John Dean explains why it’s too late for Donald Trump to stop Michael Cohen from flipping

| 7:07 pm EDT July 3, 2018
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There is perhaps no greater expert on flipping on the President of the United States than John Dean, the White House Counsel who initially helped Richard Nixon cover up Watergate, and then later famously flipped on Nixon and helped to take him down. History is now echoing itself, with Donald Trump’s personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen beating the drum about flipping on Trump. Now John Dean is explaining why it’s too late, legally speaking, for Trump to stop Cohen.

The people around Michael Cohen have told three different major news outlets over the past two weeks that he’s either planning to, or open to, cutting a plea deal. Cohen then gave an off-camera interview to Good Morning America and hinted at that same sentiment about flipping. John Dean says that alone is enough to change the legal parameters of the situation, thus eliminating Trump’s ability to convince Cohen not to flip.

Here’s how John Dean spelled it out on Twitter, in response to the Good Morning America interview: “Michael Cohen is signaling prosecutors that he is ready to talk. It is too late for Trump to arrange for his legal fees because for him to now not testify would be obstruction. Cat is out of the bag with the only question being what kind of cat is it?”

So there you have it. At this point Donald Trump cannot buy Michael Cohen’s silence. Trump can’t pardon Cohen into silence either, both due to the probability that such a pardon of an alleged co-conspirator would be struck down by the courts, and the state level charges that would be brought against Cohen as a result of any attempt at a federal pardon. Now that Trump has no way to stop Cohen from flipping, and Cohen has no reason not to flip, it’s just a matter of Cohen facing that reality and actually doing what he’s been hinting at.