After the salacious testimony of Stormy Daniels last week about what she did in the bedroom with Donald Trump in 2006 and how she got paid $130,000 a decade later to not talk about it, this week Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors are bringing their star witness to the stand in Trump’s election interference case stemming from 2016. Federal felon Michael Cohen will explain how he helped his boss break the law.
Yes, Cohen is a crook and a liar. But Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, who confessed to having a hand in 19 murders, cooperated with the federal prosecutors to testify against John Gotti. A Manhattan jury convicted Gotti and he died in prison.
The Donald is not anyway like the Dapper Don, a murderous Mob leader, and hapless Cohen is no bloodless killer like Gravano. But like henchman Gravano, henchman Cohen knows how his boss broke the law and will testify to it.
Cohen pleaded guilty to his part in the 2016 election interference scheme to pay off Daniels. Cohen told the judge he was guilty on Aug. 21, 2018, while Trump was in the White House, having successfully hidden the $130K payments to Daniels before the November 2016 national vote. It was Cohen who wrote the check to Daniels. That payment was one of the crimes that Cohen confessed to as an illegal campaign finance violation, along with other federal tax offenses. He was sentenced to prison in an agreement and did his time.
It wasn’t a crime for Trump to have sex with Daniels in 2006 and it wasn’t a crime to pay her hush money in 2016, even using Cohen as a middleman. Trump’s crime, as charged by Bragg, was that Trump faked his business records to further the larger felony that Cohen was convicted of. That’s why Cohen is much more important to the case than Daniels. It was Cohen’s crimes that Trump aided, which would make Trump guilty as well.
So Trump’s lawyers will say that Cohen is a rat (like Gravano) and a cheat and liar and a convict (like Gravano). But Cohen’s crimes are what makes him central to this case.
It’s a shame that Bragg didn’t also pursue felony charges against Trump based on what Cohen exposed as Trump’s routine manner to lie and cheat on the valuation of his assets and holdings, hoodwinking insurers and lenders by inflating or deflating the actual numbers. There was a brewing phony valuation case assembled by his predecessor, Cy Vance, but Bragg decided against it.
It fell to state Attorney General Tish James to bring a civil suit against Trump on the bogus valuations. She won, spectacularly, with Trump fined a half billion dollars. While the standard of proof is steeper in a criminal case, Bragg should have gone for it.
As to the present case, who will the Manhattan jury believe, Trump or Cohen? When Trump ran for president in 2016 he only got 10% of the votes in Manhattan, while winning 12% in 2020. But we remember that in 2003 Cohen ran as a Republican for an East Side City Council seat against incumbent Democrat Eva Moskowitz. Cohen got creamed, but he scored 23% of the votes. Let’s hope that these dozen Manhattanites sitting in judgment also are twice as likely to side with him over Trump.
