Harvard Student Says Michael Cohen Threatened Him Over ‘Endorsement’ Prank
Harvard senior Tom Waddick says that he received a threatening call from Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen following a prank he helped pulled on Trump in 2015, Boston Magazine reported.
Waddick works at the Harvard Lampoon, the university’s comedy magazine, which is known to pull off pranks. The prank against then-candidate Trump began when Waddick, along with other Lampoon writers, broke into the Harvard Crimson’s office and stole the paper’s president’s chair.
The Lampoon staffers reached out to Trump’s campaign, pretending to be staffers from the Crimson interested in endorsing the campaign. Trump agreed to meet the students, who he thought were real staffers of the Crimson .
Waddick and his peers brought the chair to Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the presidential candidate took a thumbs-up photo with the students.
Waddick said that once the Trump campaign solved the prank a few days later, Cohen called him threatening to get the students expelled.
“He says, you know, I’m gonna come up to Harvard,” Waddick told 60 Minutes in Sunday’s interview. “If this photo gets out you’ll be outta that school faster than you know it. I can be up there tomorrow,” Waddick retold.
The Lampoon published the infamous “thumbs-up” photo in July 2015, as a fake Trump endorsement.
Former adult film star Stormy Daniels has also been known to claim that Cohen made threats.
Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO