“Michael Cohen and his attorney met Wednesday with a group of state and federal law enforcement officials investigating various aspects of President Trump’s family business and charitable organization,” CNN reports.
“The group, which included the federal prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York who charged Cohen in August and officials from the New York Attorney General’s office, met at the Midtown New York City office of Cohen’s attorney, Guy Petrillo.”
Vanity Fair: “Other than a few tweets and statements, Cohen has remained relatively quiet since pleading guilty, in August, to violating campaign laws by paying off women who claimed to have had affairs with Donald Trump at what he said, in open court, was the ‘direction’ of the then-candidate.”
“Behind the scenes, however, Robert Mueller’s special investigation into collusion and obstruction of justice continues apace. So does the Southern District’s probe into campaign-finance violations. Despite having no formal cooperation agreement with the government, Cohen has willingly assisted and provided information critical to several ongoing investigations… in a string of meetings that have exceeded more than 50 hours in sum.”
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, is urging the public to vote next month in what “might be the most important vote in our lifetime,” the Washington Post reports.
“Cohen is out on bail until his sentencing in December, meaning he remains eligible to cast a ballot on Nov. 6. The midterms could be his last opportunity to vote for some time: He faces 46 to 63 months in prison, according to court filings.”
Cohen changed his party registration to the Democrats last week.
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former attorney who until June served as the Republican Party’s deputy finance chair, today changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat, Axios reports.
After reports surfaced that Michael Cohen was cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, the following message went out of Cohen’s twitter account:
Good for @michaelcohen212 in providing critical information to the #muellerinvestigation without a cooperation agreement. No one should question his honesty, veracity or loyalty to his #family and #country over @potus @realdonaldtrump
Vox reports the tweet was quickly deleted, but reappeared soon after on the account of attorney Lanny Davis.
Michael Cohen “has participated over the last month in multiple interview sessions lasting for hours with investigators from the office of special counsel, Robert Mueller,” ABC News reports.
“The special counsel’s questioning of Cohen, one of the president’s closest associates over the past decade, has focused primarily on all aspects of Trump’s dealings with Russia — including financial and business dealings and the investigation into alleged collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and its surrogates to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.”
“Investigators were also interested in knowing whether Trump or any of his associates discussed the possibility of a pardon with Cohen.”
Vanity Fair: “In recent weeks, it has also become common knowledge among close friends of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, that Cohen is talking to the Mueller team, according to people familiar with the situation.”
“For months, Cohen has appeared to signal his willingness to cooperate with the government, both with the Southern District of New York and the special counsel’s office. While prosecutors for the Southern District did not initially approach Cohen about a cooperating agreement before he pleaded guilty, many speculated that he could still cut a deal in the months between the plea and his sentencing in December. Those familiar with Cohen’s thinking were unsure about what he might have to offer prosecutors, but because he had worked so closely with Trump and his family for more than a decade, it was assumed that he could potentially be a useful corroborating witness.”
In court documents filed today, Stormy Daniels said she “vigorously opposes” President Trump and Michael Cohen’s attempt to invalidate the hush-money agreement that barred her from speaking out about her alleged affair with Trump.
Daniels claims that Trump and Cohen’s “sudden desire to escape” the agreement is a sign that they have been “shamelessly deceiving this Court and the American public for more than six months.”
“An attorney for Michael Cohen is backing away from confident assertions he made that Cohen has information to share with investigators that shows Trump knew in 2016 of Russian efforts to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post reports.
“Lanny Davis, a spokesman and attorney for Cohen, said in an interview this weekend that he is no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump’s awareness of the Russian efforts.”
Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis told Yahoo News that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee failed to ask the right “follow-up questions” when his client appeared before the panel last year and therefore failed to elicit crucial answers about President Trump’s prior knowledge of Russian hacking of Democratic emails during the 2016 election.
Davis said that senators failed to ask the right follow-ups to Cohen’s prepared statement — about Trump’s “level of awareness” of the hacking, seeming to draw a distinction between awareness and “involvement.”
A person familiar with the matter tells the Associated Press that New York’s attorney general is looking to open a criminal investigation into whether Michael Cohen also violated state tax law.
Federal prosecutors granted immunity to David Pecker, CEO of the company that publishes National Enquirer, in the Michael Cohen investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Gabriel Sherman: “Pecker’s apparent decision to corroborate Cohen’s account, and implicate Trump in a federal crime, is another vivid example of how isolated Trump is becoming as the walls close in and his former friends look for ways out… Trump and Pecker have been close for years.”
Said one Trump friend when told the news: “Holy shit, I thought Pecker would be the last one to turn.”
President Trump told Fox & Friends that Michael Cohen “flipping” on him to get a better plea deal isn’t fair and should be made illegal.
Said Trump: “I’ve known all about flipping—for 30 or 40 years I’ve been watching flippers. I’ve seen it many times, I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff, it’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. You get 10 years in jail but if you say bad things about somebody, in other words make up stories if you don’t know, they just make up lies… and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero. They have a statue erected in their honor. It’s not a fair thing but that’s why he did it. He made a very good deal.”
President Trump tried to distance himself from his longtime former personal lawyer Michael Cohen in an interview on Fox & Friends. saying that Cohen “worked more or less” as a “part time” employee.
Said Trump: “He was a lawyer for me, one of many. Didn’t do big deals, did small deals.”
NBC News: “Cohen, in fact, was a vice president of the Trump Organization when he left the company in May.”
“Michael Cohen told lawmakers last year, in sworn testimony, that he didn’tknow whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians,” three sources with knowledge of Cohen’s testimony tell Axios.
Said Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis: “Nothing has changed.”
CNBC: “Buried in the legal documents released Tuesday as part of Cohen’s guilty plea on eight felony counts, there was a new, previously unreported payment Cohen made in 2016 to help Trump: $50,000 for work that prosecutors say Cohen ‘solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign.’”
“The documents do not identify which tech company Cohen paid the money to, or what, exactly, the company did for him. But the mere existence of the previously unknown payment suggests that Cohen may have been doing more for Trump, and for the Trump campaign, than simply paying off women.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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