Which Michael Cohen Did You See?
Bad liar, good liar, redemption case, resistance grifter, or recovering addict?
Last week, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee. As with many things in the Trump era, what you heard depends on the frame you applied.
Did Cohen come to Congress to spin fictions? To redeem himself and help his country? To bilk gullible Democrats? Here’s five possibilities:
1 — Bad Liar
Cohen can’t be trusted. He’s a criminal on the way to prison, and one of his crimes was lying to Congress.
Maybe he’s trying to sell a book in the future. Maybe someone put him up to it. Maybe he’s bitter that he didn’t get a job in the White House. Or maybe he’s lashing out now that he got caught. Whatever the reason, you can’t believe anything he says.
Does it make sense?
Not really.
Cohen is a criminal and a liar — that much is indisputable — but that doesn’t mean he’s making all this up. Everyone has lied and everyone has told the truth. Criminals’ testimony against former associates plays a major role in many criminal convictions. Noting that Cohen lied many times in the past is a reason for skepticism, but not to dismiss him entirely.
Cohen’s testimony was very different from the one that landed him in jail. He offered detailed accounts of various criminal and legal-but-shady behavior, many of which make him look terrible. He brought supportive evidence, such as a check Cohen claimed was reimbursement for payments to keep Stormy Daniels quiet about her affair with Trump, signed by the president himself. That’s a violation of campaign finance law, and a conspiracy to commit bank fraud to cover it up.
Multiple times Cohen responded to hostile “then why’d you lie?” questions with variations on “I was trying to hide it from my wife.” Most married people probably find that motivation plausible, even if they wouldn’t do it. And airing dirty laundry like that is an admission against interest, making it more credible.
Sometimes, Cohen defended Trump. When asked about a rumor that Trump hit Melania and got caught on camera, Cohen said he looked for the tape and it doesn’t exist, adding that Trump would never do something like that. When asked about Russia, Cohen said he doesn’t know of any direct evidence of collusion. And he emphatically denied ever going to Prague, undermining some Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.
If Cohen was just making up stuff to tar Donald Trump, he probably would have played along with Democrats’ accusations.
Republicans’ hostile questioning shows they think Cohen’s claims are credible. Most used their time to cast doubt on Cohen’s character, rather than rebutting his allegations.
Compare this to the Kavanaugh hearings. Republicans tried to discredit Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey-Ford, asking her who paid for her travel to Washington, among other things. But they also cast doubt on her accusation, asking probing questions she couldn’t answer — such as where, exactly, did the alleged sexual assault take place? — and demanded corroborating evidence she couldn’t produce.
Cohen implicated Trump in multiple crimes, but most Republicans on the committee didn’t even try to dispute them. Granted, Blasey-Ford is a much more sympathetic witness than Cohen. But if they could have poked holes in his accusations, they would have.
To believe he’s making it all up, you have to believe that Cohen, fresh off lying to Congress and getting handed a prison sentence, decided to lie to Congress again and get more jail time. Not impossible, but not very likely.
2 — Good Liar
Republicans insinuated that Cohen was spinning fictions, which is what a bad liar would do. But maybe Cohen’s a good liar.
Good liars don’t make up a bunch of stuff. It’s too easy to get caught and discredited. Good liars mostly tell the truth, but sneak in some self-serving falsehoods, ideally about things that cannot easily be fact-checked.
Interestingly, Donald Trump is a bad liar. It’s often obvious he’s lying, and he frequently gets caught. But he commits so completely to bad lies — and contents himself with fooling some people rather than everyone — that he makes it work.
Assuming the good liar frame, Cohen’s confessions and defenses of Trump were true, but he did it to win over his audience and set up his lies.
Does it make sense?
Not really.
He wasn’t nearly smooth enough. And, don’t forget, he’s going to jail because he got caught lying to Congress (among other things).
One possible good lie: Cohen claimed to be in the room while Roger Stone told Trump, over speakerphone, about WikiLeaks’ impending release of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. That would support accusations of an electoral conspiracy, but the only people who know if it’s true are Stone, Trump, and Cohen.
If it’s not true, it’s a good lie because it tells a lot of people something they want to hear and, since Cohen said he doesn’t have it on tape, there’s no way for us to evaluate its veracity.
But Cohen also made mistakes that good liars don’t make. For example, when accused of seeking revenge for not getting a White House job, Cohen insisted he never wanted one. But in a November 2016 interview on CNN, he said the opposite.
I don’t know if this was a deliberate lie or unreliable memory — humans have a subconscious tendency to remember events in a way that paints themselves in a positive light — but I know it was a mistake good liars don’t make. The point was unimportant, but Cohen kept arguing it. A good liar responds with something like “I always wanted to work closely with Mr. Trump, and was disappointed he didn’t bring me to D.C. But that sort of thing happened a lot in my many years working for him. I wanted something, he went another way, I was disappointed, but I did what he asked. I always did what he asked.” And then, accusation deflected, a good liar would move on. Cohen didn’t.
If Michael Cohen strikes you as a good liar, you haven’t met one (or they’re so good that you haven’t realized it).
3 — Redemption Case
Cohen has turned over a new leaf. He’s seen the error of his ways, both in his personal conduct and his role in elevating Trump. Now he wants to do the right thing.
In his opening statement, Cohen said (emphasis mine):
I hope my appearance here today, my guilty plea, and my work with law enforcement agencies are steps along a path of redemption that will restore faith in me and help this country understand our president better.
He maintained this theme throughout, casting his testimony as an effort to redeem both himself and America. Some Democrats agreed. For example, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) called Cohen’s “a story of redemption.”
Does it make sense?
Sort of (see #5). But not really (see #4).
4 — Resistance Grifter
Forced to flip on his longtime patron, Michael Cohen is homeless. He burned a lot of bridges and needs allies, so he tells Democrats and other anti-Trumpers exactly what they want to hear.
Does it make sense?
Yes, but.
As Commentary’s Noah Rothman argues, Cohen’s pitch to Democrats is a little too perfect. In the hearing, he called Trump a racist, referencing already known incidents, such as when the president called African countries shitholes. He brought up some attacks on Obama, calling it ironic that Trump asked Cohen to threaten his schools not to release his grades or SAT scores, since Trump accused Obama of hiding a weak academic record. In an eye-roll-inducing exchange, Cohen claimed one reason he felt compelled to speak out against Trump is concern over the “daily destruction of civility.”
And on August 21, 2018, he launched a GoFundMe, the “Michael Cohen Truth Fund,” which presents this plea:
Michael decided to put his family and his country first. Now Michael needs your financial help.
It’s raised over $200,000.
However, while it’s safe to say Cohen’s motivated more by self-interest than principle, that doesn’t mean his accusations are false. Grifters often try to take advantage of real circumstances rather than spin fictions from whole cloth.
Does anyone doubt that, in a decade as Donald Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen saw some shady stuff?
5 — Recovering Addict
Cohen messed up big and he knows it. If he didn’t get caught, he probably would’ve stayed on the same unhealthy path, but get caught he did. His life fell apart, he hit rock bottom, and now he’s trying to rebuild, admitting his errors — to himself, as well as others — and warning where this road leads.
Does it make sense?
Yes.
Cohen matter-of-factly admitted serious wrongs. He said he was ashamed and called himself weak. He repeatedly apologized to his family. In Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous, those resemble Steps 1, 4, 5, 8, and 9.
And yet, it was clear Cohen liked working for Trump. He realizes it was bad for him — as with many addicts, getting caught and punished had a lot to do with that — but still, he misses it.
In a telling exchange, Cohen accused Republicans of lying to protect Donald Trump:
I’m responsible for your silliness because I did the same thing that you’re doing now for ten years. I protected Mr. Trump… I can only warn people the more people that follow Mr. Trump as I did blindly are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.
Carrying the message to other addicts is Step 12.
There’s some truth to all five of these frames, and together they paint a full picture of Cohen’s testimony. But recovering addict fits best. It explains why Cohen’s attitude and public statements changed. And it explains why he might be telling the truth now, without absolving him of responsibility for his actions.
We shouldn’t just take him at his word, but many of his claims appear credible. They warrant further investigation.
Cohen implicated Trump in multiple crimes during the campaign and in office. If they’re supported by documentary evidence and corroborating testimony, they should be part of impeachment charges.
