Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, and the child Jane Doe (Katie Johnson)
Michael Cohen shocked a small handful of people last week when he announced that he would not only be hosting a weekly Sunday night show on WABC Radio—former home of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Rudy Giuliani, to name a few—but that he had repaired his relationship with Donald Trump. Trump’s former fixer had been welcomed back into the fold “about six, seven months ago.” Speaking for myself, I wasn’t surprised. I remember what happened “six, seven months ago,” and it’s when I first met Michael Cohen.
In December, I was still a subscriber to Michael’s “Mea Culpa” Substack, which, roughly translated, means “my bad,” referring to his time spent working for Donald Trump, both in the White House and prior. This included, by his own admission, threatening upwards of 500 people on Trump’s behalf. But not now; now Cohen was a changed man.
On December 17th, Trump gave a speech from the White House, which replayed most of his usual talking points about economic growth, new infrastructure, lowering drug prices, and endorsing candidates. It was a bit of a yawn, but as he usually does, Zev Shalev pulled together a group of independent journalists to break down Trump’s spiel, including Nick Paro, Lev Parnas, myself, and Michael Cohen. I was a little surprised, if not starstruck, to see Cohen in the interview—at this point I was still learning the ropes of livestreams and how to talk to people I’d only ever watched on the news.
Everything went well, until Zev brought up that this speech was likely another distraction meant to pull the American public’s attention away from the Epstein files. This led to the discussion of the notorious “Katie Johnson” (pseudonym) case, which Cohen called “fake.”
“[Katie Johnson’s case was] started by somebody who managed to find a lawyer in order to file this case, despite the fact he never met the client. It was all done via the mail.”
We’ll get back to this in a minute.
The interview devolved quickly, and Cohen would come back a day later on Lev’s show saying, “This guy, Zev Shalev, the other night started the same shit. Zev’s a schmuck.”
“Well, everybody, we want to wish you a wonderful evening. A happy holiday. Even to those of you who like Zev, happy holidays to you, too, right? Don’t choke on your holiday spirits.”
But it wasn’t the back-and-forth that made me concerned about Cohen, but a comment he’d made in our livestream that caught me off-guard.
“To the best of my knowledge, again, being in Trump’s office 5, 6, 7 hours a day, I never heard Jeffrey Epstein’s name mentioned.”
This could not be true. Cohen had known Trump for years, and had gone to work for him in 2006, the same year Trump spoke with the Palm Beach police about Epstein. And Cohen had certainly worked for Trump during the Katie Johnson case.
Despite my concerns, things stayed relatively quiet through the holidays. But on January 12th, another Substacker (who asked not to be named) came to me with an email she’d found in the DOJ files. In it, Mike Monico and Barry Spevack, Cohen’s lawyers, requested to file a Rule 35 on Cohen’s behalf, saying that Cohen “has heard Trump say things about Epstein.” This was two-and-a-half months after Cohen had begun his sentence for paying off adult film actress Stormy Daniels, as well as tax evasion and lying to Congress. By definition, a Rule 35 would give Cohen the opportunity to reduce his three-year sentence in exchange for providing “substantial assistance” in investigating someone else, i.e. Trump.
When the email went public, things moved quickly. On January 16th, Cohen wrote a piece on his Substack saying that he “felt pressured and coerced” by the New York Attorney General’s Office (i.e. Letitia James and Alvin Bragg) “to only provide information and testimony...to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.” To be clear, a prosecutor cannot force a defendant to file a Rule 35, which would in no way benefit the Attorney General’s Office.
Be that as it may, the article caught fire in conservative media, and by the day’s end most right-wing news stations were reporting that Michael Cohen was, indeed, coerced by Letitia James to file a Rule 35.
A day later, Meidas Touch announced they would no longer produce or carry Cohen’s podcast, Mea Culpa, but did not specifically cite the email.
By the end of the month, Cohen began leaning uncomfortably to the right, giving a big interview on the Patrick Bet-David (PBD) podcast, where he not only reiterated that New York prosecutors had “pressured and coerced” him, but that he may be seeking a pardon, though his response was vague.
“Okay. Yeah, I would take a pardon, but I’m not asking for a pardon for me. I’m asking for a pardon for 70 million Americans who are nonviolent felons here in America right now that are treated like second-class citizens.”
His tune had clearly changed, saying he missed his time working for Donald Trump, and that he still loves him. Uncomfortable, but not the end of this story.
That brings us back to Katie Johnson.
In the awkward meeting with Michael Cohen, and in the weeks after, he became convinced that I was mixing up cases when it came to Katie Johnson, aka “Jane Doe.” As he often likes to say, “There are more Jane Doe cases filed in the United States than there are Ford F150s.” But just as every truck has a license plate, so too, every court case has a docket number. And I’m no lawyer, but that makes it pretty easy to clarify who’s who among the hundreds of Jane Does associated with the Epstein investigation.
But in this case, Michael Cohen made it clear that he thought Katie Johnson (pseudonym) was a fraud. Because he, himself, had talked to her lawyer, learned that the lawyer had never met with Katie in person, and so Cohen, himself, went to her address to knock on her door and get the facts. He referred to her as “Mary Jane Doe,” and said that the case involved a baby, but when he went to the address it was just an empty lot in the Bronx. Case closed—Katie Johnson, Jane Doe, Mary Jane Doe, was clearly not what she seemed.
Except here’s the thing: I bumped into Katie’s private investigator, and she didn’t live in the Bronx. In fact, she didn’t live in New York City or State at all; she lived in California. And there was no baby, and she was never called “Mary Jane Doe” on any of her court documents. And Cohen would have known this, because in his own words, he dropped her file on Trump’s desk, clearly contradicting his previous statement that he’d never heard Epstein’s name in all the time he’d worked for Donald Trump.
And that story about her lawyer never meeting her, except by mail? That wasn’t true either. Because if Cohen had looked at the case, Katie Johnson aka “Jane Doe” had a high-powered legal team, which included Thomas Meagher and Lisa Bloom. In an interview with Joy-Ann Reid, Cohen stated that he reached out to Meagher after the Rule 35 email, to verify they’d never discussed the case. Cohen said he’d never spoken to the attorney, back in 2016 or in the years since. Except a minute later he slipped and stated that he actually had spoken to Meagher back in 2016 about the Katie Johnson case.
Cohen also claimed, again, he wasn’t seeking a pardon from Donald Trump. Except also that he kind of was.
Michael Cohen walked away from his interview with Reid claiming he’d been vindicated, that he was right all along that I was mixing up the Jane Doe cases, and that he had nothing to do with Katie Johnson. He even landed in my DMs, demanding that I apologize for saying otherwise.
But I know they were the same person, and it wasn’t hard to bring the receipts. And the idea that Michael Cohen, the man who claims to have threatened 500 people on Donald Trump’s behalf, was tracking down a survivor to knock on her door says a lot about his response to this case and what Donald Trump was willing to do to make it go away.
So, for the record, here is the breakdown of the Katie Johnson, aka “Jane Doe” case.
On April 26, 2016, a woman using the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” and representing herself, filed docket 5:16-cv-00797, “Katie Johnson v. Trump & Epstein” in the State of California. This would be dismissed on May 2, 2016 without prejudice (can be refiled).
On June 20, 2016, the same woman would refile her case, docket 1:16-cv-04642, as “Jane Doe v. Trump & Epstein,” because she was now represented by attorney Thomas Meagher and the case had moved to the State of New York. This was dismissed without prejudice on September 16, 2016.
On September 30, 2016, the same woman would refile her case, docket 1:16-cv-07673, as “Jane Doe v. Trump & Epstein,” because she had added a witness, and also added to her legal team, now including Thomas Meagher, J. Cheney Mason, and Lisa Bloom.
On November 11, 2016, Katie Johnson/Jane Doe withdrew her case for the final time, just three days after Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. It came as a surprise to her legal team, who had prepared a press conference in which Doe had planned on going public. But after a major hack into the legal team’s digital files, especially pertaining to her case, Doe cancelled everything and went into hiding, where she has remained.
The only other Doe v. Trump cases were in 2017—docket 1:17-cv-01597, pertaining to the transgender military ban, and docket 2:17-cv-00178-JLR, a class-action suit related to immigration policy changes. Thus there should be no confusion as to which file Michael Cohen dropped on Donald Trump’s desk in 2016.
On March 13th, Cohen went on Lara Trump’s show, the Right View, and stated that he was starting a podcast with controversial right-wing influencer Laura Loomer called “Across the Aisle.”
And while Loomer and Cohen’s newfound friendship doesn’t appear to have come to fruition, four months later the host of Syd and Friends on WABC Radio announced Cohen would be getting his own Sunday night show called “When you know, you know.” And it was during this surprise announcement that Cohen told his small handful of supporters that he had, indeed, stepped back into the good graces of one, Donald Trump. And he had done this because, like Trump, he too had experience betrayal. The betrayal of the “pack,” as he called it, about which I will let you come to your own conclusions.
And yet, while it is Cohen who says he’s been betrayed by an audience who wouldn’t quite budge when it came to trusting Trump’s former (and maybe current) fixer, I would argue that maybe it was the audience themselves who’ve been betrayed. After all, it’s been a year and a half since Cohen came to Substack, announcing “my bad,” and hawking a book in which he said Trump behaved like a “mob boss,” and detailing the fraud and hush-money conspiracies he participated in, in the nearly 12 years that he worked for Donald Trump.
It was Michael Cohen who helped Donald Trump understand and maneuver the sale of Maison de L’Amitié in 2008 to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million. Just four years prior, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had broken off their long-term friendship when Trump went behind Epstein’s back to purchase the property for $41 million, an amount Epstein claimed Trump didn’t have.
And it was Michael Cohen who wrote the check for Stormy Daniels, an adult film star, for $130,000, in order to keep quiet about her sexual affair with Donald Trump in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.
And it was Michael Cohen who served as Trump’s attorney for all legal matters related to the Miss Universe Organization and Miss Teen America pageants. Thirteen women and girls who participated in the pageants came forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault.
And finally Katie Johnson, the 13-year-old child who in 1994 was (allegedly) taken to Epstein’s home and brutally abused, both physically and sexually, by the now-President of the United States. She would be interviewed multiple times by the FBI, adding to the credibility of her case, along with a long list of civil-rights attorneys who believed her, and would have taken her case to trial. But Johnson/Doe disappeared in order to protect herself, and never saw her day in court, nor was she ever paid a settlement. (Not to be confused with Jane Doe 4, who alleged a similar story of abuse at the hands of Donald Trump in the early 1980s.)
As many of us suspected, Michael Cohen has gone back to work for Donald Trump, is vying for a pardon, and will likely use his newfound power to step back into his old shoes, leading with revenge, threats, and the old persona we met on the stand in 2019, when he gave his testimony before the House Oversight Committee. I was introduced to Michael Cohen back then as a liar, a cheat, and a man who do anything for the proverbial rolodex—the currency of the Trump Administration and the Epstein class. But now he’s motivated by a crowd of independent readers and writers who saw him for what he really was, and shut the door. I don’t know what the next two years will look like, or what Cohen’s long-game will be, but I’ll keep bringing receipts.
Ellie is an author, editor, and independent journalist focusing on survivor justice. She lives with her family just outside of New York City.
Wow! I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, so I guess he and Trump make a good pair. It will be interesting to see who does what to whom first as they're both only interested in their own welfare.
I am echoing Jill Pugh's comment below: Thank you for your consistent, thoughtful, and fact based work. I’m old enough to remember when that wasn’t so rare or controversial.
I, too, am that old and am thankful for your reporting.