Michael Cohen reaches his breaking point

| 6:45 pm EDT June 16, 2018
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Everyone has their breaking point – even when it comes to Donald Trump’s henchmen. Michael Flynn’s breaking point was when he realized his son would end up in prison if he didn’t cut a plea deal against Trump. Rick Gates’ breaking point was when he realized that remaining loyal to Paul Manafort was going to ruin him. Now it’s Michael Cohen’s turn, and it’s not that difficult to figure out what triggered him.

After ABC News reported earlier in the week that Michael Cohen was planning to cut a plea deal against Donald Trump, CNN confirmed that reporting yesterday, adding that Cohen is now telling his friends and family about it. So what broke him? It’s been widely cited that he was up against an evidence deadline. But it’s not the first or last such deadline he’d have faced. Instead, this seems to come down to the latest reminder that when it comes to Trump, loyalty is a one way street.

In the nearly eight months since Paul Manafort was first arrested and charged for his role in the Trump-Russia scandal, he’s been about as loyal as Donald Trump could have hoped for. Manafort has passed up numerous opportunities to cut a plea deal. But in return, Trump has passed up numerous opportunities to pardon Manafort. When this week began, we learned that Manafort was going to be sent to jail on Friday. That’s when Michael Cohen began talking about cutting a deal. As the week went on, Trump still took no action to try to help Manafort, and sure enough, he went to jail yesterday. Hours later, Cohen began talking more definitively about a plea deal.

As Palmer Report has already laid out, Donald Trump cannot magically pardon his way out of this. It’s why so many of his underlings have gone ahead and cut plea deals instead. But desperate people cling to desperate hope, and just maybe, Michael Cohen was still hoping Trump might try to save him. Then Trump decided to let Manafort go to jail, a reminder that Trump couldn’t care less about his henchmen – and it turned out to be Cohen’s breaking point.