Cohen Was Told to ‘Reverse Engineer’ Trump’s Net Worth

Michael Cohen, the one-time fixer and personal lawyer of Donald Trump, testified on Tuesday that he had been instructed by the former president to “reverse engineer” the value of assets that are now at the center of a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit, the Financial Times reports.

Cohen told the Manhattan court that the annual “statement of financial condition” he helped prepare for his former boss — and which is the central issue in the New York attorney-general’s case — was a fiction.

Said Cohen: “I was tasked by Mr Trump to increase the total assets based on a number that he arbitrarily selected.”