Cohen serves up a Shakespearean story of deceit, betrayal and regret
Instead, Cohen has told all.
‘‘The flip,’’ as it is called in law enforcement circles, has brought down presidents before.
During Watergate, it was White House Counsel John Dean, who had coordinated the cover-up of the break-in at the Watergate complex and oversaw hush money payments to the burglars. Sensing he was about to be scapegoated (correctly), and after seeking immunity from prosecution from President Richard Nixon (who refused to grant it), Dean obtained his own counsel and started informing on the president and others in his administration.
In the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, it was Monica Lewinsky herself who unwillingly cooperated with Ken Starr’s investigators, after they threatened her with perjury for denying her affair with the president.
Cohen, an admitted liar, con man and thug, characterised Trump in his testimony as a racist, a con man and a cheat. Explaining Trump’s practice of inflating and deflating the value of his assets depending on whether they were being taxed or used as loan collateral, he implicated Trump in possible bank fraud. Describing Trump’s use of a straw bidder to push up the auction price of a portrait paid for with Trump Foundation monies, he implicated Trump in possible charities fraud.
As unreliable as he is, Cohen introduced corroborating documents and implicated witnesses whose credibility remains intact. Whether this is the inflection point, and whether Cohen will be remembered as the man who brought down a president, remains to be seen.
So, why did he do it? The man who once said he would take a bullet for his boss says he turned on Trump after the 2018 Helsinki Summit, where the president accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials of 2016 election meddling. That seems far-fetched.
A more likely scenario is that after the FBI raided his office and took his files, Cohen faced substantial legal liability, and he cooperated his way out of it. It is not also hard to imagine that Cohen, left behind as Trump ascended to the White House, felt the cold stab of betrayal himself.
It isn’t over yet. Cohen has been interviewed at length by the special counsel’s investigators, and his testimony will likely colour the Mueller Report. He is said to be cooperating with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who may consider indicting a sitting president in contravention of Department of Justice guidance.
Betrayed and betrayer, Cohen will head to prison in May to atone for his crimes, but not before – like Iago did to Othello – making ‘‘the net to enmesh them all’’.
Danielle McLaughlin is the Sunday Star-Times’ US correspondent. She is a lawyer, author, and political and legal commentator, appearing frequently on US and New Zealand TV and radio. She is also an ambassador for #ChampionWomen, which aims to encourage respectful, diverse, and thoughtful conversations. Follow Danielle on Twitter at MsDMcLaughlin.