Once the blindfold fell off and he saw who Donald Trump was, attorney Michael Cohen became a free verse. There were no more secrets.
In February 2019, released from bond after his arrest and three-year prison sentence, when his ex-pat held the presidency of the United States, Cohen appeared before Congress and unleashed.
He told lawmakers under oath that Trump was a racist and a pathological liar in politics, in business or in his sexual relationships. Among these, the one allegedly held with the porn actress Stormy Daniels, a case of alleged bribery with the payment of 130,000 dollars for her silence that is now being studied if it can mean the criminal imputation of a former president for the first time in the history of the USA .
As an illustrative case, the lawyer (now disqualified) confessed that his ex-boss had admitted to him that he never had problems with spurs on his feet, the excuse he used to get rid of going to the Vietnam War. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” was the question with which he mocked his refusal to be enlisted.
This led to a journalistic investigation in which the daughters of the doctor in Queens (Trump’s hometown) who signed the diagnosis assured that their parent did it as a favor to Fred, father of what was then known as Cadet Espers .
That young man who did not want to go to the front threatens to turn his country into a war scene. Since a week ago he baselessly proclaimed that he would be arrested on Tuesday, Trump has been leading a rhetorical escalation, inciting violence and encouraging “death and destruction” if he is impeached. Don’t forget what happened with his call for a coup on January 6, 2021, when his hordes took the Capitol to perpetuate him in power.
In his case, Daniels is a “horse”, while Alvin Bragg, the chief Manhattan prosecutor who investigates him, a “racist” (the first African-American in office), the epitome of evil and “an animal”. insult very much along the lines of white slavers and supremacists who deny humanity to black citizens.
And Cohen? Well, he is a convict and a liar. He does not deny it, but claims that if he resorted to falsehoods it was because of his work with Trump.
To understand who Cohen was and what he did in the service of the ex-president, it is perfect to get to know Mr. Wolf, the character played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s masterful film. Mr. Wolf is dedicated to solving mob boss problems.
He was the fixer, and this is the position that Cohen, 56, held for Trump from 2006 to 2018. It was up to him to fix the grievances of the leader of the family business and then a candidate for the White House. “Again and again I felt that it was my duty to cover up his dirty actions”, he said at the court hearing on the day the judge imposed the sentence on him, at the end of 2018.
When he requested leniency, he remarked that he had done it all because of the influence of one person: Donald Trump.
This is how in 2016, close to the elections and faced with the threat of Daniels to blow up his affair on television, Cohen put a thread on the needle. He obtained a mortgage-backed loan to pay off the $130,000 that sealed that woman’s mouth. Once installed in the White House, Trump paid him the money.
But Cohen felt that he was being thrown at the horses’ feet. He served thirteen months behind bars and, due to the impact of the pandemic, was under house arrest for more than a year.
From that operation in 2016 in which he closed the mouth of the porn actress to the present, Cohen has made a radical transformation, from fixer to whistleblower, to main prosecution witness against the former president.
That lawyer who proclaimed that he would be willing to take a bullet for Trump has become his antagonist. He explains the evil deeds he did to cover up that boss he adored to anyone who will listen. He has written books, is welcomed on set (not at Fox, obviously) and has the Mea Culpa podcast.
He has testified about 20 times to the prosecutor’s office and most recently to the grand jury that must decide. Some believe that he will appear again on Monday because of possible gaps in his story that could derail the investigation. But Cohen insists that Trump is just as guilty as he is, if not more. “He will end up in prison”, he dreams.
