Author | Michael Cohen |
---|---|
Cover artist | Brian Peterson |
Country | United States |
Genre | Nonfiction |
Publisher | Skyhorse Publishing [1] |
Publication date | September 8, 2020 |
Pages | 432 |
ISBN | 978-1-5107-6469-9 Print |
OCLC | 1197713662 |
Website | Skyhorse Publishing |
Disloyal: A Memoir; The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump is a 2020 book by Michael Cohen. [2] [3] In the memoir, Cohen recollects his time working as an attorney for Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018, his felony convictions, and other personal affairs. Throughout the book, Cohen alleges numerous incidents of wrongdoing by Trump. [4]
As his lawyer and "fixer", only Michael Cohen had insight into the shadiest side of Donald Trump. His book describes Trump's racist remarks towards South African President Nelson Mandela, former President Barack Obama, and other minorities, particularly Blacks and Hispanics. [5] [6]
According to Cohen, the book also describes the cruel and humiliating remarks Trump leveled against his own family and members of his staff. As he once testified before Congress, Cohen describes how he personally witnessed Trump engaging in tax fraud by inflating his wealth. [7] Cohen also alleges how he, at Trump's direction, had John Gauger of Liberty University buy IP addresses to rig an online poll for CNBC that listed the greatest CEOs of the past 25 years. Later Cohen described how Trump instructed him to have Gauger rig an online poll that listed the place of early runners in the Presidential race, putting Trump fifth. [8] The book examines Cohen's insights into Trump's views towards women, and Trump's use of payments to women with whom he was alleged to have had extra-marital affairs, an offense for which Cohen was personally tried. Cohen is ruthless and brutal in detailing the behavior he exposes in his former employer. [9]
One of the book's most interesting predictions, stated first in Cohen's February 2019 testimony before the Congressional Oversight Committee, was that if Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, as he did by seven million votes two months after the book's publication, he would find a way to stay in office even if it required bending the election rules or engaging in what might be potentially illegal actions. As his book noted, Cohen concluded his congressional testimony with the words, "Given my experience working with Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power." Though the election results may still be in doubt by many of his followers, Trump's consistent attempts to use the courts, Republican governors, and election officials to override election results that after investigation the courts consistently found valid and with no evidence of fraud, seem to give some credence to this claim, as did Trump's discussion with Vice-President Mike Pence to consider interfering with the reading of election results to take place in Congress on January 6, 2021.
In the book, Cohen describes what he believed to be Trump's capacity to lie and tell half truths, to exaggerate, to willingly mislead, and to manipulate his followers and the press. Trump is portrayed as a heartless man who looks for the help of conservative Christian leaders while later viciously criticizing them, and who claims he supports the common man yet fails to pay money he owes to small and large businesses. He is described as a charlatan who will do anything to push his agenda and meet his personal and financial goals, while putting his family, staff, and the country second to his own agenda. [9]
Cohen also makes the following claims regarding Trump in Disloyal:
Lloyd Green writing in The Irish Times gave the book a positive review among a number of reviews that were mixed. Green noted "it's easy to distrust Cohen...But that doesn't make the book any less interesting. For all its black-hearted opportunism and self-aggrandizement, it delivers a readable and bile-filled take on Trump and his minions". Green considers the book's epilogue its most significant contribution to the Cohen saga. The section describes the efforts of William Barr to prevent the release of Disloyal, even if, in the opinion of Cohen and Green, it required destroying Cohen's rights to free speech, and pulling strings to have him remain in prison. [25]
Alex Shepherd of the New Republic gives a somewhat mixed review but notes that "Cohen's links with Trump are indeed deeper and more intimate than those of other tell-all writers ... A great many skeletons are excavated ... Disloyal is... a story of Cohen's gradual awakening to Trump's lawlessness and selfishness and the threat he posed to the country ... Disloyal is as unsavory a book as Michael Cohen is a character." In a conflict expressed by several other reviewers, Shepherd warns of Cohen's limited credibility for his "lying, cheating, and covering up" for the President, but still believes the book affords a unique insight into the real Trump as only an insider like Cohen, a person equally blemished by greed and a thirst for power, could provide. [26]
Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post, pans the book, calling it "A revolting, contradictory, redundant and transparently faux-penitent memoir" and notes that "While he does proffer the eye-popping details and anecdotes required in any Trump tell-all, Cohen reveals little about Trump that is not already widely understood." Lozada lists a series of books that each describe aspects of Trump's life with greater detail and insight than Cohen's book. [27]
Luke Harding of The Guardian gives a positive review describing the book as an "exhilarating and lurid story – part survivor's memoir, part revenge tragedy. His verdict on the president is brutal." Most importantly, Harding stresses Cohen's verdict on Trump "is, for the most part, convincing". Harding also notes "There are gossipy sketches of the president's family and flatterers ... illuminating on the theme of collusion with Russia ...". Cohen's part in potential Russian collusion revolved around his role negotiating a Trump Tower in Moscow while Trump was simultaneously denying any financial dealings with Russia. Harding notes that "Cohen is humbly repentant and ashamed" for his tax crimes and thuggish behavior while in Trump's employ, and though he accepts this for the most part, many reviewers question the genuineness of Cohen's admission. Understandably, Harding is disappointed that Cohen says nothing about his meetings with special counsel Robert Mueller and his Russian investigation team, nor about Paul Manafort, Trump's 2016 campaign manager who slipped off with aid Robert Gates to give critical polling information on the 2016 battleground states to Konstantin Kilimnick, a career Russian agent. Harding infers that including an account of his meeting with the Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Paul Manafort might have provided essential information regarding Cohen's knowledge of Russian interference and Trump's ties to interference in the 2016 election. Rather remarkably, considering the book was published two months before the election, Harding noted Cohen's prediction that he believed Trump would be very unlikely to quit if he lost the November 2020 election to Joe Biden. Instead, Cohen expected the president to attempt to cheat his way to victory, a tactic Cohen believed had served Trump well before. [28] [29]
Anastasia Tsioulcus of NPR writes a mixed review but notes that Cohen makes an interesting addition to the list of Trump's potential improprieties by asserting that Trump used Liberty University's John Gauger to alter online polls to bolster candidate Trump's reputation. Tsioulcus also reported on Cohen's admission that Trump worked closely with David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, whose publications include the National Enquirer, to "catch and kill" stories of Trump's relationships with women as well as to damage political rivals, particularly Sen. Ted Cruz. Tsioulcus details Cohen's admiration and loyalty to Trump as his motive for following him, but quotes Cohen when he writes what could be the book's central theme, "I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man." Tsioulcus notes that Cohen alternates in the book between taking responsibility for his questionable behavior and trying to effectively detail what he found so attractive yet ultimately self-destructive in following Trump. [30]
Gina Rodriguez is an American former pornographic actress known for her work with "D-Listers" such as Nadya Suleman and Michael Lohan. In 2017 she starred in and executive produced the WEtv docu-series Mama June: From Not to Hot.
Kevin Mitchel Downing is an American lawyer. He has previously worked for the United States Department of Justice Tax Division and as a partner for the law firm of Miller & Chevalier.
Michael Dean Cohen is an American former lawyer who served as an attorney for former United States president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018. Cohen served as vice president of the Trump Organization and personal counsel to Trump, often being described as his fixer. Cohen served as co-president of Trump Entertainment and was a board member of the Eric Trump Foundation, a children's health charity. From 2017 to 2018, Cohen was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.
The Russian government interfered in the 2016 United States elections with the goals of sabotaging the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta—was ordered directly by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The 448-page Mueller report, made public in April 2019, examined over 200 contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report compiled by Christopher Steele that was published without permission as an unfinished 35-page compilation of "unverified, and potentially unverifiable" raw intelligence reports—"not established facts, but a starting point for further investigation". It was written from June to December 2016 and contains allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign. Several key allegations made in June 2016 about the Russian government's efforts to get Trump elected were later described as "prescient" because they were corroborated six months later in the January 2017 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Mueller Report, namely that Vladimir Putin favored Trump over Hillary Clinton; that he personally ordered an "influence campaign" to harm Clinton's campaign and to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process"; that he ordered cyberattacks on both parties; and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had numerous secretive contacts with Russian officials and agents. While Steele's documents played a significant role in initially highlighting the general friendliness between Trump and the Putin administration, the veracity of specific allegations is highly variable. Some have been publicly confirmed, others are plausible but not specifically confirmed, and some are dubious in retrospect but not strictly disproven.
On March 4, 2017, Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that falsely accused former President Barack Obama's administration of wiretapping his "wires" at Trump Tower late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims appeared to have been based on a Breitbart News article he had been given which repeated speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch or on a Bret Baier interview, both of which occurred the day prior to his Tweets. By June 2020, no evidence had surfaced to support Trump's claim, which had been refuted by the Justice Department (DOJ).
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Since Donald Trump was a 2016 candidate for the office of President of the United States, myriad suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials have been discovered by the FBI, Special counsel, and several United States congressional committees, as part of their investigations into the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following intelligence reports about the Russian interference, Trump and some of his campaign members, business partners, administration nominees, and family members were subjected to intense scrutiny to determine whether they had improper dealings during their contacts with Russian officials. Several people connected to the Trump campaign made false statements about those links and obstructed investigations. These investigations resulted in many criminal charges and indictments.
Konstantin Viktorovich Kilimnik is a Russian–Ukrainian political consultant. In the United States, he became a person of interest in multiple investigations regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, particularly due to his ties with Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, who was a campaign chairman for Donald Trump.
This is a timeline of major events in the first half of 2017 related to the investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials and spies that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8 and the post-election transition, this article begins with Donald Trump and Mike Pence being sworn into office on January 20, 2017, and is followed by the second half of 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a timeline of major events in first half of 2018 related to the investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials and spies that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, the transition, and the first and second halves of 2017, but precedes the second half of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021. These events are related to, but distinct from, Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections.
The two criminal trials of Paul Manafort were the first cases brought to trial by the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort served as campaign chair for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign from June 20 to August 19, 2016. In July 2017, the FBI conducted a raid of Manafort's home, authorized by search warrant under charges of interference in the 2016 election. Manafort and his business assistant Rick Gates were both indicted and arrested in October 2017 for charges of conspiracy against the United States, making false statements, money laundering, and failing to register as foreign agents for Ukraine. Gates entered a plea bargain in February 2018.
This is a timeline of events in the first half of 2019 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016, the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and followed by the second half of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, sorted by topics. It also includes events described in investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. Those investigations continued in 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and 2019, largely as parts of the Crossfire Hurricane FBI investigation, the Special Counsel investigation, multiple ongoing criminal investigations by several State Attorneys General, and the investigation resulting in the Inspector General report on FBI and DOJ actions in the 2016 election.
This is a chronology of significant events in 2016 and 2017 related to the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies during the Trump presidential transition and the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Following the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016, this article begins on November 8 and ends with Donald Trump and Mike Pence being sworn into office on January 20, 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2018 related to the investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, and the first half of 2018, but precedes that of the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021. These events are related to, but distinct from, Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections.
This is a timeline of major events in the second half of 2017 related to the investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, the post-election transition, and the first half of 2017. The investigations continued in the first and second halves of 2018, the first and second halves of 2019, 2020, and 2021.
This is a timeline of events related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
This is a timeline of events from 2020 to 2022 related to investigations into the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016, election day, the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first and second halves of 2019.
Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation is a best-selling non-fiction book written by Andrew Weissmann, a former Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), and later a General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2011 to 2013. Released by Random House on September 29, 2020, the widely read book gives an insider's view into Department of Justice special counsel Robert Mueller's highly controversial investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump.