CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi, Gloria Borger, and Justice correspondent Evan Perez nailed it in today’s article, “Trump says ‘inconceivable’ that Cohen recorded conversation about ex-Playmate payment” (https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/21/politics/donald-trump-michael-cohen-taping/index.html).
Michael Cohen’s license to practice law in New York has not yet been revoked.
And unlike former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, he’s not in jail, and he doesn’t want to go there either.
As Trump’s Fixer-in-Chief, Cohen was one of Trump’s most trusted lawyers within the Trump Organization, and Cohen encouraged him to run for the highest office in the land. He wanted Trump to appoint him to a cushy fixer-type job in the White House. As recently as this year, the two super-brash New Yorkers were seen socially at Mar-a-Lago.
He was so good at fixing situations for Trump that he paid hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, who has shown no shyness at all in telling the world that she had an affair with the current occupant of the Oval Office — an office that comes with a lot of nukes.
Trump has been married three times, and his dalliances with women other than his wife are well known. Why do you think he was once the owner of the Miss Universe contest? Do you think it was so each successful Miss Universe contestant could receive a scholarship to Trump University?
Enter Karen McDougal, Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in December 1997. McDougal claims she had a ten-month affair with Trump. Guess who denies it?
Lawyers are supposed to represent their clients and to advocate in their best interests, so why would Cohen secretly record a conversation he had with Trump in September 2016, in Trump Tower?
Perhaps more to the point, why would Trump, this morning, erupt in anger (a quality he evidently cherishes?)
In April, the FBI raided Cohen’s office and residence, ending up with a small mountain of evidence. Included in that mountain is a recording which Cohen secretly made of a phone conversation that he had with his Trumpclient, two months before the November 2016 election. As the ever-robust and super-flamboyant Rudy Giuliani has said publicly, in that recorded phone conversation, Cohen and Trump discussed payment via Cohen to McDougal so she wouldn’t talk (in a National Enquirer story which that infamous tabloid planned not to publish because its editor thinks the world of Trump) about her affair with Trump, right before the election. But Giuliani, now Trump’s personal lawyer, thinks that’s no big deal.
Telling the truth is not a virtue to which Trump aspires — for example, witness his semantic twists and turns since Helsinki. Let’s call him the Liar-in-Chief, but Putin’s better at it.
Our crack investigator, associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman, has discovered even more tapes in the possession of the FBI.
Those tapes reveal that Trump explained in detail to Cohen why he so desperately wants to have a love affair with Vladimir Putin.
Cohen considers Rev. Al Sharpton as a great person to talk to, and the Rev is eager to talk about that tomorrow (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/20/trump-michael-cohen-tape-payments-734950.
Isn’t it great these days to be a citizen of the USA?