Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, testified this week in the criminal trial of his former boss.
To those Americans still in the grips of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Cohen has become an unlikely pin-up. It does not seem to matter much that he is a convicted criminal who has served two-and-a-half years in prison for a variety of charges. Admittedly, some of these pertained to his actions on behalf of Trump, but he was also found guilty of hiding $4million in income from the Internal Revenue Service back in 2018. No, what matters most is that Cohen loathes the former president and his testimony could be critical to putting Trump behind bars.
Payments made by Cohen on Trump’s behalf to porn star Stormy Daniels are at the centre of the current trial. Infamously, Trump had hoped to stop her going public with tales of them having sex during the 2016 election.
Cynics might recall the many damaging things American presidents have done in the past. Think carpet bombing the jungles of Vietnam with skin-searing chemicals, lies about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, or overthrowing democratically elected leaders in countries all over the world. So what crime, pray tell, is New York district attorney Alvin Bragg levelling against Trump?
To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure what the answer is. Paying hush money is not in and of itself illegal. The legal details of the case elude not only me, but also many esteemed experts. It seems to all basically boil down to how the payments were recorded in the Trump operation’s books. Were the payments to Daniels via Cohen ‘legal expenses’ or were they reimbursements? It is so petty that it is impossible for anyone of sound mind to get worked up about.
Yet such is the American liberal establishment’s determination to get Trump that any excuse will be seized on to pursue him. What’s more, prosecutors have even set aside concerns over Cohen’s glaring bias and made him their star witness. ‘It cannot be overstated how much the criminality of this trial entirely revolves around Michael Cohen’, said Michael Barbaro on The Daily, a podcast from the New York Times, earlier this week.