Paul Rosenzweig, a former prosecutor in independent counsel Ken Starr’s office, says Donald Trump should be worried about his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen flipping on him.
“They’re going to squeeze him like a grape,” Rosenweig said of Cohen. “I think in the end he’ll pop unless Trump pardons him.”
As Politico reports, aides to the president—and Trump himself—are beginning to fear Cohen’s “loyalty” in the wake of an F.B.I. raid on the lawyer’s office and residence.
Yesterday Jay Goldberg—a longtime legal adviser to Trump—told the Wall Street Journal he has warned the president not to trust Cohen in the aftermath of that raid. “Michael will never stand up [for you]” if faced with charges, Goldberg said.
Goldberg also warned the president Cohen might even be asked to wear a wire.
Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of Trump who’s argued against the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, agreed that federal prosecutors will “try to turn [Cohen] into a canary that sings.”
“That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment,” Dershowitz told Politico.
Aides were also rattled by a statement Cohen gave last week to CNN’s Don Lemon, shortly after the FBI raid. The former Trump lawyer called the even “unsettling to say the least,” but said the agents were “extremely professional, courteous and respetctful.”
One Trump ally noted that people’s priorities often shift when “faced with spending a long time in jail.”
“They start to re-evaluate their priorities, and cooperation can’t be ruled out,” the ally told Politico.
