Oh Cohen you poor sap.
Trump is changing the destination of that bus to Cohen as we speak.
Let me splain’ to you about Trump “Loyalty”
One way street I’m afraid.
Maybe I missed in the firehose of news the last few weeks. Has Trump formally severed his lawyer/client relationship with Cohen? If not that would seem to be a notable bit of news to chew over, yet I don’t read of the papers, mags or TV networks comment on it. Doesn’t it seem natural if your attorney is under investigation for crimes you may also be implicated in to announce either a termination or suspension of the relationship pending disposition of the issues in play?
No, I’m his lawyer. Pay me. Donald and I go way way back. Bought his steaks, bought his wine, took his classes – I’m the real deal. Do not listen to that Michael Cohen, I’m the guy you want to invest your money in. Send me a private message and we’ll get things going.
"It was almost as if we were hiring him as a lobbyist.”
I believe the phrase you’re looking for is “paying an extortionist”.
I’m his personal lawyer,” the source, an unnamed GOP strategist, told CNN.
Forgive me, but what part of that isn’t true?
Just because Cohen’s heavily involved with influence-peddling doesn’t mean he’s not tRump’s personal lawyer. He is…and as far as I can tell, he hasn’t been fired, or had his representation of tRump taken away from him, and is probably still getting some kind of contingency or retainer fee. Sooooo…
If tRump doesn’t like Cohen’s influence-peddling on his behalf, if tRump was a normal person or the least bit bothered by this (he’s not in either respect) he’d do something about this. But, noooooo. He’s OK with this or he’d let it be known he was done with Cohen and has let him go.
Yep. Exactly what I was thinking and expressed as well.
Its sort of like keeping Flynn on 18 days past when he should have fired him. He hasn’t learned anything since those early days.
Depends on what Cohen has on Trump, or Trump thinks he has on him, I would guess. I havent seen anything about him being dismissed either.
It’s a bit up in the air, from what I have been able to suss out. There has been no formal statement indicating that he has severed their relationship, but he has, at various times, made statements indicating that Cohen served as his attorney…in the past. While not specifically stating it, it does seem to imply that Cohen is not currently representing him in any legal matters.
Which is probably a safe assumption, as I seriously doubt Michael Cohen is representing anyone in court these days, including himself.
Technically, however, that would potentially raise fraud questions if these stories are true. If Cohen was not on retainer, and was not actively representing Donald, then telling a corporation that you are (not were) “the President’s lawyer” would be misrepresentation.
However, I think Cohen’s mounting legal problems are MUCH bigger than how he misrepresented himself to potential clients who refused his services. Its the clients who DID pay that is causing the bigger headaches.
“I have the best relationship with the President on the outside, and you need to hire me.”
Looking forward to seeing what kind of relationship they have on the inside.
Waiting to hear, “It was just a joke”
Like all good comedy, timing is the key. When did he make his sales pitch vis-à-vis getting thrown under the bus.
As of April 5th, just last month…he made a statement in present tense on Air Force One about this. “Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael”. There has been nothing since then disavowing that admission.
“A tiny, tiny little fraction was extortion.”
Cohen is the tip of the iceberg and in some ways a distraction.
Well worth the read. As a former federal employee, I am dismayed. The good news: organizations that constantly lie to each other and the public will inevitably collapse. The bad news: there may be few or no pieces left over to put back together.
Midway through its second year, Trump’s White House is at war within and without, racing to banish the “disloyals” and to beat back threatening information. Bit by bit, the White House is becoming Trump’s Emerald City: isolated, fortified against nonbelievers, entranced by its mythmaker, and constantly vulnerable to the risks of revelation.
To keep Zinke’s attention, staff hewed to subjects related to his personal experience. “I briefed him on invasive species,” Clement said. “It was one issue where it looked like we might actually get a little traction, because in Montana they had just discovered mussels that could really screw up the agricultural economy.” The strategy failed. “He didn’t understand what we were talking about. He started talking about other species—ravens and coyotes. He was filling the intellectual vacuum with nonsense. It’s amazing that he has such confidence, given his level of ignorance.”
…
In one agency after another, I encountered a pattern: on controversial issues, the Administration is often not writing down potentially damaging information. After members of Congress requested details on Carson’s decorating expenses, Marcus Smallwood, the departmental-records officer at HUD, wrote an open letter to Carson, saying, “I do not have confidence that HUD can truthfully provide the evidence being requested by the House Oversight Committee because there has been a concerted effort to stop email traffic regarding these matters.” At the Department of the Interior, the Inspector General’s office investigated Zinke’s travel expenses but was stymied by “absent or incomplete documentation” that would “distinguish between personal, political, and official travel.” According to Ruch, of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, when environmentalists filed suit to discover if industry lobbyists had influenced a report on Superfund sites, they were told, “There are no minutes, no work product, no materials.” Ruch added, “The task-force report was a product of immaculate conception.” He believes that the Administration is “deliberately avoiding creating records.”
…
At the ICE office in San Francisco, Schwab knew that the numbers were nonsense. Internally, the agency had projected that, out of a thousand and twenty targets in the area, it would be lucky to find two hundred. (In the event, it arrested two hundred and thirty-two.) Schwab has been a government spokesman for more than a decade, first in the Army, where he served at the North Korean border, and then at NASA. “I contacted the headquarters and said, ‘How are we going to respond to this when we know this is inaccurate?’ ” he recalled. Schwab was told not to elaborate or correct the error; instead, he should refer reporters to existing statements. “That just shook me,” he told me.k
I needed to be assured that this money didn’t flow from Cohen’s coffers into Trump’s.
I still think there is more scandal here.
The New Yorker’s become a deeply depressing magazine for me to read lately. Not just this story, but the detailed reporting by Farrow and Mayer on Schneiderman and his crimes against women.
I’m sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I’m beginning to suspect the story that Cohen was frozen out of the White House (and was upset about it – “miss you, boss”) is bullshit. Maybe he and Donald thought Cohen could be more effective working shakedown scams from the outside with some (illusory) form of deniability. Everything in TrumpWorld is about fleecing the marks and keeping the kayfabe going.
I think you are almost assuredly correct. Again, there is little to no reporting on the disbursements from this slush fund yet. Where that money went (literally, follow the money trail) is going to open up all sorts of cans of worms.
These are deeply depressing times and the truth of reality is almost always unsettling. I’d rather be a depressed realist than a mindlessly upbeat naif.