Trump is fuming at his former lawyer Michael Cohen for revealing secretly recorded tapes of Trump discussing payouts to an alleged Playboy-bunny mistress. But he best be careful because Cohen could land Trump and at least one of his friends in legal trouble, in addition to driving the president up a wall. It’s a remarkable turnaround for the sycophantic New Yorker who was plaintively whining, “Boss, I miss you so much” in a phone call with Trump a year ago. But there doesn’t appear to be any going back for Cohen, who’s been leaking dirt on Trump all week. So what kind of damage can he really do?
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Trump Tower: The most serious allegation Cohen has made against his former boss is that Trump was aware of the infamous Trump Tower meeting where an alleged Russian government emissary, Natalia Veselnitskaya, offered the Trump campaign—including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and other senior campaign officials—dirt on Hillary Clinton. That meeting and a related statement from Team Trump are reportedly a primary focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, who have grilled Trump staffers about their misleading statement to Times. The statement, passed off as written by Trump Jr., was actually dictated by Trump himself, who insisted on characterizing the meeting by its nominal agenda (Russian adoptions) rather than its actual one: getting Clinton dirt.
No one is quite sure why the Mueller team is so interested in the Trump Tower meeting, but Cohen’s claim, if true, could help Mueller’s Russia investigators find whatever it is they’re after. We also now know that the Russian attorney is a more significant player than previously thought. Emails from Veselnitskaya—recently leaked to an exiled Russia dissident group and given to the AP—show that the Russian lawyer had closer links to the top levels of Russian government than she initially let on.
Maybe pump the breaks a bit: As many pundits have pointed out, Cohen’s claim thus far remains just that—a claim. Unlike l’affair McDougal, there are no tapes corroborating Cohen’s Trump Tower statements. Instead, all we have is his word that, as CNN reported, “he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians' offer by Trump Jr.” Keep in mind that Cohen is facing growing pressure from prosecutors over his finances and his hush money payout to alleged Trump mistress Stormy Daniels. If he wants prosecutors to cut him some slack on his own legal problems, he needs to convince them he can deliver the goods on a more serious criminal issue. That makes Cohen a motivated seller who warrants some precautionary skepticism. For his part, Trump has strongly denied the allegations.
Bunny problems: Cohen’s tape of Trump shows an obvious awareness of Karen McDougal’s claims of an affair and the attempt to buy her silence. That’s not so much a potential legal issue for Trump (at the moment, at least) as it is for his friend David Pecker. Trump seemingly never ended up making a hush money payout to McDougal but American Media Inc., the company his friend Pecker is in charge of, bought the rights to McDougal’s life story—including her affair with Trump—in what many have alleged was an attempt to help his presidential campaign avoid scandal.
If that’s true, the deal could run afoul of campaign finance laws. At least one watchdog group has already filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department about the AMI deal and called it an illegal campaign contribution. Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was tried by federal prosecutors—albeit unsuccessfully—on similar allegations that he had wealthy friends orchestrate payouts to a pregnant mistress during the 2008 campaign.
Distraction: Even if Cohen’s allegations never materially contribute to anyone’s criminal problems other than his own, he’s still a liability for the president because he holds the possibility of dragging out Trump’s myriad scandals into ever seedier news cycles. But every time a new tape drops or the press goes chasing a Cohen claim and forces the White House to play defense, the administration isn’t controlling the conversation but getting dragged by it. A White House that’s serially overwhelmed by playing scandal defense could lose the opportunity to reach voters through the din and make the affirmative case for its reelection and the reelection of its allies.
It’s personal: Cohen is far from the first Trump underling to offer prosecutors evidence that could harm Trump. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn copped a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to help out in the Russia inquiry in exchange for avoiding jail time for lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials. Trump has offered public sympathy for the disgraced general and tweeted a lament that Flynn’s “life can be totally destroyed while Shadey James Comey can Leak and Lie and make lots of money from a third rate book.”
So why does Flynn get pity while Cohen gets spite? Flynn’s plea agreement with Mueller’s office hints only vaguely that he’s expected to help out with "Any and all matters as to which this Office deems the cooperation relevant." So far, we haven’t seen any sign that this has included testimony or evidence about Trump personally. Cohen, as tapes disclosed by CNN showed, secretly taped his boss in a compromising conversation about an alleged former mistress and has offered to implicate Trump as having foreknowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting. The icing on the cake is that Cohen hired Lanny Davis, President Bill Clinton’s former personal attorney and a loyal Hillary Clinton supporter—a fact that Trump himself has angrily tweeted about.
Pardons for me but none for thee: Trump’s anger and sense of betrayal at Cohen could cloud his judgment. We know from reporting in The New York Times that Trump’s lawyers have explicitly considered orchestrating pardons for Flynn and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, which would’ve spared them from having to offer evidence in the Russia inquiry. But if Cohen keeps publicly dishing on his former boss and more compromising tapes surface, could the notoriously temperamental Trump suck it up and pardon his betrayer if his lawyers thought it necessary? That’s a lot of pride to swallow.
