Michael Cohen, the former longtime fixer and personal attorney to Donald Trump, says he believes his old boss has a backup plan to save himself from criminal prosecution if he loses the November election to former Vice President Joe Biden. 

The drama, he said, would take place in the 11 weeks between Election Day and the January 20 inauguration. 

“My suspicion is that he will resign as president,” he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night. “He will allow Mike Pence to take over, and he will then go ahead and have Mike Pence pardon him.”  

Trump has freely used his pardon power to help political allies, granting a commutation to Roger Stone, a pardon to disgraced former Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a pardon to former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who has been a Trump supporter on Fox News.

The president has also claimed he can pardon himself, which no president has done and would likely go to the Supreme Court, making a pardon from an elevated Vice President Pence a more assured route of success.  

Cohen turned against his former boss in 2018 when he cooperated with investigators, testified before Congress and pleaded guilty to numerous criminal charges, including lying to Congress and violating campaign finance law, which he says he did for Trump. 

He was sentenced to three years in prison, which he is now serving at home after being released due to the coronavirus pandemic. He is promoting his new anti-Trump memoir, “Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.”