NEW YORK — (CNN) A top adviser to Donald Trump is under fire after comments he made in an explosive interview while defending the Republican presidential candidate from a decades-old rape accusation.
Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump and an executive vice president at The Trump Organization, asserted in an interview published Monday in the Daily Beast that legally “you cannot rape your spouse.”
The rape accusation stems from an accusation Trump’s then-wife Ivana Trump leveled at her husband during divorce proceedings in the early 1990s, an accusation she has since walked back.
Marital rape today is illegal in all 50 states and non-consensual sex between spouses does in fact constitute rape.
Cohen, who is one of Trump’s top lawyers, also threatened to sue the Daily Beast reporter and ruin the reporter’s life.
“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen said, according to the Daily Beast.
“So I’m warning you, tread very f—ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. You understand me?”
Cohen has not responded to a request for comment from CNN.
“Mr. Trump didn’t know of his comments but disagrees with them,” Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told CNN, referring to Cohen’s remarks to the Daily Beast.
“I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit. Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign. Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible president,” Ivana Trump said in a statement obtained by CNN, whose authenticity the Trump campaign verified.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, distanced itself from Cohen, who has spent weeks appearing on multiple television news shows, including CNN’s “New Day,” to play up Trump’s candidacy for president and defend the campaign from attacks from Trump’s primary opponents.
“Mr. Trump speaks for Mr. Trump and nobody but Mr. Trump speaks for him,” a campaign source told CNN on Tuesday morning.
A second campaign source toed the same line and pushed back against the notion that Cohen is a surrogate for the campaign.
“He is speaking as someone who has great insight into Mr. Trump’s skills as an executive,” the source said.
Both sources emphasized that Cohen is employed by the Trump Organization and not the campaign.
Cohen has not only repeatedly appeared on TV to support Trump’s presidential campaign, but he has also provided statements in response to political reporters’ inquiries about Trump campaign controversies.
Cohen sent CNN a statement via email earlier this month when Trump’s official Twitter account posted photo of men in Nazi uniforms.
In a deposition during divorce proceedings, Ivana Trump accused her husband of raping her during a 1989 incident, an accusation that was first revealed in the 1993 book by former Newsweek reporter Harry Hurt III, “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump.”
CNN could not obtain a copy of the deposition.
As the book was about to be published, Ivana Trump wrote a statement that was printed on the first page of that book:
“I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent,” she said in the statement. “I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson said in a statement that the rape accusation “is old news and it never happened.”
“It is a standard lawyer technique, which was used to exploit more money from Mr. Trump especially since he had an ironclad prenuptial agreement,” the spokesperson said.
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