The real reason Michael Cohen just dropped his Trump-Russia suit

| 3:45 pm EDT April 19, 2018
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In the midst of the worst week of his life, Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen has announced today that he’s dropping his civil suits against those entities that helped promote the Trump-Russia dossier. This has led observers on social media to jump to a number of conclusions about what this means. Is Cohen admitting he went to Prague to negotiate with the Russians during the election? Does this mean he’s cutting a plea deal against Trump? Let’s talk about what it really means.

Legally speaking, this is not an admission on Michael Cohen’s part that the Trump-Russia dossier is true, or that he really did go to Prague. He is simply no longer seeking damages from those who promoted the dossier and the claims it made about him. So why drop the suits? There are a few plausible explanations for that, and it’s important to understand what each of them could mean.

The first could be that, with Cohen now in criminal court trying to fend off the kinds of potential criminal charges that could send him to prison for life, he no longer feels he can afford to put any time or focus into a sideshow like these civil suits. The second could be that he fears the evidence seized in the FBI raid is enough to sabotage his civil case.

The third could be that he is indeed planning to cut a plea deal with the Feds, and needs to clear these civil actions out of the way. However, it appears Cohen and Trump are still mounting a shared legal defense in criminal court, which would not be allowable if Cohen is exploring or negotiating a plea deal. The dead giveaway that Michael Flynn was working out a plea deal was when his legal team moved to sever ties from Trump’s legal team. So if these new moves by Cohen end up being followed by a move to sever from Trump, that would be the sign you’re looking for that Cohen is flipping.