The lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels says President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen will betray him, and the president’s team knows it.
Michael Avenatti said in an appearance Sunday on CNN that because Mr. Cohen paid off his porn-star client, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, he could end up in jail and has thus become a prime target for prosecutorial pressure and White House distrust.
“What’s going on here is that Mr. Trump and the administration have concluded what I’ve been saying for weeks: that Michael Cohen’s in a lot of trouble and he’s going to flip on the president,” Mr. Avenatti said on CNN’s “State of the Union” show.
And the National Enquirer is getting ready for that eventuality, Mr. Avenatti claimed.
The celebrity-gossip tabloid, which is headed by Trump friend David Pecker and which Mr. Trump has cited to support conspiracy theories about Sen. Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination, went after Mr. Cohen Friday with its lead cover article.
“Trump Fixer’s Secrets and Lies,” the headline read, teasing an article that would feature “payoffs & threats exposed.”
“Wow!!! Things are getting so bad that AMI is now starting a campaign to undermine the credibility of Mr. Cohen,” Mr. Avenatti noted on Twitter on Sunday.
Wow!!! Things are getting so bad that AMI is now starting a campaign to undermine the credibility of Mr. Cohen. Why? Because they know what I have been saying for weeks - he will soon flip on Mr. Trump and they want to be able to claim he is lying when he does. pic.twitter.com/lW8i6StnLz
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) April 29, 2018
Mr. Avenatti, who correctly predicted weeks ago that Mr. Cohen would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, called the cover an insurance policy for the president in his CNN appearance.
The cover “is the first effort on their part to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility so that they can claim – when he does flip – that he’s a liar, that he has no credibility, etc.,” Mr. Avenatti said.
“It’s pretty transparent what’s going on here … Trump realizes he’s in a lot of trouble and he’s in panic mode,” Mr. Avenatti concluded.
Mr. Cohen acknowledges paying $130,000 to Ms. Clifford as part of a nondisclosure agreement regarding her claims to have had an affair with Mr. Trump in 2006-07. He said he paid Ms. Clifford with the knowledge or assistance of Mr. Trump or his organizations, before or after the fact.
If that were true, Mr. Cohen may have committed a campaign-finance violation and possible bank fraud. In other contexts, Mr. Avenatti has hooted at the claim that the Trump team was unaware of the payoffs, asking rhetorically how often attorneys pay the expenses of their clients.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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