President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, claims in a new book manuscript that Trump made racist comments about Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, the Washington Post reports.
Cohen made the allegation in a court filing on Monday night. The claim is part of a lawsuit Cohen filed against Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Prisons officials; Cohen claims he was reimprisoned as punishment for his plans to publish a tell-all memoir about his former boss. Before his return to jail, he had been serving his sentence for fraud in home confinement.
Cohen said his book “will provide graphic and unflattering details about the President’s behavior behind closed doors,” including “the President’s pointedly anti-Semitic remarks and virulently racist remarks against such Black leaders as President Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela, neither of whom he viewed as real leaders or as worthy of respect by virtue of their race.”
The working title of Cohen’s book is Disloyal: The True Story of Michael Cohen, Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. He’s hoping to publish it before the November presidential election.
Cohen is being backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Ben Wizner of the ACLU said, “The government cannot imprison Michael Cohen for writing a book about President Trump,” the New York Times reports.
Cohen’s allegation is similar to one made by President Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, who recently claimed that she had heard her uncle use the “N-word.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
