Michael Cohen will be jury's tour guide into Trump's 'heart of darkness': biographer
Former Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen is set to take the witness stand on Monday and Trump biographer Timothy O'Brien argues that he will essentially serve as jurors' Virgil on a Dante-like survey of MAGA hell.
In his latest Bloomberg column, O'Brien writes that Cohen "will lead Trump's jury to the heart of darkness" that is the former president's psyche when he describes how he helped him cover up an affair he had with adult film star Stormy Daniels in the closing weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.
O'Brien argues that while Trump's lawyers will have real ammo to call Cohen's credibility into question, Cohen will simply be reiterating in greater detail what other witnesses in the case have already heard about the seedier aspects of Trump's life.
What's more, O'Brien makes the case that there's no way a man with high ethical standards could have successfully executed the role that Cohen was hired by the former president to perform.
"Cohen, a lawyer, didn’t work for Trump because he was a deft attorney, a skillful accountant or a brilliant money manager," argues O'Brien. "He worked for him because he knew just enough about the law, accounting and greed to help Trump engineer end runs and cover-ups."
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While O'Brien doesn't know whether a jury will ultimately convict Trump in the hush-money case, he does think it could nonetheless have an impact on swing voters.
"But the impact of the New York trial was always going to be measured more by the effect that all of the unsavory testimony may have on moderate and independent voters in this year’s presidential election than on the eventual verdict," he contents. "The case offers a stark reminder that Trump has the judgment and sexual appetites of a juvenile delinquent and the business acumen of a grifter."