I rather enjoy watching Donald Trump drag Democrats and their minions into deep water and drown them.
Such is the case for one of the Democrats obvious attack dogs, NY AG Letitia James. She just watched her case blow up in her face.
As CNN reported,
An apparent backtrack by Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen threw the New York civil fraud trial into more chaos Wednesday afternoon.
Cohen gave combative testimony in the face of cross-examination by two Trump attorneys on Wednesday, after he had implicated Trump the day prior for directing him to “reverse-engineer” financial statements to increase his net worth.
Let’s pause here for a minute to understand that Cohen has been the prosecution’s key witness in two attempts to get Trump.
And I don’t blame Democrats for trying to flip Trump’s personal lawyer, because that man should have all the dirt.
But as in the first time when the attorney ended up in prison, Democrats should have shifted gears, and abandoned the strategy of using Cohen.
Cohen was released from jail in 2021, after serving his three-year prison sentence — mostly spent in home confinement. He vowed to continue to cooperate with law enforcement probes. He said at the time,
“I feel great today. It’s been long overdue,” Cohen said to a collection of camera crews alerted to his presence by a tweet he had sent Sunday.
Cohen was sentenced to prison in December 2018 after pleading guilty to campaign finance charges and lying to Congress, among other crimes…The campaign finance charges came after he helped arrange payouts during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actor Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from making public claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.
He implicated Trump at the time in the campaign finance charges, as he did again on Monday when he said that his release from home confinement “in no way negates the actions I took at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump.”
He said he was “cognizant of my responsibilities” and “will not cease my commitment to law enforcement.”
“I will continue to provide information, testimony, documents and my full cooperation on all ongoing investigations to ensure that others are held responsible for their dirty deeds and that no one is ever believed to be above the law,” Cohen said.
How has that worked out for Cohen? Any new developments? BTW, where is that Stormy Daniels?
Still, Democrats try to feed once again at the trough. So they put Cohen on the stand, and on Wednesday morning, Trump attorney Alina Habba pressed Cohen about his 2019 congressional testimony. At that time, Cohen declared, “Not that I recall, no,” in response to a question about whether Trump had directed him or Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg to inflate numbers for Trump’s personal statement.
Cohen said to Habba that he was lying in his testimony to Congress.
Court adjourned for lunch. When all parties returned, Trump other attorney, Cliff Robert questioned Cohen further about his congressional testimony. The problem for James and the team trying to destroy Trump is Cohen’s new and different response. Now, apparently Cohen said that the testimony was not false.
“So, Mr. Trump never asked you to inflate the numbers on his financial statement,” Robert asked.
“Correct,” Cohen said.
And there it was. In one word: “correct”. Rinse and repeat of 2018.
Trump’s attorney asked for a directed verdict to dismiss the trial given that Cohen was a key witness in the case.
And though Judge Arthur Engoron denied the request, Trump abruptly left the courtroom to declare victory. Trump said to reporters in the hallway,
“The witness just admitted that we won the trial, and the judge should end this trial immediately.”
In an attempt to do damage control, the New York attorney general’s lawyers asked Cohen in follow up questions to clarify his response. Cohen said that Trump never directly asked to inflate the numbers. But Cohen suggested that inflating the numbers was implied. As Cohen said, Trump spoke like “a mob boss.”
“He tells you what he wants without specifically telling you,” Cohen said. “We understood what he wanted.”
The old, “I know what his intent was without him stating his intent defense”. Ironically, this is opposite of what Democrats James Comey said of Hillary Clinton’s “intent”, when she deleted 33,000 emails, bleachbit servers, and smashed cell phones.
What happens when you have no case?
I don’t see much of a way back for Letitia James and Team “Get Trump”. Maybe fat boy Alvin Bragg will have better luck trying his case. That particular case reached its statute of limitations, and was elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony.
In all, Trump faces 91 indictments. Frankly, I see a countdown list coming soon, as Trump’s legal team starts to jettison each of these frivolous cases against him. Imagine the number of people who can be sued if James successfully sues Trump for “inflated real-estate”.
Cities who levy taxes on real-estate will be at risk. And who sets the rate on real-estate?
I’m sure legal scholars somewhere are looking into this case. It’s certainly one for the ages.
