Fox is reporting that Michael Cohen was back on TikTok last night using the Trump trial to troll for dollars. Cohen reportedly appeared in a teeshirt showing Trump in an orange jumpsuit and asked for more followers. He also reportedly announced his candidacy for Congress, which would allow him to take one of the seemingly few oaths that the serial perjurer has not violated.

Who would have thought that District Attorney Alvin Bragg calling a porn star to the stand would be the moral high ground for key witnesses?  Next could be a disbarred, convicted perjurer who is still seeking to make money off the case.

Cohen previously pledged not to discuss the trial after many of us objected to Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order as unconstitutional, particularly as to Cohen who has continued to attack Trump on the air while defending the gag order for his own protection.

Cohen’s prior promise lasted a record of a couple days before he broke it on TikTok. Now he is appearing with a teeshirt mocking Trump and using the moment to pursue a congressional seat.

For Judge Merchan, this is precisely what he was warned about. He has stubbornly enforced his poorly written and excessively broad order. After admitting that this was a “case of first impression” on the extension of gag orders to such things as repostings on social media, Merchan clarified his meaning not with a new order but by imposing sanctions on Trump.

Trump is now appealing the gag order and Cohen is doing his best to undermine not just his residual credibility but that of the court. Between the lurid testimony of Daniels and the continued antics of Cohen, Merchan looks completely feckless, if not farcical, in his own courtroom.

For Merchan and the prosecutors, none of this can come as a surprise.

There is an old fable of a scorpion who wants to cross a river and convinced a hesitant frog to carry him on its back. After all, if he stung the frog in the river, they both would die. That seemed logical so the frog agreed to do so only to have the scorpion deliver a lethal sting halfway across. When the frog asked why the scorpion would doom them both, the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”

Cohen has always been open as a grifter.

The problem is not Cohen. He continues to act to his nature. The problem is a political and legal system that enables him as a serial liar. It is a system that continues to call Cohen to the stand and ask him to swear to God to offer the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” without a signature joke drum roll before his punchline.

Yet, Cohen now wants to take an oath of office in the legislative branch.  He seems to collect oaths the way some collect animal heads for a trophy wall. The question is whether other members could suppress laughter when he swears that he is taking the oath of office “without… purpose of evasion.”

NB: A version of this column appeared on the New York Post.