LOS ANGELES – When I was a teenager, my friends used to invade my parents’ house every time my folks went on vacation. They did so to hold raucous parties, during which my father’s liquor cabinet was raided with abandon.
OK, so maybe “invade” isn’t the right word since I admittedly (a) invited several of male friends to come to these parties and (b) literally begged every one of my female friends to attend them. That’s not the point, though; the point is, we didn’t just drink dad’s liquor, we cleverly “replaced” it by refilling the bottles to their prior fullness, using water from the kitchen tap.
We thought we were being clever at the time, because we were teenage idiots who didn’t consider that someday, just maybe, my father might pour a drink from his diluted supply and immediately know what had transpired, because his attempted vodka-tonic clearly was a water-tonic.
When dad called me on what we’d done, I compounded my bullshitting sin by trying to play dumb. “What do you mean, the bottles have been watered down?” I protested. “It must have been Bill who did that.”
Bill, my brother, was 6 years older than I was at the time I coughed up that lie – and since I was 16, easy math revealed my brother was “old enough to buy his own damn liquor!” as my father not-so-calmly observed at the time.
As I watch the stories of the Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump affair/attempted cover-up play out, I find myself wondering if Trump attorney Michael Cohen is, secretly, a teenage idiot.
From the start, Cohen’s denial of the affair made very little sense, especially once it was revealed he’d paid hush money to Stormy. If there was no affair or sexual relationship, what was Stormy paid to keep quiet about, the uneven execution of Trump’s golf swing?
It made even less sense when Cohen claimed to have entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Stormy on Trump’s behalf, but without Trump’s knowledge. As numerous other attorneys immediately pointed out, that’s likely something the New York Bar Association would find to be a violation of the state’s rules of ethics for attorneys.
Of course, now that Trump himself has entered into the ongoing legal wrangling, with attorneys filing a motion on his behalf to remove the case Stormy filed against him to federal court, the cat everybody already knew about has fully exited the bag which was too small to contain him in the first place.
“Mr. Trump intends to pursue his rights to the fullest extent permitted by the law,” says the motion relating to a lawsuit which resulted from a challenge to a nondisclosure agreement, which in turn sprang from an alleged affair Cohen said never happened.
I know Cohen is referred to as Trump’s “pit bull” or “bulldog” or some other tough-guy sobriquet, but I’m starting to wonder if the nickname is a derogatory comment on the man’s intellectual capacity, not a compliment to his lawyerly tenacity.
Whether he realized it or not, Cohen’s claim he executed the nondisclosure agreement with (and associated payment to) Daniels without the knowledge or involvement of his client, or the client’s various organizations, put him in the position of essentially confessing to ethical violations. He couldn’t have it both ways – either Trump knew about the agreement, or Cohen violated the rules. (There may be slightly more wiggle room than this, but if so, no attorney I’ve spoken to about the case could come up with a description of it.)
Cohen’s latest line is that the payment to Daniels had nothing to do with Trump’s campaign, despite it coming only weeks before the election.
“What I did defensively for my personal client, and my friend, is what attorneys do for their high-profile clients,” Cohen said. “I would have done it in 2006. I would have done it in 2011. I truly care about him and the family – more than just as an employee and an attorney.”
Uh-huh. We believe you Mike. You paid Stormy out of the goodness of your pit bull heart, and it’s just a coincidence your “friend” happened to be running for President at the time. Sounds legit.
Cohen’s latest claims will now be scrutinized with all the vigor the press can muster, just as his previous ones have been. My bet is, they’ll turn up something which makes it clear the agreement had everything to do with the election, despite Cohen’s statements to the contrary.
What amazes me is Cohen’s inability (or unwillingness?) to see this coming. Once the Wall Street Journal got ahold of the story of the payment to Daniels, the jig was half-way up. Denying Trump’s involvement may have made sense in the context of blind loyalty, but as absurd as the claim was, Cohen must have realized his explanation would only draw more scrutiny.
Much like my obvious, easily disposed of liquor-replacement lie to my father all those years ago, I think Cohen’s line of BS was rooted in an overestimation of his own cleverness, paired with an underestimation of his audience’s intelligence.
To be clear, Cohen’s audience for the denial, whether he understood such or not, was a rabidly anti-Trump media corps, not Trump’s supporters.
Trump’s supporters don’t give a fuck about any of this Stormy/affair stuff, just like they didn’t give a fuck about the Access Hollywood tapes, or the Trump University case, or any other derogatory story about Trump, be it recent, ancient or somewhere in between.
I have no idea where (if anywhere) the Trump/Daniels case is going to go. But if the point of Cohen’s conduct up to this point was to shield his client from the truth coming out, he might have well just let Stormy tell her story.
At least that way, he’d be $130,000 wealthier than he is right now…. Allegedly.
