David Corn: Why Michael Cohen Is a Triple Threat for Donald Trump

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/why-michael-cohen-is-a-triple-threat-for-donald-trump/

Why Michael Cohen Is a Triple Threat for Donald Trump
Business deals, affairs, Russia ties—the president’s former fixer knows all.
David Corn
Jul. 26, 2018 7:06 AM


When Michael Cohen handed over to CNN (via his lawyer Lanny Davis) a tape he secretly recorded of Donald Trump and him discussing a payment intended to keep a Playboy model silent about her alleged affair with Trump, the former Trump fixer signaled that he indeed has defected and is willing to cooperate fully with prosecutors, including special counsel Robert Mueller. This marks what promises to be a decisive moment in not only the Trump-Russia scandal but all the Trump scandals (known and unknown), for Cohen appears to have been involved in almost every aspect of Trump’s deeds and misdeeds. With Cohen blowing the whistle, Mueller and other prosecutors will end up with a symphony of leads. After all, he likely has inside information on each of the three rings of the Trump scandal circus: the Russia affair, the business affairs, the affairs affair. Make a Venn diagram of all this, and Cohen is dead center. This ex-consigliere poses a triple threat to the godfather he once ruthlessly served.

Let’s start with Russia. Cohen intersects with the known narrative in at least two ways. He was there when Trump cut a deal with Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his pop-star son Emin to hold the Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013. When Trump gathered with the Agalarovs in Las Vegas in June 2013 to formalize their partnership, Cohen accompanied the celebrity businessman and was part of a celebratory dinner at a high-end restaurant. That is, Cohen was present at the creation of the bond forged between Trump and this Putin-friendly oligarch. (Also in attendance was an Agalarov associate who had been linked to Russian money laundering.) This could well be significant for investigators because it was the Trump-Agalarov connection that led to the now notorious Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016—when Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, then the campaign chairman, met with a Russian emissary whom they were told would provide them dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a secret Kremlin plot to help Trump.

snip//

And then there is everything else in Trump World—all of Trump’s financial dealings. Trump’s reputation as a businessman is not one of probity and prudence. He has long had—and lied about—business connections to organized crime. In 2010, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., opened an investigation into whether Trump, Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump had committed fraud related to the selling of units in Trump SoHo, a 46-story luxury condominium-hotel. (In 2012, the probe was dropped. Vance had received campaign donations from Trump’s personal lawyer, but he has claimed that had no bearing on the case.) A sketchy deal that Trump began in 2014 to develop a Trump Hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (The hotel never opened.) And many of Trump’s other projects in the United States and abroad have sparked legal tussles. Cohen could be expected to have much to say about any Trump wheeling-and-dealing that may have crossed lines.

For years, Cohen’s office was near the boss’. As a friend of Cohen points out, Cohen “worked in an environment that was total chaos. People were constantly running in and out of Trump’s office. The man had a 30-second attention span. Everyone knows everything. Everyone is talking. And there are no secrets.” In the middle of Hurricane Donald, Cohen was as close to the mast as anyone. He may well know of Trump actions deserving of investigation that prosecutors for Mueller and the US attorney in New York have never taken a gander at. If Cohen ends up a cooperative witness, one question will be how far federal prosecutors want to—or are willing to—dig into Trump’s business. A whole new terrain could be wide open for exploration.

Several years ago, a lawyer who worked for the Trump Organization told an acquaintance of mine, “My job boils down to doing two things. First there is this: I say, ‘Mr. Trump, you can’t do that. You really can’t do that, Mr. Trump.’ Then I say, ‘Mr. Trump, why did you do that?'” Cohen was not that type of attorney. He was the handyman who came in after one of the regular lawyers had gone through those two steps—a Mr. Fix-it for a rule-bending executive.

In recent weeks, Cohen has been compared by some to John Dean, the Nixon White House lawyer who eventually testified that Nixon was in on the Watergate cover-up and who became a quasi-hero of that scandal. No doubt, Lanny Davis is advising Cohen on how best to rehabilitate himself and change his image from a sleazy pit bull who was willing to do anything for Trump (even take a bullet!) to a repentant henchman who now is eager to serve the truth. But if Dean was a torpedo that sank Nixon, Cohen is more an aircraft carrier. He probably has ammunition that can strike multiple Trump targets. His cooperation with prosecutors could dramatically reshape and perhaps expand the Trump investigations. He is someone that Trump ought to fear. There likely are bodies buried in Trumpland, and if you want to raise the dead, Cohen is the guy to see.

[donkeypoofed]

1. Great article! thanks for sharing!

Ooooooh,I can't wait for the movie to come out or the Trial of this Century to start - whichever is first.

I wanna know everything !

[FakeNoose]

2. Cohen should have some valuable info about RNC campaign financing too

Keep digging guys! It's probably all there but it won't be easy to find.

[2naSalit]

3. Btween him and

that accountant, Weisselberg, that pretty much will be the whole crime family history in two units.

[warmfeet]

4. I can hardly wait,

for the asshole in bullshit to go down.

Leavenworth for life.

Lock the asshole up already.

[sandensea]

5. "And then there is everything else in Trump World--all of Trump's financial dealings"

There's where it'll get really interesting.

Among the worms likely to crawl out of the woodwork: Mafia connections, pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein, drug traffickers like Joe Weichselbaum, the escort services (by which he met his future wife, our current First Lady), plus the Kushners and all their financial monkey business, etc.

I sure as hell hope someone makes a movie about all this.

[Wednesdays]

9. Movie, nothing.

It'll be a Netflix 26-episode series.

[sandensea]

10. Word!

[Hekate]

6. KnR

[BadGimp]

7. My nipples are hard...

I meant to say, Minions, my Minions are hard.

[calimary]

8. What a tangled web we weave...