Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Donald Trump famously bleated early in his presidency as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the lawyer he expected would shield him from all charges of wrongdoing, began to fail him. Sessions was about to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s dilating probe into the nexus between meddling Russians and the Trump campaign, leaving Trump legally exposed to what became the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

Trump’s wish was for a lawyer who would shout and bully all of his foes into silence and win his case in the public court of opinion before charges could be filed, much as the malicious and threatening Cohn had done for him in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. But Cohn, who died in 1986, proved impossible to replicate. Rudy Giuliani, another sort of hard-nosed New York lawyer, eventually took the assignment, but he too failed to deflect Mueller. Trump then replaced Sessions with legal temp Matthew G. Whitaker in November, reportedly asking him to undo the recusal of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, where some of Trump’s alleged financial misdeeds are being scrutinized. But even after telling associates he would “jump on a grenade” for Trump, Whitaker shirked the suicide assignment.


Absent a reanimated Cohn to do his dirty work, Trump has continued to play the attorney’s part for himself, snarling and snapping at his enemies, exhaling wild lies and menacing accusations into the television ether. Everywhere Trump looks, he finds proof of his exoneration. When Judge T.S. Ellis sentenced former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort to 47 months of jail-time this week, Trump translated the prison term as a personal victory.

“Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia,” Trump tweeted on Friday. Nice try, Donald, except Mueller has yet to charge Manafort with anything related to collusion. What Judge Ellis said was that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election,” which is quite different from clearing him of collusion. It would make as much sense for Trump to say Judge Ellis cleared Manafort of jaywalking. Court-watchers are predicting that a longer sentence awaits Manafort next week when Judge Amy Berman Jackson will award him additional time for the financial crimes he was convicted on. She jailed Manafort for witness-tampering and is considered a tougher sentencer. How will Trump respond? If he doesn’t concoct exoneration, he’ll probably act as if it had never happened.

The absolutism of Trump’s “no collusion” protestations neglect the evidence found in Mueller’s filings, as David Corn and Dan Friedman of Mother Jones note in a new piece. In his Cohen sentencing memo, Mueller cites “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump Organization] executives during the campaign.” Mueller doesn’t specify the information, but the “Russia-related matters” might be about the Moscow Trump Tower project whose timetable Trump attempted to fog from sight with his repeated lies about when it had ended. Corn continues his excavation, reminding readers of Trump adviser (and later national security adviser) Michael Flynn’s pre-inauguration talks about Russian sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, talks that he lied to the FBI about.

To continue, Cohen has testified that Trump knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between top Trump campaigner Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. and a gaggle of Russian schemers who alleged to have “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Does that not whiff of collusion? Trump’s campaign request, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” has that stench, too. Mueller wrote in his indictment of Roger Stone that a senior Trump campaign official was “directed” to approach Stone about whatever dirt WikiLeaks might have on Clinton. Given that the Russians appear to have been behind the hack-work WikiLeaks posted, doesn’t this cross the collusion threshold? The odor gets stronger still when you consider that Manafort shared polling data with his business associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik and had him instructed to reshare it with two Russia-aligned Ukrainian oligarchs.

(To be fair to Trump, he has reportedly denied in writing to Mueller of knowing about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Also, he reportedly wrote that Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks.)

Even if Trump beats the collusion rap, he’ll need super-Cohn powers to outrun the non-Russia-related investigations closing in on him. This week, the House Judiciary Committee tossed a drift net on 81 potential witnesses and entities, demanding documents and testimony about Trump’s campaign, his businesses, the transition and other topics. But the sleuths from the Oversight and Reform Committee are onto him, as well, and so are the Intelligence Committee, the Ways and Means Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. Committees will attempt to study his tax returns, his interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his issuance of security clearances and paying of hush money, charges of obstruction of justice and abuse of power and even revisit the Russia business.

Back in his New York home, state regulators have subpoenaed the Trump Organization’s insurance broker as part of an investigation of his family business finances. State Attorney General Letitia James plans to investigate tax, financial, philanthropic, and emolument topics. And, the Southern District of New York’s federal investigation remains alive. Trump stands legally naked in most of these scuffles because he can’t invoke executive privilege which means that even if he beats Mueller, the committees, the courts and the regulators will dissect him down to his last ganglia.

Trump won’t need a Cohn to protect him. He’ll need an army of them.

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What would Roy Cohn do? Send suggestions via email to [email protected]. My email alerts fear congressional committees. My Twitter feed avoids regulatory commissions. My RSS feed says to live outside the law you must be honest.

