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On 4 occasions Cohen said, under oath, that "the job he wanted" (and got) was being personal attorney for the President of the United States. @PreetBharara, you've here retweeted a tweet that falsely says "Cohen denied aspiring to work for Trump during testimony before Congress."
1/ Words matter—especially to lawyers. @dcexaminer *could've* said "Cohen denied aspiring to work for [the] Trump [administration] during testimony before Congress," but that might not have gotten notice from @PreetBharara—as it would've been too nuanced to make sufficient waves.
2/ I and many others—indeed a majority of those polled in the most recent public polling—found Cohen credible in part because a *lawyer* saying (in paraphrase) "I wanted to be the president's personal attorney rather than work in the White House Counsel's Office" makes *sense*.
3/ The point of Cohen's testimony was that he was in thrall to Trump until his life fell apart. That meant saying dumb things—under Trump's influence. Why not chalk this up to that—while acknowledging that, to Cohen, "personal lawyer" *would've* been better than a government job?
4/ As Trump's personal lawyer, Cohen would 1) make more money, 2) never be FOIAed, 3) not be under the public microscope, 4) not be forced to abandon the pseudo-legal strategies he'd been using for years. In the WH, he'd have been exposed as a *bad lawyer*. So yeah—I believe him.
5/ Cohen's claim that being personal lawyer to the President of the United States is "exactly the job I wanted" is so plausible on so many levels, I have no idea why we're looking backward to a time when Cohen has *admitted* he was publicly spouting BS in public and private. /end
PS/ Here's the worst part: Cohen's public statement was actually that "it'd have to be a role I'd be comfortable with," and that it *could* be a *political* rather than *governmental* role—i.e. personal attorney to the President, the very role he received. cnsnews.com/video/flashbac…
