Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time its enemy action

Yesterday’s drama at the U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan unfolded beyond the wildest dreams of countless observers. One week earlier, federal agents executed multiple raids on Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime attorney, fixer and factotum. Granted unusually broad remit, FBI agents seized years of records of all kinds from Cohen’s home, office and hotel room—a development that seems to have terrified the Oval Office, based on President Donald Trump’s especially unhinged rage-tweets in response.

The Department of Justice quickly ascertained that when it came to his work for the Trump Organization, Cohen wasn’t much of a lawyer, rather a clean-up man for Trump’s missteps with women and the arranger of unsavory business deals with an assortment of dubious characters, many of them from the former Soviet Union. Cohen’s court appearance yesterday was guaranteed to be a barn-burner, given the Trump consigliere’s over-the-top media antics, to say nothing of the presence in court of Stormy Daniels, the adult actress and former Trump paramour who claims to have taken a $130,000 payment from Cohen to purchase—or at least rent—her silence for the 2016 election.

But Stormy, whose public telling of her tale sent Cohen down the road to perdition, turned out not to be yesterday’s big draw. Instead, it was Cohen himself and his suspiciously short client list. Trump was Client Number One, as everyone knew, while it recently emerged that Number Two was Elliott Broidy, a venture capitalist, Trump backer, and Republican macher whom Cohen assisted by arranging a $1.6 million hush-deal with a Playboy model who claimed Broidy had impregnated her. When this payoff came to light last week, Broidy resigned from his senior post with the Republican National Committee.

http://observer.com/2018/04/outed-as-michael-cohen-client-hannity-joins-trump-kremlin-drama/amp/