Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been going quietly about his work with a team of the most talented attorneys in the nation working for him. His contrast to Donald Trump reveals near-polar opposites. Recently, Mueller has been going through a series of interviews to one of the people who was once closest to POTUS.
Trump would not have had to do much to make his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, happy. A small job at the White House would have done the trick, but the president would not give Cohen even a token position in Washington D.C.
His former attorney or “fixer” was so loyal to his boss that he said he would have taken a bullet for Trump, but loyalty only works one way for the Donald. As a consequence, over the past few weeks, Cohen has been talking to Mueller.
The special counsel’s team has focused on the money that flowed in and out of the Trump Organization and the president’s business interactions with Russia. Mueller also wanted to know what Cohen could tell him about Moscow’s attack on the 2016 presidential election.
The fixer worked closely with the president on a deal to build a Moscow Trump Tower until the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign. ABC reported that Cohen said he quit working on the Moscow project when he decided:
‘(The) proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.’
Last month, Trump’s former fixer pled guilty to bank and tax fraud in a Manhattan federal court. He also said that he violated campaign finance laws when he paid two women hush money for their alleged affairs with the then-businessman in 2006.
In his statement, Cohen said that he committed the crimes and named Trump as a co-conspirator. The president denied knowledge of the situation.
According to ABC, Cohen agreed to the interviews, which were conducted in New York and in Washington. Some of the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York came to some of the interviews he had with Mueller.
It seems, Trump’s former attorney has also been cooperating with the New York state Attorney General’s investigation into the Trump Foundation, too. The New York attorney general has been investigating Trump and his three eldest children misusing the funds for private use, for a life-size portrait of Trump, campaign donations, and other offenses.
Cohen’s attorney, Lanny David, earlier admitted that his client would cooperate with the special counsel and New York officials. At the time he pled guilty, David said:
‘Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows.’
The former fixer began working with the special counsel about a week after Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, began cooperating with Mueller. A jury convicted Manafort of eight charges of bank and tax fraud charges. It would have been 18 charges had one member of the jury had not held out.
The verdict came in, coincidentally, within minutes of Cohen entering his guilty plea. If Manafort had not agreed to cooperate, he was facing a second trial for virtually the same crimes in a far less friendly jury system.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
