It's almost quaint now to look back at the shock we all felt at presidential candidate Donald Trump attacking the judge presiding in the Trump University fraud lawsuit as biased because he was Latino and Trump was talking about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Most Americans assumed that it would be impossible for such a disrespectful and, frankly, racist person to be elected in the 21st century but as it turned out that was just a preview of many such attacks to come. (Trump eventually settled that lawsuit for $25 million.)
Because Trump is such an inveterate lawbreaker, he has been the subject of many legal cases over the years and biographers and armchair psychologists have speculated that his strategy has always been to denigrate the judges and the prosecutors in those cases publicly. It is due to his father's advice to always fight with everything they have. But it's just as likely that he's following the advice of his mentor, the odious attorney Roy Cohn, who has been called "one of the most reviled men in American history." If anything, it was Cohn who pulled Trump out from under his father's shadow.
Trump's current troubles, and many in his past, stem from his weird relationship with Cohn, who taught him that there are no rules and no limits to what he can get away with if he has the chutzpah to challenge the very concept of reality itself, daring people to disbelieve his lies or risk destruction. It's the ethos of the bully and the gangster and despite all the drama in his life, Trump's gotten away with all of it, eventually becoming the most powerful man in the world with a full-fledged cult following of tens of millions of people. Cohn's students learned his lessons well.
The case unfolding in New York these past few weeks centers on another of Trump's lawyers, Michael Cohen, who Trump saw as a low rent Roy Cohn who would carry out the dirty business Trump feels entitled to engage in without accountability. Cohen eagerly took on the job of Trump's legal henchman, never questioning the ethics or morals of what he was asked to do and when asked how he could have done that he testified this week that he was "knee deep in the cult of Donald Trump." The trial has shown how much Cohen yearned for Trump's approval and how little Trump respected him in return.
Cohen is a broken man today, loathed by the press with which he had a hostile relationship as Trump's hatchet man and humiliated before the entire country as a liar and a loser on the witness stand, even as he provides the testimony that corroborates evidence that his former boss broke the law. Michael Cohen paid a high price for his loyalty to Donald Trump.
We've also been reminded in this trial of another of Trump's lawyers, the former U.S. attorney and mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. Once a front runner himself for the Republican presidential nomination, and esteemed by many as a hero for his leadership of the city after 9/11, Giuliani is now one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference trial, has been held liable for $148 million for his defamation of two election workers, is facing disbarment and was recently fired from his radio show. This week he left the judge overseeing his bankruptcy aghast as he's completely non-compliant and has not followed any of the court's instructions.
Rudy Giuliani has been completely destroyed by his loyalty to Donald Trump, which he maintains until this day despite the fact that Trump has not helped him financially and would have no power to pardon him if he were to become president again. All of this is a result of the dirty work he did on behalf of Trump's Big Lie.
Two other lawyers, Jeffrey Clark (who appeared at the courthouse in support of Trump on Thursday) and John Eastman have had their reputations shredded and their lives upended for willingly plotting with Donald Trump to overturn the election in 2020. Both men are co-defendants with Trump in the Georgia case. Eastman has since been disbarred and was fired from jobs at Chapman University and the University of Colorado over his involvement in the Jan. 6 plot. Loyal legal soldiers and Trump co-defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell have also been destroyed by their involvement with Trump's schemes. Like the others, they were thrilled to be part of Trump's nefarious plans but are paying the price for it today.
Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, Powell and Chesebro are all unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case against Donald Trump brought by special counsel Jack Smith. What an ignominious end to their legal careers. And it's all in service of Donald Trump.
Trump has more lawyers, of course, although it's not as easy to find them as it once was. Many can obviously see the writing on the wall. (The running joke is that MAGA actually stands for Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.) Luckily for the newer hires, the campaign is paying the bills these days so they don't have the same worries as Trump's previous attorneys about getting paid — yet.
Trump seems to be very attached to his attorney, Alina Habba, who defended him in the New York civil fraud trial and the E. Jean Carroll defamation cases, all of which Trump lost. They frequently travel together and she has attended the Manhattan hush money trial as moral support. Another of his favorites is Christina Bobb, recently indicted in the Arizona fake electors case and hired by the Republican National Committee to head their election integrity unit.
His top lawyer in both the Mar-a-Lago and hush-money case, Todd Blanche, is a former prosecutor with a good reputation who has thrown his lot in with Trump entirely, moving his practice and his family down to Florida and is reportedly very "broey" with Trump. So far he hasn't broken any laws in his defense of Trump so his reputation and standing as a lawyer remain intact.
Just as all those Republican officeholders who are making the ritual pilgrimage to that Manhattan Courthouse to demonstrate their fealty to Donald Trump as Michael Cohen once did, so too should his current lawyers.
His first lawyer Roy Cohn taught Trump everything he knows about being a ruthless, belligerent, con man who could get away with murder with a take-no-prisoners, win at all costs attitude. And Trump loved him for it. But when Cohn got AIDS (and lied about it claiming it was liver cancer) the legal walls started closing in on him and he was finally disbarred, Trump abandoned his mentor without a second thought. Cohn's secretary Susan Bell told Michael Kruse of Politico that he "dropped him like a hot potato, he really did.”
If Trump would do that to his mentor and muse, he would do it to anyone. Just look at the broken human wreck named Rudy Giuliani. Loyalty only goes one way with Donald Trump.
