GOP Strategist: Cohen 'Knows Where a Lot of the Bodies Are Buried'
*By Amanda Weston*
Michael Cohen may have pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts, but one GOP strategist said President Trump's former personal attorney and fixer could still pose a serious threat, since he "knows where a lot of the bodies are buried."
"Michael Cohen has the keys to the kingdom," said Rick Wilson, author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies."
"He knows about Trump's finances. He knows about Trump's taxes. He knows about Trump's dalliances with various porn stars and models and God knows who else. He is a guy who could cause a lot of damage on the Trump perception front."
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges including tax fraud, false statements to a bank, and campaign finance violations. He also admitted he made payments in 2016 to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump. In his plea, Cohen said he acted at the direction of a candidate for federal office, implicating his former boss and mentor.
Wilson said in an interview on Cheddar Wednesday that Cohen may testify that Trump was aware of a conspiracy to meet with Russian officials in Trump Tower to gather information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.
"He may be able to point to the fact that the president encouraged it," Wilson said. "So, we're in a situation where Trump has got some really serious peril when it comes to the Russia case. But again, he also can expose a lot of other parts of Donald Trump's life that Trump does not want out there."
Cohen [once said](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/michael-cohen-interview-donald-trump) he would take a bullet for the president, but his attorney painted a very different picture on Wednesday while discussing a presidential pardon on NBC's "Today."
“He considers a pardon from someone who acted so corruptly as president to be something he would never accept,” Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, [said](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/michael-cohen-willing-share-all-he-knows-mueller-lawyer-says-n902801).
Trump later took a jab at Cohen, [tweeting](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032247043992023040), "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!"
Still, despite all the drama, Wilson said it's premature to talk about impeachment, calling recent developments "the first inning of the first game of the World Series."
"There has to be a realistic expectation you can move from an impeachment procedure in the House to a conviction in the Senate," Wilson said, adding, "we are very far away from that."
"If the Democrats are smart, they're going to focus on the corruption and not on the impeachment. These things fill in the blank on their own."
For full interview, [click here] (https://cheddar.com/videos/former-trump-attorney-michael-cohen-pleads-guilty).
The school shooting in Texas that left 19 children and 2 teachers dead has reignited the debate over gun control.
The tragedy in Uvalde is the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade and marks the latest in a string of mass shootings in the country. Jared Moskowitz, Broward County Commissioner and candidate for Congress in FL-23, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss why gun control measures are stalled in the Senate, and where legislation can move forward from here.
Police and detectives are still investigating the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two adults. Cheddar News was joined by Kirk Burkhalter, professor at New York Law School and former NYPD detective to gain some insight on what investigators are looking for and what comes next.
Texas authorities say the gunman who massacred 21 people at an elementary school was in the building for over an hour before he was killed by law enforcement officers.
Join Cheddar News as we break down the top headlines for Thursday, May 26 including updates on the Texas school shooting, President Joe Biden's executive order on police reform, and a recount in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary.
Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia rebuked words from the FDA commissioner that could have been construed as blaming parents for stockpiling baby formula exacerbating the shortage.
Cheddar News reporter Megan Pratz brings the latest from the scene of yesterday's horrific school shooting at a Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Now the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with 19 children and two adults killed, Pratz goes into comments by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, details about the deceased shooter, and reactions from members of the community.
The Robb Elementary School mass shooting killing 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas pm Tuesday was the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and came just 10 days after the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York. Nelson Vergara, the founder and CEO of 360 Protective Solutions, joined Cheddar’s Opening Bell to discuss. "Right now what law enforcement is concentrating on is trying to trace his steps as to what motivated the gunman to act the way he did. What it boils down to just trying to figure out what led to his motivation to do such a horrific act.”
An recently conducted AP-NORC poll found that majorities of the Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S. still find themselves either somewhat worried or extremely worried over the pandemic, while more than half of white Americans responded with either being not too worried or not worried at all. Dr. Chris Pernell, the chief strategic integration and health equity officer at University Hospital, joined Cheddar News to talk about how perceptions of COVID-19 differ between groups of Americans. "We’re still seeing people get infected, and because of the toll of the disproportionate impact, we have concerns among the Black and brown community about whether or not they have an increased risk of exposure because of where they work, because of the use of public transportation, because they live in homes that they may not be able to safely quarantine and or isolate in, and because they have at baseline chronic health conditions that may make coronavirus more severe in those persons," she said.
Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the EPA and the president of Beyond Plastics, joined Cheddar News to talk about the role of plastics in the climate crisis and California's investigation of ExxonMobil and other oil companies for misleading the public on the ability to recycle plastics. "The reason why petrochemical companies like Exxon have gotten away with selling more and more plastic is that they've lied to the public and told us don't worry about all those negative upstream impacts and downstream impacts of plastics. Just be sure to recycle it. Well, guess what? Plastics largely are not recycled," Enck said.
