Michael Cohen put a pause on his family vacation to tell MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace that, after what people witnessed during his case, he's bemused by how any of Donald Trump's 18 co-defendants could stay loyal to him.
"I know what he's capable of," Cohen told the accused, via Wallace. "I know what has happened to me and, rest assured, what's happened to me will happen to you, if you don't smarten up."
It's a warning that Cohen has been giving since he spoke to the House Oversight Committee in 2019.
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Cohen, who was Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges including lying to Congress, violating campaign finance laws evading income tax. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but nearly much of it at home. He was a key witness in the New York grand jury hearing that led to Trump's indictment involving hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Cohen sued Trump, saying he'd promised to pay his legal fees, but then reneged.
He told Wallace that, for him, it took over four years get the money he was owed – and he warned the other defendants not to expect Trump to pay up, as Giuliani claims Trump promised he would do.
"Donald does not have a long-standing friendship or relationship with Rudy 'Colludey,'" Cohen said, with the moniker for Giuliani's last name. "...Yet, they are all appeasing and they are all playing to a party of one. For what reason, I don't know.
"Let me be also very clear about something. I read the Fani Willis indictment. It reads like a book. It reads like a really good book that lays out facts and lays out circumstances and documentary evidence and testimony, all to get to one ultimate conclusion, and the ultimate conclusion here, Nicolle, is a guilty conviction."
Wallace mentioned a "head-scratcher" that Trump continues to fundraise and score millions in campaign donations that he uses for his own legal defense, but it's not something he's sharing with other co-defendants.
"Worse than that is that he is still the leading Republican candidate for the upcoming presidential election," Cohen said. "That, to me, is the real head-scratcher. You know, anybody would turn around and say if a former president who wants to be president again is being indicted, that would, or should be, a disqualifying factor. But we're not talking about one. We're not talking about two. We're not talking about three. We're not even really talking about four, Nicolle. It's five if you count the superseding indictment."
It made him wonder if the indicted Trump allies were "really that gullible" or "are they really that stupid to follow this man into the dumpster fire of the cult of Donald J. Trump? Why? What do they get out of it? The answer is, they get absolutely nothing. And everybody else that's in that inner circle, these 18 other co-defendants, the only thing that they're going to get is a lot of pain and a lot of legal bills. and that's it."
See the full interview with Cohen in the videos below or at the link here.
Cohen 1www.youtube.com
Part 2:
Cohen 2youtu.be
