Rudy Giuliani went on all the regular shows yesterday, and his message can be best summed up as: “Mueller has to show us that he has criminal information against Trump before we’d cooperate because right now we look around and see nothing.”
It’s a fascinating defense in that it has absolutely no basis in law, and seems absurd on its face. In fact, if one feels quite strongly that there is nothing “criminal” around one’s life, such a person is far more likely to go crashing into the prosecutor’s office to explain anything that need explaining.
Everyone thinks that in all situations, “lawyering-up” means shutting up.
No, that’s not always true, in fact, on those few occasions where it becomes real clear to a defense attorney that the prosecutor is simply misconstruing things, a meeting – with protections – is often the first thing we try to do. Want to know the people who really don’t want to talk to prosecutors and try to make demands and deals? The ones that have a great deal to fear.
Regardless, Rudy makes his demands, and he also said that Michael Cohen should cooperate with the feds and tell the truth. Now, if you hear that statement from someone you know is squeaky clean, like say President Jimmy Carter, then you will believe the statement is to encourage someone to cooperate with the government and tell the truth.
When you hear the statement from someone who is acting more like the lawyer for a mob-boss, what you hear is “If you talk, you better give OUR version of the story. Or else …” And, I am not the only one who interpreted the statement that way, none other than Kasie Hunt made the same point on her show last night.
Well, Michael Cohen now has a real lawyer, Lanny Davis, and Davis sent Rudy a real message that had a bit of an echo effect:
Did @rudygiuliani really say on Sunday shows that @michaelcohen212 should cooperate with prosecutors and tell the truth? Seriously? Is that Trump and Giuliani definition of “truth”? Trump/Giuliani next to the word “truth” = oxymoron. Stay tuned. #thetruthmatters
— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) July 9, 2018
Oh.
Well, I guess we can now say that at least Lanny Davis believes that Michael Cohen knows enough “truth” that he can prove Rudy and Trump are outright liars, there’s no other way to take that tweet. And, I don’t think it is an accident that Davis put “the truth matters” tag right at the end.
This is a fight, and Cohen could “win” his fight by being so dangerous to Trump as to be “brought back into the family” so to speak, and pardoned. But that tweet tells me that at least Davis realizes that Cohen is far better served cooperating with the feds. Whether Cohen HAS the type of information that the Feds want badly enough to drop everything against him is the only real question remaining. It seems Davis thinks Cohen knows some stuff that Trump and Rudy don’t want revealed.
It is quite simple when boiled down. Cohen is facing decades in prison unless he has evidence that the president of the United States is illegally involved with Russia. For the first time, I think Lanny Davis has an idea that Cohen might be able to deliver just that evidence.
