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Credit to Author: Garrett M. Graff| Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2019 16:08:30 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n The bombshells and <\/span>not-so-surprising surprises, those both legal and just plain embarrassing, come on almost every page of Michael Cohen\u2019s 20 pages of prepared testimony<\/a> for the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Cohen claims that the president knew about Roger Stone\u2019s alleged contact with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange<\/a>, that the president wanted Cohen to lie about the Trump Tower Moscow project<\/a>, that the president paid hush money while in the White House, that he ordered Cohen to threaten his high school to keep his grades private, that he insulted minorities, and so on.<\/p>\n And Cohen, knowing that Republicans would attack his credibility, is coming to the table with receipts\u2014documents and exhibits, many in Trump\u2019s own hand, that back up specific allegations.<\/p>\n In some ways, his historic testimony Wednesday on Capitol Hill at a congressional hearing carried live on TV and radio, testimony that caused him at times to come close to tears as he testified against the man to whom the lawyer and fixer dedicated a decade of his life, was the first coherent, consistent story of Donald Trump\u2019s behavior during the 2016 campaign\u2014a candidate intimately involved in the details of his own campaign who didn\u2019t expect to win but who lied and cheated through the whole endeavor.<\/p>\n \u201cI wound up touting the Trump narrative for over a decade. That was my job. Always stay on message. Always defend. It monopolized my life. At first, I worked mostly on real estate developments and other business transactions. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump brought me into his personal life and private dealings. Over time, I saw his true character revealed,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cDonald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation\u2014only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.\u201d<\/p>\n The question is whether Americans (and Republicans specifically) will believe Cohen.<\/p>\n That should actually be an easier question to answer than the House GOP will surely pretend it is\u2014after all, prosecutors are used to witnesses with credibility problems. The inherent challenge in prosecuting crime is that most people involved in crime are criminals, so it\u2019s easy to impugn their veracity. That\u2019s why prosecutors rely on corroborating testimony and evidence to back up witness claims\u2014and that\u2019s precisely what special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District have already done with Cohen.<\/p>\n You can rest assured that when they\u2019ve allowed Cohen to claim something or say something, they have corroboration\u2014other testimony, documents, etc.\u2014to back it up. After all, they\u2019re ethically prohibited from allowing Cohen to say something in court that they have reason to believe isn\u2019t true. All of which is to underscore why Cohen\u2019s prepared remarks today should be carefully studied\u2014they\u2019ve surely been carefully vetted by counsel and lawyers (and maybe even prosecutors), all with a vested interest in ensuring that Cohen remains a credible witness for any and all future trials.<\/p>\n Even before he took the stand, Cohen\u2019s prepared testimony dramatically reset and altered our understanding of the Russia story in five key ways:<\/p>\n First, Cohen makes three key assertions: (1) that Trump was closely monitoring the Trump Tower Moscow dealings (Trump would ask \u201cHow\u2019s it going in Russia?\u201d); (2) that he may have known about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting hosted by Donald Jr.; and (3) that Trump also knew about Stone\u2019s contact with Assange and WikiLeaks ahead of the first dump of stolen emails. Together, they begin to assemble a cohesive timeline of a pattern that could amount to a conspiracy: A candidate who knew about the June 2016 meeting in advance, then knew about the WikiLeaks stolen email dump beforehand, then went out on July 27, 2016, and made his long-puzzling \u201cRussia, if you\u2019re listening<\/a>\u201d comment.<\/p>\n Even before he took the stand, Cohen\u2019s prepared testimony dramatically reset and altered our understanding of the Russia story.<\/p>\n Second, Cohen again raises what I\u2019ve always considered one of the most suspicious parts of the Trump Tower Moscow project\u2014the expected $300 million price tag to the Trump Organization. That nine-figure price tag stands out as highly atypical for the business at the time. By 2016, the Trump Organization had gotten out of large-scale projects\u2014it was mostly picking up small licensing deals, a few million here<\/a>, a few million there<\/a>. Something about the Trump Tower Moscow project was obviously different\u2014very different. As Cohen\u2019s prepared statement says, \u201cHe stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.\u201d It potentially stood to gain the Trump Organization something like a hundred times the size of a normal Trump deal at the time. Why was it so out of scale? (And I\u2019m not just talking about the oversize $50 million penthouse<\/a> that might have gone to Vladimir Putin himself.)<\/p>\n Third, he pierces the facade\u2014which has never been all that believable\u2014that it was possible these projects were proceeding without Donald Trump\u2019s personal oversight or permission. One of the realities that reporters and pundits have danced around confronting is the tiny scale on which Trump\u2019s world operates; neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign were sprawling Fortune 100 enterprises with thousands of employees spread across dozens of offices, in which it\u2019s conceivable that the left hand legitimately wouldn\u2019t know what the right hand was doing.<\/p>\n The Trump Organization was a small family business\u2014and the campaign was run like one. There were few serious executives or players either not named Trump or, in Jared Kushner\u2019s case, married to one\u2014and in terms of the Trump Organization, perhaps the only two meaningful staffers not named Trump, Cohen, and CFO Allen Weisselberg are both cooperating with investigators. It\u2019s never seemed all that believable that Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner\u2014three central figures who were with him every day, people who were in constant contact with him and in constant competition for his affection and gratitude\u2014would have hosted a meeting a meeting in Trump Tower, the building where the candidate lived and worked, with Russians promising gifts and not mention it either before, during, or after.<\/p>\n Fourth, Cohen brings Donald Trump\u2019s crimes into the White House\u2014and he brings the literal receipt. Cohen has provided the committee a \u201ccopy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account\u2014after he became president\u2014to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.\u201d It\u2019s easy to forget that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, aka \u201cIndividual 1,\u201d has already<\/em> been credibly implicated as an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance felony\u2014a fact that in any other circumstance would garner unending wall-to-wall news coverage.<\/p>\n Fifth, Cohen gives a precise and completely believable accounting of the confusion over last month\u2019s BuzzFeed bombshell<\/a> that said Cohen had been directed by Trump to lie to Congress. It was a rare moment that seemed to break though the noise<\/a> around the Russia probe, an overt act of criminality that threatened Congress\u2019 own legitimacy and caused the special counsel to issue an unprecedented statement denying the BuzzFeed report. As Cohen explains, both reports were really correct: He lied on Trump\u2019s behalf, but Trump didn\u2019t specifically order him to do so. Cohen says he didn\u2019t have to\u2014the two had worked together long enough that he knew his role. It\u2019s the equivalent of the \u201cWill\u00a0no one\u00a0rid me of this turbulent priest?" question posed, abstractly, by King Henry II that led to the murder of Thomas Beckett. He didn\u2019t have to give the order\u2014because everyone knew what he was saying.<\/p>\n Cohen lays out a similar pattern: \u201cAt the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there\u2019s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s interesting about Cohen\u2019s argument\u2014and why it rings true, almost word for word, actually\u2014is that Jim Comey said, in effect, the same thing<\/a> about when Trump said he \u201chope[d]\u201d Comey would see his way past the Michael Flynn investigation in 2017. Comey similarly testified on Capitol Hill in June 2017 saying he knew what Trump wanted, even though Trump didn\u2019t say it specifically. As Comey said, \u201cI mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying \u2018I hope this.\u2019 I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s camp has recently turned to accusing Cohen of being a \u201crat,\u201d language that typically emanates only from the world of organized crime. Cohen\u2019s testimony, for the first time, does begin to paint a public picture\u2014under oath, under penalty of perjury, and from a broken man whose loyalty to Trump he now admits was misplaced, a man already facing prison\u2014of the Trump world\u2019s crimes as more organized and coherent than they\u2019ve seemed thus far.<\/p>\n