Micahel Cohen, a special counsel to Donald Trump, apologized on Tuesday for comments about marital rape that he made while defending his boss from allegations that Donald Trump sexually assaulted his ex-wife.
“As an attorney, husband and father there are many injustices that offend me but nothing more than charges of rape or racism. They hit me at my core. Rarely am I surprised by the press, but the gall of this particular reporter to make such a reprehensible and false allegation against Mr. Trump truly stunned me,” Cohen said in a statement to CNN. “In my moment of shock and anger, I made an inarticulate comment – which I do not believe — and which I apologize for entirely.”
In defending Trump from allegations made by ex-wife Ivana Trump, Cohen said that legally, “you can’t rape your spouse.”
“You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse,” Cohen told the Daily Beast. “You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law.”
He also threatened the Daily Beast reporter while addressing the rape allegations.
“I think you should go ahead and you should write the story that you plan on writing. I think you should do it. Because I think you’re an idiot. And I think your paper’s a joke, and it’s going to be my absolute pleasure to serve you with a $500 million lawsuit, like I told [you] I did it to Univision,” he told the Daily Beast.
The Trump campaign on Monday distanced itself from Cohen and his comments, and Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told CNN that Trump “disagrees” with Cohen’s statements.
Cohen was defending Trump against allegations made by Ivana Trump in a deposition, quoted in the book, “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” which was published in 1993, and which the Daily Beast resurfaced on Monday.
According to the book, Ivana Trump said in the deposition that Trump assaulted her in 1989, pulling out her hair and then forcibly penetrating her. Donald Trump denied her claims about the assault in 1993. Ivana Trump gave a statement on the incident for “Lost Tycoon,” saying that she “felt violated” but did “not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense,” according to the Daily Beast.
On Tuesday, she gave a statement to ABC News referring to the Daily Beast report, in which she said that the deposition was given “during a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit.”
