(THREAD) This is a live thread of the testimony of Michael Cohen in Donald Trump’s criminal trial. Its author is a NYT-bestselling Trump biographer and former criminal defense attorney. I’ll not only be covering the testimony live but adding essential background.
Please RETWEET.
Please RETWEET.
1/ First, some information on my own brief association with Michael Cohen, in the interest of full disclosure. I’ve been interviewed by Michael Cohen on his podcast, and thereafter was invited back many times; I did not accept those invitations. I have spoken to Michael by phone.
2/ In speaking with Michael by phone, he floated (at a minimum) the idea of me ghostwriting or co-writing his second book, the follow-up to his #1 New York Times bestseller DISLOYAL—a book I candidly thought was surprisingly excellent.
I had no interest whatsoever in doing this.
I had no interest whatsoever in doing this.
3/ I do not take the view of Michael Cohen that MSNBC has taken, that after his plea to several federal felonies, a federal prison sentence, and a period of home detention, he is a changed man. I have represented thousands of criminal defendants, and I do not believe this at all.
4/ I believe that Michael Cohen is the same man today that he was five years ago, ten years, and fifteen years ago.
I do not think he was chastened by his conviction, I think he was angered by it—albeit not without good reason. Our justice system usually goes after the big fish.
I do not think he was chastened by his conviction, I think he was angered by it—albeit not without good reason. Our justice system usually goes after the big fish.
5/ But in criminal cases and potential criminal cases involving Donald Trump, the behavior of our criminal justice system is categorically different: tiny fish are gobbled up while the big fish—Trump—is self-consciously let go to commit more crimes. Thus: washingtonpost.com/investigations…
6/ So Cohen has a right to be angry; when he was federally convicted in 2018—*by the Trump administration DOJ* (which, in the silly, benighted view of Donald Trump, would mean he was convicted *by Trump*)—it should have mean a means for the FBI to get to Trump.
But it wasn’t.
But it wasn’t.
7/ The Trump FBI—led by a Trump appointee—and the Trump DOJ, led by a Trump appointee, was happy to put Cohen in prison. And though it referred to Trump as an unindicted coconspirator, it thereafter did nothing to pursue him but dither and delay to run the statute of limitations.
8/ This enabled Trump to preposterously claim, just weeks ago, that he was in no way involved in the Cohen federal case—again, he was the *unindicted co-conspirator*—and misrepresent the case as being about taxi medallions when it was almost entirely about his own federal crimes.
9/ The Trump FBI and Trump DOJ letting Trump off the hook—which, again, by Trump’s own standard of how the FBI and DOJ work, was Trump corruptly directing his own people to spare him—also so delayed a *state* investigation of Trump’s crimes that it led to the odd case we see now.
10/ The case Trump now faces is odd in several ways. One way—which Trump is obsessed with—is that the events it considers happened in 2015, 2016, and 2017, which seems a long time ago until you realize that the Trump FBI and Trump DOJ could’ve moved on Trump in 2018 but wouldn’t.
11/ While Donald Trump may not have been eligible to go to trial while still president, he *could’ve* been indicted. Instead, the Trump FBI and Trump DOJ indicted and imprisoned a small fish who *obviously* should have been used to indict the big fish (Trump) in 2018 but was not.
12/ And Trump was involved in the 2018 Cohen case far more than anyone realizes (and certainly far more than the pathological liar Trump, whose spectacular lie is that he had nothing to do with it at all, will admit). Why? Because Cohen was also charged with lying to Congress...
13/ ...which is something *Trump and his lawyers pushed him to do* to *hide facts about the Trump-Russia scandal*. Remember the Trump-Russia scandal? The one Trump said he had nothing to hide in? He and his lawyers got Cohen to commit criminal perjury to hide the truth about it.
14/ We will return to that in this thread, have no fear.
15/ But the *other* effect of the Trump FBI and Trump DOJ letting unindicted co-conspirator Trump off the hook in 2018 to punish Trump’s friend, attorney, fixer, and employee—the little fish—instead was that the *state* had to elevate Trump’s charges to felonies to prosecute him.
16/ Some of you may recall my Stormy Daniels testimony thread, which went viral last week (link below).
In it, I noted the many ways Trump’s corruption ultimately screws *Trump* over—only for him to later blame others for that which he brought on himself.
In it, I noted the many ways Trump’s corruption ultimately screws *Trump* over—only for him to later blame others for that which he brought on himself.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1788324850685083673
17/ In the case of Daniels’ testimony, Trump ran the same defense a Rape defendant in the 1940s would—the disgusting, contemptible “nuts and sluts” defense, in which a man who *definitely* had sex with a woman claims she’s crazy and slutty to discredit her and the *clear* truth.
18/ With Trump, his FBI and DOJ burying the federal felonies against him via intentional delay—in the same way we now know the FBI and DOJ blocked investigating Trump over January 6 for years, and delayed searching his Florida home for stolen docs for months—ended up hurting him.
19/ The State of New York could’ve and would’ve brought misdemeanors against Trump in 2018 using Michael Cohen’s testimony—with almost no chance of jail—but had to wait for the DOJ and FBI to finish their work.
But the DOJ and FBI only aimed to run out the clock on Trump’s case.
But the DOJ and FBI only aimed to run out the clock on Trump’s case.
20/ And they *did* run out the clock—in *two* ways. By taking no action on Trump they left the *federal* case for the Biden FBI and DOJ, which of course was terrified of looking political by charging him (which is what Bill Barr, the Trump lackey and 2024 voter, was counting on).
21/ But they *also* thereby ran out the clock on any *state-level* misdemeanors against Trump.
The Trump DOJ and Trump FBI had evidence on Trump they were withholding from New York so it could not prosecute Trump on state misdemeanors before the statute of limitations ran out.
The Trump DOJ and Trump FBI had evidence on Trump they were withholding from New York so it could not prosecute Trump on state misdemeanors before the statute of limitations ran out.
22/ In fact, the feds held this information the State of New York was entitled to for *so long* that it was only just sent over a few *weeks* ago—and almost caused a delay in Trump’s Manhattan trial until after the election (which Trump Legal tried to make happen, but failed at).
23/ So New York found a legal theory—one I personally believe is both sound and warranted, if novel—to elevate to felonies the misdemeanors the Trump FBI and Trump DOJ had blocked it from.
*That’s* why Trump is facing 34 felonies now: because of his own administration’s actions.
*That’s* why Trump is facing 34 felonies now: because of his own administration’s actions.
24/ (For those confused, felonies have longer statutes of limitations than misdemeanors, so a state prosecutor has *much* more time to bring a felony than a misdemeanor. All of this explains why we are dealing in 2024 with a case that involves facts from 2015 and even earlier.)
25/ So yes—Michael Cohen has a right to be angry. He watched Trump pardon *every other criminal co-conspirator* or *arguable* co-conspirator—Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort—while Trump had *such confidence* that Cohen was his dog that he wouldn’t save him.
26/ And I do think that was how Cohen took what happened to him.
As we will see in this live thread of Cohen’s testimony, Cohen was *more* loyal to Trump than *anyone else* in Trump’s orbit, but Trump would do *nothing* to save him in a case Trump was entwined with *intimately*.
As we will see in this live thread of Cohen’s testimony, Cohen was *more* loyal to Trump than *anyone else* in Trump’s orbit, but Trump would do *nothing* to save him in a case Trump was entwined with *intimately*.
27/ So in being interviewed by Cohen; in speaking with Cohen by phone; in reading Cohen’s book, then learning more about what was behind it; in writing a NYT bestseller (Proof of Collusion, Simon & Schuster, 2018) largely about Cohen; in looking at the possibility of working...
28/ ...with Michael Cohen, I instantly knew it was not something I wanted to do or could do consistent with my principles. I’ve known too many men like Cohen—and I won’t sacrifice my principles *one iota* for attention, money, fame, eyeballs, or whatever MSNBC thought it got...
29/ ...by bringing Cohen on-air repeatedly and never canceling on him. (In the interest of full disclosure, MSNBC has invited me on 11 times; ten times it cancelled on me and one time I declined, after which I told my agent I was no longer interested in working with the network).
30/ My point—in bringing my own story into this—is to note that (a) I don’t find Cohen trustworthy; (b) I don’t admire his motives; and (c) he’s useful for many parties he can be profitable for, from MSNBC—on whose air he says what viewers want to hear—to the State of New York.
31/ But *none of that means he is not telling the truth*.
32/ Cohen telling the *truth* in 2024 benefits him in too many ways to count.
Telling the truth *does* get him on MSNBC in a sort of rehabilitation tour—as the truth is *very* bad for Trump *and* what MSNBC viewers want to hear.
And the truth is *very* bad for Trump in NYC now.
Telling the truth *does* get him on MSNBC in a sort of rehabilitation tour—as the truth is *very* bad for Trump *and* what MSNBC viewers want to hear.
And the truth is *very* bad for Trump in NYC now.
33/ Michael Cohen also knows better than almost anyone alive—because unlike almost anyone, he’s actually gone to federal prison for lying—that lying to protect Trump in 2024 would not only not benefit him at all but could lead to him going to jail again on a state Perjury charge.
34/ He also knows that he already issued proffers and pleaded guilty at the *federal* level—where telling the verifiable truth was central to his plea deal—so deviating from the truth he was compelled to tell back then would be fruitless and disastrous for him right now in 2024.
35/ But it goes so far beyond this.
36/ First, Michael Cohen knows that *Trump already admitted to sufficient facts to be convicted in Manhattan* in his civil case with Stormy Daniels, as Ryan Goodman of Just Security recently noted on Twitter with video from his own recent appearance on CNN. And that is 100% true.
37/ Here is the video:
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1788920296163971274
38/ So for all that Trump pretends that this is a case about the credibility of Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen—and for all that media and sometimes even prosecutors in New York seem to be playing along with this illusion—Trump already confessed in court filings to these crimes.
39/ So why should Cohen *not* tell the truth, when a) the truth hurts a man he wants to hurt, b) the man he wants to hurt has already admitted in court that the truth Cohen wants to tell *is* the truth, c) Cohen already admitted the truth to the FBI and d) lying could jail Cohen?
40/ It’s only Trump’s *desperate defense*—and nothing more—that imagines that the nuts-and-sluts defense (as it is sadly called) he’s using against Stormy Daniels, or the basic credibility attack he’s planning on Michael Cohen, can change the *inalterable* fact that he is guilty.
41/ We don’t need to pretend Michael Cohen is an angel to believe him as he testifies today.
What most Americans do not understand—but anyone who works in the criminal justice system *does*—is that *most* criminal cases in the United States that depend on eyewitness testimony...
What most Americans do not understand—but anyone who works in the criminal justice system *does*—is that *most* criminal cases in the United States that depend on eyewitness testimony...
42/ ...revolve around witnesses who are themselves obvious bad actors. Either they’ve criminal records from other matters; acted criminally in this instance and cut a deal for leniency; or acted unethically in this instance in a way they’ll be challenged on in cross-examination.
43/ If witnesses in American criminal trials had to be angels, America’s justice system—and with it, America’s *rule of law*—would collapse *today*.
*That* is how vital to trial advocacy imperfect witnesses (and the plea deals often undergirding their testimony) are to America.
*That* is how vital to trial advocacy imperfect witnesses (and the plea deals often undergirding their testimony) are to America.
44/ But even this undercounts significantly how valuable, reliable and probative Cohen’s testimony is here. Why? Well, here we get into my unique experience in having written a NYT bestseller in which Michael Cohen is arguably the main character (the only other book, I suspect...
45/ ...that answers to this description, with respect to the Trump presidency, would be Cohen’s own DISLOYAL, which is, again, a surprisingly great read).
Simply put, what you really need to understand—and I say this as a Trump biographer—is how Donald Trump commits his crimes.
Simply put, what you really need to understand—and I say this as a Trump biographer—is how Donald Trump commits his crimes.
46/ Trump’s whole business empire is built on felonies—most notably Fraud (defrauding banks and the IRS); Theft (stealing from independent contractors by signing contracts with them he has no intention of honoring, which is a crime); Bribery (once he entered politics, he began...
47/ ...selling U.S. domestic and foreign policy *in advance* to the highest bidder, as he just did with U.S. energy policy); Sexual Assault (Trump appears to have committed clandestine sex crimes as a way of self-regulating his rampant sociopathy); and... yahoo.com/news/trump-sle…
48/ ...various other financial crimes relating to stealing from or defrauding investors, renters or potential renters, business partners and—of course—voters.
Donald Trump, as a U.S. brand, stands for the longest-running criminal enterprise outside various American mafia groups.
Donald Trump, as a U.S. brand, stands for the longest-running criminal enterprise outside various American mafia groups.
49/ What makes Trump special, though, are two things:
i) How he commits his crimes (to wit, with a very small number of co-conspirators—many of them bonded to him in variously impenetrable legal ways);
ii) how state and federal law enforcement studiously avoid investigating him.
i) How he commits his crimes (to wit, with a very small number of co-conspirators—many of them bonded to him in variously impenetrable legal ways);
ii) how state and federal law enforcement studiously avoid investigating him.
50/ I am not going to get into the second item in this thread, as it is too complicated. Suffice to say that (a) Donald Trump appears to have, per much major-media reporting, been an informant for the FBI against his own renters and business associates... businessinsider.com/trump-flipping…
51/ ...and (b) we have reporting confirming that from the moment Donald Trump began his political career the FBI *in particular* became loath to mess with him because (i) he has many fans in the FBI, particularly the NYC field office, and (ii) doing so would be politically messy.
52/ But as to the first item I mentioned, above—Donald Trump commits crimes via a *small network*, many of them legally bonded to him—*that* is essential to understanding the criminal trial Trump faces now, and the critical eyewitness testimony Cohen is giving in Manhattan today.
53/ As a Trump biographer who’s now published 4 books on the man in just the last 6 years (3 linked to below, one published in full on my Substack, PROOF), I know exactly who Trump commits his crimes and other misconduct with and through.
So does the FBI. amazon.com/dp/B089B15WBG?…
So does the FBI. amazon.com/dp/B089B15WBG?…
54/ Often it is attorneys like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen. (Other Trump attorneys who have been indicted include John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Christina Bobb, even as attorneys like Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have shown up in Trump scandals as well.)
55/ Sometimes it’s members of Trump’s family who Trump trusts not to betray him (Don Jr.); or men he’s paying to be loyal to him, lie for him, and go to jail for him (Allen Weisselberg); or men he knows to be foreign agents who *can’t* snitch or they’ll be killed (Paul Manafort).
56/ His most dangerous (to him) compatriots are those who are real friends—which is why he has almost no friends. The two people in this category would be Thomas Barrack—who was key in foreign-collusion investigations—and Howard Lorber, though he’s tight with Netanyahu via Jared.
57/ The one other category includes world-beater troublemakers like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, who Trump simply believes are so power-hungry, so deranged, so ideologically driven, and so unscrupulous that as long as he can *pardon* them he can work with them.
58/ Even taking into account all these categories, Cohen stands out as *the most loyal* Trump foot-soldier—a man with access to Trump secrets (I believe many of which he has not yet divulged because he believes divulging them would endanger him and his family) no one else has.
59/ Every time this century Donald Trump flirted with running for President of the United States before he actually did—most notably in 2008 and 2012—Michael Cohen was his de facto shadow campaign manager, the point man for determining the viability of a Trump political career.
60/ When Trump wanted to sell American foreign policy during the 2016 general election campaign, he turned to Michael Cohen to negotiate a clandestine Trump Tower Moscow deal throughout the entirety of that campaign—direct negotiation with the Kremlin!—and literally no one else.
61/ Even though Trump knew Manafort to be a Kremlin agent and had been working with him (with Manafort as his consultant) since the 1980s, he trusted Cohen more; even though he knew Felix Sater had Kremlin contacts and was his real estate guy for/in Russia, he trusted Cohen more.
62/ While Marc Kasowitz—another dodgy Trump lawyer—paid off ~100 women pre-election in 2015 and 2016 per then-Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon (who revealed this to author Michael Wolff), and Trump friend(ish) David Pecker aided with others, Cohen was the *constant* in that work.
63/ Trump and his family are infamously under the impression that as long as you have an attorney in the room, anything you say in a room is privileged and can never be revealed. This is factually and legally wrong in too many ways to count, but it explains the Trump obsession...
64/ ...with surrounding himself with lawyers who he believes he can order to commit crimes without there being any blowback to him, even in theory, in perpetuity. And the two men closest to him in this regard are Cohen and Giuliani, and Giuliani only because Cohen went to prison.
65/ Giuliani’s work to steal the 2020 presidential election for Trump by working with Kremlin agents in Ukraine began in late 2018, only after Cohen had pleaded guilty—after begging unsuccessfully for aid from Trump—which plea left Trump with no fixer. Giuliani was the new Cohen.
66/ Some of you may wonder why I’m offering this prelude as Cohen is under direct examination right now, so let me explain—as this *is* a Cohen testimony live thread.
First, understand that Cohen will be testifying for 2-3 days. We are in just the first hour of his testimony.
First, understand that Cohen will be testifying for 2-3 days. We are in just the first hour of his testimony.
67/ Second, understand that the fireworks we are waiting for will come on *cross-examination*, as Trump sends out one of his attorneys to do battle with a man who Trump *knows* is telling the truth, but whose credibility he also knows he can attack (ironically, because of what...
68/ ...Cohen has done for Trump in the past; it’s rather stunning to attack the credibility of a witness largely for the unethical, possibly illegal things *you* wanted them to do—and watched them do—on *your* behalf).
Third, the media in the room right now, *with exceptions*...
Third, the media in the room right now, *with exceptions*...
69/ ...have been part of the problem in covering this trial, not the solution. They are perfectly good stenographers of what Cohen is being asked in the moment, but they have given either no context *or the wrong context* for his testimony. And let me explain what I mean by that.
70/ Most in media frame Cohen’s testimony as a continuation of a “feud” between the two men—a framing that’s great for corporate-media ratings. It’s also—like most corporate-media framings—great for Trump, as it buys into his claim that Cohen’s testimony can only be retribution.
71/ But not only does Cohen have every motive to tell the truth; not only is he already formally *locked into* a narrative by prior pleas and representations; not only are all his credibility issues ones that *Trump created* by ordering him to do dodgy sh*t for years and years...
72/ ...but there’s no feud between the two men, because that suggests equal footing. No, what happened is this: Cohen was Trump’s dog—the man who committed his crimes for him—and Trump abandoned his dog the second the fuzz were wise to his play. That left Cohen with zero options.
73/ Did Cohen beg for Trump’s help? Yes. Unsuccessfully. Did he lie to Congress to hide from the People’s representatives—and from future 2020 voters—that Trump was colluding with the Kremlin throughout the 2016 election via the *very deals* the Steele dossier warned of? Yes.
74/ Did Cohen make legal efforts to hide what he knew about Trump by claiming legal privilege? Yes. Did Cohen try to take some blame for things Trump did? Yes. Did Cohen think he could get a pardon, or Trump-FBI/Trump-DOJ intercession, because Trump’s team made him think so? Yes.
75/ Did Cohen retain some loyalty to Trump up through the bizarre attempts Trump had Barr make to screw over Cohen with respect to his federal sentence and where/how it would be served? Yes.
So to imply that there is this random feud between the two—suggesting bias from Cohen...
So to imply that there is this random feud between the two—suggesting bias from Cohen...
76/ ...that stems from nothing but self-interest, self-preservation, or merely an irrationally emotional animus—is *preposterous*. And those carefully typing up what Cohen is saying in court right now are doing so under the false framing they have put to his critical testimony.
77/ As this is an all-day live Twitter thread, we *will* get to *everything* Michael Cohen is saying in court today—even as none of it will be as important as the cross tomorrow. But this thread, unlike others, will contextualize what we’re hearing today and why we’re hearing it.
78/ Which brings us to the fourth reason this thread is offering context before offering testimony: what we’re hearing today is simply... not new. It’s a repetition of what Cohen has already testified to; what Trump has already admitted to; and what media has already reported on.
79/ So if you are reading this and thinking, “Just tell me what he’s saying right now!”, you’re already falling for Trump’s trap—as advanced, inadvertently or perhaps negligently, by corporate U.S. media. You are believing that this old story is actually a new and surprising one.
80/ You’re believing that Cohen’s direct examination is urgent to follow in real time because it represents the continuation of a feud (scare quotes!) which has seen Cohen try to ruin (scare quotes!) Trump—a man he hates—with a fusillade of abject lies.
And all that’s bullshit.
And all that’s bullshit.
81/ What Cohen is doing now is repeating the same story he told the FBI, DOJ, federal judges, anyone who listens to his podcast, Congress, anyone who watches his interviews on MSNBC, anyone who reads his books or articles *and* what *Trump himself said* in the Daniels civil suit.
82/ So America thinking the first *hour* of Cohen’s direct examination is what’s critical to hear in real time—rather than all this context—is precisely the problem in my view as a Trump biographer, former criminal defense attorney, working journalist, and former journalism prof.
83/ What the direct examination we’ll shortly move to will establish what we know: in August 2015 Trump met with Cohen, Hope Hicks and David Pecker at Trump Tower to work out an arrangement in which Trump mistresses would en masse be paid off to hide Trump misconduct from voters.
84/ During *exactly this period of time* Cohen was *also* running point for Trump on what would be the most lucrative business deal of his life: Trump Tower Moscow. That involved working with Kremlin agents and even, in 2016, the Kremlin itself to secretly make Trump even richer.
85/ During exactly this period of time Cohen was *also* one of Trump’s top political advisers, as his nominal campaign manager was just another Trump fixer—the thug Corey Lewandowski—and his other top adviser was yet another thug, Roger Stone. Bannon and Manafort arrived in 2016.
86/ As Cohen has exhaustively explained, Trump likes to work with the same fixer for a long period of time—it’s why Lewandowski keeps leaving and returning to his orbit—so he can get that fixer to engage in misconduct without constantly having to explicitly spell out his demands.
87/ This is why Trump almost never uses email—too much of a paper trail.
88/ This is why Trump often uses aides’ phones to make or take important phone calls—so future investigators won’t know whose phone records to subpoena, or won’t have a proven basis for seeking such a subpoena on the front end.
89/ This is why—as exhaustively established with full sourcing in the Proof Trilogy—Trump often rips up inculpatory paperwork; and/or burns it; and/or bags it en masse and has it tossed; and/or *eats* it (yes, really); and/or flushes it down a toilet.
He’s obsessed with secrecy.
He’s obsessed with secrecy.
90/ And he’s obsessed with secrecy because he’s a career criminal. And like any career criminal who won’t commit many of the crimes directly himself but is focused on outsourcing those crimes to others via *oral* directions they cannot later prove, he needs a fixer.
Like Cohen.
Like Cohen.
91/ So what we’re getting in court now is an account from the man who was Trump’s *leading* fixer in 2015-16, trusted so much he was trusted to lie to Congress and oversee a course of foreign collusion which—*if* Russia’s 2016 cyberwar had been seen as war—could’ve been Treason.
92/ What we’re getting in court is a *true* account from a man who is unethical and unscrupulous *because* he gave over his soul to a career criminal: Donald Trump.
My experience with juries leads me to believe jurors can well understand that *Trump* has no standing to attack...
My experience with juries leads me to believe jurors can well understand that *Trump* has no standing to attack...
93/ ...the credibility of Michael Cohen when it’s *Trump* who twisted this man to his ends; *Trump* who directed all Cohen’s actions; *Trump* who abandoned this man to law enforcement to save himself, creating *precisely* the testimony we are hearing today; *Trump* who already...
94/ ...has admitted *in civil court filings* to the facts he will—incredibly—contest as false today, just as he spent two years openly consorting with Stormy Daniels in the late 2000s just to claim that he never had anything to do with her. Donald Trump creates his *own* mayhem.
95/ With all that necessary preamble, we turn to the testimony of Michael Cohen today.
96/ The Cohen testimony, which will last for 2 or 3 days depending on how it goes, began about 100 minutes ago. Not much has happened. Trump has apparently had his eyes closed for some of the testimony, either because he’s sleeping or so angry at Cohen he cannot even look at him.
97/ The early testimony covered Michael Cohen’s work and educational background, which is candidly unimpressive—but also telling.
Cohen went to one of the worst law schools in the world, which was fine for Donald Trump because *Trump did not want his lawyering or care about it*.
Cohen went to one of the worst law schools in the world, which was fine for Donald Trump because *Trump did not want his lawyering or care about it*.
98/ This is a point many will miss. Donald Trump, per Forbes at least, is a billionaire; but he’s not just any billionaire—he may be the billionaire *most involved in litigation on a daily basis* of any billionaire *in the world*. Yes, really. So he hires as a lawyer a total dud?
99/ As noted, Trump is a career criminal who got rich off crime. When litigation arises, it’s because one of his victims has sued him. So litigation represents a failure of his criminal scheme.
Cohen’s role—as an unscrupulous consigliere—was to help Trump crime *pre-litigation*.
Cohen’s role—as an unscrupulous consigliere—was to help Trump crime *pre-litigation*.
100/ For *that* work, you do not want a lawyer. You want a thug you have attorney-client privilege with. Thus, Cohen—so bad an attorney you could have barely called him that even before he was disbarred. He was around to have secret chats with Trump and then go threaten people.
101/ The catch-and-kill operation conjoined the two Cohen functions: secret negotiations to do something unethical or illegal, and the threats such negotiations sometimes necessitated. That was the role Cohen played with the Kremlin; with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal; and...
102/ ...with *corporate media* in the early months of the Trump campaign, when Cohen was likely as much the Trump campaign manager as Lewandowski was (and about as inexperienced and unscrupulous in that role, too). He would harangue media for bad 2015 political coverage of Trump.
103/ None of this utilized his meager legal talents, but his willingness to threaten people. That fact will hang over this trial now that the jury knows that Daniels was threatened in 2011—when Cohen *was* the campaign manager for a prospective Trump 2012 run—and that guided her.
104/ Specifically, the State of New York got into evidence the threat made against Daniels and her child *in person* in 2011—by an unknown man, sent by {*cough*} unknown persons—because she said the fear it caused her would guide her conduct as to Trump for the next decade-plus.
105/ For what it’s worth, Daniels and Cohen have since made up from any bad blood between them, a fact Trump’s counsel got from Daniels on cross-examination as part of an absurd, silly-ass theory that there has been a years-long conspiracy between Cohen and Daniels to harm Trump.
106/ Cohen is asked by prosecutors about his *legal* work for Trump, and indeed there was... *some*. But it was on relatively easy and simple matters, and Cohen doesn’t appear to have either billed Trump or been paid by him in the normal way attorneys are.
This is unsurprising.
This is unsurprising.
107/ Trump often underpays his closest lackeys on the assumption that they know, and he knows, that—*to a point*—he’ll allow them to use his name to earn side deals, as long as Trump is getting a taste of anything particularly big.
I learned all about this as a Trump biographer.
I learned all about this as a Trump biographer.
108/ This is what folks don’t understand about Trump stiffing Giuliani the money he owed him for legal services. Trump’s view was that Giuliani had wet his beak so many times using Trump’s name as a shibboleth—often just selling access to Trump, or acting as a paid messenger—...
109/ ...that in Trump’s view Giuliani wasn’t entitled to more money—especially not on-the-books money that could be scrutinized later on as a possible paper trail. What Trump *wants* is to have lackeys he doesn’t pay, who get their money from corrupt sources he can later disavow.
110/ This whole case is proof Trump was right (as a career criminal) to be concerned about paying his lackeys!
It’s precisely his attempt to reimburse Cohen at once for (a) his fixer services, and (b) the outlay Cohen made to Daniels via his own bank loan, that led to this case.
It’s precisely his attempt to reimburse Cohen at once for (a) his fixer services, and (b) the outlay Cohen made to Daniels via his own bank loan, that led to this case.
111/ So when Cohen is testifying—as he now has today—that Trump only irregularly paid him, often in lump sums after a long period of service, that’s consistent with who Cohen was to Trump, what Trump wanted from Cohen, Trump’s criminality, and the sketchy work Cohen was doing.
112/ This can’t be overstated: normal billionaire businessmen don’t hire patently bad, underqualified lawyers like Michael Cohen.
Ever.
And they don’t hire lawyers to do (as Cohen has testified he often did) non-legal work for them just so as to gain attorney-client privilege.
Ever.
And they don’t hire lawyers to do (as Cohen has testified he often did) non-legal work for them just so as to gain attorney-client privilege.
113/ So the early, pre-lunch testimony from Cohen about his arrangement with Trump is far more telling than corporate media is now saying. It *alone* underscores that Donald Trump is not a businessman in the way any juror would normally understand that term, nor Cohen a “lawyer.”
114/ Cohen has testified that at times he’d do six figures worth of legal and nonlegal work, and Trump wouldn’t pay him—though arguably, given his supposed net worth, he easily could—but would instead offer him perks (like an EVP position at the Trump Org) he could use for graft.
115/ This is Trump’s MO. He did the same with Giuliani. He does the same for all his lawyers. He avoids paying them, as his belief is that their association with him opens up opportunities for future legal or illicit work that’s sufficiently remunerative for them to be satisfied.
116/ You *can’t understand* how Trump operates if you don’t understand that he’s not a businessman but a career criminal. You *have* to see his use of fixers, borderline lawyers, lackeys, his company, and his clients and associates and voters as part of a *mafia-like operation*.
117/ This also explains Cohen’s testimony today about the pseudo-legal work he did for Trump, which centered on getting vendors to accept less than the contract Trump had signed with him under the threat of a frivolous lawsuit for breach of contract the vendors could not afford.
118/ I’ve represented poor Americans as criminal defendants on this exact alleged conduct *many times*. It’s a felony. It’s always been a felony. Sometimes it’s called Felony Theft of Services, sometimes Felony Theft By Deception, sometimes Felony Fraud, sometimes something else.
119/ You can’t sign a contract you don’t intend to honor when there’s a transfer of money for services involved.
That’s Theft or Fraud.
And poor Americans get charged with doing this on contracts involving only *hundreds* of dollars every single day.
Trump stole *millions*.
That’s Theft or Fraud.
And poor Americans get charged with doing this on contracts involving only *hundreds* of dollars every single day.
Trump stole *millions*.
120/ So when corporate media blithely stenographs today that Cohen testified to bargaining with vendors, this is what he was really doing: systematically engaging in a Criminal Conspiracy to steal from and defraud small businesses so Trump could make *tens of millions off them*.
121/ The veritable sea of destroyed small businesses Trump left in his wake is *staggering* in its bloody breadth and depth. These are working and middle-class people Trump—via Cohen—stole millions and millions of dollars from over *decades* because for whatever reason he knew...
122/ ...law enforcement would leave him be. Was it because he was an FBI collaborator? Or had friends—or fans—in the FBI? Or because high-end real estate is unregulated (as it’s just presumed to be so dirty it would take law enforcement more resources than it has to police it)?
123/ Was it because Trump was using an attorney to shake down these vendors, so proving intent would be hard (because conversations with Cohen were privileged)? Was it because law enforcement feared the bad press Trump could bring down upon it? Was it Trump’s longtime mafia ties?
124/ Was it because these vendors were afraid to go up against Trump in court, because he could easily ruin them through years of defamation litigation—so much so that it was preferable to them to take pennies on the dollar under their contracts, or even better to *fold up shop*?
125/ I don’t know. But I do know Cohen was the point of the spear of what for you or me would not just be criminal, not just a criminal conspiracy, not just a felony criminal conspiracy spanning years, not just a felony criminal conspiracy spanning years and involving millions...
126/ ...but a conspiracy answering to this description *that’d put you in prison for the rest of your f*cking life*.
I’ve seen men go to prison for a year for conduct of this sort involving $1,000.
Imagine stealing tens of millions over decades. You’d be looking at 20-40 years.
I’ve seen men go to prison for a year for conduct of this sort involving $1,000.
Imagine stealing tens of millions over decades. You’d be looking at 20-40 years.
127/ So hopefully you understand now why the long prelude to covering Cohen’s testimony today was necessary.
You cannot understand who Trump is, and who Cohen was to Trump, if you think this is just some melodrama between two former friends. This is *so much* bigger than that.
You cannot understand who Trump is, and who Cohen was to Trump, if you think this is just some melodrama between two former friends. This is *so much* bigger than that.
128/ So let’s continue with the pre-lunch testimony, now.
129/ What Cohen describes is being Trump’s single closest associate—which I can confirm he was, Trump’s children excepted—for years, working with him daily and speaking to him multiple times a day and doing things for him no one else could or would do because they were illicit.
130/ And Trump would use praise to let Cohen know when he had done well—and that praise was reserved for when Cohen had committed a crime or done something illicit that made Trump money, as Trump believed that praise on the back end could never inculpate him in any of the crimes.
131/ He was right—but for the wrong reasons.
He was right because law enforcement was inexplicably afraid of touching him. He was *wrong* on the law, as in fact Trump was very much part of an ongoing criminal enterprise with Michael Cohen for many, many years of Theft and Fraud.
He was right because law enforcement was inexplicably afraid of touching him. He was *wrong* on the law, as in fact Trump was very much part of an ongoing criminal enterprise with Michael Cohen for many, many years of Theft and Fraud.
132/ Consider that Trump *didn’t* merely praise Cohen after-the-fact, thereby deliberately inducing him (via not just praise but continued employment and continued sporadic payment) to keep engaging in criminal conduct. He *also* initiated each criminal act by falsely alleging...
133/ ...that he was dissatisfied with a vendor contract that *in point of fact* had been superlatively delivered upon. Each time Trump did that he was revealing he’d never intended to honor the contract *even if it were delivered on*—but would use Cohen to renegotiate it ex post.
134/ Feel free to Google the trail of destroyed businesses and destroyed lives Trump has left in his wake—over many decades—to earn just a little more money from deals he’d already negotiated and could have afforded to pay in full. And blame law enforcement for not getting him.
135/ Trump is going to ask this jury, very soon, to blame *Cohen* for that conduct. Not Trump, who orchestrated it, or law enforcement, who let it happen for decades and thereby enabled it after-the-fact, but Cohen.
The problem? *Cohen already served his punishment for this*.
The problem? *Cohen already served his punishment for this*.
136/ Michael Cohen having received a years-long prison sentence for what he did should put us at peace about his misconduct, which he is now testifying honestly to based on the fact that it mirrors what the evidence shows and what Trump has already admitted to in civil lawsuits.
137/ It’s *Trump* who hasn’t been held to account.
And, for that matter, it’s *prosecutors* who may have to explain—at least in general terms—how it was that Trump got away with criminal conduct for so long. They would likely argue that they needed the paper trail Trump created.
And, for that matter, it’s *prosecutors* who may have to explain—at least in general terms—how it was that Trump got away with criminal conduct for so long. They would likely argue that they needed the paper trail Trump created.
138/ Indeed, this is one way to understand this case, in conjunction with what we’ve already discussed about how Trump’s FBI and DOJ caused the case we see before us today at the state level: Donald Trump was so desperate to lie to voters *on a schedule* he created a paper trail.
139/ Trump’s entire criminal history is based on *avoiding* paper trails using men like Cohen. But he was *so* desperate to save his brand—(and only secondarily, his political career)—after the Access Hollywood tape dropped that he got *sloppy* with his usual criminal enterprise.
140/ Cohen just testified that Trump is a “micromanager”—something every Trump biographer knows, given how he clutched his pearls over the *tablecloths* at his big Inauguration dinner and is infamous for clucking over the furnishings of all his private spaces—which must be taken...
141/ ...in conjunction with Cohen *also* testifying that he was the point man—along with so much else, as the de facto Trump campaign manager (pre-Manafort, pre-Bannon, pre-Conway, mid-Lewandowski) in 2015—for massaging major-media coverage of Donald Trump during his campaign.
142/ Trump wasn’t just obsessed with his media coverage, but he believed—rightly!—that he could negotiate that coverage with corporate media via threats and promises and backroom deals and appeals to their greed. (This is one of many reasons to read *indie* journalists on Trump.)
143/ So you can understand why prosecutors are going through this evidence with Cohen: because it establishes that the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal situations were the perfect storm for Trump and his shadow campaign manager. Cohen was *exactly* the man he needed to save him.
144/ The Access Hollywood, Daniels and McDougal situations all arose within a matter of weeks in 2016, and mostly related to (a) media coverage, (b) the sordid side of a campaign that you would want a shadow campaign manager for, (c) illicit negotiations, and (d) illicit payoffs.
145/ So when Hope Hicks—a Stockholm Syndrome victim if ever there was one, though that probably lets her off easy—desperately tried to testify to aid Trump in this case to the effect that Cohen was so good at putting out fires because *he’d* created them, that is an *insane* lie.
146/ Cohen may have inadvertently put out some of Trump’s fires negligently—and *if* he was behind the 2011 threat to Stormy Daniels, that’d be one example of this—but make no mistake, each fire that he addressed was one of *Trump’s* creation. (That is, Ms. Hicks’ surrogate dad.)
147/ This is why, as Cohen just testified, his phone’s 30,000 contacts were *synched* with Trump’s—so when Trump had an issue with someone, Cohen had access to that person for a shakedown or follow-up negotiation *immediately*. It also explains the extraordinary access Cohen had.
148/ Remember I mentioned the category of person Trump pays to protect him and lie for him, the example for which I gave was Allen Weisselberg? Well, another would be Keith Schiller. Schiller had an access to Trump of the same order that Cohen did, as the man’s chief bodyguard.
149/ Cohen testifies that he often reached out to Trump via Schiller or Trump secretary Rhona Graff—a witness in this Manhattan case whose hand Trump absurdly tried to shake before she testified against him as a state witness—or via a Trump child.
But he could always get to him.
But he could always get to him.
150/ Remember, Trump’s MO is that he doesn’t use email and tries to avoid using his own phone for illicit conspiracies, which is why it makes sense that Cohen would often talk to Trump either in person *in a space Trump controlled* or with Trump on the phone of a close associate.
151/ This thread will run 400+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp
152/ So much of the direct testimony from Cohen this morning was basic scene-setting, like him confirming for prosecutors and the jury that his work for Trump often involved lying.
(Side note: *any* work for Trump, by *anyone*, *necessarily* involves lying; it’s the *main job*).
(Side note: *any* work for Trump, by *anyone*, *necessarily* involves lying; it’s the *main job*).
153/ Cohen says he’d do media appearances to shill for Trump, which was essential to working for him—he needs to *see* you abase yourself, lie gleefully, and sacrifice your principles for him *in public* so he *knows* he owns you—and would create fake events to defraud voters.
154/ It was Cohen’s job to make Trump rallies look diverse when they weren’t, or well-attended if they weren’t. This underscores that Cohen paying off mistresses was *exactly* in line with what he did for Trump—make an unelectable PoS who *knew* he was unelectable seem palatable.
155/ This is an essential fact about Trump: his lying may be pathological, his criming instinctive and his sex crimes inherent to his ravenously sociopathic, antisocial nature, but this *doesn’t* mean he’s unaware of what he is. He may specialize in developing public fantasies...
156/ ...but he’s aware of the private—and now not-so-private—truth: that he’s a horrifyingly inept businessman, a lifelong criminal, a scarily violent misogynist, a proud bigot, and a thief and fraudster with thousands of frauds and thefts under his belt. And far worse than that.
157/ And those in his orbit know all this. His kids do. Rudy does. Bannon, Stone, Flynn, Cohen, Weisselberg, Schiller, Matthew Calamari, Barrack, Lorber. Others.
Which is why when any one of them turns against them—even if *he* forced their hand, as here—his hatred is white-hot.
Which is why when any one of them turns against them—even if *he* forced their hand, as here—his hatred is white-hot.
158/ So when Trump said to Cohen—as Cohen just testified Trump said to him in early 2015—“You know when this [the June ’15 announcement of my presidential candidacy] comes out, there are going to be a lot of women coming forward,” it was a rhetorical point. Trump knew Cohen knew.
159/ And *everyone* who knows Trump knows the Stormy Daniels testimony is true. *No one* doubts it. All Trump’s political career has *ever* been about—the vile lie at its center—is that the American people can be conned into thinking Trump is other than what *he has always been*.
160/ And which Trump lackey was at the center of that vile lie in 2016?
Michael Cohen.
You see now how threatened Trump is by Cohen taking the stand. This is not a matter of mere personal animus, this is Donald Trump facing the vile lie at the heart of his world *in the flesh*.
Michael Cohen.
You see now how threatened Trump is by Cohen taking the stand. This is not a matter of mere personal animus, this is Donald Trump facing the vile lie at the heart of his world *in the flesh*.
161/ Hoffinger, one of the prosecutors, is eliciting from Cohen on direct examination that it was Cohen’s job to act as a middleman with anyone engaged in unsavory conduct on Trump’s behalf and to *encourage* that unsavory conduct to continue to *communicating Trump’s gratitude*.
162/ The specific—and most relevant—example used here is of course David Pecker, the sleazy tabloid publisher who “caught and killed” stories for Trump because he believed Trump would pay him back *both* directly *and* (for his trouble and risk) with future business deals that...
163/ ...could be arranged with the foreign nationals and foreign governments Trump was then being bribed by (and also aided in his 2016 campaign, illegally) due to their belief—encouraged by Trump—that he would set U.S. national policy to favor them. And Pecker *was* so rewarded.
164/ All of that is covered in exhaustive, fully sourced detail in the NYT bestseller Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019)—but also in recent threads I’ve done at Twitter about this very trial—so I won’t belabor this point. But Trump’s gratitude did come with cash, that’s clear.
165/ Hoffinger has elicited from Cohen not just the type of work Cohen did for Trump over and over and over again across years, but *exactly* how it would come about. From Trump raising an issue with Cohen to implying he should do what he had done in the past to resolve it, to...
166/ ...reviewing his work and praising it if it enriched Trump to getting angry if it didn’t, to finding ways to enrich Cohen that only sometimes involved directly paying him, to checking in with him regularly—and vice versa—to Cohen *always* checking back in to receive credit.
167/ This description of Trump is consistent in every respect with what Trump biographers like myself have learned about him. He’s transactional in *everything*. He doesn’t act—ever—out of charity, only out of an expectation of profit. And those who work closest to him know this.
168/ This matters—in fact, is central to Cohen’s testimony, today —as it explains why he *always* kept Trump in the loop on what he was doing. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have earned credit with Trump; his work would be fruitless, as there’d be no future transactional compensation.
169/ Keep in mind that Trump’s truly *knee-slappingly hilarious* criminal defense is that Cohen just cared about Trump so much that he paid off Daniels without ever telling his boss he had done so. But as Hope Hicks confessed on the stand, Cohen does *nothing* simply for charity.
170/ Trump and Cohen were men who understood one another, which is why they not only worked together for years and years and years but why Cohen might have been the single most important person in Trump’s life for 2015 and much of 2016. Cohen knew how to *earn credit* with Trump.
171/ And the way to earn credit with Trump was—and still is—to let him know the *moment* you have done something for him, *especially* if it is something illicit you know he would never have done for himself because it could have exposed him to future civil or criminal liability.
172/ But this wasn’t—as Trump would have it—a situation in which Cohen simply went off to work as a free agent, only returning to his master to accrue credit(s). Cohen is testifying to how his checks-in were *frequently* in *mid-action*, so he and Trump could strategize together.
173/ For instance, Cohen testifies that he helped shape the terms of the AMI-McDougal payoff Trump greenlit, with Cohen being the one who suggested AMI seek life rights from McDougal—i.e., the rights to her whole life story—rather than something narrower and less safe for Trump.
174/ Cohen is also asked about the doorman story—the $30,000 AMI paid to a doorman who said Matthew Calamari told him Trump had a child with his housekeeper in the 1980s. There is a lot of confusion about this, so I want to clarify one important thing here about the doorman story.
175/ All of the evidence we have confirms that the doorman story is true.
Why do I say that?
Because the doorman *merely said that this is what he was told*. And the doorman *passed* a polygraph in which he was asked whether this is what he was really told by Matthew Calamari.
Why do I say that?
Because the doorman *merely said that this is what he was told*. And the doorman *passed* a polygraph in which he was asked whether this is what he was really told by Matthew Calamari.
176/ It is a *separate* question as to whether what the doorman was *told* is true. As to that, we know (i) Matthew Calamari, as head of Trump security, would know if this were true; (ii) Calamari would likely now lie about what he said if he said it (as he is still employed...
177/ ...by Trump and Trump therefore remains the meal ticket he is loyal to); (iii) the housekeeper does indeed have a child she won’t speak to the media about (which, given Trump confessing over and over to affairs and payoffs, seems like a clear case of yet another one); and...
178/ ...(iv) the same goes for the daughter, who is strangely mum on her parentage—or, not so strangely, given that her alleged father is famous for throwing NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) with borderline criminally onerous penalties at *anyone* he does business with because...
179/ ...as indicated earlier, he is a career criminal.
180/ But because the doorman story—which is, apparently, in reality, the Calamari story—couldn’t be independently corroborated (it certainly *seems* because of payoffs), the prosecutors have run with a needless concession that it is untrue, which is a *huge* boon to Donald Trump.
181/ It’s a boon to Trump because his *defense*—which is odd, because it doesn’t really qualify as a defense—to 34 felony counts of Falsifying Business Records is that the woman he was paying off lied about them having sex (which is actually immaterial to the charge he’s facing).
182/ So Trump getting to claim the doorman lied about him, which he didn’t, creates a sense for the jury that Trump is indeed the victim he claims to be: always being set upon by leeches who want money from him and are willing to lie about it.
But *that* premise is the lie here.
But *that* premise is the lie here.
183/ Remember, it was Trump’s own *campaign CEO*—Steve Bannon, a man who’s literally *about to go to federal prison to protect Trump*—who has publicly admitted that Trump paid off 100+ women to make American voters believe in 2016 that he was anything but the scum of the Earth.
184/ And it’s Trump himself who said to Pecker—per Pecker’s testimony—that he refuses to pay women off, which is a) evidence of consciousness of guilt for all the payments Trump knew he’d made and wanted to hide from even Pecker, and b) evidence he would *never* pay off a *liar*.
185/ In questioning Cohen about Dino the Doorman, Cohen admits there was another Trump employee involved—Calamari—though he doesn’t name him. He *does* say he spoke to Calamari, who unlike Dino was well paid; $30K would mean little to him. Guess who didn’t back Dino? Calamari.
186/ The point: Dino’s story of being told something was true—but whether what he was told was true is unknown. It is, simply, *completely consistent with everything we’ve ever known about Donald Trump in every conceivable particular*.
If *that* tale’s untrue, another one isn’t.
If *that* tale’s untrue, another one isn’t.
187/ But there’s another bit of context here that no one’s discussing, and if you can believe it, it involves the Steele dossier and the Kremlin—the very entity Cohen was negotiating with (via agents and later directly) on Trump’s behalf in Fall 2015, as the campaign was ongoing.
188/ You may remember that the Steele dossier began, on pg. 1, with a fairly innocuous story of Trump’s 2013 Moscow hosts—the *first* of *two* sets Kremlin agents he’d ultimately sign a Letter of Intent with to build Trump Tower Moscow (the second in 2015)—sending some women...
189/ ...to his Ritz Moscow room in November ’13 consistent with his earlier letter to Putin saying that he wanted to party with some of Moscow’s beautiful women. The women sent—and yes, it’s confirmed by eyewitnesses that they were sent (see Proof of Collusion, 2018)—were from...
190/ ...a digital brothel run by a friend of one of Trump’s hosts. There was *no indication in the dossier* that these prostitutes were either sent to Trump for him to have sex with *or* that any sexual relations ever occurred.
They were sent, simply, to hang out/party with him.
They were sent, simply, to hang out/party with him.
191/ During that party, per the dossier, one of the women peed on a bed in Trump’s suite—which he wasn’t planning on sleeping in anyway, as he’d later admit—because Obama once slept there and it was seen as a harmless, funny prank to defile a bed Obama (who Trump hated) slept in.
192/ That was it. That was the whole of the story. A stupid story, really, but made more interesting by the fact that Trump *admitted* he believed the room to be under video surveillance...and the dossier *said* it was. Which meant someone in Russia had video of this silly prank.
193/ As the Mueller Report detailed, Cohen was approached by a Georgian (former Soviet republic) businessman he trusted and told the video *did* exist and was being passed around the upper echelon of Moscow politicos/high society.
Cohen believed his friend was telling the truth.
Cohen believed his friend was telling the truth.
194/ And Cohen had reason to believe the tape existed. He’d been present when the Kremlin agents Trump was doing business with in 2013—the Agalarovs—had wooed Trump to Moscow in early 2013 at a strip club in Vegas. And at that club, Trump was delighted by a “golden showers” show.
195/ Again, *not a huge deal*. Trump watched a naughty show at a Vegas strip club. Who cares? He’s entitled. But Cohen knew the *Agalarovs* knew how much he’d enjoyed watching that particular event—it was kinky for him, apparently—so he wasn’t at all surprised that the family...
196/ ...would’ve arranged for the same sort of show in Moscow as a callback to the fun night on which they’d all met for the first time in Vegas.
Also, Cohen knew Trump loved porn stars, Playboy bunnies and prostitutes—and would party with them any chance he got. He also knew...
Also, Cohen knew Trump loved porn stars, Playboy bunnies and prostitutes—and would party with them any chance he got. He also knew...
197/ ...Trump was a serial adulter, so he wouldn’t be worried about partying with women outside the presence of his wife. Indeed, Hungarian model Kata Sarka says Trump approached her for adulterous sex *that very day* (the day of the golden shower show in Moscow); she declined.
198/ And whose job did *Trump* make it to track down this tape, when he found out about it? Michael Cohen, of course. Did Trump tell Cohen not to worry about it because no such tape could have existed? No. In fact, he wanted Cohen to look into the situation—his way of saying...
199/ ...that the tape existed without (classic MO for Trump) ever having to say it existed, the same stunt he would pull with Cohen and others in discussing Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. He would never admit these women were telling the truth because he didn’t have to do so.
200/ The men he was dealing with *knew* the women were telling the truth—and *knew* that *Trump* knew that they knew—and *also* knew Trump was too cautious to say the women were telling the truth but wouldn’t have them *deal with the women* were they all *not* telling the truth.
201/ Why did Trump have Cohen look for the so-called pee tape (which Trumpists—even some in media—lied about and referred to as a sex tape to discredit it)?
Because he knew it existed; because he knew a payoff could disappear it; because he knew Cohen was already negotiating...
Because he knew it existed; because he knew a payoff could disappear it; because he knew Cohen was already negotiating...
202/ ...with the Kremlin, and it was likely the Kremlin had the tape (as Trump had conceded to US media that the Kremlin was video- and audio-bugging his room at the Ritz Moscow); because if the tape came out it would harm him politically; because if the tape came out it would...
203/ ...cast new attention on a clandestine deal (in this case the Trump Tower Moscow deal with Aras Agalarov—Putin’s personal architect, who couldn’t do Moscow real estate deals without Putin’s say-so), which is analagous to the catch-and-kill deal with AMI Cohen could reveal...
204/ ...as well as a host of esoteric reasons: it would embarrass Trump personally; Melania might leave him (which he would only care about for the political cost of that happening right before Americans went to vote); and leaving it out there gave the Kremlin blackmail material.
205/ Now, *that* story—like Trump sending Saudi business Pecker’s way in exchange for the AMI deal, at a time Trump was colluding with the Saudis over the 2016 election and U.S. energy policy—is not going to come into the trial today because it would be objected to as irrelevant.
206/ But of course it is *exquisitely* relevant.
207/ It underscores how much Trump trusted Cohen, and what for. It underscores exactly the role Cohen and Trump saw the former as having. It underscores Trump’s M.O. with respect to elections and voters and inculpatory evidence. It underscores Trump’s lack of care in engaging...
208/ ...in conduct that could compromise him politically or *even* (once he was elected) compromise American national security. It underscores his penchant for secret liaisons, secret deals, women with backgrounds mainstream MAGA America wouldn’t approve of, payoffs... all of it.
209/ Everything Trump says he’d never be involved with—*particularly* with a man of Michael Cohen’s low character, harrumph!—that in fact he’s spent years and years and years being involved *with Michael Cohen* on over and over and over again. Just as Cohen’s testifying to today.
210/ The amount of evidence damaging to Trump that Trump’s attacks on Cohen’s credibility could have brought into this trial, which prosecutors have *declined* to bring into this trial, is staggering. And it makes Trump repeatedly begging for a mistrial truly an act of vile gall.
211/ This is the very same thing I showed in my viral thread about the Stormy Daniels testimony (see above in this thread for the link): Trump has crafted a defense that literally allows for an *avalanche* of bad conduct by him to come into trial as intensely relevant evidence...
212/ ...which he is essentially daring prosecutors to bring in because he believes the Puritanical SCOTUS will somehow save him if lots of prurient evidence comes to light in his trial because of evidentiary doors *he* opened.
And he might be right! Prosecutors clearly think so.
And he might be right! Prosecutors clearly think so.
213/ But you know who *doesn’t* get a pass for misunderstanding this? Media. At every turn, they’ve criticized prosecutors for bringing in *5%* of the Trump misconduct his everyone-but-me-is-crazy-and-a-criminal defense would’ve *entitled* them to bring in, including as to Cohen.
214/ Indeed, the Kremlin negotiations Cohen conducted for Trump—on the missing tape; on Trump Tower Moscow; as to the most pro-Kremlin foreign policy ever devised by a U.S. politician, which Trump devised to win himself a tower in Moscow—prove *so much* about their relationship.
215/ They position Cohen as Trump’s most trusted consigliere; they position Cohen as Trump’s de facto (shadow) campaign manager in 2016; they establish the precise ambit of Cohen’s known duties as covering *exactly* what Cohen says he did as to Daniels, and says Trump knew about.
216/ Which is why you have to hear reports on Cohen’s testimony *not* through the lens of the present—in which the men are enemies—but as to the time-period *Cohen is actually testifying about*, a time when Donald Trump may have trusted Michael Cohen more than any man then alive.
217/ *This* is the disservice media has done to the rule of law to get eyeballs on its trial coverage: playing up what Trump wants us to see—a feud—rather than what Cohen is now *testifying* to, which is a very different time in which the facts on the ground were quite different.
218/ The job of a prosecutor is to bring the jury to a *particular point in time and space* through witness testimony—which is why it did so much background work with Cohen early on in his testimony today. And what defense attorneys like me would want to do in a case like this...
219/ ...is make the jury think about the *present*, instead: Cohen hating Trump; Cohen being friendly with Daniels; Cohen and Daniels having podcasts. It would even behoove defense attorneys to *anger* Cohen on the stand so that the jury is thinking of him *today* and not 2015-6.
220/ So yes—wearing my hat as a former journalism prof, not just a former federal criminal investigator, former criminal defense attorney, and current Trump biographer/presidential historian—I’m saying that for-profit corporate media creates false narratives that harm the truth.
221/ What prosecutors are doing a good job of today is eliciting lots of details on what Cohen did with respect to the McDougal and Daniels payoffs that implicitly establish too why Cohen had 30,000 contacts in his phone—and why all these were synched with Trump’s phone contacts.
222/ The reason Trump needed someone like Cohen—the reason Cohen could do what no one else could—is that Cohen had spent years working alongside Trump to develop *so many* shady contacts, including some in media, that he would learn instantly of any mistress seeking a cash deal.
223/ Kasowitz didn’t know such people! Nor did Bannon, Flynn or Lewandowski. Not even Roger Stone knew a fraction of the people Cohen did. If a tape was circulating in Russia, *Cohen* would hear about it from a Soviet-born businessman. If a mistress wanted cash, Cohen would hear.
224/ The level of value Cohen offered Trump was incalculable, and therefore—commensurate with that—was the level of trust Trump ultimately came to put in Cohen *during the time-period Cohen is testifying accurately about*, not during the present moment Trump wants us focusing on.
225/ It’s with this in mind we see, in the testimony today, prosecutors going over with Cohen on direct examination messages he received from and sent to Pecker’s right-hand man at AMI—Dylan Howard—and how quickly Cohen heard about *any* mistress who could be a problem for Trump.
226/ To be clear, I expect Cohen dealt with other mistresses than those he’s being asked about; remember, Bannon said 100+. But prosecutors are *afraid* to ask about any others, though it would establish Cohen’s credibility, due to fears of a specious mistrial demand from Trump.
227/ What’s so preposterous about this is that Trump being an adulterer was baked into his identity *decades* ago. Him being a playboy and degenerate became part of his persona last century. To suggest any voter or juror will *newly care* about him being a louse is so ridiculous.
228/ And one could argue that, if you’re going to be the scum of the Earth in your personal life as Trump has always been, (a) don’t commit crimes, (b) don’t abandon your fixer if he asks for your help, and (c) certainly don’t *challenge his credibility in court*, you damn idiot!
229/ But as we’ve always seen, Trump gets special treatment: from judges, from prosecutors, from police, from the FBI, from the CIA, from the DOJ, from media, from the Secret Service (which often goes above and beyond protection duties for Trump). So he gets the kid gloves today.
230/ This thread will run 400+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp
231/ What you will see—if you read the transcript of Cohen’s testimony when the court releases it tomorrow or Wednesday—is that most of the testimony was incredibly dry. Very different from what we saw with Stormy Daniels. And there’s a reason for that. Actually several reasons.
232/ The biggest one is that to establish Cohen’s credibility the state wants to do what it *knows it can do without objection*—show Cohen’s command of the dry details that made up much of the work he did for Trump—rather than the salacious stuff Trump’s counsel would object to.
233/ By keeping the jury *and Cohen* focused on the past, and dry details and exchanges from 2015 and 2016, it makes him seem calm, professional, measured, unbiased, competent (at least at what he did), even meticulous. Meanwhile, Trump’s counsel will try to get his hackles up.
234/ So the cross will focus on Cohen’s troubles in 2018, the two books he wrote, his podcast, and his anger at Trump—anything but what the case is about. And the state will avoid bringing in all the other dark stuff Cohen did for Trump, though arguably it should be able to...
235/ ...because it would play poorly in our culturally conservative (in many respects *procedurally* pro-Trump) media; it could lead to a stronger mistrial motion; it could cause Cohen to go rogue as a witness; and it would damage Trump’s credibility, but *also* Michael Cohen’s.
236/ But make no mistake, for however boring and anodyne this direct examination is—they’re reviewing, ad nauseam, every communication Cohen had negotiating these payoffs on Trump’s behalf and with Trump’s full knowledge of his actions—Cohen did some *dark sh*t* for Donald Trump.
237/ And that’s why I have been so focused on providing the accurate, comprehensive, fully sourced *background* and *context* to this testimony: because there are strategic reasons that the examinations likely won’t go there, but even if a jury won’t hear about any of this now...
238/ ...*you* as news consumers, citizens and voters have a right to understand the context within which (say) Trump will raise a mistrial motion, almost certainly, over *some* part of the Cohen testimony, when in reality jurors are getting a totally *neutered* account of events.
239/ Even just summarizing the testimony as it’s happening right now is painful—as it’s mind-numbing details about texts and business meetings and phone calls that really serve *only* to establish that Cohen was Trump’s agent at all stages of these negotiations and Trump knew it.
240/ Of course, we must remember this presentation is for jurors, not us. They’re tasked with *only* judging the evidence put before them in trial and nothing else, so prosecutors must build a case from the ground up and include within it *only* information they deem essential.
241/ Meanwhile, for Trump and his team—who know that Trump is dead to rights, and did absolutely everything he’s accused of in just the way he’s accused of doing it—their only friend is chaos. They must muddy clear waters so much the jury throws up its hands in confusion/despair.
242/ A boring, orderly, dry Cohen testimony establishing his wits, credibility, and ability to perceive the events he’s describing, conforming to the evidence the State has already provided—indeed, he’s coming after much corroboration, rather than before—is what prosecutors want.
243/ So my goal as we go forward is to focus on the interesting and new elements in Cohen’s testimony, not the parts merely corroborating what we already know. For instance, it is interesting that Cohen is underscoring how *angry* David Pecker at AMI was about Trump screwing him.
244/ We’ve talked a lot about Trump’s MO in this thread—and here we return to that subject. Just as Trump screwed over Cohen when placating and aiding him (in 2017) would have been better for Trump’s criminal schemes, Trump was screwing over Pecker though doing so endangered him.
245/ When you are an adult human male who has never faced consequences for his actions—and Trump has been pampered by America more than the Gerber baby—you begin to assume (if your sociopathy didn’t already convince you of this) that you can harm others without any consequences.
246/ Law enforcement has taught Trump this lesson. MAGA voters have taught Trump this lesson. Republican politicians and officials have taught Trump this lesson. Anyone who has *ever* socialized with Trump despite knowing him to be a lesion on the soul of America has taught him.
247/ What they have taught him is that he is impervious to consequences. So yes, Trump thought Cohen was a loyal enough dog that he would go to prison for him for any length of time and never turn against him. He assumes the same of Allen Weisselberg—correctly, it turns out!—now.
248/ It’s why Trump won’t drop the Big Lie—he’s only been rewarded for it; so far, he hasn’t gotten punished for it, or for January 6, or for colluding with Russia and Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Turkey and Israel and Venezuela and Hungary, and likely never will—so why stop now?
249/ Trump knew that AMI was failing financially; and had already paid Dino the Doorman $30,000; and was now being asked by him to pay $150,000 to McDougal; and that Pecker was hiding these expenditures from his bosses, and Trump simply didn’t care. Because he’s reckless, mostly.
250/ But it’s *also* the case that Trump knew he would have a lot of goodies to dole out if he became POTUS—mostly business deals with the foreigners he was colluding with—and had *long* ago taken the measure of David Pecker and determined him to be a man without a moral bottom.
251/ So Trump knew that, as with Cohen, he could string Pecker along perpetually in the hopes of getting Trump’s table scraps because, if past is indeed prologue, Pecker *would* get enough table scraps—as Cohen was getting—to shut him up and keep him just a perpetually loyal dog.
252/ And indeed it seems clear that Pecker made *exponentially* more from the Saudis than he ever expended paying off Trump’s mistresses, which was partly a matter of Trump’s design and partly a matter of his luck. For we must concede it: Trump is one of the *luckiest men alive*.
253/ It’s too rarely commented on that the reason many Americans love Trump is because they earnestly see him as being touched by fate—which, in a slanted way, he is, as the level of luck he’s received (which has never stopped him from crying victim, of course!) is preternatural.
254/ Now, if I were religious, which I’m not, I sure wouldn’t look at Trump’s activities and say that his luck is a sign that he’s touched by God. In fact, were I a religious person and done *any reading in Christianity* (which I have), I’d see him as the *Devil’s* work-product.
255/ And this is a more *relevant* question than my tongue-in-cheek treatment of it suggests. Some of the major questions I get asked as a Trump biographer are, How does he get away with it? Why does no one stop his crimes? Why doesn’t he faces the consequences the rest of us do?
256/ And I’ve no answer for it—honestly. It’s the one question I can’t find an answer to as a Trump biographer. And I know none of you have found it either. So if a priest came to me and said that Trump has a deal with the Devil, it would seem as good an explanation to me as any.
257/ The point being, I don’t know why Pecker didn’t turn on Trump the way Cohen ultimately would after Trump *literally* left him no choice. They weren’t really friends. Pecker knew—he’s now testified—that he was committing crimes for Trump. But for some reason, he trudged on.
258/ Obviously the focus of the Cohen testimony today is the audio Cohen surreptitiously recorded—further proving that Cohen was always the fly in the ointment of the Devil’s Plan or whatever explains Trump’s charmed life—in which he talks catch-and-kill deals with Trump himself.
259/ Trump acknowledges hess aware of the catch-and-kill op; aware that Cohen is the lead on it; aware AMI is involved; aware women are being paid off; and even suggests that Cohen make payment in *cash*—the better (one presumes) to leave no paper trail. Trump hates paper trails.
260/ Again, keep in mind how *normal* this interaction would’ve seemed to Trump, as Cohen was likely also working with Kasowitz on such deals; was the leading on Trump Tower Moscow negotiations with the Kremlin and its agents; was trying to locate a “pee tape” in Russia and more.
261/ What we hear on that tape is a man talking to his consigliere. It’s Tony Soprano talking to Silvio Dante, not a businessman speaking to one of countless business associates. It’s a man talking to another man with whom he’s *synched all his phone contacts*, for Christ’s sake.
262/ But for all that this is the big picture, the little details matter too. For instance, just 27 minutes ago Cohen was asked how he first heard that the Wall Street Journal was going to be running a major report on a Trump mistress weeks before the 2016 election. Cohen says...
263/ ...he might have heard about it from Hope Hicks—the comms director for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, who’s now trying to aid Trump by preposterously claiming that Cohen was sort of a silly hanger-on rather than Trump’s fixer. Why did she message Cohen? I’ll tell you.
264/ Because Hope Hicks knew goddamn well that Michael Cohen was Trump’s consigliere.
She knew a good deal about what Cohen did for the Boss.
She knew that Trump was crooked as a bent nail.
And she knew that when a bad story popped up, it was Cohen’s job to kill it dead. ASAP.
She knew a good deal about what Cohen did for the Boss.
She knew that Trump was crooked as a bent nail.
And she knew that when a bad story popped up, it was Cohen’s job to kill it dead. ASAP.
265/ We’re in the stage of FAFO in which folks who should be Finding Out the consequences for F*cking Around with a career criminal are instead trying to chart a middle course: comply with subpoeas while providing testimony that may please a future POTUS with the pardon power...
266/ ...who will also, if he becomes POTUS again, seek to destroy his enemies by any means—even illicit ones. Hope Hicks was one of the worst enablers of Donald Trump, and should have no place in polite American society any longer.
But she does. In part because she did enough...
But she does. In part because she did enough...
267/ ...to try to muddy the waters about who Michael Cohen was to Donald Trump when her actions establish that she understood all of this *perfectly well* (including through her attendance at the fateful August 2015 Trump Tower summit between Mssrs. Trump, Pecker, and Cohen).
268/ Hicks is also counting on the fact that—despite the recorded fact that Trump often spoke of her like a piece of sexual meat when she wasn’t in the room—he feels in a fatherly way toward her, much as he does with Ivanka (who he’s also known to be very sexually attracted to).
269/ Sorry to have to have written that—but that’s who the man is. History will record moral atrocities about him that even his top biographers haven’t caught wind of yet. All we can do is tell the truth, and in so doing give you all a sense of what’s surely coming down the line.
270/ About 20 minutes ago, the jury returned from its brief afternoon recess, so we’re getting very close to caught up with this generally “dry and uneventful” testimony (which again—to be clear—means it’s going *well* for the State; “exciting” would be more to *Trump’s* liking).
271/ Now we come to a tough question.
Is there a possibility that—in an effort to hurt Trump as much as possible *when simply telling the truth on the stand would do*—Michael Cohen has already or will soon tell unnecessary lies under oath during his testimony today or tomorrow?
Is there a possibility that—in an effort to hurt Trump as much as possible *when simply telling the truth on the stand would do*—Michael Cohen has already or will soon tell unnecessary lies under oath during his testimony today or tomorrow?
272/ And the answer is, yes, in my judgment that is a possibility. I am *not* claiming any special knowledge whatsoever of Cohen’s plan for testifying; I am simply trying to be accurate and fair as a historian. Cohen learned *vengeance* at the feet of a true master: Donald Trump.
273/ He has been convicted for lying before. His entire career was built on lies about Trump. I personally adjudge him to be pathological liar. He is one of these men—MAGAs want all men to be this way, which is grotesque to me—who believes admitting error is admitting a weakness.
274/ So it’s in this context Cohen was just asked if he ever wanted or expected a job in the Trump administration. There’s been a lot of major-media reporting to the effect that he did, but also a lot of major-media reporting to the effect that that vain hope of Cohen’s was sad.
275/ So when asked by Hoffinger if he ever wanted or expected a White House job, Cohen insists—repeatedly—that he did not.
And here’s where I want to pull back for a moment and reveal some things about trial advocacy and criminal law. Things I know from long, hard experience.
And here’s where I want to pull back for a moment and reveal some things about trial advocacy and criminal law. Things I know from long, hard experience.
276/ First is the easy stuff: no lawyer can suborn Perjury (put on a witness you know for a fact is lying, based on your own information and belief via receipt of evidence rather than gut instinct). That’s not a hard rule to follow—any lawyer worth their salt does so religiously.
277/ But being a criminal defense lawyer also means almost daily being put in situations in which you must question—sometimes even call yourself—witnesses with credibility issues.
And I’m not just speaking of defendants, who rarely testify but always have an absolutely right to.
And I’m not just speaking of defendants, who rarely testify but always have an absolutely right to.
278/ You may have to call, say, a defendant’s friend or girlfriend or coworker to family member, who you well understand wants to be helpful to the defendant in their testimony. Or you may—more easily—face cross-examining a state witness you know would lie to *harm* your client.
279/ And then there’s this weird, oddly common third category: witnesses who are just kind of pieces of sh*t who don’t respect rule of law or the court, or have basic integrity, but are *also* stupid as hell—so they’ll sometimes say preposterous things on the stand for no reason.
280/ Obviously one *hopes* not to ever have to deal with such witnesses, but it does seem like criminal incidents attract them like flies—perhaps because many situations involving crimes involve at least *some* reckless, stupid, unsophisticated, irresponsible, antisocial people.
281/ To be clear, these people may not be *bad* per se—simply pathological. They may have a lifetime of telling half-truths behind them, and cannot turn off their personalities or tendencies just because they are on the witness stand in a court whose rules they *may* not respect.
282/ The original working title for the second Michael Cohen was The Department of Injustice. This is a man angry at law enforcement in many respects, and while he may want to see Trump face justice—and isn’t wrong for wanting that!—he also doesn’t love prosecutors. Like, at all.
283/ He’s also a man obsessed with his image. I think (just an opinion, based on outside observation) he wants to please MSNBC with his commentary and feels he can play it like a fiddle to ensure he stays on-air. I think his podcast is scripted to attract a Trump-hating audience.
284/ All of which cynicism he’s entitled to, I suppose, and he’s likely had a hard(ish) life that led him to be this way. But I also don’t know that he can *turn it off* just because he’s on the witness stand, and I don’t know how much prosecutors can control him in that regard.
285/ So no, he doesn’t want to admit that he hoped in vain for a White House job Trump was never going to give him, because that hope makes him look a bit silly, naive, and doltish. And he especially doesn’t want to admit this in front of Donald Trump in the Trial of the Century.
286/ So I do worry that there are questions Cohen has been or will be asked that he’ll answer based on what he thinks is good for Michael Cohen rather than what the truth demands, what’s good for the rule of law, what’s good for America, or what obligation he owes to a U.S. jury.
287/ And *nothing* hurts a case more than lies.
This is the main thing a generation—or three—raised on the bullshit depiction of the criminal justice system the Law & Order series gave us doesn’t understand. *All* parties benefit from trials focusing only on the *truth*. Really!
This is the main thing a generation—or three—raised on the bullshit depiction of the criminal justice system the Law & Order series gave us doesn’t understand. *All* parties benefit from trials focusing only on the *truth*. Really!
288/ If you’re a defense lawyer and know there’s a push to introduce bullshit into your case, *or* if you’re in the same situation and you’re a prosecutor, you work as hard as you can to eliminate that BS from the trial. You don’t call that witness. You don’t make that argument.
289/ Why? Well, first because it’s the right thing to do, but *even* when you’re under a zealous-advocacy obligation—which trial attorneys are—the simple fact is that judges and *particularly juries* have excellent bullshit-detection mechanisms. Lies are almost always caught out.
290/ They are caught out because of cross-examination. They are caught out because of evidence that later comes in—including rebuttal evidence—you didn’t know about and perhaps *couldn’t* have known about. They are caught out because jury deliberations involve 12 people, not one.
291/ They are caught out because witnesses are never as good as dissembling as they think. They are caught out because our body language betrays us. They are caught out because lies are harder to remember than the truth, so we often end up contradicting ourselves when lying.
292/ A good defense attorney, like a good prosecutor, wants to put on a defense that is *wholly true*. Yes, really! You actually *select* the defense based on what is true and provable and plausible. And if a seemingly better defense would rely on lies or guesses, you discard it.
293/ If there’s no defense, you plead guilty. That’s why 90%+ of all criminal cases plead out (did you know that?) It’s a rare instance in which you’ve no honest defense but are *forced* to go to trial. That happens almost exclusively if your client is desperate, scummy, or both.
294/ Trump is desperate and scummy. So I’m going to tell you something no one but a criminal defense attorney who’s also an *indie* (not corporate) journalist would tell you: this case is *only* going to trial because Trump is running for POTUS. This case should have pleaded out.
295/ Trump is dead-to-rights—he did this. He’s no viable defense besides advice-of-counsel—which he gave up because he wouldn’t waive attorney-client privilege, as his lawyer would be forced to reveal how very guilty he is—or an attack on the indictment, which he’ll do on appeal.
296/ And because he has no defense, but *also because he has lied through his teeth to his attorneys about everything*, they are left flailing about, not knowing how to structure their questions or even their defense because they cannot proceed based on what they know to be true.
297/ Trump is *the* nightmare client. He’s the Platonic ideal of a client no one would represent but a public defender—we can’t choose clients—or a lawyer so unscrupulous they shouldn’t be practicing.
A client like Trump destroys your reputation *and* gives you unwinnable cases.
A client like Trump destroys your reputation *and* gives you unwinnable cases.
298/ I’d say exactly the same about Michael Cohen, if he came to me asking for legal representation. Frankly it’s how I instantly felt even in the face of the very different prospect of working with him on a book project. I felt I’d very soon be asked to compromise my principles.
299/ Trump knows this about both himself and Cohen. And his counsel knows it about both Trump and Cohen. So one of the only things defense counsel can do here is test the sufficiency of the State’s evidence by calling Cohen on any stupid lies or half-truths he tells on the stand.
300/ And, you know, the odds there will be some are... decent.
301/ But I’m also here to tell you that that’s, like, *every* criminal trial. It’s why we have an *adversarial* system of justice rather than the *inquisitorial* one Europe has. We *know* people will be dodgy, so we set two zealous advocates against one another before a *jury*.
302/ In many, many criminal trials, certain things will be said that are not *quite* right. Some of them the lawyers will object to immediately; the judge may sustain those objections, and even strike certain testimony. A judge can admonish the jury to ignore certain evidence.
303/ Or such testimony is attacked in redirect or rcross, or via rebuttal witnesses, or with the introduction of documentary evidence attacking a witness’s credibility/statements. Or you can attack testimony in closing arguments. Jurors discard certain testimony in deliberations.
304/ All of which is to say that Cohen potentially making misstatements *isn’t* an instant case-winner for Trump or *close* to that because—well—welcome to trial advocacy! This is just how it goes.
Trump and his lawyers (and his fans) will insist otherwise, but them’s the facts.
Trump and his lawyers (and his fans) will insist otherwise, but them’s the facts.
305/ So, with that said, let’s return to the testimony.
306/ Court adjourned just 15 minutes ago, so I am covering the final 90 minutes or so of Cohen’s testimony today. It appears the general consensus of those in the room was that Cohen was calm, serious, and restrained in his testimony—exactly what the State wanted.
The defense...
The defense...
307/ ...will try to rile him up, and candidly it’s not hard to do. It’ll take every ounce of self-restraint Cohen has to resist the urge to be combative, melodramatic and loud(ish) with defense counsel, and I think the jury is out—no pun intended—on whether he can manage that.
308/ As for the last portions of Cohen’s testimony today, they focused on getting a view inside the Trump campaign as the Access Hollywood tape dropped—which Trump believed could end not just his political career but even decimate his business brand (especially with women)—and...
309/ ...again, establishing just how close Cohen was to all the negotiations over catch-and-kill *especially* post-Access Hollywood tape—as at that point the Kremlin and the Saudis abandoned him, the GOP elite abandoned him, AMI abandoned him...
...and only Cohen remained loyal.
...and only Cohen remained loyal.
310/ This thread will run 400+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp
311/ What Michael Cohen establishes, with compelling testimonial and documentary evidence, is that he truly was like a shadow campaign manager in 2016—which is certainly how Hope Hicks, the comms director of the campaign, treated him, as I have noted previously in this thread.
312/ If a story came up, any story anywhere, that Trump wanted to kill in the weeks before the election and thought he might have the pull to kill—with Pecker, Rupert Murdoch, or whoever—he set Cohen on the case, and Cohen would spring into action, usually via shouts and threats.
313/ But Cohen also establishes just how close he was with some *astonishing* testimony about how Donald Trump talks in private—and no, I am not talking about all the racist comments about Black Americans and antisemitic comments about Jews Cohen has spoken and written of before.
314/ At one point, with respect to a story about Trump’s serial adulteries—a man couldn’t have any more contempt for his wife than Trump does Melania—Cohen asked Trump how certain news would play “upstairs” (by which he meant with Melania).
You will not believe Trump’s response.
You will not believe Trump’s response.
315/ TRUMP: “Don’t worry [about her]; how long do you think I’ll be on the [marriage] market for [if we get divorced]? Not long.”
As I said—speaking as a Trump biographer who has researched him full-time for *almost a decade* now—the man is a contemptibly transactional creature.
As I said—speaking as a Trump biographer who has researched him full-time for *almost a decade* now—the man is a contemptibly transactional creature.
316/ I often refer to Trump as a sociopath because there is no evidence, public or private, of any normal human feeling in the man. He only loves one of his children, and only because she reminds him of himself and (accordingly) he wants to sleep with her. He doesn’t even know...
317/ ...how *old* his son Barron is, and he lives with him.
He had no awareness that Barron had been selected as a Florida GOP delegate until the press told him, and no awareness Barron had been pulled back from that precipice (presumably by his mother) until the press told him.
He had no awareness that Barron had been selected as a Florida GOP delegate until the press told him, and no awareness Barron had been pulled back from that precipice (presumably by his mother) until the press told him.
318/ His defense, based 100% in fantasy—and thus dangerous for all the reasons I said previously, *plus* because Trump (a Perjury-charge-in-waiting) *can’t* testify—that he was worried the truth about Daniels, McDougal and so many other mistresses would hurt Melania... is garish.
319/ Imagine not giving a sh*t—excuse my language—about how much you embarrass/betray your supermodel wife with the other supermodels, Playboy bunnies, porn stars and (possibly) prostitutes you sleep with, and then using *your love for her* as a defense at a trial on 34 felonies.
320/ I mean, I don’t know. He’s a monster, right? Is there any requirement of polite society that demands we say anything else? Do my journalistic responsibilities compel me to sugar-coat what he is for you rather than just telling you what a near-decade of research has shown me?
321/ The man is a f*cking *monster*.
That’s my judgment as a journalist, an attorney, a historian, an author, a professor, an amateur ethicist—any attorney who wants to be a good attorney has to be one—a husband, and an American.
He’s a f*cking monster. It’s a straight-up fact.
That’s my judgment as a journalist, an attorney, a historian, an author, a professor, an amateur ethicist—any attorney who wants to be a good attorney has to be one—a husband, and an American.
He’s a f*cking monster. It’s a straight-up fact.
322/ But that’s not the important question for this thread. The question for *this* thread is, does the jury see and hear that obvious fact, when Cohen testifies to what Trump said to him in private about Melania? I suspect they do.
But can Trump now seek a mistrial over it? No.
But can Trump now seek a mistrial over it? No.
323/ As if to prove how little they’ve actually *thought* about the criminal justice system—despite their glee, and political focus, on how efficiently it destroys the lives of *other* people (usually poor and nonwhite)—MAGAs think bad facts can’t come in at a criminal trial! 🤣
324/ Newsflash: if you’re a defendant, bad facts are almost the *only* things that’ll come in at your trial. No one’s there to throw you a bouquet of roses. The only question is if you’ll be *caged* at the end of the proceedings. So the *question* is, is the testimony *relevant*?
325/ As we’ve covered, everything about the wholly fantastical defense Trump forced his lawyers into for this case actually *hurts* him—and that includes his claim he was worried about his family during the course of his catch-and-kill/defraud American voters operation in 2016.
326/ By promising that defense in opening arguments, Trump/his lawyers opened the door—as we say when discussing evidence at trial—for the State putting on any evidence tending to disprove that gratuitous (wholly false!) Trump claim.
And this part of Cohen’s testimony does that.
And this part of Cohen’s testimony does that.
327/ Indeed, Cohen could likely go on at length about the evidence he has—he probably has a lot—regarding how much contempt Trump has for his wife and almost his whole family. The only reason the State will avoid most of it is because Trump will be appealing to political judges.
328/ That’s right: the shadow of Trump-appointed appellate judges, and the significantly-Trump-appointed Supreme Court, hangs over this case. A political judge who wants to aid Trump will *not* use a relevance analysis, but a *fairness* one. And I don’t mean a prejudice analysis.
329/ A prejudice analysis is when a judge determines the prejudicial effect of a given piece of testimony outweighs its probative utility, meaning that you can’t justify bringing in the evidence by saying it’s relevant and proves something because it is *so* massively damaging.
330/ Most defendants are smart enough not to open the door—as we say—to massively damaging evidence of their poor character coming into a trial because the evidence is necessary to establish a fact in dispute in the case.
But guess what: Trump *is* that stupid! Or just reckless!
But guess what: Trump *is* that stupid! Or just reckless!
331/ Trump’s trial strategy is *so* stupid, reckless, arrogant, delusional, deranged, and divorced from *anything* that *any* expert would’ve advised him to pursue that—I kid you not—it actually becomes an argument *against his reelection*.
No man so foolhardy should be a POTUS.
No man so foolhardy should be a POTUS.
332/ What the last 90 minutes of Cohen’s testimony establishes, in fact, was that Trump was *so* certain Cohen would be his loyal dog forever that he not only admitted his crimes to him but then *screwed him over* when he got in trouble and *still* assumed Cohen would be loyal(!)
333/ This, too, is disqualifying in a President of the United States. How do you expect Donald Trump to deal effectively and aggressively and confidently on our behalf as Americans with Putin and Erdoğan and Orbán and Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping if he can’t handle...Michael Cohen?
334/ Cohen had no difficulty secretly recording Trump, turned on him when Trump abandoned him, had all the documentary evidence he needed—testimonial evidence notwithstanding—to bury Trump, and knew where the bodies were buried for a man not loyal to him. What was Trump thinking?
335/ This is one way to understand Trump’s many criminal cases: they underscore how *very* easy it was to outmaneuver Trump once *anyone* was trying to do so. Trump benefitted, in other words—and for decades—from an incredible run of luck and law enforcement just... looking away.
336/ Trump was so stupid that even though he knew Pecker could bury him with the McDougal deal, he screwed him over on payment. And even though he knew Daniels could bury him with the story he was having Cohen pay for, Cohen testified Trump secretly planned to screw her over too.
337/ Who’s to blame for Trump being so reckless in his conduct—and then so reckless in how he covered it up?
Alvin Bragg? No. Joe Biden? No. Merrick Garland? No. Unnamed communists? No. BLM? No. Pro-peace demonstrators on college campuses? No.
The man did all this to *himself*.
Alvin Bragg? No. Joe Biden? No. Merrick Garland? No. Unnamed communists? No. BLM? No. Pro-peace demonstrators on college campuses? No.
The man did all this to *himself*.
338/ And I think Michael Cohen’s testimony established that, while shining none of the light Trump wanted shone on Cohen (which light—of course—would only reflect that Cohen was as unscrupulous as Trump *wanted and needed him to be*). Which is why the NYT headline right now is...
339/ ...in the NYT’s first op-ed on Cohen’s testimony, COHEN’S TESTIMONY LANDED BLOW AFTER BLOW ON TRUMP.
*Yikes*.
But that does appear to be *exactly* what Trump’s foolhardy actions, and equally foolhardy defense, have wrought. Today’s testimony was clearly a disaster for him.
*Yikes*.
But that does appear to be *exactly* what Trump’s foolhardy actions, and equally foolhardy defense, have wrought. Today’s testimony was clearly a disaster for him.
340/ This thread will run 400+ tweets, so this is just a brief mid-thread break to note that while of course this thread and its expertise are free, if you’d like to tip the author for his work, you can do so in seconds, in any amount, at the link below: sethabramson.net/pp
341/ But Michael Cohen’s devastating impact on Donald Trump’s criminal defense today—assuming Cohen doesn’t screw it up tomorrow with lies or intemperance on cross-examination—didn’t end with the revelation about Melania or Trump’s high degree of involvement in a criminal scheme.
342/ Cohen details that Trump was driving the plan to screw over Daniels by deliberately delaying the resolution of her deal until after the election, as *Cohen* knew this would lead to her going to the press and Trump losing the election due to a *second* sex-related scandal.
343/ So why did Trump put his whole presidential campaign on the line? Why did he put his entire brand on the line? Just to avoid paying Stormy Daniels $130,000? When he knew that the *best-case scenario* was that she would simply go to the press as soon as the election was over?
344/ Two reasons, both relevant to my key discoveries as a Trump biographer:
(i) Trump’s cheap—but he’s not *just* cheap. He’s also essentially broke. He *can’t* willy-nilly pay people $130,000, because he’s terminally illiquid.
(ii) Trump f*cking hates—I mean *hates*—all women.
(i) Trump’s cheap—but he’s not *just* cheap. He’s also essentially broke. He *can’t* willy-nilly pay people $130,000, because he’s terminally illiquid.
(ii) Trump f*cking hates—I mean *hates*—all women.
345/ Trump will pay a woman for sex if she’s a prostitute and he has entered into that deal; that’s why Karen McDougal revealed to Anderson Cooper that Trump tried to pay her after they had sex; he thought she was a prostitute, though she wasn’t (and actually *really liked* him).
346/ But if Trump slept with you and you seek to make money off that story, he’s at war with you now and forever. His contempt knows no bounds.
And this is party because career criminals *have* to think this way: people who tell about what you did in private are your Kryptonite.
And this is party because career criminals *have* to think this way: people who tell about what you did in private are your Kryptonite.
347/ It’s hard for those of us who aren’t sociopaths and career criminals to understand how important the Code of Silence was/is to Trump. (I mean as to others, of course. Trump isn’t bound to it—he’ll dime you out to the FBI in an instant. But he wants everyone *else* so bound.)
348/ Trump had no interest in figuring out how to actually scrape together $130,000; hated Daniels so much that he *relished* the idea of screwing her over with a contract he never intended to honor (that’s his M.O., remember; it’s how he got rich); and didn’t want a paper trail.
349/ Michael Cohen was in Trump’s life *specifically* to deal with such things. But he was also—never forget this—*also* in *Hope Hicks’s* life to deal with such things. Isn’t it nice when—as a comms director—you can just talk to the fixer to get him to get rid of a comms issue?
350/ But no one appreciates the fixer. In fact, he’s not even supposed to be *noticed* unless and until he’s arrested. Then the mafia makes sure he’s taken care of. Except Trump is like the stupidest mobster alive: when his consigliere is arrested, he spurns him. Who *does* that?
351/ When you hear today—and you will, including in this thread—that Cohen’s testimony was devastating, understand that it’s not just the sobriety that it was delivered with (though that helps) but how *detailed* it was about establishing how in the loop Trump was on all of this.
352/ Anyone who knows Trump—that includes his biographers and presidential historians—knows that if he doesn’t care about something, it’s invisible to him. He’ll only notice it if he has to lie—on the spot—about knowing something about it.
But if he *cares*? He’s a micromanager.
But if he *cares*? He’s a micromanager.
353/ If Trump was coasting toward Election Day after his and his son’s final failure to get fake dirt on Clinton from Russian nationals and/or WikiLeaks in September 2016, the Access Hollywood tape woke him up because he realized he could lose not just the election but his brand.
354/ He suddenly looked a fool before the whole world. Everyone started abandoning him. So he—if only briefly—regained his focus on his would-be political career to try to save his brand. He worked very closely with Cohen.
But even then, as soon as he knew a deal with Daniels...
But even then, as soon as he knew a deal with Daniels...
355/ ...had been struck, he returned instantly to his default setting: let someone else deal with it so long as you don’t have to outlay any money or answer any questions about it. Again, this sort of thinking and conduct wouldn’t fly in a *babysitter*—let alone a U.S. president.
356/ In recounting all this on the stand today, it helped that Cohen was willing to admit—if a bit grudgingly, and sometimes only via euphemism—that he was willing to lie for Trump, even on national TV. In fact, I think Cohen could have done more to own up to this. It would help.
357/ I liken his responses to questions about advocating for Trump on TV to his response about a job in the White House: he’s aware that if he admits to a thing with Trump in the room he’s in a way *losing* to Trump and he doesn’t want that. But clearly Cohen *did* lie for Trump.
358/ OMG, there are so many call logs in this testimony! It’s so boring!
Which is *amazing* for the State—it’s just what they wanted, and what I would’ve wanted as a trial attorney if I were in their shoes.
It’s the *defense* that needs a big Michael Cohen clown show this week.
Which is *amazing* for the State—it’s just what they wanted, and what I would’ve wanted as a trial attorney if I were in their shoes.
It’s the *defense* that needs a big Michael Cohen clown show this week.
359/ Katie Phang is amazing, but hopefully this image below underscores why I didn’t want the job she (mostly) had to do today as a journalist-stenographer for some incredibly bland—even deliberately bland—trial testimony.
I was present for enough of that in my old legal career!
I was present for enough of that in my old legal career!
360/ What we’ll see in the cross of Cohen is the reverse of what Trump’s lawyers have assured us—and the jury!—they want in this trial. They *claim* to want this framed as a documents case, but what they *need* in crossing Cohen is unprofessional testimonial fireworks, not paper.
361/ I want to underscore that I really appreciate the input Katie offers in her coverage, including speaking of Cohen’s demeanor—even how he addressed the prosecutor as “ma’am” (a courtesy it would be wise for him to show tomorrow, generally speaking re: “sir,” to Mr. Blanche).
362/ This is important not just for the sake of decorum and to show respect to the court and to the jury, but because Cohen is testifying to some unethical conduct and—almost as bad—to some *embarrassing* conduct as a former Trump stooge. He needs to maintain gravitas, if he can.
363/ It helps that, even inasmuch as he was doing dirty work for Trump, he seems to have done it competently, with confidence and—not for nothing—in a way that was helpful to his Boss, such as it was. Cohen took prosecutors through how he used a HELOC to get money to pay Daniels.
364/ Remember, Trump’s defense—or part of it; I mean, the *full* defense alleges a wild conspiracy between Daniels and Cohen to take him down (when both were once supporters of his)—is that Cohen out of the goodness of his heart paid $130,000 to Daniels he never told Trump about.
365/ I can’t emphasize how stupid and bankrupt this defense is. As I’ve mentioned, you never see a defense this stupid and counter to the facts because you never have a defendant *this* desperate *and* arrogant. The real defense here, if there is one, is a technical defense...
366/ ...to the indictment itself—though as I noted it was ironically the corruption of Trump’s DOJ and FBI that forced state prosecutors to pursue cases as felonies they might’ve otherwise pursued as misdemeanors (and again, I think the theory for elevating the charges is sound).
367/ Cohen took the jury through the David Dennison agreement Trump was involved with via a pseudonym, and I cannot imagine—given how clear Cohen was on this point—that any juror doubted that the purpose of the deal was to maintain Trump’s viability as a GOP political candidate.
368/ To put a fine point on it, if Cohen doesn’t pay for Trump’s deal with Daniels, Donald Trump isn’t President of the United States on January 21, 2017.
I suspect there are few if any historians who’d dispute that fact, and if the jurors are smart, they’ve already accepted it.
I suspect there are few if any historians who’d dispute that fact, and if the jurors are smart, they’ve already accepted it.
369/ Wow—so it looks like I’ve been threading for about nine hours now.
Fortunately, we’re on the home stretch: the last part of Cohen’s testimony today.
As ever, if you want to tip the author of this thread for his work, see this quick-and-easy link: sethabramson.net/pp
Fortunately, we’re on the home stretch: the last part of Cohen’s testimony today.
As ever, if you want to tip the author of this thread for his work, see this quick-and-easy link: sethabramson.net/pp
370/ CNN covering this testimony as a “lurid feud.”
Take it from a former journalism professor that that’s not how you cover a major event like this one.
This is about rule of law and decisions made by human adults; it isn’t mere lurid gossip fodder—like some reality-show feud.
Take it from a former journalism professor that that’s not how you cover a major event like this one.
This is about rule of law and decisions made by human adults; it isn’t mere lurid gossip fodder—like some reality-show feud.
371/ The reason the latter portions of Cohen’s testimony are important is because of course the 34 felonies Trump faces regard business records produced after the election—when Trump was paying Cohen back for what he knew was an illegal campaign contribution (the Daniels payoff).
372/ Michael Cohen created shell corporations for that purpose, after having had *many* direct and telephonic communications with Trump about the work he was doing on his behalf. In a bizarre way, Trump’s best remaining defense might be that he was *so negligent* in assuming...
373/ ...Cohen was handling everything that he paid no attention as he signed checks later on and approved ledgers later on that included paying Cohen over $400,000(!)—$130,000 for the reimbursement and presumably the rest to keep quiet about all of it. But Trump has big problems.
374/ Trump had micromanaged the process on the front end; Trump is famously frugal (so no, he *doesn’t* give out $400,000—especially not to Cohen—willy-nilly, which is why Cohen carefully established with prosecutors why Trump was so loath to pay him for his work in the past)...
375/ ...and even if Trump was—by the time he caused these false records to be created—the President of the United States, unless he was literally non compos mentis in 2017, which he definitely won’t claim he was, he knew the event just *weeks earlier* that had made him POTUS...
376/ ...was the event his lawyer, fixer, friend, and employee was now seeking reimbursement for was the Daniels payoff, and not some other miscellaneous (never explained) legal work, as Trump now preposterously claims. Indeed, we now *know* Trump saw $130,000 as a lot of money...
377/ ...because he was such a little adulterous *baby* about paying it in the first place. He can hardly say he joined a plot to avoid paying a woman who knew the truth about him $130,000 pre-election, but just *weeks later* couldn’t be bothered by a $400,000 payout to his fixer.
378/ Trying to find any sense in Trump’s defense in Manhattan is like looking for oxen meat in your clams casino. What the hell are you doing?
379/ Some miscellaneous items on the back end of Cohen’s direct testimony:
i) Cohen explains how angry Trump was about all this, which underscores he didn’t merely forget about it post-election;
ii) Cohen says Trump promised him the role of personal attorney to the president...
i) Cohen explains how angry Trump was about all this, which underscores he didn’t merely forget about it post-election;
ii) Cohen says Trump promised him the role of personal attorney to the president...
380/ ...which strongly calls to mind his promise to Sidney Powell that she’d be Special Counsel to the President (a made-up title, but one Trump intended *would* give her power) four years later, in 2020; and
iii) his testimony about the betrayal he felt when Trump stiffed him...
iii) his testimony about the betrayal he felt when Trump stiffed him...
381/ ...is I suspect oddly affecting for jurors, not because Cohen’s a good guy but because he strikes such a sad, lonely, cringing figure who’d done everything to help a man become President of the United States only to be *tossed aside like garbage* at the end of years of work.
382/ Specifically, when it came time to determine Cohen’s *bonus* for 2016—a year in which you could argue that Michael Cohen *singlehandedly made Trump the most powerful human on Earth*—Trump treated Cohen like he was a McDonald’s employee who had gotten his order wrong. Really.
383/ I think jurors may forget about Cohen’s lack of scruples and wonder how much of a PoS you have to be to not just be a criminal, cheater, and liar but *also* someone who kicks your dog in the head after he saves you from drowning.
Imagine if Timmy kicked Lassie in the head.
Imagine if Timmy kicked Lassie in the head.
384/ The image that Cohen paints of having to go to Allen Weisselberg—who the State wants to call but feels it can’t because Trump structured a deal with him (which I’d call felony Obstruction) in which he loses hundreds of thousands of dollars if he testifies against Trump—...
385/ ...to more or less *beg* him to ask their *billionaire* boss to reimburse the $130K he outlaid *on his behalf* and wasn’t thanked for is one that leads to some sympathy for Cohen, even if you don’t in any way respect who he is or the work that he was doing in 2016 for Trump.
386/ And since Cohen’s testimony isn’t over, there is even more opportunity for him to induce this sort of weird kind of sympathy *tomorrow*, in continued direct, before Trump’s attorney (Todd Blanche, we expect) takes on the unenviable task of trying to treat Cohen like a dog.
387/ That’s why I’ve been using a dog analogy, here. Trump worked Cohen like a dog; treated him like a dog; and abused him like a dog—*if* you imagine a dog-owner who should be imprisoned for mistreatment of an animal. *Now* Trump will demand his lawyers *cross* Cohen like a dog.
388/ So what the State was doing here was positioning Cohen as dutiful, loyal, and committed to Trump—and competent at the dirty work Trump wanted him to do—and also, therefore, a man Trump *shouldn’t* have mistreated (even less than he already shouldn’t have mistreated Daniels).
389/ This is a sort of trap for Trump’s defense team, which clearly has been ordered by a monster (Trump) to treat *Cohen* like a monster—not a dog—because that is how Trump sees him, and Trump candidly doesn’t care a whit how the jury (now) does.
But his *lawyers* need to care.
But his *lawyers* need to care.
390/ A simple rule for defense attorneys is that the better a state witness comes off before a jury, the less leeway you have to attack them. You will—almost certainly—still have bases to discredit/question them, of course, but jurors may not emotionally give you a lot of leash.
391/ This is why we often speak of “losing the jury”—which, oddly, is as much about jurors being sick of the *lawyers* for the defendant as with the defendant themselves (as remember, it’s the *lawyer* for the defendant who’s doing the talking and is the proxy for the defendant).
392/ I know who and what Cohen is, and have dealt with his sort before—as a lawyer dealing with other lawyers but also, candidly, as a former public defender who’s represented thousands of accused criminals. And despite all that, when I spoke to Cohen...I liked him. I really did.
393/ I can say from experience that Cohen has the capacity to be a lovable asshole. No, I’ve never been on the receiving end of his threats as others have—but then, neither have jurors. They’re seeing the charismatic, gregarious, deceptively smart lawyer from an obscure school...
394/ ...who really was a loyal dog to Trump, a master who didn’t deserve his loyalty.
There’s a possibility for empathy embedded in that story that prosecutors can/will make use of if they’re smart, and that Trump and his attorneys will ignore if they’re foolish. Which they are.
There’s a possibility for empathy embedded in that story that prosecutors can/will make use of if they’re smart, and that Trump and his attorneys will ignore if they’re foolish. Which they are.
395/ So incredibly, there is now—after today—a real chance for the lashing cross Trump is directing (surely) his lawyer Todd Blanche to do tomorrow or Wednesday to backfire and seem like a *continuation* of the neglect, abuse, and/or cruelty Trump appears to have heaped on Cohen.
396/ Remember, too, that Trump—as a sociopath—lacks empathy, so he *cannot* imagine how the jury sees him except by considering how he sees himself.
He doesn’t realize how jurors’ opinion of him plummeted after, say, Cohen testified about Trump’s comments about his wife Melania.
He doesn’t realize how jurors’ opinion of him plummeted after, say, Cohen testified about Trump’s comments about his wife Melania.
397/ He can’t understand how him telling Stormy Daniels that sex with him would get her out of the trailer park—*when she never said anything to him about ever living in a trailer park*—makes him seem like a rich, narcissistic jerk who sees other people as mere pawns for his use.
398/ And he—a man who’s an expert in nothing but believes himself an expert in everything, because he lives in a dangerous, deranged, delusional fantasyland of his own decades-long construction—is the one ordering his attorneys how to represent him, though *they’re* the experts.
399/ There are arenas in which this flies: politics, say, where there are millions of Americans who *want* a Strong Daddy Dictator to subjugate them. Yes—we must accept this—there are folks with so much contempt for themselves they *want* to be ground under the heel of a monster.
400/ But courtrooms are different. They just are. Everyone—including jurors—feels ennobled by the space, the moment, the gravity of the tasks everyone present has. It’s *not* a political rally. Trump has no facility with this sort of space and doesn’t know that.
It may sink him.
It may sink him.
END/ I hope you found this thread informative! I tried to bring my expertise as a lawyer, journalist, and Trump biographer to bear. There’s no obligation, but if you’d like to leave a tip in any amount to this now-fulltime indie journo, you can do so here: sethabramson.net/pp
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