Michael Cohen Is Not Flipping

Over the last two days, it has been very difficult to turn on the news without a major network reporting that Michael Cohen may flip and turn State’s evidence on the man who has employed him for a decade as his organization’s fixer. It is my view that Cohen is most unlikely to flip.

Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ attorney, may have been the first person to suggest that Cohen would flip, and is supported by the fact that Cohen dropped his lawsuits against Buzz Feed and Fusion GPS over the Steele Dossier. In recent days, former Trump attorney Jay Goldberg and OJ Simpson attorney, Alan Dershowitz, have both also suggested to President Trump that he should prepare for Cohen to flip.

When one works for a wealthy, eccentric billionaire as his “attorney” or fixer for any length of time, you become very loyal. That loyalty increases the longer you are there, even though in most cases the billionaire and his family have long stopped treating you well and stopped being super generous. You keep confidences tightly in the hope that you might one day see a payday.

In Cohen’s case, especially, he is over 50 and has proven that he has few other skills than being a thug/fixer. At this point, his entire existence - his family, his friends – are all based around Trump. The only real-life position outside the Trump Organization that Cohen has ever held was as Chairman of the Board of Columbia Grammar School (again because of his Trump connections and a position from which Cohen resigned following Trump’s campaign announcement).

On April 13, when Cohen sat outside the Loews Regency Hotel with Rotem Rosen, a Trump business partner, and Jerry Rotonda, a former Trump financial advisor, smoking cigars, he was doing much more than indicating to the Court that he would be defiant. He was signaling to the White House that he is wearing new kneepads and Trump can count on his continued loyalty.

Clearly, Cohen’s not flipping now. And, he certainly isn’t flipping before Trump appoints a new Attorney General for the Southern District of New York to replace Geoffrey S. Berman. Trump and Cohen are going to bank on a new appointee’s ability to shut this case down.

I will however also say that my hypothesis about Cohen's loyalty goes out the door if Trump is dumb enough to turn on Cohen first.