Administrator. “Michael Cohen talks to George Stephanopoulos: TRANSCRIPT” “Michael Cohen sat down for an exclusive interview with George Stephanopoulos” (14 Dec 2018) ABC News. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michael-cohen-talks-george-stephanopoulos-transcript/story?id=59816305

Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney and fixer, said Donald Trump directed him to make payments to two women who said they had affairs with the then-candidate because Trump "was very concerned about how this would affect the election."

A lightly edited transcript of Cohen's interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, which aired today on "Good Morning America," follows here:

  Part 1

Michael, thank you for doing this.

George, good to see you.

Emotional day in court yesterday, and I was struck by that line you had ... you said you felt like you had your freedom back.

Yes.

How does it feel today?

Like I have my freedom back. Though I have to be honest. It has been very rough to be before the court with my family in attendance, my mother, my father, my wife, my children, my sisters, my brother, my niece, cousins, friends, it was ... ummm, it was a very rough day.

And then you wake up today, and the president is tweeting from very early in the morning several different things ... what struck me most is his claim that you agreed to this plea deal for this reason he said, "Those charges were just agreed to him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence."

I know which tweets you are talking about. First of all, it is absolutely not true. I did not do it to embarrass the president. He knows the truth. I know the truth, many people know the truth. Under no circumstances do I want to embarrass the president of the United States of America. The truth is, I told the truth. I took responsibility for my actions. And instead of him taking responsibility for his actions, what does he do? He attacks my family. And after yesterday, again being before the court and taking the responsibility and receiving a sentence of 36 months, the only thing he could do is to tweet about my family?

He said in the tweets and repeated in an interview later on that basically he says -- his claim -- you are lying about him to protect your wife, to protect your father in-law.

Inaccurate. He knows the truth, I know the truth, others know the truth, and here is the truth: The people of the United States of America, people of the world, don't believe what he is saying. The man doesn't tell the truth. And it is sad that I should take responsibility for his dirty deeds.

You lied for him for a long time.

More than 10 years.

Why?

Out of loyalty. Out of loyalty to him. I followed a bad path and hence how we started this conversation. I have my freedom, and I will not be the villain -- as I told you once before -- I will not be the villain of his story.

He is saying very clearly that he never directed you to do anything wrong. Is that true?

I don't think there is anybody that believes that. First of all, nothing at the Trump organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me, as I said in my allocution and I said as well in the plea, he directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters. Including the one with McDougal, which was really between him and David Pecker and then David Pecker's counsel. I just reviewed the documents ... in order to protect him. I gave loyalty to someone who truthfully does not deserve loyalty.

He was trying to hide what you were doing, correct?

Correct.

And he knew it was wrong?

Of course.

And he was doing that to help his election?

You have to remember at what point in time that this matter came about -- two weeks or so before the election. Post the Billy Bush ["Access Hollywood"] comments, so, yes, he was very concerned about how this would affect the election.

To help his campaign?

To help him and the campaign.

You mention dirty deeds in your allocution yesterday. When you think about it, when you look back, did you know what you were doing?

I am angry at myself because I knew what I was doing was wrong. I stood up before the world yesterday and I accepted the responsibility for my actions. The actions that I gave to a man, who, as I also said in my allocution, I was loyal to. I should not be the only one taking responsibility for his actions.

So he's still lying?

Yes.

Do you know why you were loyal to him at the beginning?

No. No, it was a blind loyalty. It was to a man I admired, but I do not know the answer to it. And I am angry at myself. My family is disappointed that they've taught me, my mother, father, right from wrong. And I didn't display good judgment.

You called it blind loyalty -- the prosecutors seem to suggest it was, southern district prosecutors I should add, seem to suggest it was -- you were being driven by greed and ambition.

That's inaccurate, but, again, I took responsibility for my actions, but I didn't make my money working for Donald Trump. I made a substantial amount of money years before working for Donald Trump. And anybody who knows me knows that to be the truth.

So what do you say to people -- and you know there are a lot of people will be watching who are thinking, "But wait a second, he lied for so long why should we believe him now?" What's the answer to that?

What do you mean, "lied"? Lied about what? At the Trump organization, it is a microcosm of even just a New York real estate market. What do we lie about? It's New York real estate, yes, it is the greatest product ever created, is that a lie?

But you pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.

Yes.

So why should we believe you now?

Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them is credible and helpful. There is a substantial amount of information that they possessed that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.

So you're done with the lying?

I am done with the lying. I am done being loyal to President Trump, and my first loyalty belongs to my wife, my daughter, my son and this country.

(ABC News)  Michael Cohen sits down for an interview with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America," Friday, Dec. 14, 2018. 

  Part 2

You worked for him a long time. I was around you many, many years ago where you seemed to be having fun.

Correct -- there was a lot of fun going on at the Trump organization.

... working with Donald Trump ...

I enjoyed working with my colleagues there as well.

When did it change?

You know, I can't give you a specific time that it went from point A to point B. It was just a change. I will tell you that the gentleman that is sitting now in the Oval Office, 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, is not the Donald trump that I remember from Trump Tower.

... how so?

He's a very different individual.

What's happened to him?

I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be. It's not like the Trump organization where he would bark out orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done. There's a system here, he doesn't understand the system, and it's sad because the country has never been more divisive. And one of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I've received, as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.

The special counsel did say that you are doing your best to tell the truth about everything related to the investigation, everything related to Russia. Do you think President Trump is telling the truth about that?

No.

That's a big statement.

[omitted]

If he were sitting in this chair right now, what would you say to him?

Lay off Twitter, run the country the way that we all thought that you would, be able to take the Democrats, Republicans, bring them together and bring the country together instead of dividing the country.

Do you think he has ears to hear that?

I don't know. I don't think so.

Was yesterday the hardest day of your life, or is that going too far?

It's an understatement.

Yet you feel you've turned a corner.

I know I have.

And when you look back at the Michael Cohen who spent 10 years with Donald Trump, what would you say to him on that first day?

"What were you thinking? You knew better. You know better."

How does this end for Donald Trump?

That sort of gets into the whole investigation right now between special counsel's office, the attorney general's office, you also have the Southern District of New York -- I don't want to jeopardize any of their investigations.

Are you still cooperating?

If they want me. I am here and I am willing to answer whatever additional questions that they may have for me.

Right, so you're saying there's certain areas that you can't get into because you're still cooperating with them.

Correct. And out of respect for process.

Why do you think President Trump is lashing out against you in such a personal way? Daily, almost now, calling you weak. Calling you a liar. Is he afraid?

Seems like it. That's what he does. That's what he does.

Are you afraid of him?

It's never good to be on the wrong side of the president of the United States of America. But somehow or another, this task has now fallen onto my shoulders, and, as I also stated, that I will spend the rest of my life in order to fix the mistake that I made.

How are you going to do that?

I don't know. One day at a time.

Foucault, Michel. Manifesto of the Groupe d’Information sur les prisons (1971) (16 Feb 2016) Viewpoint Magazine.

  Although the explosive events of May 68 in France radicalized entire sectors of society, many radicals paradoxically passed the world of the prison over in silence. As an internal circular from the Gauche prolétarienne (GP), a revolutionary formation inspired by Maoism, put it, “concern for the prisoners does not exist,” and many act as if “an imprisoned militant is a dead militant.” But the mounting wave of repression following the May events eventually pushed activists to reconsider the prison as an eminently political space. In June 1968, Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin banned eleven radical organizations. He then proceeded to tighten censorship laws, harass radical publishers, and even pass a law that held that anyone associated with any demonstration in which persons were harmed, property damaged, or violence committed against police officers could be arrested for those crimes, no matter how tenuous the link. The prisons flooded with radical militants from all currents.

  In response, radical gauchistes – especially those from the now illegal GP – began to organize in the prisons. Yet at first, the Maoists tended to draw a firm line between themselves, the “political prisoners,” and all the other “common law prisoners.” As Michel Foucault explained in a later interview:

  When Maoists were put in prison, they began, it must be said, by reacting a little like the traditional political groups, that is to say: “We do not want to be assimilated with the criminals of common law, we do not want our image to be mixed with theirs in the opinion of people, and we ask to be treated like political prisoners with the rights of political prisoners. ¹

  But when their first actions were crushed in isolation, they realized the need to link up with other prisoners, which in turn dramatically transformed their understanding of the working class itself.

  Collaborating with these other prisoners taught them that the very distinction between “political prisoners” and “common law prisoners” was itself a political division created by the ruling class. As Alberto Toscano puts it, unity now meant breaking a division that “was both imposed upon and eventually affirmed by the workers’ movement, with its debilitating introjection of a bourgeois morality itself reproduced by legal and penal institutions: the division between the proletariat and the ‘non-proletarianized plebs.’”

  This sparked a comprehensive rethinking of the composition of the working class. In fact, contrary to the GP’s previous beliefs, the working class turned out to be far more complex than assumed. How did the law create divisions within the working class? How was the prison a site of class struggle? What did the prison régime have to say about state repression in general? What was the prison’s relationship to the capitalist mode of production? To power?

  These were open questions, which demanded political investigation. Indeed, few people knew anything about the prisons, especially since in France outsiders were not allowed inside – the first time Foucault stepped into a prison was in Attica. A basic understanding of conditions inside these spaces, then, was deemed strategically essential. With this goal in mind, those involved in the ex-GP’s political organization for prisoners, such as Jacques Rancière, Daniel Defert (Foucault’s partner), Christine Martineau, and others, settled on the idea of inquiry, explicitly recalling Karl Marx’s “workers’ inquiry” first proposed in 1880.

  The ex-GP activists were strongly encouraged in this direction by a number of radical intellectuals who soon joined the campaign. After its earlier failures in the prisons, the ex-GP realized that it had to connect the struggle inside the prisons with those on the outside. Thus, in December 1970, ex-GP radicals advanced a new position: they decided to reach out to philosophical and cultural luminaries, such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Genet, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. This encounter between the ex-GP on the one hand, and a number of militant intellectuals, above all Foucault, on the other, gave way to a new organization, the Groupe d’information sur les prisons (GIP). ²

  On February 8, 1971, forty-five years ago, Foucault unveiled the GIP to the public. Co-signed by Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Jean-Marie Domenach, the manifesto outlined a program of inquiry, research, and political struggle. Working with prisoners, their families, doctors, lawyers, and militants, the GIP successfully smuggled texts in and out of the prisons, ultimately producing five investigative booklets. But this campaign not only gathered vital information about the prisons, it helped give voice to all those prisoners forcibly silenced by the state, playing an important role in the emergence of a vibrant, autonomous prisoners’ movement in France as well as other countries.

  We reproduce Foucault’s statement, newly translated by Stuart Elden, below.

– Salar Mohandesi

---

  None of us is sure to escape prison. Today less than ever. Police control [quadrillage] over day-to-day life is tightening: in city streets and roads; over foreigners and young people; it is once more an offense to express opinions; anti-drug measures increase arbitrarily. ³ We are kept under “close observation.” ⁴ They tell us that the system of justice is overwhelmed. We can see that. But what if it is the police that have overwhelmed it? They tell us that prisons are over-populated. But what if it was the population that was being over-imprisoned? Little information is published on prisons. It is one of the hidden regions of our social system, one of the dark zones of our life. We have the right to know; we want to know. This is why, with magistrates, lawyers, journalists, doctors, psychologists, we have formed a Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons.

  We propose to make known what the prison is: who goes there, how and why they go there, what happens there, and what the life of the prisoners is, and that, equally, of the surveillance personnel; what the buildings, the food, and hygiene are like; how the internal regulations, medical control, and the workshops function; how one gets out and what it is to be, in our society, one of those who came out.

  This information is not in the official reports that we have found. We will ask those who, for some reason, have an experience of the prison or a relation to it. We ask them to contact us and tell us what they know. A questionnaire has been compiled which can be requested from us. As soon as we have sufficient responses, the results will be published.

  It is not for us to suggest reform. We merely wish to know the reality. And to make it known almost immediately, almost overnight, because time is short. This is to inform opinion and to keep it informed. We will try to use all means of information: daily newspapers, weeklies, monthlies. We therefore appeal to all possible platforms.

  Finally, it is good to know what threatens us, but knowledge is also good to defend oneself. One of our first tasks will be to publish a small Manuel du parfait arrêté (Complete Arrest Guide), paired of course as an Avis aux arrêteurs (Note for Arrestors).

  All those who want to inform us, be informed or participate in the work can write to the GIP at 285, rue de Vaugirard, Paris-XV^e. ⁵

This text was first read at a news conference on February 8, 1971. It was subsequently published in Esprit in March 1971. Partial translations can be found in Didier Eribon’s biography, Michel Foucault, trans. Betsy Wing (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 224-5; and in David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (London: Random House, 1993), 258.

  References

1. Michel Foucault, “Michel Foucault on Attica: An Interview,” Social Justice 18, no. 3 (45), Attica: 1971-1991 Commemorative Issue (Fall 1991): 32.

2. The literature on the GIP, and Foucault’s involvement with it, is growing. The documents and materials of the GIP have been collected in Le Groupe d’information sur les prisons: archives d’une lutte, 1970-1972, eds. Philippe Artières, Laurent Quéro, and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel (Paris: IMEC, 2003). Recent commentary in English includes Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition, eds. Andrew Dilts and Perry Zurn (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015);

Julian Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics: May 1968 and Contemporary French Thought (Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), chapters 2, 5, 6, 7;

and Marcelo Hoffman, Foucault and Power: The Influence of Political Engagement on Theories of Power (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).

3. Translator’s Note: Quadrillage is a grid-like systematic division and control of an area.

4. Translator’s Note: David Macey notes that Garde à vue “refers to the common police practice of holding people without charge for a period of up to twenty-four hours” (The Lives of Michel Foucault. 515 n. 1) In the 1970s the British army imprisoned Northern Irish Catholics without trial in a policy known as ‘internment’. However neither detention nor internment capture the visual sense of the French term.

5. Translator’s Note: This was Foucault’s home address.