Michael Cohen is back.
The disbarred lawyer has spent a lifetime marketing his curious skill set: a moral and ethical flexibility that allows him to do things that others would find revolting. A legal thug who threatened students, journalists, and others on behalf of his former client. He then turned against Trump to cut a deal for himself after being criminally charged for fraudulent conduct. He has now turned against the New York prosecutors who sought to rehabilitate him to prosecute Trump.
For full disclosure, I have been a critic of Cohen for years, dating back to his time as a thug for Donald Trump, when I chastised the New York bar for failing to act against him. While the media once despised Cohen, he became a darling of the press when he turned against Trump.
Cohen’s North Star has always been pure, unadulterated self-interest. Neither loyalty nor decency has deterred Cohen from making false statements or serving the interests of his changing patrons.
His conduct as an attorney was a disgrace to the bar for years, as he gamed the system for his own benefit. Michael Cohen was long known as the “fixer” for former President Trump — a legal thug who threatened students, journalists, and others on behalf of his former client.
His signature has been to threaten lawsuits against critics. He even sued Trump and failed.
When his fraudulent business conduct led to criminal charges, it was clear that he was again entertaining best offers. Cohen reinvented himself as a redemptive sinner and received financial support from Trump critics.
Throughout this process and after his conviction, he continued to be accused of lying.
He claimed urgent medical needs for release from prison. Of course, he previously claimed health problems for failing to appear to testify, only to be spotted out on the town for a fancy dinner.
During the Trump trial, Cohen was again accused of lying. He spent two days insisting that he had been a liar but had lied to help former President Donald Trump.
Cohen has lied to Congress, courts, special counsels, the IRS, the banks, and virtually every creature that walks or crawls on the face of the Earth.
Notably, his past convictions for business and tax fraud were not taken in Trump’s interest but in his own. When he admitted on the stand that he lied during his prior plea agreement, it was to advance his own interests.
Cohen has now continued this pattern of shifting loyalties and turned on New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accusing them of pressuring him to frame his testimony to guarantee Trump’s conviction.
After Trump’s recent court victories and the remanding of his federal case, Cohen is claiming that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the New York Attorney General’s Office “pressured and coerced” him into tailoring testimony: “I felt pressured and coerced only to provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to build the cases against and secure a judgment and convictions against President Trump.”
The posting led some to speculate that Cohen is again marketing his availability to the highest bidder. Whatever the reason, his statement clearly undermines his former allies as they struggle to preserve what remains of their prior prosecutions.
Cohen remains the personification of the old fable of the scorpion and frog. In the fable, a scorpion convinced a leery frog to carry him across a river, noting that he could not sting him since they would both drown. Halfway across, the scorpion struck, and the frog asked why he would doom them both. The scorpion replied, “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
James and Bragg just felt that all-too-familiar sting from Michael Cohen.
Never would Justice be better served than if Bragg, James, Cohen and a 55-gallon of chum were all dumped into the ocean together to become shark bait… with the sharks having been specially-trained to take their time…. :-O
All you can do is make ad hominem attacks, instead of having a healthy, respectful discussion
about whether ICE’s actions are constitutional.
This is what the government always has done . Why should this be any surprise to anyone. The current administration is just more blatant about what it is doing. This is the real world unfortunately. That is why the Epstein files will never be released and the rich and the powerful of both parties will continue to be protected.
Prof. Turley,
It does not matter whether Bragg and James pressured him or not.
What matters is that he is obviously so much of a liar that no one ever should have beleived his testimony.
I personally have no problems beleiving James and Bragg tried to shape Cohen’s testimoney
Prosecutors do that all the time.
The problem is NOT James and Bragg in this instance – though what is claimed is unethical – ethics are not common among prosecutors.
The problem is with Merchan. I am not sure Cohen should have been allowed to testify.
Regardless, it required a massive instruction from the Judge informing the Jury that Cohen was convicted of crimes in falsification and
was confessing to further lies under oath in his testimony. That Cohen’s testimoney can not be beleived as a matter of law without massive corroborating evidence.
More simply – the problem is with the judge – not the prosecutor.
The problem is with Cohen, who clearly has no integrity. Merchan was also a problem, but for different reasons.
Does the Constitution apply to non-Republicans, too, or only Republicans?
The disbarred lawyer has spent a lifetime marketing his curious skill set: a moral and ethical flexibility that allows him to do things that others would find revolting.
If he were a Democrat lawyer and member of the Washington DC Bar, like Comey, this column would have been written in a completely different manner. Comey did worse to the entire nation than Cohen did towards individuals
. The scorpion and the frog, perfect.
The only quandary left is the reason anyone would waste time on Cohen or the definition of female. Not surprisingly the most talkative person on SCOTUS is KBJ. For every 11,ooo words she’s spoken Justice Thomas has spoken 95 words. I don’t understand what she’s saying and I don’t think she does either.
🌲
What does it say about New York City juries that they believed Michael Cohen?
If the Constitution is such a sacred document, then violations of due process, habeas corpus, and the First Amendement by ICE agents are something worth exploring. This should be obvious, low-hanging fruit.
As if any of that tripe is actually true. Cope harder, my friend.
It is.
You choose not to see it.
You are full of crap, too.
The Constitution means nothing to you, either.
You choose not to see it. You are full of crap, too. And you’re the guano covered bat who was blind and silent during the Obama and Biden presidency. So credible!!!!
Projection:
Channeling one’s actions onto others typically refers to the psychological concept of projection, where a deeply emotionally disturbed individual unconsciously or deliberately attributes their own thoughts, feelings, and anti-social or criminal behaviors onto someone else.
This is an internal defense mechanism which allows mentally ill people to avoid confronting their own behavior and guilt by seeing it instead as as the thoughts and actions of another person who they despise and hate.
Did you expect the lawless actions of the Biden administration that allowed millions of illegals into this country to rape and pillage the public coffers to go unanswered?
We should halt completely all immigration but for vetted tourists, cancel sll student visas and H1-B visas until we have deported every single illegal. And that includds cancelling all of the ridiculous TPS nonsense.
Illegal immigrants need to be identified by all available methods:
Punishing employers
IRS investigations
Cut off public funds
and more
You are full of crap.
The Constitution means nothing to you.
You are full of crap. The Constitution means nothing to you. And you’re the guano covered bat who was blind and silent during the Obama and Biden presidency. So credible!!!!
Projection:
Channeling one’s actions onto others typically refers to the psychological concept of projection, where a deeply emotionally disturbed individual unconsciously or deliberately attributes their own thoughts, feelings, and anti-social or criminal behaviors onto someone else.
This is an internal defense mechanism which allows mentally ill people to avoid confronting their own behavior and guilt by seeing it instead as as the thoughts and actions of another person who they despise and hate.
@OldFish
This was always going to be like ripping off the most painful of bandaids to the left, particularly given how mad and compounded it all got since 2020, but it has to be done. We do need some fair reform in this area, but we’ve got to clean up the mess, first.
At times I think the entropy we saw on every level from 2020-25 was a direct projection of what it’s like inside a modern leftist’s mind 24/7. There is no order, logic, fairness, or sanity there.
James, I read “modern leftists” as a small but loud cadre of true believers, not the broader electorate. Their influence far exceeds their numbers and that’s where the entropy comes from. Would you agree?
OLLY,
I agree. I have noted before, my sister is a registered Democrat. As a member of her local Democrat party chapter, many members want to return to traditional, JFK Democrat party policies. Not the “modern leftists” extreme ones, which, as we have seen, generally fail.
However, my sister has had a few, “modern leftists,” tell her, her thinking was wrong.
Biden let in millions of unvetted illegals, many with criminal records, human trafficking, child trafficking, drug crisis. And Democrats ignore the problem or spin it in a way to make a MS13 gang member, into a “Maryland family man.” Reading the rage rhetoric coming from Walz and Frey, they seem to be the ones inciting violence and suggesting fighting a war with the federal government. Kinda sounds like insurrection talk to me.
The legal immigrants who finally get an immigration visa approved after years of vetting are just as valuable as future Americans now as they have been before now. The Democrats have succeeded in renaming their criminal Illegal Aliens as “immigrants” to persuade Americans that real immigrants are no better.
Same as the democrats and their media have cherrypicked some Republicans to present as representing all, and convinced half the country all Republicans are neo-fascists and racists. Straight out of the Chicago communist Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals” that Obama and Clinton both adopted as their operations manual.
If we can’t multi-task to both deal with criminal Illegal Aliens and associated crime while at the same time continuing legal immigration, we aren’t intelligent enough as a nation to survive. Just throw in the towel and flail while going down an angry loser.
This frames immigration as a problem of labels, enforcement, and political manipulation, but it still misses what the Founders saw as decisive: formation. Madison and Adams were clear that a republic depends less on policies than on a citizenry formed in the habits and principles of self-government. Lawful immigration, border enforcement, and crime control all matter, but none of them address whether citizens, native-born or immigrant, are being formed to sustain liberty once they’re here. A nation can multitask on enforcement and visas, yet still fail if it neglects the harder work of cultivating civic responsibility and constitutional understanding. That is the gap no amount of rhetoric can fill.
If the Constitution is such a sacred document You would have been wailing about violations through the entire Obama and then Biden presidencies. But you didn’t – making YOU the low-hanging fruit today.
Projection:
Channeling one’s actions onto others typically refers to the psychological concept of projection, where a deeply emotionally disturbed individual unconsciously or deliberately attributes their own thoughts, feelings, and anti-social or criminal behaviors onto someone else.
This is an internal defense mechanism which allows mentally ill people to avoid confronting their own behavior and guilt by seeing it instead as as the thoughts and actions of another person who they despise and hate.
What violations ?
You do not just get to make things up.
To be clear – while the illegal immigrants ICE is targeting are primarily criminals and alleged criminals.
They are not being arrested and tried for a crime.
They are being detained and deported – SENT HOME for being here illegally.
Due process is the legal procedures that are used to protect rights.
There is no right for an illegal immigrant to be in the US.
The Due Process they are entitled to is minimal.
They are entitled to Habeus protection – but in a habeaus claim the burden of proof in no longer on the government,
and the illegal immigrant is generally limited to trying to prove they are NOT the person that the government is trying to deport.
There is also a habeaus claim of illegal detention – but every person detained by ICE can be released immediately – onto a plane back to their country of origen. They are being precluded from wandering arround the US. Which they have no right to.
They are not having their right to freedom infringed.
I would note that your first amendment claims have been dying in court – because they are garbage.
The 3rd Circuit just reversed the lower courts on Khalil. They told the lower courts they have exceeded their juridiction.
Essentially they said what I did above.
There is no right to criminal due process in the Article III courts for people who are not being tried for a crime.
By law and constitution jurisdiction over illegal immigration is with the Executive and Article II courts.
The trier of Fact is the article II court – not the federal district court.
That Federal district courts are limited to minimal habeaus claims as well as claims that the Article II court did not apply the law correctly.
The findings of fact of article II courts in immigration cases are outside the jurisdiction of the article II courts – by law and constitution.
As is typical of the left you are trying to make up rights where they do not exist.
You have an absolute right to be in the US if you are born here.
You have a near absolute right if you were naturalized – generally only fraud in the visa, legal residence and naturalization process can result in revoking citizenship
You have Some limited rights to be here if you have legal residence status – that can be revoked for the same reasons citizenship can be with a lower standard of proof as well as a significant numbr of other reasons.
Visa holders have very limited rigths to be here.
Illegal aliens have no right to be here.
Courts have the power to protect actual rights.
Due process exists to protect actual rights.
The only difference between Cohen and Avanetti is that Avanetti is still in jail. The only guy Cohen is loyal to is Cohen. He will always do what’s in his best interest. His 15 minutes of fame is so far past us. First-year law students should use Cohen as an example of what not to be as a lawyer.
Michael Cohen, Michael Avenatti, Hunter Biden … esq. cellar dweller’s`
Jim
You can be sure of one thing. The MSN will be all over this.
jimboct says: “The only difference between Cohen and Avanetti is that Avanetti is still in jail.
They’re complete rookies as criminals in comparison to Washington DC lawyers like Comey, McCabe, Mueller, Smith, Monaco,etc. from the Obama and Biden administrations. They have been richly rewarded, are still members in good standing of the Washington DC Bar Association, and will never spend a single day in the Crowbar Hotel.
And there will never be similarly worded columns written by JT to excoriate them. I have a pretty good idea as to why that is true.