"NO, I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?),” President Donald Trump wrote, alluding to his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen. | Chris Kleponis/Getty images Trump camp escalates counterattack on 'pathological liar' Cohen The president's team is waging all-out war against a former Trump confidant who has apparently turned against him.

A furious President Donald Trump and his allies are launching a campaign to undermine the credibility of Trump’s former personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, in response to Cohen’s dramatic public turn against his longtime patron.

Trump, who has privately fumed about Cohen for days, trashed his former lawyer in a Friday tweet while angrily denying his explosive allegation that Trump knew of and approved a July 2016 meeting between senior members of his presidential campaign, including his son and a Russian attorney who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.


“So the Fake News doesn’t waste my time with dumb questions, NO, I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr," Trump wrote.

"Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?),” he added, alluding to his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen. “He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!”

Trump's blast followed blistering attacks on Cohen's credibility by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who charged on Thursday night that a man Trump long called a confidant is, in fact, a "pathological liar."

CNN initially reported Thursday night that Cohen claims that he was present when Trump Jr. informed his father of the planned meeting, and that Trump approved it. Cohen allegedly is willing to share that version of events with Mueller, who is leading a federal probe into 2016 Russian election interference. A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to POLITICO that Cohen is indeed making these allegations, while adding that he has not yet spoken to Mueller’s team about them.

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Trump’s close advisers have worried for months that Cohen would flip. Some have privately speculated since at least April that Cohen likely would turn on Trump, noting that he faces intense pressure to cooperate with Mueller, thanks to deep legal exposure he faces from investigations into his past business dealings unrelated to the election — including, as Trump’s tweet noted, several New York City taxi companies he has owned.

But they’ve nonetheless been taken aback by Cohen’s no holds barred approach and his willingness to publicly reveal potentially devastating details of his private conversations with the president. Asked to describe the mood among Trump’s close confidants, one person close to the president replied simply, “Not good.”

Trump is enraged over about the Cohen revelations, according to another person close to him, and the president’s legal team is moving swiftly to discredit the man who served as Trump’s lawyer for more than a decade.

It was an awkward argument for many of the president’s advisers, who argued that Cohen can’t be trusted, but offered little explanation as to why Trump had leaned so heavily on an allegedly dishonest lawyer for so long.

In fact, many in Trump’s orbit initially defended Cohen as he was initially being investigated by federal authorities. In May, amid reports that Cohen might flip, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, called Cohen an “honest, honorable lawyer” during an interview with ABC News.

Giuliani's tone shifted dramatically this week after an audio tape that was secretly recorded by Cohen during the presidential campaign was made public. That tape featured Trump discussing efforts to silence a former Playboy model who alleged she had an affair with him.

By Thursday night, when news broke that Cohen was prepared to tell Mueller that Trump green-lighted the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Giuliani had launched an all-out assault on Cohen’s character.

"He’s been lying for years,” Giuliani told CNN, adding later, “I don’t see how he has any credibility.”

At the White House, the Cohen news was met with a mix of frustration and resignation. White House aides have reluctantly grown accustomed to the never-ending stream of eye-popping revelations about the Mueller investigation — and they’ve learned to compartmentalize their concerns, put their heads down and block them out, according to two people who work in the building

Few current White House aides worked on the presidential campaign, when much of the activity that Mueller is investigating occurred. One White House official said aides don’t openly discuss any concerns they may have about the Russia probe, adding that it “doesn't seem like anyone is any more concerned than usual.”

The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer was attended not just by Donald Trump Jr. but also by then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has since been indicted by Mueller’s team, and by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.

Although the Russian attorney was billed as possessing damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. has insisted that the meeting focused mostly on the issue of the adoption of Russian children by American parents, a practice that was banned by Russia in retaliation for a package of sanctions passed in 2012 by Congress and signed by then-President Barack Obama. Trump Jr. has insisted that the promised information on Clinton did not materialize, and in September 2017 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee he said he did not tell his father about the meeting beforehand.

A July 2017 statement issued by Trump Jr. on the meeting was in fact dictated by Trump himself — a fact not revealed until months after the initial statement was released.

Cohen has emerged in recent months as a focal point of the multiple legal battles surrounding the president and has indicated that he could be willing to cooperate with federal investigators probing the collusion allegations between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. Cohen’s office and residences were raided by the FBI last April, based on information referred from Mueller’s team to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

News that Cohen allegedly knew of the June 2016 meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya follows the publication earlier this week, also by CNN, of a recording of a conversation between Cohen and Trump about a pre-election payment aimed at killing a story about former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims to have had a 10-month affair with the president in 2006 and 2007.

Trump can be heard on the recording saying the word “cash,” although the president’s legal team has claimed that he was saying, “Don’t pay cash.” Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, has insisted that such language cannot be heard on the tape.

Also among Cohen’s legal and business woes is his ownership of multiple New York City taxi medallions, the metal shields affixed to New York’s yellow cabs that allow them to operate legally. At their peak, some medallions sold for more than $1 million, but their value has diminished significantly with the rise of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. CNN reported in May that Cohen owed more than $280,000 in taxes related to his taxi companies.

Cohen is also a business partner of Evgeny Freidman, who is nicknamed the “Taxi King” because he controls so many medallions. Freidman entered a plea deal with prosecutors last May related to charges that he failed to pay $5 million in taxes, Bloomberg reported, indicating that he may be cooperating with investigators.

Trump has repeatedly and loudly denied that there was any collusion at all, labeling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” staffed with partisan Democrats, even though Mueller himself is a registered Republican.

“Arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats obviously cannot find Collusion the only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “So now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) - the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country.”

The New York Times reported Thursday that Mueller’s office is examining the president’s Twitter account, as well as other statements, related to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former FBI Director James Comey as part of its investigation into allegations of obstruction of justice by the president. Trump’s allies have insisted that it is impossible for a president to obstruct justice because he sits atop the federal justice system and has authority over all of its investigations.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.