In Explosive Interview, Cohen Says Mueller Has “Substantial” Evidence Against Trump

Former Trump attorney and purported “fixer” Michael Cohen kicked off his PR campaign to win a lighter sentence on Friday (two days after a federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison) with a long-winded interview with Cohen’s favorite daytime TV personality – ABC’s George Stephanopoulos – where he tried to convince the public to believe his testimony about President Trump by claiming that he ‘flipped’ on the president, not to save his own skin, but to do right by his family and his country.

Cohen

Offering his most detailed accounting yet of the events that led up to his guilty plea, Cohen insisted that Trump had directed him to make the “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that have emerged as the center of the campaign finance allegations that prosecutors are seeking to trace back to the president.

Cohen: “Nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen said. “He directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters.”

As one might expect given Stephanopoulos’s prior interviews with Cohen and other Trumpworld figures, interview was effectively set up to try and convince the audience that Cohen is a believable witness. But just in case some viewers still harbor doubts about Cohen’s integrity, he would like them to know that if they don’t believe him, the special counsel has “substantial” evidence corroborating his claims that has yet to be made public.

Cohen: “Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them is credible and helpful. There is a substantial amount of information that they possessed that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.”

Asked why he was loyal to Trump in the beginning, Cohen said he “admired” Trump, and that his allegiance to the real estate developer was “a blind loyalty.”

Cohen: “No. No, it was a blind loyalty. It was to a man I admired, but I do not know the answer to it. And I am angry at myself. My family is disappointed that they’ve taught me, my mother, father, right from wrong. And I didn’t display good judgment.”

But that doesn’t excuse his actions, Cohen admitted, adding that he’s “angry with myself” because “I know what I was doing is wrong.”

Despite facing a substantial federal prison term, Cohen said that he now feels like he has “his freedom back” (that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Cohen’s claims that he is being 100% truthful by resulting to such obviously ridiculous platitudes). Yet, he’s still afraid of the president.

Stephanopoulos: Are you afraid of him?

Cohen: “It’s never good to be on the wrong side of the president of the United States of America. But some how this task has fallen on my shoulders and I will spend the rest of my life trying to fix the mistake that I made.”

Do you think President Trump is telling the truth about Russia?

Cohen: No.

Trump has changed since the days of the Trump Organization, where Cohen said he “had a lot of fun” working with Trump. Cohen believes the “pressure” of running the country is eating away at Trump, and that this has soured his attitude on a fundamental level. He said he “doesn’t recognize” the Trump of today.

Cohen: You know, I can’t give you a specific time that it went from point A to point B. It was just a change. I will tell you that the gentleman that is sitting now in the Oval Office, 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, is not the Donald trump that I remember from Trump Tower.

Stephanopoulos: … how so?

Cohen: He’s a very different individual.

Stephanopoulos: What’s happened to him?

Cohen: I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be. It’s not like the Trump organization where he would bark out orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done. There’s a system here, he doesn’t understand the system, and it’s sad because the country has never been more divisive. And one of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I’ve received, as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.

If Cohen could offer one piece of advice to President Trump, it would be to make good on his post-midterms promise to usher in an era of “bipartisan good feeling”.

Cohen: “Lay off Twitter, run the country the way that we all thought that you would, be able to take the Democrats, Republicans, bring them together and bring the country together instead of dividing the country.”

Then again, placing the blame solely on Trump for the partisan divide in Washington isn’t exactly fair.

While Cohen offered only praise for Trump’s tenure as a New York real estate developer selling the “greatest product ever created”,

Turning to the subject of Cohen’s “legacy”, Cohen said he hopes that he will be “remembered in history” for helping to bring the country back together. Though President Trump’s tweets accusing him of being a  turncoat and a “rat” are much more memorable than Cohen’s claims that he is telling the truth for the first time in his life.

Cohen: I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be. It’s not like the Trump organization where he would bark out orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done. There’s a system here, he doesn’t understand the system, and it’s sad because the country has never been more divisive. And one of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I’ve received, as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.

In comments to the Wall Street Journal, Rudy Giuliani called Cohen’s allegations “much ado about nothing.”

“Whether they talked about it or not, their talking about it can’t make it a crime,” Mr. Giuliani said of the hush-money payments, adding that “as far as I know, Cohen is not telling the truth.”

We now await an stream of angry tweets from President Trump.

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