Puck correspondent Tara Palmeri told CNN that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former fixer, has been schmoozing the president since June 2025 — and she identified a specific motive behind the outreach.

Speaking to the network in a Friday morning interview, Palmeri said Cohen asked her for Trump's phone number last year and teased that he thought he could get back "in" with Trump. Not long after she handed over the number, Palmeri said, Cohen met with Trump at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.

According to Palmeri, the effort all goes back to Cohen wanting a pardon. Presidential pardons reach federal crimes, and it was Cohen's 2018 guilty pleas — to campaign-finance violations tied to hush-money payments, tax evasion and lying to Congress — that made him a felon and cost him his law license; he was sentenced to three years in federal prison and completed that term in 2021 through a combination of imprisonment and home confinement.

"This is absolutely about a pardon," she said flatly.

Palmeri noted that when President Joe Biden left office without granting Cohen a pardon, Cohen complained that Hunter Biden had received one while he had not. Biden pardoned his son in December 2024, weeks before leaving office and after repeatedly ruling it out, in a grant covering potential offenses from 2014 through 2024.

"He was very angry when he didn't get one," she recalled. "You even heard him again, back on MS NOW saying, 'I'm someone's son, too' after Hunter Biden got a pardon and he didn't. He then created this proposal to pardon all nonviolent felons, 70 million, including himself. This was something he proposed during the Biden administration."

Cohen has since proposed the same measure under the Trump administration, Palmeri said.

The reversal is the latest turn in Cohen's long arc from loyal lieutenant to adversary and back: he spent more than a decade at the Trump Organization and reportedly once said he would "take a bullet" for Trump before flipping in 2018, cooperating with federal prosecutors and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, and testifying to Congress in 2019 that Trump was a "racist," a "con man" and a "cheat."

"This was always about getting a pardon," she explained. "And he's very useful to President Trump. I mean, he does hold on to all of his secrets. He was a fixer for so many years. He handled cases like Karen McDougall and Stormy Daniels. Ostensibly, any other people that have had these issues with President Trump in the past. And Trump was particularly vulnerable. I think he saw an opening."

Palmeri went on to say that since that initial contact with Trump, Cohen has alleged that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg "coerced" his testimony. If Cohen is able to prove that claim in court, it could get Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts thrown out. That May 2024 verdict in Bragg's hush-money case made Trump the first former US president convicted of a crime; he received an unconditional discharge at sentencing in January 2025 and is appealing. The case is also a New York state matter, beyond the reach of presidential pardons, which apply only to federal offenses.

"So, they need each other. In a way, this is a convenient reunion," Palmeri alleged. "They're being, I think, they're being opportunistic, both of them. But maybe there is this sick love affair happening. I mean, even on the stand, [Cohen] admitted that he had this obsession with President Trump. I mean, it's very interesting to me, that Michael Cohen can make these flip-flops, but he does the same thing in conversations. He'll say one thing and then he'll say another. And it's almost — it's very difficult to follow him."

If he does not receive a Trump pardon, Palmeri said she expects Cohen to be furious.