Cohen’s Guilty Plea Does Not Prove Trump Committed Campaign-Finance Crimes

For many years, Michael Cohen reveled in his notoriety as Donald Trump’s “fixer.” It is safe to say that it was not Cohen’s legal acumen that brought him into the New York real-estate magnate’s circle. His credentials are unimpressive, and what’s known about his ambulance-chasing law practice seems dodgy. When it emerged that he was under investigation in 2018, we learned that he had virtually no clients and that the fraud schemes being scrutinized by federal prosecutors from my old shop (the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, or SDNY) had little or nothing to do with either the practice of law or Donald Trump.

Cohen is the central witness in elected Democratic prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s unabashedly partisan and legally farcical prosecution of Trump in the Stormy Daniels caper. That is both good for Trump and bad for Trump — good because Cohen’s creepy background, crowned by his fraud and perjury convictions, makes him an utterly unreliable witness; bad because prosecutors will be able to argue that, if they have a case, it is in the Trump organization documents they’ve obtained rather than the witness testimony, and — more to the point — it is Cohen’s very loathsomeness that attracted Trump to him. The Donald was perfectly content to have Cohen as his sidekick, confidant, and attack dog for over a decade. Every time Trump’s defenders slam Cohen they are unwittingly taking a whack at Trump himself . . . and reminding Americans of the kinds of loyalists they could expect to see in the to-me-still-inconceivable event of a second Trump administration.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

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For many years, Michael Cohen reveled in his notoriety as Donald Trump’s “fixer.” It is safe to say that it was not Cohen’s legal acumen that brought him into the New York real-estate magnate’s circle. His credentials are unimpressive, and what’s known about his ambulance-chasing law practice seems dodgy. When it emerged that he was under investigation in 2018, we learned that he had virtually no clients and that the fraud schemes being scrutinized by federal prosecutors from my old shop (the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, or SDNY) had little or nothing to do with either the practice of law or Donald Trump.

Cohen is the central witness in elected Democratic prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s unabashedly partisan and legally farcical prosecution of Trump in the Stormy Daniels caper. That is both good for Trump and bad for Trump — good because Cohen’s creepy background, crowned by his fraud and perjury convictions, makes him an utterly unreliable witness; bad because prosecutors will be able to argue that, if they have a case, it is in the Trump organization documents they’ve obtained rather than the witness testimony, and — more to the point — it is Cohen’s very loathsomeness that attracted Trump to him. The Donald was perfectly content to have Cohen as his sidekick, confidant, and attack dog for over a decade. Every time Trump’s defenders slam Cohen they are unwittingly taking a whack at Trump himself . . . and reminding Americans of the kinds of loyalists they could expect to see in the to-me-still-inconceivable event of a second Trump administration.

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.