Michael Cohen has been given two weeks notice

| 8:04 pm EDT August 19, 2018
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Despite all his public posturing, his interview, his tweets, and the incriminating tape he released, Michael Cohen has yet to formally cut a plea deal against Donald Trump. If you’ve been wondering how much more time he’s going to be given before he’s charged and arrested, we now have our answer. Suffice it to say that the clock is ticking very loudly, and we’re on the verge of some real fireworks.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which is handling the Michael Cohen case, is now saying that it’s preparing to file charges against him “by the end of August,” according to the New York Times. That gives him slightly less than two weeks to make up his mind about his next move. He can still cut a plea deal after he’s been charged and arrested, but he may have more leverage if he decides to flip before the Feds have to go to the trouble of busting him.

Michael Cohen is almost certainly facing some amount of time behind bars if he cuts a deal against Trump. But if he refuses to cut a deal and he goes to trial and loses, he could be looking at decades in prison. This same new report about Cohen reveals that the Feds are focused on $20 million in allegedly fraudulent loans he received in an effort to keep his failing taxi business alive.

It’s rapidly becoming clear that the criminal case against Michael Cohen involves a whole lot more than the $130,000 he paid to Stormy Daniels on Donald Trump’s behalf, which from all appearances was a violation of campaign finance law. Instead, Cohen is looking at criminal charges that are closer to the ones Paul Manafort is currently trying to fend off at trial. The Feds only have one motivation to make Cohen’s August 31st deadline public: they really want him to flip, and they want him to know that they’re not messing around.