The White House is much like an auto accident scam. or perhaps like such an accident in motion, and flipping end-over-end might be the result as we look on.
Like today’s “shithole country” welcome to the president of Nigeria, one of many Trump policy disasters has now been identified as a scam and only thing left is to double down and keep the fraud going. And that means throwing Cohen under the bus.
Yeah, about that ‘bonkers’ bit… we’re just watching the bus crash, Donald.
Now the stakes have gotten higher than The National Enquirer paying off the objects of Trump’s embarrassment and humiliation, but it could mean actual State of NY jail time for Cohen as they now have signaled his time in the barrel and being cut loose from Trump.
The leaking of Mueller’s questions by Trump’s lawyers has a similar signaling effect but they may be flawed since they also signal a much larger range of possible lines of inquiry.
Enlisted now is the tabloid that has trapped the stories of 45*’s potential sex-partner litigants as a catch-and-kill maneuverer to pay off a complainant. Cohen ironically probably had a role in setting up Karen McDougal’s arrangement with them.
More complicated for Cohen is a decade of working as Trump’s sexual-adventure fixer but more recently as one of Trump’s liaisons to the Russian mob. Trump’s federal pardon will have no effect on NY state-level crimes.
The real problem is that for that same time period, his childhood mob-buddy Felix Sater may have been a CI for the FBI.
...the best defense Trump has left is to discredit Cohen altogether, and make the case that he is fabricating evidence against the president to save his own skin.
In other words, the narrative we see in the National Enquirer is an indication that Trump is seriously desperate.
As Law&Crime‘s Ronn Blitzer noted, the signs suggesting Cohen might flip are already there. Cohen has recently dropped two high-profile defamation cases and is mostly sticking to radio silence. Add this latest wrinkle to the list.
lawandcrime.com/...
If the tabloid suggests Cohen is about to get thrown under a bus, the Enquirer has Trump's back.
The cover claims that Trump "passed polygraph proving no Russia collusion," but inside, it only cites a Florida lie detective named Michael Sylvestre who ran Trump's televised claim that he did not collude with Russia through "the world-renowned DecepTech Voice Stress Analysis Machine." Sylvestre found "HUGE" anger but no dishonesty on Trump's part. Oddly, the Enquirer didn't ask him to run the same test with Cohen.
theweek.com/...
What do you know about a Ukrainian peace proposal provided to Mr. Cohen in 2017?
Mr. Cohen, the lawyer, hand-delivered to the White House a peace proposal for Ukraine and Russia. This unusual bit of backdoor diplomacy is of interest because it involved a Ukrainian lawmaker who said he was being encouraged by Mr. Putin’s aides. Mr. Cohen has said he did not discuss the proposal with Mr. Trump.