Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer”, Michael Cohen, testified this week in Alvin Bragg’s “Hush Money Case”. It’s one of four active criminal cases against Trump and the first to go to trial. A year ago it was considered to be the weakest case against Trump with the fewest potential consequences. That was then. Thanks to the partiality of Trump-appointed judges, it’s very likely the only case that will see trial before the 2024 election.
As things turned out, Alvin Bragg’s prosecution brought a howitzer to a knife fight. While none of us saw the trial on TV, just Trump’s unhinged cookie-cutter bleatings in the hall during court recesses, most legal eagles who were in attendance said that Alvin Bragg’s prosecution was devastating and technically brilliant. Prosecutors kept their case focused on three key witnesses: Stormy Daniels (the porn star recipient of the hush money), David Pecker (the publisher of the sleazy National Enquirer and self-avowed “eyes and ears” protector of Trump’s seedy reputation) and Michael Cohen.
Cohen’s testimony was the glue that tied all previous testimony into one coherent and powerful package for the jury.
Who exactly is Michael Cohen? I wasn’t sure myself until I read his book, “Disloyal“, where he described in detail and with an engaging narrative style who and what he was to Donald J. Trump.
From 2006 to 2018 Cohen was Trump’s “fixer”. His hit man. While he was a lawyer (a profession from which he is currently barred thanks to his work for Trump) he never spent a day in court for Trump. His job was to do the dirty work that Trump is too cowardly to do himself: intimidating the board at Trump Resorts not to file Chapter 11, threatening Trump-constructed condos who want to knock his glorious name from their facades and of course paying hush money to porn stars.
Cohen wrote that nobody knew Trump’s dark, reptilian underbelly better than he, not even his own kids. It was Cohen’s job to do the extra-legal jobs on which Trump didn’t want his fingerprints… and that brings us to today.
Cohen’s testimony was allegedly slam-dunk proof of Trump’s culpability in committing document fraud, a charge that is only more believable since his $450 million fine in the preceding New York civil case for… you guessed it… document fraud.
Trump’s defense presented no witnesses of its own, including Trump who had previously said that he was “definitely” testifying. Instead, their strategy is to paint Cohen as a liar on a mission to vindictively destroy Trump by Democrats trying to interfere in the 2024 election. Never mind that Cohen is, like 95% of the witnesses against him in all four trials, a life-long Republican. In fact, most of them were once in Trump’s inner circle so it’s more accurate to say that his prosecutions are a conspiracy of Republicans who know Trump all too well.
That Cohen is a liar is something that both Cohen and prosecutors admit without reservation. He was, after all. sentenced to prison for his dishonesty. What Trump’s lawyers dance around however is the fact that he was paid to lie in that case. By and for Trump. That was his job.
I know literally no liberals or Democrats who believe that Michael Cohen is anything but what he is. What they believe is that Cohen is a lying, double-dealing crook with ties to the Russian mob and who lied when it benefited him or his client to do so. In other words, he’s a baby Trump. It’s why Trump liked him and used him as his “personal attorney”. He was corrupt and corruptible. That, and Cohen has the courage that Trump lacks to get nasty in peoples’ faces. Problem is, there’s no benefit for Cohen to lie in this trial. He already served his time for his role in this crime. Now it’s Trump’s turn.
What “libtards” actually believed back in 2018 was that Cohen would keep his mouth shut and Trump would pardon him just as he had done with his other corrupt and convicted minions, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos. Pardoning these lowlifes made it almost impossible for prosecutors to flip them as witnesses in their current investigations.
So why wasn’t Cohen pardoned too? That’s a question for Trump and his vindictive brain but it’s probably because Trump knew from his lapdog Attorney General that federal prosecutors were talking with Cohen so he might flip. Keeping Cohen in prison was Trump’s way of sending a message to Cohen to keep his mouth shut. In mob parlance, Cohen “knew too much”, far more than pissants like Bannon and Stone. He had been a critical and knowing part of Trump’s unethical and criminal dealings for almost 12 years. As we know from the conga line of former Trump “best people” who were introduced to the underside of his well-used bus, loyalty is a one-way street in Trump Town. If you become a potential threat to the wannabe godfather, you get whacked.
Trump boxed Cohen out after his conviction and then made a lot of nasty statements about him that led Cohen to believe that Trump would not only NOT pardon him but would use him as a patsy going forward on which to blame even more illegal behavior.
Cohen is simply repaying the same lack of loyalty to Trump that Henry Hill did to Paul Vario when the latter turned his back on him. Mob rules. It didn’t mean that Hill’s, or Cohen’s, testimony was false. On the contrary, what we saw was documented evidence against Trump in the form of checks with his name on them, audio tapes with his voice and former co-conspirators ratting him out. That was good enough for Gotti.
