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Salon
Salon
Politics
Matthew Chapman

Cohen says tax charges would nail Trump

Michael Cohen and Donald Trump (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

On Friday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen argued that the clearest way to indict and convict the former president is on tax charges — similar to the charges for which he himself went to prison as part of Trump's Stormy Daniels payoff scheme.

This came during a discussion about the bombshell report that the classified documents Trump hoarded at his Mar-a-Lago resort included secret intelligence about Iran and China.

"You know, [Iran and China] are two of the specific areas of foreign policies that he needles President Joe Biden about most frequently," said anchor Nicolle Wallace.

"Everything Donald does is on purpose," said Cohen. "The way that he took the documents, the way that he had them brought to Mar-a-Lago, the way he hid them, the way he sued, he had to turn them over, he didn't turn them over, they find more documents whether it's financial or these documents. The scary part is we don't know what additional documents this man is hiding." He cited how Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Trump demanding that he sign attesting there are no other documents he has hidden somewhere, only for Trump to blow it off.

"Do you think she'll ever get her answer?" asked Wallace.

"No," said Cohen. "He doesn't respect the process. This is the whole problem. This is a petulant child that you tell them, don't stick your finger into the electric socket. No, I can do it. I can do whatever I want. And he'll stick his finger and he'll get shocked like what's going on now. Subpoenas, lawsuits, etcetera. But at the end of the day it's not killing him. That's why I keep going back to the same thing. Let's stop the nonsense. Let's go after the low-hanging fruit. We already know he tax evaded. Enough. Why are we worried about this? Don't worry about murder, extortion — as they did with Capone, get him on tax evasion. Let's put this Mandarin Mussolini Menace behind bars, which is where he belongs."

Watch below:

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