00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, May 29.
00:05 Today on Forbes, here's how much Michael Cohen is making off Donald Trump.
00:12 Lawyers in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which is prosecuting Donald Trump
00:15 in his first criminal trial, have long encouraged Michael Cohen to stay away from the press.
00:21 They haven't had much success.
00:23 Mark Pomerantz, who once worked in the DA's office, wrote, quote, "The media attention
00:28 was like catnip to him.
00:30 We had no means of keeping him away from the cameras."
00:34 It wasn't only that Cohen, who had shadowed Trump for years, liked being in the limelight.
00:39 Nor was it just that Cohen, whose life had been upended by Trump, wanted to humiliate
00:44 his former boss.
00:46 There was also money at stake.
00:48 Lots of it.
00:49 In bashing Trump, Cohen has earned about $4.4 million over the last four years, averaging
00:55 out to $1.1 million annually, or roughly double what his former boss paid him.
01:01 First, he cashed in on books.
01:04 Cohen's Disloyal, a memoir, the true story of the former personal attorney to President
01:09 Donald J. Trump, came out in September 2020, two months before Americans took to the polls.
01:15 It became an immediate No. 1 New York Times bestseller, staying on the list for four weeks.
01:20 The book sold 290,400 print copies, according to Circana Bookscan, an industry data service.
01:28 Cohen testified that it had made him about $2 million in just the first few months after
01:32 it was released, and has gone on to bring in around another $1 million since.
01:38 Two years after publishing his first book, Cohen released Revenge, how Donald Trump weaponized
01:43 the Department of Justice against his critics, which spent one week on the bestseller list
01:48 and sold a more modest 24,400 print copies, according to Circana Bookscan.
01:54 Cohen disputed the sales figures when contacted by Forbes, but declined to answer other questions,
01:59 citing the ongoing trial.
02:01 In court, he testified that the book earned him "around $400,000."
02:06 The most impressive thing about the books?
02:09 How Cohen structured the deals surrounding them.
02:13 Cohen testified in Trump's civil fraud trial last fall that he did not receive an advance
02:17 for either book.
02:18 In 2020, the CEO of Skyhorse Publishing, which released Disloyal, told Publishers Weekly
02:25 that Cohen had a "non-traditional contract."
02:29 As a result, he appears to have earned far more than he would have with a standard book
02:32 deal.
02:35 Around the same time his first book was published, Cohen launched Mea Culpa, a profanity-laced
02:40 podcast in which Cohen interviews various people familiar with Trump, including journalists,
02:45 turning his press contacts into profitable content.
02:49 New episodes post twice a week, although the show has been on hiatus during the trial.
02:54 Cohen testified that Mea Culpa averages around 300,000 downloads a week and has been downloaded
03:00 a total of more than 10 million times.
03:02 It currently ranks among the top 80 most popular political podcasts in the United States on
03:07 Apple Podcasts, according to ChartTable, an analytics service owned by Spotify.
03:13 A second show, Political Beatdown, which Cohen co-hosts, debuted in February 2023.
03:20 It live-streams two episodes a week to YouTube, the audio of which is then pushed out to podcast
03:25 apps.
03:26 In all, Cohen testified that the two podcasts have generated about $1 million for him via
03:31 ads and merchandise.
03:33 One piece of merchandise, a T-shirt, even got a little bit of publicity during the trial,
03:38 when Trump's defense team noted that Cohen is hawking a T-shirt depicting Trump in an
03:42 orange jumpsuit behind bars.
03:46 Even when Cohen isn't making much money, though, he seems happy to get attention.
03:50 At the urging of his 20-something-year-old kids, Cohen joined TikTok around December
03:55 2020.
03:56 Like a true Gen Xer, he was slow to post at first.
03:59 But Cohen eventually got into it, streaming hour-long videos nightly around 10 p.m. for
04:04 anyone willing to shell out $5.99 a month.
04:08 Why?
04:09 He explained at trial, quote, "Build an audience to create a community, to really vent because
04:14 I am having a difficult time sleeping, so I found an outlet."
04:18 He also makes a little money from it.
04:20 According to TikTok, Cohen's so-called "community" consists of 309 subscribers, which would suggest
04:26 he is on pace to earn about $22,000 a year before TikTok takes any cut.
04:33 For full coverage, check out Zach Everson's piece on Forbes.com.
04:38 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:41 Thanks for tuning in.
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