The president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, says in a new book that Trump acted like a mob boss and used mafia-type tactics to battle foes and advance his personal agenda.
According to the New York Times, which received an advanced copy of the book, Disloyal, a Memoir, set to be released this week, Cohen explains how the Trump Organization acted as an organized crime unit and that the Donald himself sat in the position of the family don.
“As I’ve been saying since the beginning, Trump was a mobster, plain and simple,” Cohen wrote when describing his part of a pressure campaign that Trump waged against then Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. The paper says Cohen describes how he helped then-candidate Trump coordinate a softball interview with Kelly after Trump’s attacks created a security risk for the former Fox host.
In an interview, set to air on Tuesday, Cohen told NBC News that he believes Trump will do anything to hold on to power.
“Donald Trump will do anything and everything within which to win. And I believe that includes manipulating the ballots,” Cohen said. “I believe that he would even go so far as to start a war in order to prevent himself from being removed from office. My biggest fear is that there will not be a peaceful transition of power in 2020.”
Trump’s long time lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen: Trump will do anything to win another term including manipulating the ballots or starting a war. pic.twitter.com/gk4GOBCHGz
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 5, 2020
Other media outlets with access to Cohen’s book mostly covered previously reported incidents and sordid accounts of Trump’s alleged bad behavior. In the book, the president’s former lawyer describes Trump as “a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”
Reporting about the book has also resurfaced a 2012 video that shows an actor, hired by Trump, playing the role of then-President Obama. In the video, “Trump ritualistically belittled the first Black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfillment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living out — until he did the functional equivalent in the real world,” Cohen wrote.
The video was meant to be shown during the 2012 Republican National Convention, during which Mitt Romney was nominated, but was ultimately scrapped.
The Washington Post ran a portion of the book that describes a disgusting incident where Trump made sexual remarks about Cohen’s young daughter. After Cohen’s then-15-year-old finished a tennis lesson, Trump said, “Look at that piece of ass. I would love some of that.”
Unsurprisingly, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a statement on Saturday condemning Cohen’s credibility: “Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it’s unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies.”
What McEnany leaves out, however, is that Cohen lied to Congress to cover up Trump’s wrongdoing.
From Rolling Stone US
