Michael Cohen to Plead Guilty (Did He Make a Deal?)

Former attorney and “fixer” for Donald Trump is in FBI custody, at this hour, expected to plead guilty to multiple counts of bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and… campaign finance violations.

For those puzzling over the implications, that last part draws a direct link to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Is it the smoking gun? Is this what Mueller and Trump’s critics have been looking for?

Well, not necessarily. How ironic would it be if what will ultimately be Trump’s undoing won’t be anything Russia related, but his adulteries?

Somewhere, deep inside, Melania is smiling. You know she is.

What will have President BestWords McTweeter in a frenzied breakdown this evening will be news that Cohen has brokered a deal, in order to get to this place.

The long history between the two, and the depths of Cohen’s involvement in Trump’s business dealings could prove more insightful than actually seeing those tax returns that the president is protecting with such fevered caution.

In addition to working inside the Trump Organization as a lawyer and problem solver, Cohen built a diverse portfolio of investments.

At one point that included running 260 yellow cabs with a Ukrainian-born partner – a partnership that ended in 2012. He also invested millions in real estate, often turning a tidy profit. For instance, a building he bought in 2011 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for $2.1 million, sold three years later for $10 million in cash.

Cohen drew the attention of authorities over something called “taxi medallions.” In April, acting on a recommendation from special counsel Robert Mueller, those authorities raided his home, offices, and hotel room, confiscating electronics and millions of documents.

Then in May, Evgeny Friedman, 46, a Russian immigrant known as the “Taxi King,” struck a plea deal that included a commitment to assist federal prosecutors investigating Cohen’s business practices.

At the time, veteran defense attorney Michael Volkov, who is not tied to this case, told ABC News he thought that spelled trouble for Cohen’s legal prospects.

“The government now has a strong inside witness who can assist in explaining many of Cohen’s business activities and potential fraud schemes, especially when it came to valuing the medallions for loan purposes,” Volkov said at the time.

At that particular time, Cohen was still pushing back against the charges against him, and tweeted out his protest.

“I am one of thousands of medallion owners who entrust management companies to operate my medallions according to the rules of the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission,” Cohen wrote. “Gene Freidman and I are not partners and have never been partners in this business or any other.” Hettena, author of the book Trump/Russia: A Definitive History, said Cohen’s legal trouble is not a surprise to anyone who closely studied his legal career.

“This is a pattern with him,” Hettena said. “This is a guy who is willing to cut corners. To bend rules. Whatever is going to help whatever interest he is serving.”

As for his involvement in any potential Trump-Russia entanglement, Cohen is named as a go-between in attempts to negotiate a Trump Tower deal in Moscow. As a matter of fact, those negotiations, although they ultimately fell through, were ongoing in the early months of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Cohen has confirmed he attended a lunch meeting with a Ukrainian politician one week after Trump took office, where the two men discussed the potential for Cohen to share a Ukraine peace proposal with his contacts at the White House. “He could be extremely valuable,” said Matthew G. Olsen, a former federal prosecutor and ABC News contributor. “He was not just a personal lawyer but also was President Trump’s so-called fixer for a number of years. So he would have had access to lots of very personal information involving his business dealings.”

Cohen was also named in the now-infamous Trump dossier. He even sued Buzzfeed News, the outlet that first made details of the dossier public.

He withdrew that lawsuit earlier this year.

It was in January of this year that the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a secret payoff of Stormy Daniels, the porn star who claims to have carried on an adulterous affair with Trump back in 2005.

Cohen began a shell company, and out of that shell company paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 – one month before the election.

After the news of the payment to Daniels, the news of a $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, also broke.

McDougal claims she and Trump also carried on an affair.

On April 5, four days before the authorities raided Cohen’s properties in New York, President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t know why Cohen had paid Daniels or where he had gotten the money to pay her. The president later acknowledged, in a financial disclosure form filed last month with the Office of Government Ethics, that he had reimbursed Cohen.

Then there is Karen McDougal, who in August 2016 signed a $150,000 deal with American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, that transferred to the company the rights to her story of an alleged ten-month romantic affair with Trump in 2006. The magazine never published her story. McDougal alleged in a lawsuit filed earlier this year that Cohen had allegedly conspired with her former attorney to bury the story. McDougal settled her lawsuit.

For those wondering about the McDougal story and the National Enquirer, it’s a practice known as “Catch and Kill,” where they purchase the rights to a story, then bury it.

David Pecker, the CEO of American Media is tight friends with Donald Trump.

Cohen, however, may have reached his end. The man who once said he’d take a bullet for Trump could now be thinking more of his family and how his sacrifices have put their well-being in jeopardy.

Cohen was devoted to Trump, but Trump, throughout this ongoing saga, has sought to distance himself from him, even sending out his current attorney, Rudy Giuliani to trash Cohen.

For the time being, Trump’s Twitter page stands cold and silent. The White House is equally subdued, with no sighting of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, so far.

Is this the quiet before the storm?

It’s hard to say, but I’m willing to bet that tonight’s Twitter light show is going to be a thing to behold.