Critics of President Donald Trump are rejoicing after his former longtime fixer Michael Cohen testified that Trump forced his hand to commit perjury before Congress. It’s the latest revelation in the Cohen case which liberals say will bring down Trump’s presidency. One problem? Cohen has “absolutely zero” credibility, writes one pundit.
Hans Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, argues that Cohen has already damaged his credibility as a witness against the president between lying to the IRS and Congress and a life of remorseless white collar crime. Now, the Democrats are offering him a chance at redemption — if he helps them take down Trump.
Pundits: Is Cohen a credible witness?
Trump critics rejoiced when Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Moscow that Cohen said he discussed with Trump during the campaign. The drumbeats on the networks picked up in December when Cohen was sentenced to three years in jail for tax evasion, perjury, and campaign finance violations, in which he has implied that the president directed him to make hush money payments to women with whom he allegedly had affairs.
With a new anonymously-sourced Buzzfeed report that Cohen lied to Congress about the Moscow project at Trump’s direction, Trump enemies are feeling more confident than ever. But the legal liabilities supposedly mounting against Trump hinge in large part on Cohen’s word, and what is Cohen’s word worth?
Spakovsky, a lawyer who has worked on federal elections, says “absolutely zero.” Cohen has lied repeatedly throughout his life of white collar crime, but the Democrats have embraced him to take down the president, he writes.
Spakovsky cites extensively from sentencing memos submitted by U.S. attorney Robert Khuzami, who describes Cohen as engaging in a “pattern of deception” that involved “extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal conduct.” Khuzami summarizes Cohen’s character with this flattering description: “Cohen’s consciousness of wrongdoing is fleeting … his remorse is minimal, and … his instinct to blame others is strong.”
Spakovsky recapitulates the evidence of Cohen’s untrustworthy character, from lying to the IRS, Congress and financial institutions to secretly recording Trump when he was his client. This is also the lawyer who once said that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, which turned out to be a lie.
Blame game
Trump has attacked Cohen’s credibility and has claimed that Cohen is trying to save his hide by testifying falsely against him. Meanwhile, Cohen gave up to 70 hours of testimony to Mueller confessing to his own crimes and accusing Trump of criminal conduct.
The president’s opponents are convinced he’s a crook, but they have come to embrace Cohen and take his testimony at face value because they think it will take down the president, Spakovsky writes. When Cohen sits down to testify again before Congress in February, Democrats will accept his word as truth despite the fact that Cohen has already been convicted of lying to Congress, on top of a long rap sheet of white collar crimes throughout a life of glib deception. Spakovsky suggests that Cohen wants to flip the blame on Trump for the botched Moscow deal and his other misdeeds, and the Democrats will give Cohen a pass and make him into a pawn to attack Trump.
“Now that the House Oversight Committee is run by Democrats, Cohen has every incentive to shift the blame for this potentially embarrassing deal to President Trump. He probably has little fear that Democrats would want to see him prosecuted for misrepresenting what happened – as long as it advances their narrative that Donald Trump is guilty of something.”
The writer also argues that Cohen’s hush payments do not constitute campaign finance violations but that Democrats will ask him about the payments to implicate Trump. Even in arranging those payments, the sentencing memo says, Cohen “used sophisticated tactics to conceal his misconduct.”
Buzzfeed report
Since falling out with his lawyer, Trump has done everything possible to besmirch — or perhaps merely accurately describe — Cohen as a bad lawyer and a “rat.” The public feud between Trump and Cohen has created a dramatic scenario in which two former friends and business partners who were allegedly involved in a life of wheeling and dealing have become the primary witnesses in a case that some say could lead to impeachment.
A piece in the Spectator claims that Trump adopted his father Fred’s practice of meeting with business partners face-to-face, one-on-one, with no paper trail. If that’s true, then the implications of the Buzzfeed story may hinge on Cohen’s credibility. The report claims that Cohen told special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to Congress after the election on Trump’s behalf to hide his involvement in the project.
The report cites unnamed law enforcement officials who said that Mueller learned of the allegedly suborned perjury through “multiple witnesses” in the Trump Organization and internal documents and texts, and claims that Cohen “confirmed” the reports. But if Trump didn’t write those documents himself, then they record Cohen’s version of events, or possibly somebody else’s.
The Spectator notes another reason to question Cohen’s credibility. The BuzzFeed report comes as Cohen admitted to paying a company to rig online polls in favor of Trump at Trump’s direction in 2015. Cohen charged Trump $50,000 for “tech services” during the campaign, but he may have overcharged his client; according to the Wall Street Journal, he only paid $12,000 or $13,000 in cash to a tech firm for the deal.
In the wake of his sentencing, Cohen said that Trump’s “dirty deeds” led him to “choose darkness.” Democrats are apparently convinced that he has already returned to the “light” and will tell nothing but the whole truth, despite lying to Congress already and a long record of consummate deception.
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