Michael Cohen cracks under the pressure
Donald Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen is now staring down the barrel of an inevitable indictment and arrest, a string of criminal charges too long to list, and potentially hundreds of years in prison if he loses at trial. Not shockingly, he’s not taking the pressure well. What is notable is that Cohen is cracking under the pressure already.
Cohen has two choices. He can cut a plea deal against Donald Trump, serve the next few years in prison, and move on with his life. Or he can spend the next few years going through a trial, during which he’ll probably have to remain in prison anyway, even as he spends up all his money on high priced attorneys, only to probably end up being sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. Cohen is still asserting his defiance, but he’s also admitting that he can’t handle any of it.
Even as Cohen is telling some of his friends that “I’m not going to just roll over” according to a lengthy new Vanity Fair profile, he’s admitting to other friends that “I just can’t take this anymore.” To be clear, this has only been going on for six weeks, since the FBI raided his office. He’s already cracking under the pressure of what he’s endured during his brief time in the proverbial barrel. There’s no way this guy is going to be able to hold out long enough to go to trial.
So whether Michael Cohen knows it yet or not, he’s going to end up flipping on Donald Trump. He just telegraphed it with his own words. Considering the rate at which Cohen is cracking up, he could end up flipping sooner than any of us might have originally been expecting.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report