Law, Power, and Justice

AFTERNOON NEWS NOTES: TRUMP ELECTION FRAUD TRIAL

1:00 pm: Cohen Cross

• Blanche: You offered your testimony to everybody and they turned you down.  Honig doesn’t understand how Cohen could have been offered a “substantial assistance letter” after he plead.  (Note: A lot of what went on with Cohen is not understood by these lawyer commentators.  The Barr Justice Department was the same kind of mobster operation Trump was). 
• Palentine: It doesn’t make sense that Cohen was offered a substantial assistance letter and turned it down.
• (Note: I am beginning to believe that none of these people on CNN have any understanding of human nature at all.  Andrew Weissmann commented the other day on MSNBC that part of the issue working with mob informants who turned and testified was their difficulty in being honest to outsiders.  But, a more serious problem was the informant being honest with themselves.  This entire line of questioning of Cohen about wanting to be part of the White House team involves Cohen
• being honest with himself.  He cannot admit to the defense attorney because he cannot be honest with himself about just how much he wanted to go to the White House.
• Men do this all the time.  The think that they most desperately want is the thing they will go to almost any lengths to deny wanting.  Wanting, especially desperately wanting anything is a vulnerability.  Therefore, it makes total sense that Cohen would deny to himself and everybody else that he has desperately wanted this and was cruelly denied it.  It just hurts too much.
• If the prosecutors make this clear on rebuttal, it will humanize Cohen to the jury.  Unless the jury is as socially and emotionally dumb as everybody on CNN.