Michael Cohen Is Declaring His Independence, Says Attorney Lanny Davis

Why am I thinking about the lyrics to the Beyoncé song, “Irreplaceable,” here?

Lanny Davis, the new attorney for former Trump “fixer,” Michael Cohen is hitting the circuit and letting it be known that his client is not chained to Donald Trump, any longer, nor will he be the guy to “take a bullet” to protect the president.

Attorney Lanny Davis told The Hill’s new morning show Rising with Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton that Cohen’s statements to ABC News’ George Stephanopolous in a July 2 interview were not a plea to get Trump to pay his legal bills but rather an act of separation.

“There’s a reason that he said at the very end of the interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos that he took these contrary positions to Mr. Trump, who he previously said he would take a bullet for, a comment that I believe he would not say today,” Davis said in an interview to air Thursday morning at http://hill.tv/rising.

“The reason he said is, ‘I will not be a punching bag as part of somebody else’s defense strategy,'” Davis added. “This was a declaration of independence two days before July 4.”

YEOUCH!

So what is going on with this aggressive public showing from Cohen and his legal team?

There has been speculation that Cohen is prepared to spill the proverbial beans and lead federal authorities to where all the bodies are buried.

That’s assuming there are bodies, of course.

Cohen hasn’t officially been charged, but federal authorities raided his home, office, and hotel room in April, confiscating a dozen electronic devices and millions of documents.

They even went into the paper shredder and reassembled the documents found there.

The authorities turned their focus on Cohen after news broke of a $130,000 payment made in October 2016 to former Trump mistress, Stormy Daniels.

The payment came at the height of the controversy over a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump boasting to host Billy Bush about sexually abusing random women.

The release of the audio prompted over a dozen women to come forward with tales of Trump’s sexual misconduct towards them.

Michael Cohen apparently set up a shell company and funneled the $130,000 payment to Daniels through that company.

At first, Cohen denied the payment had anything to do with an affair, even presenting a signed statement from Daniels, denying the affair.

It would have gone down as a case of he said/she said, were it not for Trump admitting on Air Force One that he knew about the payment.

He threw Cohen under the bus.

Friends of Cohen have revealed that he doesn’t believe that his old client will be there to get him off the hook with a pardon, should it come to that.

In the interview with Stephanopoulos, Cohen stressed that he’s not committed to the protection of Donald Trump, anymore.

“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen said. “I put family and country first.”

That’s how it should be.