Michael Cohen is cooperating with Robert Mueller after all. Just how important is he to Trump’s downfall?
With the news on Friday that Paul Manafort, the convicted felon and former campaign manager for Donald Trump, had decided to plead guilty and flip on Trump, a majority of cable news coverage that was not focused on Hurricane Florence was focused on the Manafort ramifications. While his agreement to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller is surely a big deal, many people seem to have forgotten about Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer.
When Michael Schmidt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, was asked on The 11th Hour With Brian Williams about his take on the individuals who have flipped on Donald Trump, he responded: “These are the people working for Mueller right now: the former deputy campaign chairman, the campaign chairman, the former national security adviser, his former personal lawyer. Those are huge pieces … But to think of those folks as if you were playing chess and you had lost so many pieces to the other side. I mean, Mueller is moving here in a very systematic direction.”
While Schmidt is a world-renowned journalist, he does not have the same intelligence as someone with a top security clearance. Would someone with the ability to access classified information have the same belief? When Williams asked former Department of Defense and CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash about his opinion on Cohen, he responded, “Cohen has already said that he conspired with Donald Trump to violate federal election laws to get Donald Trump elected. That would be the second effort to get Donald Trump elected illegally. The first one, of course being the effort by Russian intelligence, but look, I think Michael Cohen has a lot of information including … the business practices and more in particular the money laundering practices of the Trump organization.”
Brian Williams’ other guest, Emily Jane Fox, is a reporter for Vanity Fair. Williams asked her if she thought Michael Cohen was ready to talk to Mueller. She put these words in Cohen’s mouth: “Come talk to me. I’m ready. I’m willing to tell you everything that I could possibly tell you that could be useful to you.” She then continued: “This is someone who has been so closely intertwined in the Trump Organization with President Trump and with his three adult children, who has worked with them closely on business deals, who has cleaned up many of their messes.” While Mueller’s flip of Manafort is surely a big deal, it is important to remember that Cohen is also a source of vast information against Trump.
I’m a ceramic engineer living in Central New York, avid sports fan but find myself more interested in politics lately.