Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, has recorded a series of anti-Trump ads that are scheduled to run during the Republican National Convention painting his former boss as a fraud.
"Later this week, he's going to stand up and blatantly lie to you. I'm here to tell you he can't be trusted — and you shouldn't believe a word he utters," Cohen, who was convicted in 2018 of federal crimes, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, says in the ad revealed Monday night.
Cohen, who is serving his three-year sentence in home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic, says convention viewers will hear Trump "talk about law and order."
"That's laughable," he says. "Virtually everyone who worked for his campaign has been convicted of a crime or is under indictment. Myself included.
"So when the president gets in front of the cameras this week, remember that he thinks we are all gullible, a bunch of fools," he says.
The ad campaign was made by the Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century, which said it will release digital and TV ads throughout the week.
Cohen, once one of Trump's most trusted employees, was sentenced in December 2018 for what a judge called a "veritable smorgasbord" of criminal conduct, including financial crimes and lying to Congress. He was released in May as part of a nationwide program allowing federal inmates to be transferred to other prisons or confined to their homes because of the pandemic.
He was locked back up about a week after he tweeted that he was writing a tell-all book about Trump. A judge found last month that the decision was "retaliatory" and ordered Cohen released to home confinement.
