Feds reveal just how badly they want Michael Cohen to flip on Donald Trump

| 5:11 pm EDT May 30, 2018
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We all know that Donald Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen is one of the keys to taking Trump down for his decades-long crime spree. We also know that the Feds have been focusing on nailing Cohen in order to get to Trump. Now we’re learning just how badly the Feds want Cohen to cut a plea deal against Trump, and how far they’re willing to go to make it happen.

There are two components to getting Michael Cohen to flip on Donald Trump. The first is convincing Cohen that he’s so screwed, he has no chance of winning at trial. The second is giving Cohen the kind of comparatively lenient offer that he can’t say no to. We still have no indication of how much or little prison time Cohen will be offered. But the Feds just gave us a big hint.

The Feds have pursuing Gene “the Taxi King” Friedman on various criminal charges for some time now. According to CNN, they had been offering him two to six years in prison if he agreed to plead guilty. The Taxi King was not interested, and was content to take his chances at trial. But once the Feds figured out that they could use Freidman to get to Michael Cohen, they went back and offered Freidman zero prison time if he agreed to pay a much larger fine. Sure enough, the Taxi King flipped on Cohen.

In other words, the Feds want to nail Michael Cohen to the wall just that badly. It’s not enough to build the kind of case that’ll get Cohen convicted at trial. They have to build such an overwhelmingly over-the-top case that Cohen takes a look at it and concludes he has no hope. Testimony from alleged co-conspirators is typically the most definitive way of nailing someone. We’ll see what kind of deal the Feds end up offering Cohen, and how much or little prison time it involves. But the Friedman deal may have taken care of the first step of convincing Cohen that he has no choice but to cut a deal.