Feds at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office notoriously implicated Trump in their case against Cohen as “Individual-1.” Still, they declined to pursue charges per a Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. In July 2019, a judge revealed the feds’ campaign finance probe had ended.

About a year after Cohen’s conviction, across the street from the feds, then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance, Jr. revived a probe into the hush money scheme that expanded to include Trump’s business dealings. But after years of investigating Trump, Vance left office without pulling the trigger on an indictment — leaving the decision up to his successor, Alvin Bragg.

Bragg quickly clashed with investigators hired by the previous administration eager for him to immediately green-light charges against Trump.

The conflict exploded into public view less than two months into his tenure when former prosecutors Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne dramatically quit and Pomerantz’s leaked resignation letter claimed Trump was guilty of numerous felonies and that it was the new DA’s “grave failure of justice” not to bring a case.

Pomerantz went on to write a controversial book about why he quit, while Bragg promised the public he hadn’t made up his mind.

Less than a year later, he began presenting evidence to a new grand jury about the hush money scheme and secured an indictment against Trump on March 30, 2023. AG Tish James’ office ultimately brought a business fraud case against Trump in the civil courts, recently culminating in almost half a billion dollars in fines, which Trump is appealing.

What is Michael Cohen’s role?

Trump’s longtime fixer-turned-bitter enemy is expected to be the DA’s star witness and has cooperated extensively since he went to prison for Trump.

Months after the feds raided his residences in April 2018 — and Cohen told The News he wasn’t worried — Trump’s bulldog attorney agreed to plead guilty to violating campaign finance laws by carrying out the hush money scheme at his behest. He also admitted to tax evasion and lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Moscow and, in 2018, cooperated during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference.

Cohen sought to cooperate with the feds to receive a more lenient sentence but refused to be fully truthful and got a three-year term for what the late Judge William Pauley described as “a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”

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