Poor Trump Still Searching For Roy Cohn, Who Remains In Hell

Bless his heart.

 A while back, in the year of our Lord 2018, there was a story in the New York Times from Michael Schmidt that really moved the ball forward in telling us how much obstruction of justice Donald Trump had committed in his efforts to kill the investigation into his ties with Russia and Russia's project to get him elected in 2016.

He had been trying so hard to get then-White House Counsel Don McGahn to successfully make sure then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions wouldn't recuse himself from the Russia investigation. But Jeff Sessions did recuse. And in front of McGahn and other Trump White House idiots, America's first Russian president/Russia's first American president had a TANTRUM.

"Where's my Roy Cohn!" Trump demanded to know. He wanted his Roy Cohn because that guy was his fixer a long time ago, before that guy died alone and disbarred. He must have forgotten that Roy Cohn was in hell for being a bad person.

 Where's Your Roy Cohn, Donald Trump? Oh That's Right, He's In Hell. 

Now it is 2023, and Trump is officially indicted times on 34 felony counts — so far! — and there is another article in the New York Times — gift link! — this time from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, and it is about how Trump is still searching for his Roy Cohn. Where is he? (Hell.) Trump can't find him! (Check Hell.) Where oh where will Trump find lawyers who will fix shit for him like Roy Cohn did? (Survey says Hell.)

Really the story is just about the latest incarnation of Trump's fuckin' weirdo band of losers willing to represent him in his (first) criminal indictment. It goes through the line of lawyers who sat with Trump in that Manhattan courtroom for his arraignment. There was Joe Tacopina, the loud shouty one who goes on TV and does loud shouty. Trump loves loud shouty. He thinks doing loud shouty on TV is an important part of the legal profession. He likes the TV. He watches the TV and he hires the people he sees there. He saw Joe Tacopina on the TV. He likes Joe Tacopina.

(Joe Tacopina is the one who used to know back in 2018 that what Trump did with the porn peener payoffs was illegal.)

There was Boris Epshteyn, who has been lounging around up Trump's ass since forever, and who is technically a real lawyer, even though he's never actually tried a case in a courtroom, so that's cool! (He wasn't named as one of the attorneys of record on the case. He was just there, we guess.)

There was Todd Blanche, some guy. He's new.

There was Susan Necheles, some woman. We guess she is also new. We're sure those last two will be around for at least a number of minutes.

Congratulations on your fool for a client, everyone.

Haberman and Swan pick up:

[The line-up of lawyers] was emblematic of his relentless search for the perfect lawyer — and of his frequent replacement of his lawyers when they fail to live up to his ideal for how the perfect lawyer should operate.

Mr. Trump has long been obsessed with lawyers: obsessed with finding what he thinks are good lawyers, and obsessed with ensuring that his lawyers defend him zealously in the court of public opinion.

His lawyers’ own foibles are seldom disqualifying, so long as they defend him in the manner he desires.

That often means measuring up to the example of Roy M. Cohn, Mr. Trump’s first fixer-lawyer, who represented him in the 1970s and early 1980s. Mr. Cohn, whose background included being indicted himself and who was eventually disbarred, earned a reputation for practicing with threats, scorched-earth attacks and media manipulation.

Mr. Trump’s continual efforts to identify and recruit the newest Roy Cohn have always been unusual and impulsive, according to interviews with a half-dozen people who have represented or been involved in Mr. Trump’s legal travails over the past seven years.

He has occasionally hired lawyers after only the briefest phone call, knowing little to nothing about their background but having been impressed by a quick introduction or by seeing them praise him on Fox News.

Are you my Roy Cohn? Are YOU my Roy Cohn? What about you? Literally, sir, this is an Arby's.

Haberman and Swan note that Trump hired Evan Corcoran for hisstolen classified documents caseBOXES HOAX after a quick chat on the phone. (He's the one where the appeals court recently ruled Trump couldn't assert executive privilege over his testimony, because of that whole crimey-fraudy-thingie.) He hired Jim Trusty for the same case because he saw him on TV. (Both are former federal prosecutors.)

Are those guys his Roy Cohn? Is Roy Cohn in the bathroom? Is he in the garage? Did the Deep State kidnap Roy Cohn during the Mar-a-Lago raid? WHERE IS HE?

“That’s one of the first questions: ‘Can you go on TV?’ He picks his lawyers literally off of TV,” said one lawyer who used to represent Mr. Trump, who insisted on anonymity to avoid publicly breaking confidence with a former client. “It’s more important that you go on TV for him, and how you look on TV, than what you actually say in the courtroom.”

So stupid.

Read the whole thing if you like, it's just more about what a disaster Trump is and how nobody in their right mind should ever want to work for him:

Mr. Trump is not an easy client: He often tells lawyers that he is smarter than them and more experienced in legal combat. He is given to instructing them not only what to say on television but also what to say in court.

The more we read things like this, the more confident we feel that yep, that guy is going to end up in prison.

Good God.

[ New York Times ]

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