As Republican leaders say the “black Tuesday” that left Donald Trump’s former campaign manager convicted of eight serious financial fraud felonies and his longtime personal attorney pleading guilty to a set of felonies that implicated the president in other felonies are not reasons to even think about removing him from office, rumblings within the GOP mainstream moan “how the hell did we get into this mess.”
Trump is praising former manager Paul Manafort as “a brave man” for refusing to “make up stories in order to get a deal” while he claims the longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, who protected him for decades, is lying about his involvement in hush money payments to a porn actress and a Playboy nude model to keep them quiet about affairs with him.
“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
In typical Trump fashion, he lied by claiming Manafort’s crimes were 12 years old. Some were. Others went back further but still others were also committed while he was managing Trump’s campaign, especially the ones that involved lying to banks to obtain fraudulent loans.
Trump lied, as he so often does.
Cohen, a “pit bull” style of attorney, was Trump’s fixer, the lawyer who replaced Roy Cohn, who came to prominence as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s “fixer” and a lawyer with a shady past.
Cohen now says he began to have serious doubts about Trump when he watched his client cozy up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Says Cohen attorney Lanny Davis:
Helsinki was a significant turning point, as he worried about the future of our country with the president of the United States aligning with somebody who everybody in his intelligence community who he appointed, including [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats, said that Putin interfered and tried to help Trump get elected. And Trump is the only one left denying that. And that shook up Mr. Cohen.
On ABC’s Good Morning America last month, Cohen said:
As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same. Simply accepting the denial of Mr. Putin is unsustainable.
That upset Trump, who claims to value loyalty over all else.
Adds Davis:
Michael Cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel, in my opinion, regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI. Donald Trump violated criminal law. He may not be able to be indicted. That’s an unclear question, but there’s no dispute here. He directed Michael Cohen to do something that was criminal. Michael did it and admitted to it.
(Trump’s) lawyers wrote the special counsel and said that he directed Michael Cohen to make these payments. So the answer is, yes, he committed a crime. When a lawyer makes an admission of fact on behalf of a client, that is dispositive evidence. It’s not disputable evidence.
Donald John Trump claims that never happened. He also said former President Barack Obama was born in Nigeria and did not have a real birth certificate. Obama’s official birth certificate shows he was born in Hawaii when what the state was an American territory.
That was only one of the thousands of lies Trump has told over the years and Fact Checking services say he now average 16 lies a day as president.
It is past time to show this liar the door…and that door should lead to a prison cell.
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1 thought on “Making Trump pay for his felonies”
One does have to wonder just how dumb Mr. Cohen is. “And that shook up Mr. Cohen.”. Really. Some of us who aren’t that bright saw this coming since the primaries.
Alternately, Mr. Cohen is quite bright, and has seen the end of the track coming for the gravy train. As long as he could cheerfully loot the place he was happy with all kinds of behavior, but now he’s getting out while he still (sort of) can. A few years in prison isn’t so bad for someone with a few [dozen] million squirreled away that he can enjoy in all innocence later on.
Prior probability suggests he’s pretty sharp. Hmm. Jon
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