Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer” probably knows the ex-president better than anyone, and during an interview Wednesday, he delivered a particularly blunt message to Trump’s closet associates and even his own family.
“I think Donald Trump is going to flip on all of them,” Cohen said.
Cohen appeared on MSNBC just one day after news broke that the Trump Organization is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the New York Attorney General, HuffPost [1] reports.
“I really believe Donald Trump cares for only himself, and he realizes that his goose is cooked,” Cohen told host Joy Reid.
Cohen noted investigators will be increasingly asking questions about Trump’s tax returns and that will almost certainly lead him to play the blame game, meaning that members of his own family — Melania included — won’t be safe.
“He’s going to turn on his accountant and point the finger,” Cohen said. “He’s going to say, ‘Don Jr. handled that, Ivanka handled that. Melania. Don’t take me, take Melania.’ That’s just the kind of guy he is.”
But Trump has rarely ever been a decent human being. Anyone who incites a riot [2] merely for their own benefit, which is what Trump did, and who carelessly botches a pandemic and then blames [3] everyone else for it can’t be remotely considered other than self-serving. And that’s exactly who this man is.
Who else might Trump blame?
The first person he’ll likely point fingers at is Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s Chief Financial Officer, and others involved in his finances.
“‘It wasn’t me. It was Allen. It was my accountant. It was the appraiser,'” Cohen said, parroting what Trump might say. “It’s never Donald. See, this is the problem. It’s never, ever Donald Trump. It’s always somebody else.”
Cohen worked for Trump for years, until 2018, when [4] he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and for campaign finance violations in arranging hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
He was sentenced to three years in prison but wound up being released into home confinement when the pandemic broke out last year.
During his interview Wednesday he noted that the information he’s provided — including taped conversations with Trump — shows how closely involved Trump is with his organization and everything else that involves him.
This, Cohen said, means the Trump family could end up in prison.
“I do have to say that my credibility, I believe, is going to end up getting Donald, Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared [Kushner], Eric, Weisselberg, his kids, some orange jumpsuits,” Cohen.
It’s been a long, dreary, and depressing four years. Maybe we can now start to feel hopeful again. These people wilfully and knowingly broke laws, so who knows — maybe poetic justice really does happen sometimes.
Watch the interview below.
.@MichaelCohen212 [5] on the new NY State criminal investigation into the Trump Organization: ‘I think Donald Trump is going to flip on all of them’#TheReidOut [6] #reiders [7] pic.twitter.com/VvxzhNZGtW [8]
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) May 19, 2021 [9]