Lordy, Michael Cohen’s tapes

| 11:55 pm EST December 7, 2018
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The SDNY sentencing memo for Michael Cohen has given us a number of important new tidbits to work with when it comes to the downfall of Donald Trump. For instance, Trump has now been formally accused by the federal government of multiple felonies. Trump also has a fun new nickname: “Individual-1.” But in all the fast moving developments, we almost overlooked the big thing that wasn’t included.

Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen of the House Judiciary Committee appeared on cable news late tonight and stated his expectation that prosecutors have gotten incriminating tapes of Donald Trump from Michael Cohen. He’s right, of course. We learned long ago that Cohen secretly recorded most or all of his conversations with Trump. We also know that many of those tapes were seized when the FBI raided Cohen’s office. So why no mention of them today?

Today’s SDNY sentencing memo stated that Michael Cohen’s cooperation was far from complete, and in fact it was incomplete enough for SDNY to throw the book at him. But then Robert Mueller stated that Cohen had helped him significantly. So we know Cohen provided things that were relevant to Mueller, but not relevant to SDNY. Also, last week we saw Cohen team up with Mueller to expose Donald Trump’s role in the Trump Tower Moscow project, so we know Cohen was willing to sell Trump out in general.

That leads us to the conclusion that Michael Cohen must have given his Donald Trump tapes to Robert Mueller. Because we didn’t hear about them in today’s filings, we’re left to further conclude that the tapes must have contained information sensitive enough that it needs to remain secret for the moment. In other words, it’s yet another sign that suggests Mueller has Trump nailed.