Michael Cohen

One of the outcomes of November’s election is that Americans can once again trust their own eyes and call out the obvious when they see it. President Biden long ago lost the mental acuity to serve as the nation’s chief executive. Progressive causes like climate change, diversity hiring and transgender men participating in women’s sports are ridiculous. And highly dubious prosecutions seemingly launched as political weapons are exactly what they appear to be. In a Friday morning double-header Americans witnessed in real time the crumbling of the last two vestiges of the lawfare campaign against former and future president Donald Trump. What were once touted as a dream of the left to bring down a king will at best be reduced to obscure footnotes in the annals of history.

If you squint, I reckon you could see two bloody corpses that the Secret Service turned over on that roof in Butler, Pennsylvaia. It was not only twenty-year-old loser Thomas Matthew Crooks; hovering right next door is the mangled corpse of the bureaucratic monstrosity that the Biden administration has been wielding against Donald Trump. There it lies, broken and inert.  Crooks tried to murder Trump with a AR-15. He almost did so, too. Had Trump not turned his head at the last moment — ironically, it was to look at a chart mapping the tsunami of illegal immigration swamping the country — Crooks’s bullet would have pierced Trump’s brain instead of merely nicking the top of his right ear.

“What happens now?” That was the question flooding my inbox and what used to be called the Twittersphere. Why? Because shortly after 5 p.m. on May 30, Anno Domini 2024, the verdict in America’s first-ever Stalinist trial came down: Trump was guilty on all counts in the so-called “hush money trial” in New York. I always say “so-called” hush money trial because it was really designed to be a "hush Trump" trial. Rather, a “hush Trump” inquisition. So now the proximate legal fate of Donald Trump, former and very possibly future president of the United States, is settled. What happens next? Trump appeals, but that case is not heard until after the election. What happens next?

The Libertarian Party announced its presidential candidate Monday, and from the looks of it, they may as well have chosen Donald Trump.Chase Oliver is the porcupines’ pick for president, as RFK Jr. was rejected and Trump was ineligible for the nomination. Otherwise he “would have absolutely gotten” it if he wanted it, per his Truth Social account.Oliver describes himself on his website as having “[been] recognized as the ‘most influential Libertarian’ by Rolling Stone, [and] garnered national attention following his debate with incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker’s empty podium. With over 80,000 votes, Oliver forced a runoff between the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Former president Donald Trump’s defense team chose to rest in the so-called “hush-money” trial in Manhattan on Tuesday, moving the case forward to closing arguments next week and then jury deliberations. Trump did not end up testifying in his own defense, which he had suggested earlier in the trial he might do. Instead, the defense called only one significant witness: Robert Costello, an attorney and former advisor to Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani. Costello testified that Cohen told him previously that he had nothing incriminating to offer prosecutors about Trump and that he told him “numerous times” Trump did not know anything about payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

President Joe Biden had a rough weekend, committing at least three major gaffes during his public engagements. The president usually spends his weekend at one of his homes in Wilmington or Rehoboth Beach to get a respite from working at the White House. His recent appearances were a reminder as to why.Biden was the featured speaker at the commencement ceremony for historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta. But his speech was panned by critics who accused him of being divisive and treating the graduates as if they are victims because of their race. He also claimed his White House was filled with Morehouse graduates, telling the crowd, “I got more Morehouse men in the White House telling me what to do than I know what to do! You all think I’m kidding, don’t you?

Stormy Daniels is joining the long list of celebrities who have threatened to flee America because of Donald Trump. Given that Cher, Barbra Streisand, Snoop Dogg and every other Trump-hating celebrity is still stateside, Cockburn is doubtful Daniels will keep her word.  In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Barrett Blade, Daniels’s porn star husband, revealed that the couple will likely leave the United States if Trump is acquitted in his hush money trial. "I know that we would like to get on with our lives,” Blade said. “I know that she wants to move past this.”  Blade added his wife’s future will be uncertain whether or not she wins the trial. “Either way, I don't think it gets better for her. I think if it's not guilty, we got to decide what to do.

After months of speculation — will they, won’t they? — President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump have officially agreed to a set of two presidential debates. In a rather surprising move, Biden released a statement indicating he would not participate in the fall debates sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (a wholly partisan sham organization, by the way, as my colleague Ben Domenech points out here). Instead, Biden laid out his own set of conditions to his opponent: there will be no audience, no RFK Jr., only CNN, ABC, CBS or Telemundo may host, and microphones must be muted when a candidate’s time expires.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen finally took the stand Monday in the so-called “hush-money” trial against his old boss in Manhattan. Cohen’s testimony has been much hyped by Trump’s critics, as the legal claim is that Trump improperly claimed payments made by Cohen to adult film star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses instead of campaign expenses. Cohen testified that his former client signed off on everything that he did, indicating that Trump directed him to pay off Daniels and suggesting that he would have known that they shouldn’t be marked down as a legal expense or retainer in the company books.

Among the many great lines in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, is this mournful observation from “The Dry Salvages,” the third of the bunch: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” How much happens to us that we only half register or undergo without really twigging its significance? One example that is both pedestrian and historical: the criminal trial in Manhattan of Donald Trump.  As I write, Trump is leading slightly in the polls, which means he is not only at the head of the chief opposition party, but also that he represents an existential threat to the future of the regime that is persecuting — er, prosecuting him.  The trial, brought by Soros-funded district attorney Alvin Bragg is often described as being about “hush money,” i.e.

A week after the death of O.J. Simpson, America has a new Trial of the Century — perhaps the first of many. Jury selection is currently underway in a Manhattan courtroom as presidential candidate Donald Trump faces charges from New York County district attorney Alvin Bragg of faking business records to conceal payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels says that she was paid $130,000 by Michael Cohen in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election in order to not talk publicly about having sex with Trump a decade previously, shortly after his third marriage to Melania and the birth of their son Barron. This is the first trial of a former US president.

On the day after District Attorney, Alvin Bragg confirmed that a grand jury had indicted former president, Donald Trump, his office’s general counsel made a bizarre request of three House Republican committee chairmen. In a letter to Representatives Jim Jordan, Bryan Steil and James Comer, Leslie Dubeck asked the lawmakers to denounce Trump’s “harsh invective” against Bragg. Trump had warned that his indictment or arrest might unleash “death and destruction.” On social media, Trump’s supporters have vilified Bragg. “As committee chairmen,” Dubeck suggests, “you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury.

Donald Trump will be the first former president to face criminal charges following a vote from a Manhattan grand jury. In a statement, Trump referred to the move as "Political Persecution," "Election Interference" and a "Witch-Hunt" that will "backfire massively on Joe Biden." District Attorney Alvin Bragg of New York County is set to indict Trump in the coming days following a five-year probe into whether an $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels constitutes a campaign finance violation and potential felony. Tacopina told the Associated Press of the grand jury's decision to indict. The specific charges are not known at this stage. "The indictment of Donald Trump is no cause for joy," tweeted Clark Brewster, a lawyer for Daniels.

Well, no indictment, but there were developments! Vocabulary word of the week: “exculpatory.” “Something that shows that someone is not guilty of wrongdoing.” Now, use it in a sentence: “Soros-funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg neglected to reveal hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence to the Grand Jury pondering whether to indict Donald Trump.” What does it mean? It means that the orange suit that Bragg was hoping to order up for Trump may have to be retailored in a larger size, one big enough to fit him. Some context: when a prosecutor conceals exculpatory evidence from a Grand Jury or defense attorneys he is guilty of prosecutorial abuse.

Here are six things to think about ahead of any indictment and arrest of Donald Trump: 1. What is Trump going to be indicted for? Trump may soon be indicted on a campaign finance law violation. This means Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has convinced a grand jury there is enough evidence to charge Trump with the crime (federal prosecutors seem to have long abandoned the cheesy political revenge fantasy). 2. But I thought this was all about Trump having an affair with some porn star? Stormy Daniels allegedly had sex with Trump in 2006, which he denies, and which she and Michael Cohen also once denied. She then took money in 2016 to sign a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, to keep silent.

Another week, another silver bullet misses Donald Trump. Once more we suffered through the same endless roll of waves of crimes, accusations, near-indictments and just bad words to which we'd become accustomed during the Trump presidency. We went from "Trump has classified material under lock and key at Mar-a-Lago" to a group of people paying $1,800 to fly a banner reading "ha ha ha ha" over the resort to mock a Trump staying 3,000 miles away in New York. On cue, the regulars on MSNBC and CNN brought out their running-dog former CIA and FBI officers to tell us tick-tock, the walls are closing in, this time it will stick, Trump is going down, he'll be in jail before he runs again for office. If we can't stop him with the electoral system, we'll use the judicial system. This. Is. The.

If you had "Trump goes to jail" in the office pool, you just lost. The end of any possible criminal prosecution out of New York over Donald Trump's finances has come as the grand jury seated to find them has sunsetted. The possibility of a civil penalty, likely a fine, looks poor, but anything is possible. This is all a long way from predictions that the walls were closing in back when these cases were initiated in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Dems, dragging all their Biden baggage along, are going to have to beat Trump at the ballot box, assuming anyone can afford the gas to drive out to vote.

The Democrats' only possible path forward is to ensure that Trump does not run in 2024. So they want to lock him away in jail. With only three years left to go, the 2024 race is narrowing to Trump versus Some Democrat. By Election Day, President Biden will be a vaguely sentient eighty-two, VP Harris will likely have left the country, and the Dems' rainbow coalition of identity claimants will quickly winnow itself down to nobody as their collective lack of experience devalues their various claims of victimhood. What to do about Trump? You can convince some Americans for awhile that Trump is a Russian agent, or violated an Emoluments Clause thingie they'd never heard of before, just by saying it over and over.

President Trump sent out a number of tweets today demanding liberation, but he probably wasn’t thinking of his old fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen, who squealed on Donald Trump before Congress, went to jail for a variety of financial and campaign finance crimes. Thanks to the coronavirus, his own problem is largely fixed. He’s getting an early reprieve from his three-year jail sentence at a medium-security prison in Otisville, New York and headed for home confinement. Another member of Trump’s rogues gallery, Paul Manafort, has asked to be released from Loretto federal prison in Pennsylvania because of the pandemic, but there’s no word yet whether his request will be granted. Unlike Cohen, Manafort remained unflinching.