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Cohen has often claimed that he’d ‘take a bullet’ for so-called ‘President Trump.’ Ok, but will he do 15 years in a federal prison for him? Many Trump allies are skeptical.
“President Donald Trump and his outside advisers are increasingly worried that his longtime personal attorney might be susceptible to cooperating with federal prosecutors.”
“Two sources close to the president said people in Trump’s inner circle have in recent days been actively discussing the possibility that Michael Cohen — long seen as one of Trump’s most loyal personal allies — might flip if he faces serious charges as a result of his work on behalf of Trump.”
“That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment,” said Alan Dershowitz, the liberal lawyer and frequent Trump defender who met with the president and his staff over two days at the White House last week. “They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”
UPDATE: Last we have heard from Dershowtiz he’s arguing Alexander Hamilton wouldn’t #ImpeachtheMFer.
The question for Dersh is if Trump isn’t impeachable who is?
Is Cohen willing to do life for Herr Trump? Trump’s allies already see possible signs that the answer is no:
In an interview with CNN last week, Cohen called the raid “unsettling to say the least.” But he also said in the same interview that the federal agents were “extremely professional, courteous and respectful” — a dramatic departure from his usual combative style.
“Those comments raised eyebrows among some in Trump’s inner circle, who noted that one of the president’s most ferocious attack dogs seemed unusually taciturn.”
“When anybody is faced with spending a long time in jail, they start to re-evaluate their priorities, and cooperation can’t be ruled out,” said one Trump ally who knows Cohen.
Trump and his allies see the Southern District of NY’s Cohen investigation as potentially an even larger existential threat than the Russia probe as Cohen has the records on where ALL the bodies are buried. There are things Cohen has done that even Trump doesn’t fully know about.
Why Cohen matters, from a former Trump campaign official:
“The guys that know Trump best are the most worried. People are very, very worried. Because it’s Michael [effing] Cohen. Who knows what he’s done?”
“People at the Trump Organization don’t even really know everything he does. It’s all side deals and off-the-books stuff. Trump doesn’t even fully know; he knows some but not everything.”
Back to Politico:
“The White House appears to be creating some distance from Cohen. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters earlier this week that though Trump and Cohen have “still got some ongoing things,” the president “has a large number of attorneys, as you know.”
C’mon-how do you assert attorney-client privilege in one breath and then try to make it sound like you barely talk anymore?
“Trump and his allies fear that documents and recordings that the FBI swept up from Cohen’s home and office could come back to haunt the president, whose lawyers have joined Cohen’s in New York in asserting attorney-client privilege and are asking a federal judge to approve an independent review of the material.”
“Who knows what Cohen has in those files,” said a person close to the White House.
“But their concerns go beyond Cohen’s voluminous files. Increasingly, Trump’s outside advisers are worried about the risk posed by Cohen himself.”
“I think for two years or four years or five years, Michael Cohen would be a stand-up guy. I think he’d tell them go piss up a rope. But depending on dollars involved, which can be a big driver, or if they look at him and say it’s not two to four years, it’s 18 to 22, then how loyal is he?” said one defense lawyer who represents a senior Trump aide in Mueller’s Russia investigation.
\“Is he two years loyal? Is he 10 years loyal? Is he 15 years loyal?” the attorney added. “That’s the currency. It’s not measured in inches. It’s measured in years.”
How many years is Cohen willing to go to prison for Herr Trump? Jay Goldberg, another long time Trump lawyer, doesn’t think Cohen will prove to be too loyal.
“Jay Goldberg, a longtime Trump lawyer, told The Wall Street Journal that he spoke with Trump on Friday about Cohen and warned the president against trusting Cohen if he is facing criminal charges. Goldberg said he warned the president that Cohen “isn’t even a 1” on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 was remaining fully loyal to the president, the newspaper reported.”
But others in Trump’s circle believe Cohen will remain loyal to the president, pointing to Cohen’s long, well-documented history of publicly defending the president, whether in business or politics.
“I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president,” Cohen told Vanity Fair in an interview last summer. Cohen tweeted earlier this month that he will “always protect” Trump.
Appearing on MSNBC on Wednesday, former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Cohen was not a risk to turn on Trump. “If you said to me and I had to flip a coin, is he going to turn on President Trump or turn on other people? I would say adamantly no,” he said.
I guess it is true that Cohen paid $130 grand of his own money to protect Trump from the Stormy Daniels story. On the other hand, he later complained that Trump hadn’t paid him back.
UPDATE: I wrote this on April 18, 2018 and by May the answer was clearly: hell no.
It’s ironic that that defense attorney quoted above thinks Cohen could be 2-4 years loyal-in fact Cohen wasn’t loyal at all and got 3 years. Scaramucci’s ‘prediction’ couldn’t have been further from the mark-which proves he wasn’t making a prediction just doing what he does best-saying what ‘President Trump’ wants to hear.
UPDATE: This year has seen the Mooch himself flip.
He is gone. It’s only a matter of time now and negotiation. @realDonaldTrump is done.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) September 24, 2019
The one who looks most prescient in retrospect is Jay Goldberg-turns out Cohen wasn’t even a 1 on a scale of 100 of loyalty.
Paul Manafort OTOH proved to be 19-25 years loyal, the rest of his life in prison loyal.
In this book I’ve called him Watergate 2.0’s-aka Stupid Watergate-G. Gordon Liddy but Liddy only served 5 years in prison. I think Jay Golberg would have to agree Manafort is 100 out of 100, a loyalist lifer.
FN: He actually received a relatively light sentence in his DC and Virginia trials-7 and and half years; nothing to sneeze at though could have been much worse-though the state trial is still going. It seems pretty clear that Manafort’s game is the pardon lottery.
What must Manafort be protecting to choose this over cooperation?
I think it’s fair to hypothesize: that he, Roger Stone and Donald Trump all colluded with Russia. We now have the basic elements. It all went down in late July-early August, 2016. A senior Trump campaign official-quite possibly Manafort himself, though the media won’t discuss this logical possibility as they hate the Guardian story that reported Manafort and Assange met three times before the 2016 election, the last time in March just before he joined the campaign-directed Roger Stone to find out what else Assange had after the DNC leaks forced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to resign the morning of the first day of the Democratic Convention.
Stone then directed Jerome Corsi to find out who then went to the UK and spoke to Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy. On August 2, 2016 he got back to Stone and told him both what Wikileaks had-Podesta-and the timing-October.
Stone would later tweet out ‘soon it will be Podesta’s time in the barrel.’
Again-coincidences take a lot of planning-and investigators don’t believe in them. On this very same day-August 2, 2016-Manafort was meeting with the Russian intel operative Kilimnik in New York City at the Cigar Club. Manafort handed him campaign polling data and they also discussed sanctions.
Meanwhile, on August 27 in Trump’s last press conference of the 2016 election he declared ‘Russia, if you’re listening…’
We later learned the Russians began their hacks of many leading Democrats very soon after that.
For those claiming there’s still ‘no evidence of collusion’ I’m eager to hear what they would consider to be evidence of collusion.
I mean this surely at least gets you in the neighborhood.
UPDATE: Between the discoveries in court documents late in 2018 and then the release of the redacted Mueller Report in 2019 it’s clear there was lots of collusion, coordination, and conspiracy; Michael Cohen revealed to Mueller and in testimony before the House in March 2019 that Stone also gave Trump advanced knowledge of the DNC emails as well-chapter A for more.