Michael Cohen’s family makes major move ahead of his reported plea deal
Over the past several days ABC News and CNN have each reported that Donald Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen is preparing to cut a plea deal with federal prosecutors. As we wait for the storyline to play out, Cohen’s family just made a major move which signals that his status in the Trump-Russia investigation is indeed about to undertake a fundamental shift.
Michael Cohen’s in-laws have decided to sell the three apartments that they’ve owned in Trump World Tower for more than a decade, and according to real estate publication The Real Deal, they’re suddenly in a hurry to sell them. On first blush it’s tempting to think that perhaps the Cohen family has simply decided to rid itself of all things Trump. But considering that these properties have a value of more than ten million dollars, this is really about money – and Cohen’s sudden need for lots of it.
It’s not difficult to figure out that Michael Cohen is broke, and that he has been for awhile. He had to use a home equity loan just to pay $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, when people with his assets usually have that kind of money sitting in the bank. It’s been widely reported that his taxi company is bleeding red ink. All along, Donald Trump has been indirectly paying Michael Cohen’s legal fees in the Trump-Russia scandal, in a not so subtle attempt at preventing him from cutting a plea deal.
According to ABC News, Cohen’s attorneys have recently stopped getting paid. This means Trump stopped paying, which suggests that Trump has figured out Cohen is planning to flip. Now the Cohen family is suddenly trying to get its hands on millions of dollars in cash. This is obviously to cover the legal bills that Cohen is about to start having to pay.
It’s possible that Michael Cohen plans to use this money to hire new high priced attorneys and try to prevail at trial. But if he were planning to fight this, Donald Trump would still be footing his legal bills. So the more logical explanation here is that, even though Cohen is preparing to cut a deal, he’s still going to face major ongoing legal bills. At the least he’ll have to hire an attorney to guide him through his plea deal. And because any such deal will send him to prison for at least a few years, and what’s left of his business will likely collapse in the interim, his family is going to need some money to live on.
