Donald Trump's decision to sue Michael Cohen for $500 million is a sure sign of desperation and indicates he fears Manhattan District Attorney has him dead to rights on the 35 felony counts filed against him last week.
That is the opinion of Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levin, who claims the lawsuit appears problematic at best and purely frivolous.
In her column for MSNBC, Levinson wrote that Trump's suing his former lawyer is a preview of what to expect when the former president's latest team of attorneys square off with Bragg's team in a Manhattan courtroom later this year.
According to the legal analyst, "Filing a case against Cohen is a classic Trumpian move. Trump uses lawsuits like stump speeches. Despite his claims that others weaponize the legal system against him for political purposes, that is precisely what Trump has done, and appears to be doing here. Filing a lawsuit, even one that may later be tossed out as frivolous, allows Trump to claim that what Cohen allegedly did to him is so egregious that he had to resort to using the legal system."
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Levinson noted that Trump is trying to assert that Cohen is a serial liar who also happens to have exposed factual information about their dealing together and that conflict of assertions will unlikely undermine the $500 million lawsuit if Trump doesn't drop it before it reaches a judge.
"Trump appears to allege that Cohen divulged truthful information about him that is covered by the attorney-client privilege, but also that Cohen spread numerous falsehoods about him. These two arguments may prove to be at odds," she wrote, "If Trump feels his best legal strategy is to undermine Bragg’s key witness, that may indicate the weakness of the other arguments we will see inside the courtroom."
Calling it an "inescapable irony" that "Trump is trying to hush up the person previously in charge of making his hush money payments," Levinson concluded that "Trump’s suit against Cohen may show us no more than how nervous Trump is about the criminal case pending against him."
You can read more here.
