76 The Paradox of Michael Cohen’s Steele Dossier Derangement Syndrome
Just when I tried to get out you brought me back in and just when I was ready to accept Marcy Wheeler’s theory that the Steele Dossier is composed of disinformation-Russian disinformation-Michael Cohen’s book led me to take a fresh look at it.
Regarding the Steele Dossier, we will have much more to say below. But by definition, Wheeler’s hypothesis was likely at least somewhat true. One of the real problem with the reception of the Dossier from when it was first released is that Trump and his GOP co-conspirators have deliberately misconstrued that it’s a Dossier not a final product so by definition it’s pretty unlikely to be 100% accurate.
In all the entire post Mueller feeding frenzy against the Steele Dossier a la Erik Wemple cum Jeff Gerth this simple but crucial fact has been entirely missed.
FN: Here EW finds an error in Gerth’s 23,000 word hit job against the Dossier at word 12. I actually find one before that though we’ll get back to the Dossier below
CJR’s Error at Word 18 – emptywheel
With the beginning of Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump’s payments to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, et al late in the 2016 election, Cohen is back in the spotlight again as one of the prosecution’s witnesses. Not surprisingly, he was not the first witness.
FN: That honor went to David Pecker who not only has the right name but whose testimony gave the prosecution pretty much everything it could have wanted for its opening drive. To the extent that it’s true-as argued recently on MediasTouch-that the jury science suggests the jury normally decides very early on how its going to rule, the prosecution’s chances would seem to be quite good-though, of course, time will tell.
It’s not surprising as while it’s pretty rich for Trump and his co-conspirators to accuse Cohen-or anyone else-of lacking credibility, Cohen’s credibility is not great. And his most recently published book hardly helped.
Indeed, I personally have been far more sympathetic to Cohen’s plight than the conventional wisdom. After all, it’s more than a little unfair that Cohen served a three year prison sentence from crimes he committed at the direction and to the benefit of Donald Trump who the SDNY named only as an unindicted co-conspirator.
FN: And even now that Braggs has finally indicted him, time will tell if Trump pays ANY actual penalty for anything-certainly won’t if the Roberts-Kavanaugh-Trump Court has anything to say about it.
Beyond that, during the Covid pandemic, Cohen was the victim of one of the most blatant, publicized examples abuse of power in recent memory when Bill Barr dragged him back to jail to prevent him publishing his first book in 2020.
FN: Inside William Barr’s Effort to Undermine N.Y. Prosecutors – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
So I’ve always felt that Cohen had a pretty righteous beef-and I still do. Hopefully in this case he finally gets some vindication and Trump faces punishment for the same crimes Cohen went to prison for. If it were a better, fairer world, Trump should go to prison-if Cohen went three years then Trump should face a term at least that long. But, of course, we hardly live in that world with the Republican Supreme Court doing everything in its power to shield Trump from any accountability whatsoever.
FN: In light of this fact it’s fairly stunning that just the other day someone on Twitter asked me why my hashtag is “Expand the Court”-why would you want to do that I was asked? I mean in light of Supreme Courts actions just the last month it’s hard to believe this is even a serious question.
Indeed, Cohen’s three year sentence always struck me as pretty harsh considering his level of cooperation with both the Mueller and SDNY investigations. But there’s the rub. While Mueller expressed great satisfaction with Michael Cohen’s cooperation, the SDNY was considerably less impressed. SDNY’s standards in cooperation, to be sure, are particularly strict and stringent. In principle if you testify for them in exchange for a plea bargain, you have to tell them everything not just everything related to the specific facts around your testimony.
Cohen was prosecuted for a number of things unrelated to the catch and kill payments he made on Trump’s behalf in 2016-tax evasion, fraud regarding his taxi medallion company, etc. And this brings us to his most recent book.
Revenge in this story can refer to a few things. Cohen’s own explicit meaning refers to the idea that Trump utilized his own DOJ to punish Cohen for his disloyalty-the title of his first book-that Barr jailed him to prevent him publishing.
But it also could refer to Cohen’s own-understandable desire for his own revenge-or at least vindication. What’s interesting though is how much of the book focuses less on what Trump did to him-Cohen plausibly believes he was prosecuted as revenge against his disloyalty, even less on the truly appalling episode when Barr violated his civil rights to prevent his publishing Disloyal, but rather on the unfairness that SDNY every investigated and indicted him in the first place.
However, two things especially have led me to see Cohen in something of a new-at least somewhat less favorable light-and to look at the Steele Dossier again with fresh eyes.
1. In the book Cohen now asserts he was innocent of much of the conduct SDNY indicted and convicted himi for-he claims either he did nothing wrong with his tax medallion business and did not evade income taxes or that if he did do anything wrong in either case it was trivial and negligible and he was only indicted for political reasons.
Understandably he discusses the idea that Trump’s hacks were behind it. But he also goes further and suggests the original investigation was largely baseless.
2. He also takes pains in the book to quite categorically deny that Russian Collusion/Coordination/Conspiracy happened. Which is strange-why spend such a significant part of the book implicitly defending the 2016 Presidential campaign of the man Cohen argues behind his unfair and perhaps wrongful conviction?
How exactly does he know the Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia assuming he was out of the loop? But let’s start with 1.