NEW YORK – In the two weeks since federal agents seized the files of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney and fixer, a question has hovered: Will Cohen cooperate with investigators?
His decision could depend in part on whether he can readily shoulder the enormous legal fees required to fight a federal probe of this magnitude.
At first blush, Cohen looks rich. He drives a Rolls-Royce, sports a $50,000 watch and owns a fair amount of Manhattan real estate.
But just as his loyalty to Trump is coming under scrutiny, a more tenuous financial picture is emerging. A taxi business he and his wife built is deeply in debt and losing money daily, his commercial real estate is throwing off only modest income, and his legal and consulting work is on hold.
Cohen declined to comment.
The owners of 32 New York City taxi licenses — known as medallions — he and his wife, Laura, took out at least 16 loans based on their once-soaring value, liens show. With the rise of Uber and Lyft, the price of a medallion has fallen from more than $1 million to around $163,000 in the past four years. Income from the taxi business has plummeted, and millions of dollars of the Cohens' loans went underwater.
Unpaid taxes and fines have piled up at the Cohen taxi companies, triggering a suspension of about half of the medallions, city records show.
Whatever monthly income the cabs once produced almost certainly fell well short of the debt payments owed to Sterling National Bank, their Montebello, N.Y.-based lender. Sterling has foreclosed on operators in similar situations and sued them but appears to be taking a less-confrontational approach with the Cohens. On Tuesday, the bank agreed to new loans for their companies and to Cohen personally, public filings show. Sterling declined to comment.
