AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.The president has made peace with Michael D. Cohen, his onetime lawyer who turned against him. But contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims, Mr. Cohen has not recanted the testimony that helped convict his former boss.Listen · 15:08 min The relationship between Michael D. Cohen and President Trump has arguably been one of the most consequential in modern presidential history.Credit...Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesBy Peter BakerPeter Baker is the chief White House correspondent. He reported from Washington.Sept. 6, 2026On a radio show last month, President Trump welcomed Michael D. Cohen, the former fixer he once denounced as a “rat” for testifying against him, back into the fold. “I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said,” Mr. Trump said. He went on to use the word “recant” three more times.In case anyone missed it, the president posted a message on social media on Friday claiming that Mr. Cohen, a key witness against Mr. Trump in criminal and civil trials, “has just fully RECANTED his testimony.” Mr. Trump demanded “that any remnant of those Politically Weaponized Cases against me be immediately terminated and dismissed.”Except that Mr. Cohen has not, in fact, recanted his testimony. He has not taken any of it back.In his eagerness to return to the president’s good graces, Mr. Cohen now says that he “felt pressured and coerced” by prosecutors to testify. But he has not actually disavowed anything that he swore to under oath about Mr. Trump’s hush money scheme to cover up an affair with an adult film actress or about his former boss’s efforts to defraud his lenders.ImagePresident Trump falsely wrote on social media on Friday that Mr. Cohen had “fully RECANTED his testimony.”Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesAnd so this unlikeliest of rapprochements between two men who helped get each other convicted of crimes is built not on an emotional outpouring of forgiveness but on what looks like a pretty straightforward bargain, spoken or unspoken, according to people close to both. Mr. Trump is trying to use his former lawyer’s desire for absolution to rewrite history as he presses his effort to overturn his conviction. Mr. Cohen gets to position himself as an insider once again and possibly obtain a presidential pardon to wipe out some of the consequences of his own felony record.“Everything is transactional,” said Brian Karem, a journalist who helped Mr. Cohen write the second of his books assailing Mr. Trump. “It’s the weirdest example yet of the transactional nature of the president of the United States and those around him. Who knows him better than Michael? I’m just surprised that it took him this long. The first thing I said was, ‘Wow, it took you long enough.’”Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT