*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).
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2019.
There's a dearth of research to back up the abundance of miraculous health claims tied to CBD ー but that won't stop celebrities from endorsing it. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a component of cannabis or hemp with little to no psychotropic effects. It is purported to have an array of applications to treat everything from epilepsy to anxiety, pain, depression, and sleeplessness. When Congress and President Trump signed the latest version of the Farm Bill into effect, they also legalized hemp, and thereby CBD derived from hemp.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are reportedly considering a meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Resort in March to resume trade talks. But whether or not any major developments will result is a toss-up, former State Department Senior Advisor Christian Whiton told Cheddar.
As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat representing Illinois' 5th district ー who worked as a criminal defense attorney before his election to Congress ー said he's focused on the president's finances and foreign investments, like the Trump Tower Moscow project, and how that may have influenced the Trump campaign in 2016.
New York City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer is owning his status as one of the so-called "job killers" trying to chase Amazon out of Queens. "We should fight for jobs, but we should fight for jobs on our terms, consistent with our values," said Van Bramer, who represents New York's 26th district, which includes the Queens neighborhoods of Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside, and Woodside.
Sen. Kamala Harris, weeks into her campaign for president, not only acknowledged that she has smoked pot, but said she isn't opposed to federal legalization of marijuana. "I think it gives a lot of people joy and we need more joy," Harris said, laughing, during an interview on the influential hip-hop radio show The Breakfast Club Monday morning.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Monday, Feb. 11, 2019.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Amazon is reportedly having second thoughts about setting up in New York, after growing backlash from local politicians. "They haven't changed their mind, but they are thinking of at least holding open the possibility that they might pull out and basically put the jobs somewhere else," Robert McCartney, senior regional correspondent at The Washington Post, told Cheddar Friday.
Gavin de Becker has been operating in elite, high-profile circles for nearly four decades, but very few knew his name before Jeff Bezos mentioned it on Thursday in his explosive allegations that a tabloid publisher attempted to blackmail him over explicit photos. De Becker, Bezos' longtime private security consigliere, has a star-studded pedigree that spans 40 years.
