Well, this bromance is on the rocks. Trump may have once told Cohen in front of a roomful of people how much he had missed him and Cohen may have said he would take a bullet for Trump, but now they’re behaving like two orangatans in the zoo flinging feces at one another. NPR:
Less than 24 hours after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal counts — ranging from tax evasion to campaign finance violations — Donald Trump’s longtime attorney and fixer brushed aside the possibility of a pardon. In fact, Cohen’s own lawyer, Lanny Davis, said his client would outright reject one if it were granted.
“I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the oval office,” Davis told NPR’s Morning Edition. “And [Cohen] has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump.”
Davis said that President Trump has used his pardon power to bail out “political cronies,” and that Cohen “is not interested in being dirtied by a pardon from such a man.”
And of course Rudy Tooty has also changed tunes. He used to say that Cohen was a “decent, honorable man.” That has morphed into dishonest liar.
“There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen,” Giuliani said in a statement. “It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen’s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.”
Look for the tearing down of Cohen’s credibility to continue.
And while Cohen’s plea agreement does not include a provision about cooperating with prosecutors, it also doesn’t preclude that possibility in the future. This means Cohen could share what he knows with investigators, including special counsel Robert Mueller.
Asked whether Cohen is cooperating with the authorities, Davis told NPR that his client has information that Mueller might want, but he wouldn’t go into specifics.
“If he [Cohen] tells the truth to the special counsel who talks to him, and I believe he will, he will have topics that in my opinion will be of interest to the special counsel in his Russian investigation and related topics,” Davis said.
Of course it’s entirely possible that Cohen is telling Trump to take his pardon and shove it because he knows it isn’t forthcoming anyhow, and it always sounds better to be the decisive one in charge.
8/21 was the continental divide in the Trump *residency. From here on out the downhill slope gets a lot steeper.
