spend even "a short amount of time" to determine whether it possesses any such records, taking the position that discovery, the formal process of exchanging evidence between parties, is over.
Even more troubling, Trump's legal team expressed concern that James has been "unwilling to take any steps to confirm whether such Cohen Records are being preserved" or whether they are in danger of being "automatically deleted and purged."
The filing put it plainly: "the NYAG is blocking any discovery into, and possibly even preservation of, evidence of the 'pressured and coerced' testimony that it used to convince the trial court to enter a wrongful judgment against Defendants."
An office that claims it cannot determine whether it has records of meetings with the witness at the center of its case is either staggeringly incompetent or actively hiding something. Neither option inspires confidence in the integrity of the prosecution.
This filing lands at a pivotal moment. The $464 million civil fraud judgment against Trump, which grew to more than $500 million with interest, was thrown out last August after the mid-level New York Appellate Division found the penalty was an "excessive" fine barred by the US Constitution.
James' office is now asking the New York State Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, to reverse that decision and reinstate the penalty. Trump's team is due to file a responsive brief with the Court of Appeals in approximately one month.
Cohen testified during the civil fraud trial that he worked with ex-Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg to inflate the value of Trump's assets on financial filings. That testimony was central to the judgment James now wants restored. If Cohen's claim of coercion is substantiated by the records Trump's team is seeking, the AG's case could collapse entirely, and a motion to vacate, a formal request to set aside the judgment, may follow. Trump's lawyers noted in the filing that these communications are "vital" as they weigh exactly that option.
The New York Post reported that James' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That silence is becoming a pattern. When asked to produce records, the AG's office says it does not know if they exist. When asked to preserve them, the office refuses to confirm it will do so. When the press calls, no one picks up.
If Letitia James built a half-billion-dollar judgment on testimony her own star witness now calls coerced, the public deserves to see every email, every transcript, and every note that passed between her office and Michael Cohen. Claiming ignorance about the existence of those records is not a legal position. It is a tell.
