Stormy Daniels' lawyer predicts that 'Michael Cohen is going to fold like a cheap deck of cards'

Michael Avenatti predicts that Michael Cohen will fold

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/CNN)

last updated 11 April 2018

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman would have wanted "more than the bare-minimum proof of probable cause" before authorizing Monday's raids on President Trump's lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, Preet Bharara, who held the Manhattan federal prosecutor job before Berman, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night. "And so I predict, as we saw with Paul Manafort, that if they decided they had enough evidence to engage in a very aggressive, a very aggressive move, that the likelihood that Michael Cohen is going to be charged is high."

Avenatti called Cohen's decision to talk to CNN's Don Lemon "moronic," explaining that "any experienced attorney would tell a client not to be speaking to the press the day after the FBI executes three search warrants on your homes and your offices. I mean, this is just crazy." It's also nuts that Trump "effectively put his own personal attorney in the crosshairs" by publicly denying all knowledge of the Daniels hush payment and referring all questions to Cohen, he added.

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"He has set Michael Cohen up to be the fall guy, in my view," Avenatti said, "and there is now a false sense of security, I think, on behalf of the president that Michael Cohen's going to take the fall for this." A good "fixer" is smart and willing to go to jail for you, and "in my view, Michael Cohen doesn't fit either one of those requirements," he added. Trump "picked the wrong fixer, he trusted too many personal secrets with Michael Cohen, and I think Michael Cohen is going to fold like a cheap deck of cards on Mr. Trump and the results are going to be very, very bad." Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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