For now, the main question regarding the Trump investigation is whether Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, will cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A week ago Monday, FBI agents used a judge-approved search warrant to raid Cohen’s home and office. Although Trump vented about violation of attorney-client privilege, there is no privilege for an attorney who works with a client regarding a current or future crime, only for past crimes.
Cohen has worked closely with Trump for decades and is known to have recorded many phone calls. Trump’s advisors believe the raid constitutes a larger threat to Trump than even the Mueller investigation itself, although the two are linked.
This week Trump added former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to his legal team. Giuliani, who hasn’t been a prosecutor in more than 30 years, said he didn’t think “it’s going to take more than a week or two” for him to end the Mueller investigation. The only way could happen, of course, would be if Trump fired Mueller.
Also this week, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he would not allow the Senate to vote on bipartisan legislation that would prevent Trump from firing Mueller.
On Friday, the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit against Russia, Trump and other high-level 2016 Trump-campaign officials for conspiring to disrupt the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. That allows the DNC to conduct discovery into the collusion charges even if Mueller is terminated. There is historical precedent. The DNC brought a lawsuit against President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee over the Watergate break-in. While the filing was attacked by Republicans at the time, that lawsuit later played a role in Nixon resigning before he was impeached.
Turning back to the present, Cohen has said he’d take a bullet for Trump and it appears that Trump’s campaign is paying Cohen’s legal fees so far. Still, Cohen is 51, has a wife and a daughter in her mid twenties and has a net worth of $10 million. It is doubtful that he wants to spend the rest of his life in jail to protect Trump. Cohen was bitterly disappointed that Trump did not appoint him to a position in the administration and Trump has a long history of verbally abusing Cohen.
Trump can, of course, pardon Cohen. Last week Trump pardoned Scooter Libby of the George W. Bush era, presumably to demonstrate that he’s willing to pardon people, including those who could testify against him. But Trump can only pardon federal crimes, not state ones, and Cohen knows he can be prosecuted at the state level as well. Mueller presumably would arrange immunity from both state and federal prosecution in exchange for Cohen’s cooperation. It seems likely that Cohen at some point will agree to cooperate – and that will be a tremendous blow to Trump.