YOU GOT TO KNOW WHEN TO HOLD 'EM, WHEN TO FOLD 'EM
Appearances can be deceiving, but it appears to me that Michael Cohen is leaning towards folding ‘em. Reports from inside the Fuhrerbunker say that Trump now believes that Cohen – who once said he’d take a bullet for Trump – is going to flip.
Cohen was a tough guy when it came to threatening women on Trump’s behalf, but when the FBI came knocking, he meekly thanked them for their professionalism. Then he said, “Do I need this in my life? No. Do I want to be involved in this? No.” Perhaps even more significantly, he said those things on CNN, not Fox or Breitbart. He sounds like a man who knows the jig is up.
There is more informed speculation (i.e., based on leaks from Cohen’s legal team) about what the FBI was after. According to the New York Times, the warrant was executed by the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. That sounds ominous all by itself. They were looking for information on payoffs to women during the presidential campaign, both from The National Enquirer and from Cohen himself, as potentially illegal campaign contributions. What did Cohen know – and do -about the infamous Access Hollywood tape?
And then there were the famous taxi medallions. The Times says Cohen once operated a fleet of 200 cabs in New York City. Did that involve tax fraud and/or money laundering? If Cohen bought high, at c. $200,000 per medallion, that would be $40 million worth of taxis. One theory is that Cohen borrowed money using the medallions as collateral. This theory suggests that when the value of the medallions dropped significantly with the advent of Uber and Lyft, Cohen couldn’t pay his debts. Time will tell.
Oh, and the Cohen investigation is being run by Robert Khuzami, a Deep State Muslim sleeper agent activated by President Obama during his last days in office. No, wait. I got that wrong.
Khuzami is a Republican. He spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention and donated to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. He was born in Brooklyn, to Lebanese Christian parents. He helped prosecute “blind sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Now he’s after Michael Cohen.
My understanding is that Donald Trump’s pardon powers cover federal crimes, which probably includes violations of campaign finance laws. I don’t know what’s up with the taxi medallion thing, so I won’t speculate about a presidential pardon there. It’s hard to imagine, though, that Cohen didn’t break a few state laws along the way.
Word on the street is that Trump trusted Cohen more than anyone outside his family, and their relationship goes back to 2006. He is to the Trump crime family what Tom Hagen was to the Corleones. If Khuzami makes Cohen an offer he can’t refuse, every tree in the forest will fall. (Two 70s metaphors for the price of one.)
Michael Cohen isn’t the only one who’s deciding that the jig is up. Paul Ryan, having achieved his boyhood dream of rewriting the tax code to reward rich people at the expense of poor people, has decided to take the money and run. Ryan isn’t nearly as smart as he and his fans in the mainstream media think he is, but he can read the writing on the wall. He’ll get a comfortable sinecure from some right-wing billionaire.
In some ways, though, the most amusing jig-is-up story so far this week comes from right-winger Erick W. Erickson, who printed a lightly expurgated conversation with a Republican congressman that took place in a D.C.-area Safeway supermarket (link below). This politician, who appears on Fox to defend Trump in public, told Erickson privately, "It's like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can't help himself. He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him.”
It gets better. Take a look.