APRIL 29, 2018
The lawyer representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen predicted that Cohen will “flip” and cooperate with federal prosecutors in a related criminal investigation in Manhattan.
Michael Avenatti, interviewed Sunday on CNN, said a recent National Enquirer cover promising details about Cohen’s “secrets and lies” is a sign that Trump is in “panic mode” over Cohen possibly cooperating with investigators in New York. The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., is run by David Pecker, a friend and ally of Trump’s.
“It’s pretty transparent what is going on here,” Avenatti said on “State of the Union.”
“Mr. Trump and the administration have concluded what I’ve been saying for weeks: that Michael Cohen is in a lot of trouble and he’s going to flip on the president,” the lawyer said. “So this [National Enquirer cover] is the first effort on their part to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility so they can claim when he does flip that he’s a liar.”
Avenatti’s comments came two days after a federal judge granted Cohen’s request for a 90-day delay in Daniels’s lawsuit, saying it was “likely” that Cohen will be indicted in the related criminal probe.
“This is no simple criminal investigation; it is an investigation into the personal attorney of a sitting President regarding documents that might be subject to the attorney client privilege,” Judge S. James Otero wrote.
“Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the Court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay,” the judge wrote.
Cohen said last week that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the Daniels lawsuit in light of the ongoing criminal inquiry in New York.
Courtesy/Source: Washington Post
