Perhaps it was inevitable that another No Good, Very Bad Week for Donald Trump, American president, would end with him firing off a series of tweets demanding to see his ex-fixer's "manuscript." Yes, the president spent his Friday morning insisting that this mystery text would prove beyond a shadow of the doubt that Michael Cohen had "committed perjury on a scale not seen before" when he testified Wednesday that he did a bunch of crimes in service to Donald Trump.

That was Trump's third tweet in two hours about this supposed manuscript. It's unclear if this is part of the same strategy employed by the House Republicans who questioned Cohen, almost every one of whom tried to suggest Cohen was doing all this—including three years in a federal penitentiary—for a book deal.

The president's former personal lawyer—and former Trump Organization executive—will almost certainly tell his story for a movie or a book in the future. He has also proven himself over the years to be a liar and a thug. But none of the Republicans on the committee were particularly successful in illustrating why he'd lie right now, when it could only earn him more time in jail. The attempts from Trump toadies Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows mostly fell short, particularly because they only seemed to focus on issues unrelated to Cohen's allegations about the president's conduct. We're really supposed to believe Cohen is doing all this as a spurned lover, because he wanted a job in the White House? And besides, Meadows was caught lying outright when he accused Cohen of failing to report work on behalf of foreign governments.

This should be no surprise from Meadows, who erupted—and came close to tears—when Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib suggested his decision to bring out a former Trump Organization employee to prove Trump is not racist was, in fact, "a racist act." Meadows was proven to be a complete joker when it emerged he'd weaponized racism to get elected, declaring during his 2012 campaign that he'd "send Obama back home to Kenya." Since, he's walked that back. He just used racism to get elected. Very cool, man.

Ignore the Noise. There Were Big Revelations This Week.

But Trump's antics on the Tweet Machine, and House Republican antics in the hearing on Wednesday, are a series of distractions from several key revelations this week that could serve as a map of Trump's future. First, Cohen claimed that Trump's lawyers altered his testimony ahead of his prior appearance before Congress, in which we now know he perjured himself about the timing of the Trump Tower Moscow Deal. Second, Cohen testified that Trump had not only directed him to commit a felony, but also had participated in an alleged criminal scheme while in the Oval Office.

And then there was Cohen's hint that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has opened further investigations into the president. NBC News has the details:

"Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?" Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., asked Cohen in the middle of a seven-and-and-a-half hour hearing full of stunning, ugly allegations.

Cohen replied, "Yes, and again those are a part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York."

The Washington Post Getty Images

It's this part that many are seizing on as Trump's fresher, but perhaps most dangerous, vulnerability. For years now, observers have watched the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller with eagle eyes, anticipating that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign—and whether Trump or his associates conspired in that effort—would be the crucial investigation into the president. That probe has yielded plenty of indictments and guilty pleas.

But the Southern District has within its jurisdiction both the Trump Organization and the banking institutions through which much of the world's capital flows. That is to say, the world is their jurisdiction. They are experts in investigating financial crimes and criminal syndicates, and they do not fuck around. And it increasingly appears that Trump's business activities weren't exactly above-board. Maybe that's why Trump reportedly ordered his stooge of a former acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, to interfere in the Southern District. Trump denies the report, which tells us exactly squat.

This also might be why Chris Christie—a noted Trump ally—said on television this week that, essentially, the Southern District could be building a case to indict the president when he leaves office based on whatever he did before he got in:

Christie, a former federal prosecutor, mentions that they've already flipped Cohen and Rick Gates, Paul Manafort's longtime Number Two who served on Trump's campaign all the way through to the transition. Those are two "tour guides," in Christie's words, through what increasingly looks like a dense forest of misdeeds. They're also talking to Allen Weisselberg, the longtime CFO of the Trump Organization, whom Cohen mentioned many times in his testimony Wednesday. Weisselberg knows where the bodies are buried, though Christie suggested he may not be cooperating fully in the way that Cohen and Gates are.

Pretty much every organization the president has ever run is under investigation or was shuttered amid allegations of severe malfeasance. The Trump Organization is under investigation. The Trump Foundation was closed down amid allegations of fraud, and the New York attorney general attempted to ban Trump from running any charity in that state for 10 years. Trump University was shuttered amid allegations of fraud, and Trump agreed to pay the victims $25 million. The Trump campaign is under investigation over possible conspiracy with the Russian government. The Trump inaugural committee is under investigation by at least three state and federal offices, including the Southern District.



KEVIN DIETSCH Getty Images

Cohen Piled on the Evidence That the President Behaves Like a Mob Boss

Once you accept the president is probably a crook, it becomes much easier to process what's going on. This came into focus when Cohen testified about how Trump never expressly said what he wanted when it involved breaking the law:

In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.

You don't need to be a Sopranos Superfan to see the mobbed-up strategery here. We never acknowledge the existence of this thing, and all that. This is the latest of many pieces of testimony from people who have dealt with Trump—including former FBI officials who spent time investigating organized crime syndicates—indicating he conducts himself in this way. Maybe he just loves Goodfellas. Or maybe he has been running organizations that skirt or break the law outright for much of his adult life, and has greased out of culpability by never leaving a paper trail and never directly giving orders himself.

Mark Wilson Getty Images

Regardless, according to reporting from Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, the Southern District's attempt to shine a light on in his shady business—which, you might remember, he still owns while serving as president in a massive conflict of interest—may be affecting Trump's calculus.

So, because the Justice Department has a standing policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the various federal prosecutors looking into him may find he committed serious crimes, but will not charge him until he leaves office. Thus Trump has an almighty incentive to stay in office at all costs, because staying in office means staying out of jail. This is an alarming addition to the calculus for a man who's already shown outright disdain for democracy, waging war on the rule of law and an independent system of justice and the free press. And it's clear, in between the tirades about Cohen's supposed manuscript, that Trump is sweating the investigation of his possible financial crimes:

Oh' I see!

And Now We Know Why the President Is Going Postal on Twitter

This is what it's come to. The president is ranting and raving on Twitter about the rapidly expanding investigations into him, as prosecutors at the state and federal levels in multiple states continually find more to investigate the more they dig. He is demanding to see his former fixer's maybe-real book manuscript, perhaps to avoid talking about how he blatantly lied in public about having ordered officials to give the Son-in-Law-in-Chief a security clearance despite warnings from intelligence professionals that Jared Kushner was open to manipulation and blackmail. In fact, representatives of four different countries were caught on tape discussing how they might use Kushner's vulnerabilities, including his financially distressed real-estate company, to pry what they need out of the government of the United States of America.

Certainly, he's not much interested in discussing his failed summit with North Korea this week, in which some observers found he got rolled and others found he simply never grasped the terms of engagement from the beginning. Perhaps we should just be glad to go another day without nuclear war. These are the kind of standards we must set for ourselves now that we chose to elect the least-qualified person available to be the world's most powerful man.

And all the while, the vice tightens. There is no bottom, and no end to what this grotesque creature embodying all the worst instincts of the American psyche might do. He has corrupted his office, ransacked the operating norms that allow a healthy democracy to function, and convinced his allies in Congress to abandon their role as a co-equal branch of government. He has even subverted the Constitution, declaring a national emergency when there is no national emergency to seize funds that Congress did not allocate with its power of the purse. There is nothing he won't do. Now that staying out of jail might mean staying in office, we're probably about to find out just what that entails.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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