I know what government weaponization looks like because I lived it; through leaks, lies, intimidation, solitary confinement, and a campaign that devastated everything I built.
For months now, politicians, pundits, legal analysts, and cable news talking heads have been fighting over President Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund. Critics want it shut down. Supporters view it as long overdue. Meanwhile, speculation has run rampant about who may ultimately qualify as a beneficiary and whether the fund itself is little more than a political tool disguised as justice.
My view may surprise some people.
I support it.
Not because I support every person who may seek compensation through it. Not because I believe every claim of political persecution deserves validation. And certainly not because I think every prosecution involving a political figure is inherently corrupt.
I support it because I know firsthand what government weaponization looks like when it is directed at a human being.
I know what happens when prosecutors stop seeking justice and start seeking leverage. I know what happens when anonymous leaks become substitutes for evidence. I know what happens when media narratives become more important than facts. I know what happens when investigators become convinced that the ends justify the means and that destroying one person is acceptable if it advances a larger political objective.
Most importantly, I know what happens to the families caught in the crossfire.
For years, Americans have debated whether federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, prosecutors, and political actors have crossed dangerous lines in pursuit of political enemies. Today those debates dominate headlines. Entire congressional committees are devoted to investigating the issue. Careers are built around discussing it.
But I lived it long before it became politically fashionable.
If the Anti-Weaponization Fund genuinely exists to compensate victims of politically motivated investigations, selective prosecution, unlawful government leaks, abuse of prosecutorial discretion, violations of constitutional rights, and the deliberate destruction of reputations for political purposes, then I believe my experience stands among the clearest examples of why such a fund should exist in the first place.
Because what happened to me was never simply about Michael Cohen.
It was about Donald Trump.
I was collateral damage in a much larger war.
The allegations that launched years of investigations, media hysteria, and government scrutiny were rooted in some of the most spectacularly false claims ever published in modern American politics. The Steele Dossier transformed me from a lawyer and businessman into a caricature of conspiracy. I was accused of secret meetings in Prague, clandestine communications with Russian operatives, financial arrangements that never existed, and relationships that belonged more in a spy novel than in reality.
None of it was true.
Not one word.
Yet those allegations became fuel for investigations, media coverage, public humiliation, and prosecutorial pressure that would fundamentally alter the course of my life.
What followed was not simply an investigation.
It became a campaign.
A campaign that involved unprecedented raids on my home, office, and hotel accommodations. A campaign fueled by leaks, distortions, anonymous sources, and public speculation. A campaign that subjected my family to extraordinary emotional trauma. A campaign that sought to use every available pressure point, financial, legal, professional, and psychological, to extract leverage against the man sitting in the Oval Office.
The objective was not justice.
The objective was pressure.
And I know the cost because I paid it.
I lost my law license. I lost business relationships built over decades. I lost banking relationships, professional opportunities, and friendships. My confidential tax information was illegally accessed and leaked; twice. My reputation was systematically dismantled through allegations that would later prove false. I incurred staggering financial losses, endured incarceration, and spent fifty-one days in solitary confinement; three days with no food.
The financial damage was staggering.
But even that number fails to capture the true cost.
The real cost was measured in sleepless nights, fear, anxiety, humiliation, uncertainty, and the emotional burden carried by my family. My children did not volunteer for this battle. My wife did not volunteer for this battle. Yet they endured every headline, every accusation, every leak, and every act of public humiliation right alongside me.
That is the reality often missing from discussions about government weaponization.
The targets are not merely names in court filings.
They are husbands.
Wives.
Parents.
Children.
Human beings.
For years, many dismissed concerns about selective prosecution and political abuse because acknowledging them would have required confronting an uncomfortable possibility: that institutions entrusted with immense power are still operated by flawed human beings capable of allowing politics, ambition, ideology, and personal agendas to cloud their judgment.
Today, much of the country has finally begun recognizing that danger.
The question is what comes next.
Because accountability without restitution is merely symbolism. Recognition without consequences changes nothing. And justice without equal application ceases to be justice at all.
That is why I support the existence of the Anti-Weaponization Fund.
Not as a partisan exercise.
Not as a political weapon.
But because I know what it feels like when the full weight of government power is turned into a weapon against an individual.
I survived it.
And the story of how it happened serves as both a warning and a lesson for every American who still believes that equal justice under law must mean exactly what it says.