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Like any decent American, I, too, have a burning desire to see Donald Trump brought to justice, removed from office, shamed, impoverished, and imprisoned.
It’s not going to happen. There are too many people in the Republican party and the American media who are willing to debase themselves in service or defense of Donald Trump. I can no longer even imagine what kind of “bombshell” would have to drop to shock Trump sycophants awake. But I’m fairly confident that bombshell is not sitting on Michael Cohen’s computer.
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Yesterday, Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, informed Congress that he recently obtained access to a hard drive containing some 14 million files. In a letter to Congress, Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, imagines that these documents are relevant to Congress’s ongoing investigation into Trump crimes, and asks for Congressional help to go through the files.
Help, and time. You see, Michael Cohen is supposed to report to jail in 30 days. In the letter, Davis asks that Cohen’s prison sentence be “substantially postponed” while he continues to cooperate with Congressional investigations. From CNN:
“We hope that this memorandum demonstrates that Mr. Cohen needs to be readily accessible and immediately available to provide ongoing assistance to Congress in order for it to fulfill its executive branch oversight responsibilities. Mr. Cohen was only recently able to access a hard drive with important documents,” the letter states.
“However, with 30 days left before he surrenders to prison, time is no longer a luxury he is capable of,” Cohen’s lawyers added.
I don’t know why Michael Cohen and Lanny Davis think we’re stupid. Cohen submitted 100 pages of these “newly discovered” documents along with his memo to Congress, and they appear to be functionally useless. From BuzzFeed:
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In a 12-page memo sent to top House Democrats, Cohen’s attorneys said Trump “encouraged Cohen to lie and say all Moscow Tower project contacts ended as of January 31, 2016 using ‘code’ language — telling Cohen during various conversations that there was ‘no collusion, no Russian contacts, nothing about Russia’ after the start of the campaign.’”…
The more than 100 pages of documents included with Cohen’s memo claim to lay bare a “conspiracy to collude” with the Russian government during the campaign, along with an array of other crimes by the president. The memo also for the “first time discloses Michael Cohen’s testimony to the Mueller team and to other non-public testimony to congressional committees,” according to Cohen’s legal team.
Can Cohen prove Trump was speaking in “code”? No? Then Utshay the Uckfay up.
The evidence that Donald Trump lied about the Trump tower meeting, lied about the Moscow tower deal, lied about his knowledge of all of it, and instructed Cohen to lie to Congress is extensive. That evidence doesn’t matter to Republicans, or enough House Democrats, because apparently we live in a world where crimes cannot be prosecuted unless the criminal says “I am committing crimes.” Republicans have moved to the goalposts to the point where anything short of a Trump confession is not going to move the needle, and Trump has installed a corrupt lawyer as the attorney general to help him get away with it all.
Michael Cohen does not have that confession. If he had it, he’d have turned it over already. He’d have testified to it. He’d have gone on television and said, “I have a tape of Trump telling me to lie and I will give it to you if you keep me out of jail.” I do not believe for one second that Cohen just happened upon a hard drive mere weeks before he is supposed to report to prison, or that the hard drive has evidence that more directly establishes Trump’s criminal behavior.
And if it does, if Cohen really has a smoking gun he’s been unknowingly sitting on this whole time, well, then Congress can go through the documents just fine while Cohen is sitting in jail. The argument that Cohen needs to remain out of prison so that he is “readily accessible and immediately available” is freaking dumb. HE’S GOING TO JAIL; WE’LL KNOW WHERE TO FIND HIM IF WE NEED TO CHAT.
Michael Cohen knows that Trump is a liar and a criminal because he helped Trump lie and commit crimes for 10 years. But Michael Cohen is also a terrible attorney. I do not believe he kept good records. I do not believe he can prove, to the satisfaction of Republicans at least, that Trump is what we already know him to be.
Cohen is of no more use. He belongs in prison now.
In bid to remain out of jail, Michael Cohen tells Congress he has more to add [CNN]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.