Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is trying to put Donald Trump behind bars.
But Bragg just got some really bad news.
This key witness just FLIPPED and the criminal case against Trump collapsed.
Former Trump Attorney Michael Cohen is the critical witness in Bragg’s farcical case against Trump.
Cohen was the one who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
And to prove Trump violated federal campaign finance laws Bragg has to prove that Trump knowingly and willfully accepted an illegal in-kind corporate contribution when Cohen paid Daniels through an LLC.
To do so, Bragg is depending on the testimony of Cohen who claims he and Trump hatched the payment plan to keep Daniels’ affair accusations secret to influence the election.
The night Bragg’s office leaked that a grand jury voted to indict Trump on the bogus charges Bragg cooked up Cohen destroyed Bragg’s case in an interview on CNN.
In between gloating about Trump’s indictment Cohen protested his innocence on tax evasion charges despite pleading guilty to those charges — among others — back in 2018.
“I have continuously told the same story. I’ve been shouting for five years from the rooftop,” Cohen said. “The lies by the Southern District of New York against me for the tax evasion, I actually hope it comes out. I have all the documents to show. There was no tax evasion. I’ve never in my life tax evade[d]. I’ve never filed [a] late tax return. I’ve never been audited. I’ve never received, you know, letters from the IRS. I have never had an opportunity going in to meet with an agent, and none of this is accurate.”
New York Magazine’s Ankush Khardori wrote that part of a plea deal is the accused admitting they’re guilty and confessing to committing crimes in exchange for the prosecution offering a lighter sentence as a “reward” for not making the government go to trial.
Cohen now claiming his innocence after admitting his guilt on the tax evasion charges means Cohen lied to the judge and prosecutors in his plea deal.
And Donald Trump will go to town on that fact once Bragg puts Cohen on the witness stand.
“Trump’s lawyers can now confront Cohen on the stand and ask him directly about these comments — and ask him why the jurors at the Trump trial should believe anything he has to say if he was willing to lie to a federal judge when he thought it suited him. In fact, they may ask, why should anyone trust him about anything, now that he has admitted to lying to two different branches of the federal government?” Khardori stated.
The legal theory behind Bragg’s case was always legally dubious.
And now Bragg is depending on a convicted felon who is admitting he already lied once in court as his key witness.
