Michael Cohen has cautioned that Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, could led to a "dangerous concentration of power" if Donald Trump secures a second term in the White House.
Cohen, the ex-Donald Trump lawyer who testified against the former president in his May criminal hush money trial, discussed the current landscape of politics in the country in his latest "Mea Culpa" podcast on Friday.
In it, he called last weekend's assassination attempt on Trump a "a grim reminder of the volatile and polarized state of American politics."
On July 13, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired his rifle at an outdoor Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Republican presidential candidate was struck by a bullet that pierced his right ear. The incident also resulted in injuries to two attendees and the death of former firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Cohen's concern about the country's "increasingly toxic" political environment led him to discuss Project 2025, a nearly 900-page document produced by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, that seeks to provide a guidebook for a future conservative administration.
The proposal seeks to rollback environmental commitments, abolish the Department of Education, cut federal health programs, and revoke FDA approval of abortion pill mifepristone, among other initiatives.
Cohen said Project 2025 "could fundamentally alter the structure of the federal government," a common partisan criticism of the agenda given its intention to bring federal agencies under more direct control of the president and concentrating power in the presidency.
"It could lead to a dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch—that would be Trump if he wins in 2024—undermining the entire checks and balances that are essential in our democracy," Cohen warned.
He added that its implementation has "potentially far-reaching" impacts on the federal landscape and reiterated critics' views who have said that it "could and will erode democratic norms and institutions, paving the way for authoritarianism."
Trump, who formally accepted the GOP presidential nomination Thursday night at the Republican National Convention, is leading President Joe Biden in FiveThirtyEight's national poll aggregator, which shows Trump ahead by 3.2 percentage points as of Saturday morning.
Cohen, who is a vocal critic of Trump, called Project 2025 "a manifesto, and it is championed by Trump and his allies." Trump and his campaign have distanced themselves from the project, despite several key figures behind the project having ties to Trump, including former Cabinet secretaries.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign spokesperson for comment via email on Saturday morning.
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Mandy Taheri is a Newsweek reporter based in Brooklyn. She joined Newsweek as a reporter in 2024. You can get ... Read more
