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President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney has further distanced himself from his ex=boss — by becoming a registered Democrat.
Michael Cohen used an online system to change his party affiliation with the Albany-based New York State board of elections around noon Thursday, according to his attorney Lanny Davis.
Cohen will be still be able to vote in the November general election, even though he pleaded guilty to eight felony counts of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations in August earlier this year.
“In New York state, the forfeiture of the right to vote doesn’t follow the felony conviction but follows the felony incarceration,” Erika Lorshbough, legislative counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, told NBC News.
Cohen’s sentencing date is in December, more than a month after the midterm elections. He changed his affiliation just a day before the state’s Friday registration deadline for the November election.
Cohen had been a registered Democrat for years until changing his registration in March 2017. “It took a great man to get me to the make the switch,” Cohen said at the time on Twitter, referring to Trump.
He had also served as the Republican Party’s deputy finance chairman but resigned that post in June amid a criminal investigation into his business dealings.
The charges were a part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, also pleaded guilty to eight felony counts stemming from Mueller’s investigation.
Cohen said in court that he was directed by the candidate, meaning Trump, to make payments to two women, including an August 2016 payment of $150,000 made with the “principal purpose of influencing” the election. The two women were presumably porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both alleged to have had affairs with Trump in the past.
Trump’s former fixer has publicly distanced himself from the president in several ways. Although Cohen has previously said he would be willing to “take a bullet” for Trump, Cohen’s attorney claimed he would be willing to share all that he knew with Mueller.