In the first of what will certainly be many attacks today, Rudy Giuliani is out with a round of attacks on Michael Cohen. A central one is that Cohen was “connected to Russian organized crime” and that – relatedly – he got his money from his Ukrainian immigrant father-in-law Fima Shusterman. You’ve seen me writing for months about Trump’s odd gambit and history with Shusterman. I’ve been writing for two years about Cohen’s ties to Russian/Ukrainian organized crime. Rudy is not making this up. But in the nature of things, with the current questions before the public, accusing Trump’s former fixer of being tied to Russian organized crime seems like a perilous line of attack.

With Michael Cohen’s decision to postpone his testimony before Congress, people are starting to focus on President Trump’s repeated attacks on Cohen’s unnamed “father-in-law”. It is outrageous that a sitting President would repeatedly threaten anyone with legal action, especially in a case when it is done with the intention of squelching testimony against him. But this isn’t just out of the blue character assassination. Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, does have a criminal record (he pleaded guilty to money laundering related charges in the early 90s) and has reputed Russian/Ukraine organized crime connections that, critically, Trump appears to be connected to. There’s good reason to believe that it was Trump and Shusterman’s business ties, money flow ties, that is actually what brought Cohen into Trump’s world in the first place. I go into some detail about it here. Shusterman seems to be one of the links that ties Trump to the Russian money channels that are central to this entire story.

So we shouldn’t run after Trump’s character assassination. But this has always been part of the story that requires a lot more attention and scrutiny. As I said, more here.