President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was the focus of the conversation surrounding Robert Mueller’s investigation on Sunday, as Trump’s legal team reportedly prepares for Cohen to cooperate with federal investigators.
Political analysts say that there is incredible pressure on Cohen from all sides.
Trump insisted on Saturday that Cohen will remain loyal to him even after the FBI raided the lawyer’s office, home, and hotel room earlier this month.
“The New York Times and a third-rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip,’ ” the President wrote on Twitter, referring to the New York Times story which reported that Trump’s lawyers are getting ready for Cohen to cooperate with authorities.
“Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!” Trump added.
“It’s hard to imagine that in his complicated financial history there aren’t some places where lines have been crossed,” GOP strategist and ABC News contributor Alex Castellanos said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the President. “Imagine those things locked up in Michael Cohen’s vault now on a tasty plate that Robert Mueller serves up to a Democratic House next year. This is serious.”
In a Sunday interview also on “This Week”, attorney Alan Dershowitz said that he was not sure if Cohen will “flip” on Trump, but noted the “enormous abilities” prosecutors have to pressure witnesses.
Which role Cohen plays in Mueller’s investigation is not clear.
However, Bloomberg reported that court documents show that his business dealings have been the target of a federal criminal probe for months, but the search of his property partly resulted from a referral by Mueller.
Republican Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a separate investigation into Russia’s election interference, noted that the Justice Department rather than special counsel Mueller has been handling the accusations against Cohen.
“But let me just say that I don’t see him as being a central figure in this,” Collins said. “The fact that the special counsel referred the allegations against Mr. Cohen back to the Justice Department and was referred to a U.S. attorney suggests to me that it is not intimately connected to the Russia probe,” she added.
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