Michael Cohen, once President Donald Trump's personal attorney, has undertaken what one legal expert described as a "fascinating social experiment": resubmitting a pardon application to Trump's Justice Department after it went nowhere under the Biden administration.

Cohen appeared Thursday on CNN's "The Lead" with Jake Tapper, where the two discussed an upcoming interview that Cohen conducted with Trump. That sit-down stunned some political analysts, given Cohen's role in Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts in New York for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment Trump sent to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.

During the interview, Cohen told Tapper that he had applied for a pardon under the Biden administration but was never contacted by the Department of Justice. So he took that same application, added a new cover letter, and sent it to the DOJ under Trump. The move highlights how pardon requests can remain unresolved across administrations, with the same submission sometimes effectively landing in a different political and legal environment when leadership changes.

Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, told Tapper he was stunned by Cohen's move.

"It's a fascinating social experiment," Honig said. "He took the exact same pardon application, supported by a bunch of liberal, prominent voices, which was not acted on by Biden, and now he's resubmitted it to Trump."

"I don't know whether the same people made the recommendations. I don't know if the same people stand by him now that he has come out and said I felt pressured and coerced, but ... there never does seem to be a full final end to a relationship between Donald Trump and anyone else. But man, I never would have expected this," Honig added.