While President Trump claims total exoneration, his former lawyer and fixer remains frustrated that his ex-boss didn’t get the same treatment as him.
Ahead of turning himself in to authorities to serve a three-year sentence for campaign finance violations and lying to the FBI, Michael Cohen railed against Trump to the New Yorker.
“You are going to find me guilty of campaign finance, with (Karen) McDougal or Stormy (Daniels), and give me three years — really?” he told the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin as part of an extensive profile on the former lawyer. “And how come I’m the only one? I didn’t work for the campaign. I worked for him. And how come I’m the one that’s going to prison? I’m not the one that slept with the porn star.”
It’s unclear what potential crimes Cohen thinks President Trump should be convicted of, but Cohen is clearly still salty about the lengths he went to defend and cover up for a man who is facing no punishment for his various misdeeds. In his report, special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 election, but the report said the behavior of witnesses tied to the Trump campaign “materially impaired” parts of the investigation.
The report also revealed that the special counsel’s office held back from offering a conclusion because they would not be able to charge Trump on obstruction due to the Justice Department opinion that sitting presidents could not be indicted. And the report crucially noted that if Mueller found clear evidence that Trump didn’t obstruct justice, he would’ve cleared him of it.
Cohen is one of two former Trump associates facing substantial prison terms for crimes primarily unrelated to the work they did for Trump before and during the 2016 election.
