Four this week. As always, these are claims you are likely to encounter, not pieces I am embarrassed about.
The Cohen interview does not help the appeal
You have seen this one by now. Michael Cohen interviewed Donald Trump on his radio show, and the framing across most of the coverage, sourced originally to Maggie Haberman on CNN, is that some people in the White House believe Cohen speaking out about the trial could be useful to the appeal.
I was going to repeat that. Then I looked at what the appeal actually is.
The live question is not whether Cohen told the truth. It is whether the case belongs in federal court under the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision. The Second Circuit revived that issue in November and sent it back to Judge Hellerstein, and the specific dispute on remand is whether prosecutors crossed a line by putting testimony from Hope Hicks and Madeleine Westerhout, both former White House aides, in front of the jury. That is the evidence that might qualify as official acts.
Cohen’s testimony was never part of that question. The payments were private conduct, which is the exact ground on which Hellerstein twice refused to move the case.
So a witness announcing that he felt pressured cannot touch it. It is not an argument the appeal contains.