On Thursday, as Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was sending signals that he’ll happily cooperate with Donald Trump to oust the attorney general and grease the path to ending the special counsel investigation, his staff also began meeting with Michael Cohen’s attorney.
While on the surface this may appear to be Grassley admitting that the Senate Judiciary Committee should really be looking into the trove of cover-ups, mystery campaign payments, and even more serious charges in the offing, a closer look suggests something else. Rather than admitting that Cohen’s eight-count guilty plea was a turning point, this tentative probing appears to be a sign that Grassley is looking for ways to not deal with Cohen.
Grassley: When some lawyer says that somebody’s willing to testify, well, what do they have to tell us? I want some idea that they’ve got something of substance to tell us.
Rather than pull Cohen in for an interview and let him reveal his information either to the Senate committee behind closed doors or, much less likely, in open session, Grassley seems determined that Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis prove that there’s something in it for the Senate before he agrees to investigate.
Republican Lindsey Graham, who joined Grassley on Thursday in making it clear that they would be open to replacing attorney general Jefferson Sessions with someone ready to end the Russia investigation, was even more reluctant to admit that there might be something worth hearing from Cohen. After all, Cohen was only someone who, as Trump said in his Thursday Fox News interview handled “small deals” for Trump, and who Trump only saw “now and then.” As when he walked past the adjoining office that Cohen had next to Trump in the headquarters of the Trump Organization for 10 years.
But Graham’s excuse for not bringing in Cohen, while generated to halt any action that would displease Trump, is still a good one.
Graham: I’ve been very consistent about this, I don’t want to cross paths with ongoing criminal investigations.
On this Graham is likely, if inadvertently, right. Cohen and Davis have waved their arms frantically at the special counsel’s office, seeking a deal, but so far at least, Robert Mueller hasn’t moved to give them anything.
This suggests that either the raid on Cohen’s offices was so damning that the special counsel feels that he has nothing more to give, or the raid on Cohen’s offices was so damning that Cohen is damned. That is, that he’s a major criminal focus of still more charges to come.
Either way, having Michael Cohen spill to the Senate at this point might do more harm than good. Had either the Senate or the House pursued the Russia investigation with anything like due diligence, it would be one thing. But both ends of Congress have either slow walked every step (Senate) or intentionally derailed every lead (House) to the point where the two investigations range from pointless to actively destructive.
Michael Cohen testified before the Intelligence Committee in both the House and the Senate in 2017. The best use of their time at this point would be making sure that Mueller has all that testimony in hand to compare with Cohen’s confession and the documents they’ve collected.
The Senate can always interview Cohen again after Mueller turns in his report. That might even be a nice step to take one the articles of impeachment are being evaluated.