Rachel Maddow just nailed it
Today has been one of the busier political news days we’ve had in quite some time – with a ton of bad news for Donald Trump, and some bad news for some other people as well. Earlier this evening, Palmer Report pointed out that Michael Cohen’s re-arrest today seemed to have been an attempt at preventing his tell-all book from coming out, raising questions about what really happened. Now Rachel Maddow has filled in the missing details.
As we explained earlier, after Cohen was seen eating in a restaurant, federal prosecutors threatened to put him back in prison unless he agreed not to publish his book, or post anything on social media. He refused these conditions, so he was sent back to prison, and we expect him to fight it in court. On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow revealed that Cohen had been expected to make a public statement today after the Supreme Court ruling – but the Feds conveniently gobbled him up just before he could have done so.
This helps make it more clear that the Feds really were targeting Michael Cohen today for reasons that everything to do with protecting Donald Trump. We suspect this will boost Cohen’s odds of being able to convince a judge that he was improperly targeted, and that he should therefore be released again.
All of this aside, there is still every reason to expect that Michael Cohen’s book will be published on schedule. Based on his recent tweets, he’s already written most or all of it. And if Trump tries to block the book’s publication in court, we saw how that played out when he tried to block Mary Trump’s book.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report