25 January 2019

Witness Intimidation

Vox published an excellent piece yesterday (link here) that analyzes whether or not Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have been openly and publicly engaging in witness intimidation directed at Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and lawyer who has been cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Cohen was scheduled to appear in public to testify before a Congressional committee in early February but has now bowed out of that appearance, citing his family's safety and Trump and Giuliani's threats. For their part, both Trump and Giuliani have been making coy and potentially slanderous statements about Cohen's wife and father-in-law.

On one hand, this could just be Trump making his typical nasty comments about somebody. On the other hand, it could be overt witness intimidation.

Hopefully, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has people looking into this. Cohen has already given his grand jury testimony, so that damage to Trump is already in the bag. But grand jury transcripts are secret and almost never leak.

By effectively making Cohen afraid to appear before Congress, Trump accidentally or intentionally has silenced what could be explosive public testimony that could have turned sentiment against the President even further.

But it's hard to believe this is accidental on Trump's part, given his past behavior. While he may not have come up with this idea, one of his lawyers, specifically Giuliani, could have put it into his head and now he's running with the ball.

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