Hugh Hewitt, a prominent conservative observer and an MSNBC contributor, briefly made the case overnight that Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, “has already done his worst” to Donald Trump, “and it is pretty bad.”
It is, indeed. Trump’s former “fixer” stood up in a New York courtroom yesterday and directly implicated the president in a federal crime. But I’d caution against assuming that Cohen “has already done his worst” to his former employer. In fact, there’s ample reason to believe yesterday’s developments, while brutal for Trump, were the first in a series of related dominoes.
Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s lawyers, spoke to Rachel on the show last night, and shared some insights that suggested there’s far more to come.
“I can tell you that Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell special counsel all that he knows — not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election, which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also, knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.”
Davis added that Cohen is “now liberated to tell truth — everything about Donald Trump that he knows.”
As developments unfolded yesterday, we learned of an important detail: Cohen’s plea agreement with prosecutors did not include provisions that would require him to cooperate with other investigations, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. But his lawyer’s comments on The Rachel Maddow Show suggest Cohen stands ready to voluntarily answer provocative questions — and provide information “on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel,” which may include possible insights into what Trump knew about Russia’s attack on our elections. Cohen “has already done his worst” to Trump? There’s reason to believe the worst is yet to come.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
