We know for a fact that Michael Cohen arranged a hush agreement with Stormy Daniels. He was at least involved in The National Enquirer’s ‘catch & kill’ purchase of the story of alleged Trump girlfriend Karen McDougal. This afternoon we’ve learned that FBI agents who raided the homes and office of Michael Cohen were looking for information about the Access Hollywood tape, at least suggesting that investigators believe he may have been involved in (unsuccessful) efforts to suppress that tape. We know enough to say that Michael Cohen was clearly on the Trump sex and assaults beat throughout the fall of 2016.
Who was he working with?
Here’s something to consider.
Steve Bannon and Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s longtime (real) lawyer, worked as a team trying to keep these stories from coming out in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape in early October 2016. I know this as a fact independent of the sources I’m about to cite. There is nonetheless significant reporting on this. In an excerpt from Josh Green’s Bannon biography, he writes that it was “Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, with whom Bannon worked closely during the campaign to investigate the women who came forward to accuse Trump of inappropriate sexual advances.”
In his Trump book, Michael Wolff quoted Bannon bragging about silencing as many as 100 women …
“Look, Kasowitz has known (Trump) for twenty-five years. Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams. Kasowitz on the campaign — what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them.”
The irreplaceable Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times tweeted the page in question earlier this year.
This sentence from the Wolff book didn’t get the attention it deserved pic.twitter.com/oGIdaPISVT
— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) January 12, 2018
So Bannon and Kasowitz were working as a team to keep these accusations out of the press. Bannon says Kasowitz “took care of all of them.”
We know that Michael Cohen kept popping up right when women were about to make accusations. Were Bannon and Kasowitz working with Cohen? Were they doing the surveillance, as it were, and Cohen was the drone (it would be poetically appropriate at a number of levels)?
Seems worth exploring.
