Longtime Donald Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen said today he participated in ‘rigging’ of online polls to benefit Trump in 2014 and 2015 – ‘at the direction’ of the then-candidate and businessman.
Cohen acknowledged the effort to manipulate polls ‘for the sole benefit’ of Trump after a bombshell report in the Wall Street Journal that he delivered a cash payment to the IT consultant for Liberty University as part of a plan to boost Trump’s image.
In a tweet after the Journal article was published, he said “what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of” Trump.
“I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” he added.
As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) January 17, 2019
At one point in 2015, Cohen delivered up to $13,000 in cash contained in a Wall-Mart bag to John Gauger, the IT consultant and owner of RedFinch Solutions LLC, Gauger told the paper.
Gauger claims he was owed $50,000 for work he had done.
Cohen also threw in a boxing glove he said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter.
The tasks he was paying for included efforts to manipulate two online polls.
One was a CNBC poll of the nation’s top business leaders.
A computer code he wrote was supposed to help boost Trump’s performance, but Trump didn’t make the top 100.
Another was to boost Trump in a February 2015 Drudge Report poll of Republican candidates – at a time of critical sorting through the field.
Such polls can affect media appearances, potential crowds, and even campaign donors.
Trump came in fifth, scoring 24,000 votes, or about 5 percent.
The Drudge site teased the story Thursday with a headline: ‘Did Trump Bribe Drudge Poll?’
However, Gauger claims Cohen stiffed him for the full amount of the transaction.
Cohen ‘kept saying he would pay the balance of the $50,000 but never did,’ according to the paper. He also ‘promised’ to get him hired with the Trump campaign, but it never panned out.
However in 2017, Cohen was able to get reimbursement for himself for $50,000, based on a handwritten note he submitted.
Most of the funds came form Trump’s personal account, according to the paper.
The president’s former lawyer, who was sentenced to three years in prison last month for various financial crimes, has agreed to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February.