“Michael Cohen exchanged more than 230 phone calls and 950 text messages over eight months with the chief executive of a U.S. money-management firm with ties to a Russian oligarch,” Bloomberg reports.
“The communications between Cohen and Andrew Intrater, the chief executive officer of Columbus Nova LCC, began on the day of Donald Trump’s election, according to a U.S. search-and-seizure warrant filed in Washington on Aug. 7, 2017, and unsealed on Wednesday.”
Michael Cohen “told a House panel during closed-door hearings earlier this year that he had been instructed by Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow to falsely claim in a 2017 statement to Congress that negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016,” the Washington Post reports.
“House Democrats are now scrutinizing whether Sekulow or other Trump attorneys played a role in shaping Cohen’s 2017 testimony to Congress. Cohen has said he made the false statement to help hide the fact that Trump had potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in a possible Russian project while he was running for president.”
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. denied to Fox Radio asking Michael Cohen to intervene in a case where someone reportedly claimed to possess racy “personal” photos that were potentially embarrassing to Falwell and his wife.
Falwell insisted that “no compromising or embarrassing photos” of himself existed.
He added: “While we have a long-standing friendship with Michael Cohen, we never engaged or paid Cohen to represent us in any legal or other professional capacity, and Cohen did not ever resolve any legal matter on our behalf.”
“Months before evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s game-changing presidential endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, Falwell asked Trump fixer Michael Cohen for a personal favor,” Cohen said in a recorded conversation reviewed by Reuters.
“Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy ‘personal’ photographs — the sort that would typically be kept ‘between husband and wife.'”
Said Cohen, without divulging specifics: “I actually have one of the photos. It’s terrible.”
Michael Cohen spoke to reporters briefly outside his Manhattan apartment before heading to report to a federal prison facility in upstate New York — suggesting once again that he had more secrets to spill, the Washington Post reports.
Said Cohen: “I hope that when I rejoin my family and friends that the country will be in a place without xenophobia, injustice, and lies at the helm of our country. There still remains much to be told, and I look forward to the day that I can share the truth.”
As Michael Cohen “prepares to head to prison in two weeks, dozens of previously unreported emails, text messages and other confidential documents reviewed by the New York Times suggest that his falling out with Mr. Trump may have been avoidable.”
“Missed cues, clashing egos, veiled threats and unaddressed money worries all contributed to Mr. Cohen’s halting decision to turn on a man he had long idolized and even once vowed to take a bullet for… Mr. Cohen’s anxiety, on display in the documents, played a role in the undoing of his relationship with Mr. Trump… But also looming large were Mr. Giuliani’s and Mr. Trump’s failures to understand the threat that Mr. Cohen posed, and their inability — or unwillingness — to put his financial and emotional insecurities to rest.”
New York Times: Why it matters that Trump and Cohen had a falling out.
Michael Cohen pledged on Twitter that he will speak about possible redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
Said Cohen: “Soon I will be ready to address the American people again. Tell it all…and tell it myself!”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) signaled that he won’t help Michael Cohen delay the start of his three-year prison sentence, even after the president’s former lawyer claimed he discovered troves of new records that could be useful to investigators, CNN reports.
Said Schiff: “I don’t get involved in sentencing matters as a practice. I never have in Congress and that’s been my policy.”
“Trump’s longtime fixer and personal attorney told lawmakers earlier this month that Trump submitted a false insurance claim regarding a fresco on the ceiling of Melania Trump’s bathroom,” the Washington Post reports.
“Lawmakers are looking into Cohen’s claim, which would be the first example of insurance fraud that has surfaced following his public testimony that Trump often exaggerated his personal wealth in financial documents provided to banks and insurers.”
An attorney for Ivanka Trump was reportedly involved in reviewing Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Vanity Fair reports.
Emails show that Abbe Lowell urged President Trump’s former personal lawyer to emphasize in his remarks that his client was not involved in a deal to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said that former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker “did not deny” that President Trump “called him to discuss the case” against his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Speaking to reporters after a two-hour meeting with Whitaker, Nadler presented Whitaker’s closed-door comments as a contradiction with his public testimony from February, during which Whitaker said Trump never expressed his dissatisfaction with Cohen for pleading guilty to various financial crimes and lying to Congress. When asked at that hearing whether he had ever discussed the Cohen case with Trump, Whitaker refused to answer the question.
An attorney who said he was speaking with Rudy Giuliani reassured Michael Cohen in an April 2018 email that Cohen could “sleep well tonight” because he had “friends in high places,” according to a copy of an email obtained by CNN.
“Two emails — both dated April 21, 2018, and among documents provided to Congress by the President’s former attorney and fixer — do not specifically mention a pardon. Cohen, in his closed-door congressional testimony, has provided these emails in an effort to corroborate his claim that a pardon was dangled before he decided to cooperate with federal prosecutors.”
Jonathan Chait: “This is a really, really big deal. The power to pardon convicted criminals for federal crimes is a legitimate use of presidential authority. Whether it’s legitimate for the president to use this power to pardon criminals who committed crimes on his behalf, or might have otherwise testified against him, is a subject of intense debate.”
Michael Cohen is suing the Trump Organization for “failure to meet its indemnification obligations” and not paying his legal fees, Axios reports.
Michael Cohen “was contacted by two New York attorneys who claimed to be in close contact with Rudy Giuliani, the current personal attorney to Trump,” ABC News reports.
“The outreach came just as Cohen, who spent more than a decade advocating for Trump, was wrangling with the most consequential decision of his life; whether to remain in a joint defense agreement with the president and others, or to flip on the man to whom he had pledged immutable loyalty. The sources described the lawyers’ contact with Cohen as an effort to keep him in the tent.”
“Michael Cohen was supposed to report to prison Wednesday to begin serving a three-year sentence for tax crimes, tax evasion and lying to Congress. Instead, President Trump’s former lawyer will be on Capitol Hill talking about the crimes he is now accusing Trump of committing,” CNN reports.
“Cohen, who is now slated to begin his prison term May 6, is back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for his fourth appearance in the last eight days, concluding his closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that began last week.”
An attorney for Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, raised the possibility of a pardon with attorneys for the president after federal agents raided Cohen’s properties in April, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The attorney hinted that Cohen would consider cooperating with prosecutors if he did not receive a pardon. Trump’s attorneys rejected the idea, but Rudy Giuliani left the door open to a pardon down the road.
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“Lawmakers are investigating whether President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen was involved in any discussions about possible pardons — which they view as a potentially ripe area of inquiry into whether anyone sought to obstruct justice,” the Washington Post reports.
“Cohen has said publicly he never asked for — and would not accept — a pardon from Trump. But people familiar with the matter said his knowledge on the topic seems to extend beyond that statement.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map 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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