Tag: Michael Cohen

Davis is historically important in that he represented President Bill Clinton during his impeachment crisis. One difference between Clinton and Trump, Davis said, is that Trump handles things himself instead of relying on counsel.

In talking about Trump, Davis said:

“They say a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. You could say that about a president. And a lot of his mistakes using his Twitter account and lots of other things he does– reflects what I think is basically a poor judgment history that Michael Cohen has told me after 10 years of working for him it would be kind to say that he has poor judgment. He has no judgment. In the years that Michael worked for him, it’s quite amazing some of his personal experiences that he’s described to me.”

When asked why he agreed to represent someone so closely associated with a president he despises, Davis explained:

“It took a while for him to persuade me that he had made a genuine turn in his life after 10 years of shoveling you know what behind Donald Trump in an amoral if not immoral environment with a man without a moral compass.”

“I did not want to represent someone who had defended him all these years on all of those dirty deeds. But that expression, dirty deeds, is the expression that Michael used with me when he said, “I am now frightened for my family and my country. It’s one thing to do this over a 10 year time period that I’m ashamed of because he was in the private sector. But now he’s president and he scares me. Would you help me get the truth out?” And it took me a while to be convinced that he was sincere. And once I was convinced, I realized I was not just doing it to help a client, Michael Cohen.”

Phillips then asked, “When you say “he fears the president,” I mean is he afraid the president’s gonna have him, you know, taken out or something?” And Davis responded, saying:

“I’ll tell you about my word, “fear.” Because I fear Donald Trump because he has a finger this close to the button. And he has sold us out. As far as I’m concerned, Helsinki is just positive proof that he sold us out to Putin and the Russians. He’s compromised us with our allies. His judgment is so poor that I don’t know what he’s going to do when he goes to North Korea.”

“He is literally a man without judgment, and he’s President of the United States. He scares the you-know-what out of me. And so does he scare Michael Cohen. But beyond that, here’s the president of the United States, the top official in law enforcement and everything else in the United States, using Twitter to call a person who is cooperating with prosecutors a rat. The word “rat” has a meaning in prison. And it means a snitch.”

“It means that the President of the United States on Twitter calls somebody going to prison for cooperating with the government a rat. That is so reckless and so dangerous. That in and of itself is an abuse of power that could lead to his ouster. Much less having Giuliani, his lawyer, call out his father-in-law and his wife and says that his father-in-law might be connected on national television to organized crime.”

Vlasto then asked him if Trump committed impeachable offenses, saying to Davis:

“Lanny, do you think a Mueller report’s gonna come out maybe in a couple weeks or few weeks. And campaign finance– this campaign finance violation is not gonna be part of the Mueller report. But do you think it’s an impeachable offense?”

And Davis responded by saying:

“No doubt. It’s a felony. I don’t know what felony isn’t impeachable.”

Davis was then asked what we could look forward to when Cohen testifies publicly before Congress, and Davis responded by saying:

“He needs to tell his personal story to the American people. And when he does, what we all think we know about Donald Trump and all of the negative reactions that many of us have to Donald Trump— you’re going to hear impersonal, frontline experiences of memories, and incidents, and conduct, and comments that Donald Trump said over that 10-year time period behind closed doors that, to me when I first heard Michael tell me all this, even as much as I knew about Trump that was negative, was chilling.”

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the entire transcript of the Lanny Davis interview read more