Trump Lashes Out at Michael Cohen as Fallout From Guilty Plea Escalates
The fallout from longtime Donald Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen’s decision to plead guilty to a host of financial crimes on Tuesday—and to implicate Trump directly in his misdeeds—arrived on Wednesday. It was as crazy as you might expect.
Trump tweeted out his first set of responses to Cohen’s admission of guilt, after conspicuously ignoring it at a rally the night before:
Good one, Mr. President. Quite the zinger!
He also managed to work in a kinder reference to Paul Manafort, the other former member of his inner circle who is headed to prison for corruption, while dismissing Cohen’s sworn testimony that he violated campaign finance laws at Trump’s behest:
Speaking with NPR, Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney and onetime special counsel for President Bill Clinton, seemed to offer no quarter regarding his client’s next steps.
“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 said.
He continued:
He has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump, who uses the pardon power in a way that no president in American history has ever used a pardon—to relieve people of guilt who committed crimes, who are political cronies of his.
Friendship ended with Donald, baby!
Davis—whose newfound role as the morality police should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism given his previous job helping Clinton navigate his various presidential, um, “indiscretions”—also hinted that Cohen may have more tricks up his sleeve.
“If he tells the truth to the special counsel who talks to him, and I believe he will,” Davis said, “he will have topics that in my opinion will be of interest to the special counsel in his Russian investigation and related topics.”
In a separate interview with the Washington Post, Davis indicated that Cohen had specific information that suggests Trump knew ahead of time about Russian efforts to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Davis has also taken to hyping his newly created crowdfunding campaign to raise money for Cohen, which has already racked up $21 out of its $500,000 goal—despite the fact that Cohen himself is estimated to have a net worth somewhere in the vicinity of $100 million.