Government

Trump’s Former Pawn And Personal Attorney Michael Cohen Calls ‘Check’ — What’s The Next Move?

It seems like attorneys are becoming key players in all the recent news and dramas.

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(Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images)

“What’s done in the dark will always find a way to shine / I done did so much that when you see you might go blind.” — J. Cole

On Wednesday, Michael Cohen laid it all out there in front of the House Oversight Committee. Cohen testified for nearly seven hours and painted his former boss, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, as a racist, liar, and cheat.

How did the testimony go? It depends on who you ask. As my ATL colleague Elie Mystal astutely pointed out yesterday:

Cohen testified that Trump was… everything we already know he is. Democrats, for the most part, wasted their time being outraged that Trump has done all the things they already know he does. Republicans, apparently, think Michael Cohen was in some sort of a 10-year plan to engage in illegal activity on behalf of Donald Trump and lie about it so he could spend three years in jail, all because Michael Cohen wants a book deal more than any human on Earth has wanted a book deal.

Did Cohen’s testimony move the needle? I have to agree with my colleague here and say probably not. The next power move, and possibly the smoking gun is held by Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former CFO. Meanwhile, Trump’s shock-and-awe presidency continues to mystify Democrats, stupify the GOP, and gaslight the general public. Regardless, in 2019, it seems like politics is the new form of entertainment. Now all our top political figures have quick Twitter fingers.

If you didn’t have time to read, watch, or listen, to Cohen’s 20-page opening soliloquy, I’ve highlighted several notable excerpts for your consumption. Without further ado, here were some of Cohen’s head-turning lines in Act I of this Shakespearean tragedy we call the Trump administration:

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  1. I lied to Congress about when Mr. Trump stopped negotiating the Moscow Tower project in Russia. I stated that we stopped negotiating in January 2016. That was false — our negotiations continued for months later during the campaign. Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.

  1. A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of time. The answer is yes. As I earlier stated, Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails. In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of “wouldn’t that be great.”

  1. Trump is a racist. The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries “shitholes.” In private, he is even worse. He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a “shithole.” This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States. While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid. And yet I continued to work for him.

  1. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself.

  1. He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the First Lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly — and she did not deserve that. I am giving the Committee today a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer from me to Ms. Clifford’s attorney during the closing days of the presidential campaign that was demanded by Ms. Clifford to maintain her silence about her affair with Mr. Trump.

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  1. When I say conman, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores. As I mentioned, I’m giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission.

  1. I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later. As Exhibit 5 to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank 14 account on August 1, 2017 — when he was President of the United States — pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me — the word used by Mr. Trump’s TV lawyer — for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf. This $35,000 check was one of 11 check installments that was paid throughout the year — while he was President. The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws. You can find the details of that scheme, directed by Mr. Trump, in the pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

It’s no wonder law school enrollment is up! It seems like attorneys are becoming key players in all the recent news and dramas. Now that’s some real representation.

What are your thought’s on this publicly broadcasted battle between Trump and his former special counsel and personal attorney, Michael Cohen? Will the Teflon Don continue his mad reign or will one of his former pawns eventually take him down?

Stay tuned…

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn. 

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