If lying were an Olympic sport, Michael Cohen would be the undisputed world champion. Cohen had a lot of aspersions to cast — but he was forced to admit that he had “no evidence” to produce.
Of course, the Democrats are also obsessed with lying about Donald Trump and destroying his public image — they and Cohen a perfect team for slandering the President.
Michael Cohen, the already-convicted perjurer, cheat, and fraud, called Mr. Trump a racist, a con man, and a cheater — but again, he had no evidence of any of his slanderous remarks. Cohen, as the Democrats so often do, was projecting.
The Special Counsel’s Office documented that Cohen began making false statements to Congress in the summer of 2017 — the beginning of a pattern of endless lies that continued through October of that year.
Cohen subsequently repeated multiple false statements in 2018, with the Special Counsel noting that his lies were “deliberate and premeditated” and demonstrated a “deliberate effort to use his lies to set the tone” of his exchanges with lawmakers. Indeed, his plea agreement established that Mr. Cohen lied to everyone — especially those closest to him.
Remarkably, the American people are now supposed to believe that Cohen is a changed man and that his testimony is a story of redemption — in Cohen’s words, that even though he “lied” repeatedly and to everyone for years, he’s “not a liar.” According to the former lawyer, his compulsive lying was a result of blind loyalty to President Trump and nothing else.
Mr. Cohen’s newfound admissions of wrongdoing — of “concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to [his] own conscience” and of paying “hush-money” to a woman—seem to depend on his misunderstanding that those constitute campaign finance violations.
Of course, the Southern District of New York compelled Mr. Cohen to plead guilty to those purported violations — but as a matter of law, what Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to are not campaign finance violations.
Mr. Trump could put however much of his own money he wanted into the campaign, and his payment to a woman to settle her claim with his own money does not violate campaign finance law. The counts Mr. Cohen pleaded to are literally unprecedented. There is not a single case in the country that supports those charges. I defy any lawyer to cite one.
The closest case was the one other over-zealous federal prosecutors brought — and lost — against former presidential candidate John Edwards. He used hundreds of thousands of donor money to pay off a mistress who had his baby, and the jury found him not guilty.
Remarkably, not even Cohen is guilty of what Clinton-shill Lanny Davis — who “represented” Michael Cohen — let him plead guilty to.
To any experienced lawyer, it’s obvious that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York included those “campaign finance violations” against Cohen in his plea agreement simply to aid the Democrats and Mueller in smearing President Trump. The “campaign finance” charges are not valid, and nothing about Cohen’s testimony today changes that analysis.
By way of contrast, President Obama had nearly two million dollars worth of campaign finance violations, but those were treated with a civil fine of a few hundred thousand dollars—and little to no mention was made of it in the press. No one suggested any criminal charges.
Even Cohen’s plea statement makes plain that Michael Cohen is and always has been all about Michael Cohen. His illegal deeds “were knowing and calculated acts” designed to “profit [him] personally, build his own power, and enhance his level of influence.” Indeed, the SDNY memorandum even noted that Cohen had developed an “instinct to blame others” for his deeds.
Cohen’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee revealed that nothing about the disgraced and disbarred lawyer has changed. He is the consummate liar, fraud, and conman.
Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor and veteran of 500 federal appeals, is the author of “LICENSED TO LIE: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.” She is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.