In book forward, Michael Cohen claims president 'wouldn't mind if I was dead'

In the recently released forward of Michael Cohen's forthcoming tell-all memoir, "Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump," Cohen promises readers that he will reveal details about the president that no one "apart from his wife and children" know. 

Cohen's memoir, which will be released on September 8 by Skyhorse Publishing, is being sold by the publishing house as "a story that you haven't read in newspapers, or on social media, or watched on television."

The publishing company, which has a history of taking on manuscripts by contentious public figures -- most recently, "Apropos of Nothing," Woody Allen's memoir, which was dropped by Hachette Book Group this past spring -- believes Cohen's book will offer "accounts that only someone who worked for Trump around the clock for a decade ... could know." 

In the forward, which Cohen titled "The Real Real Donald Trump," he writes that the president would likely prefer if he were dead. "The President of the United States wanted me dead," begins the chapter. "Or, let me say it the way Donald Trump would: He wouldn't mind if I was dead."

Cohen describes the forthcoming text, which appears to have been written from prison, as "a book the President of the United States does not want you to read."

In early 2019, Cohen decided to testify against his former boss to Congress, making him persona-non-grata in circles close to the president. "I was exactly the person Trump was talking about when he said he could shoot and kill someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it," writes Cohen. 

Cohen has served just over a year of a three year prison sentence for violations of campaign finance law and lying to Congress.  He was released from prison in May as fears over the pandemic ramped up, but was sent back in July after making known his plans to publish "Disloyal." A deal was arranged between his attorney and the U.S. government, which dropped its attempt to stop the book from coming to market.