(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Former President Donald Trump took a shine to a newly-revealed bombshell letter that he said blew a huge hole in the hush-money witch hunt being pursued by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
“Wow, look what was just found—A Letter from Cohen’s Lawyer to the Federal Election Commission,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
The letter in question, which surfaced Wednesday, was a 2018 missive that reportedly showed Michael Cohen had lied to investigators and had actually claimed that the former president did not reimburse him for quiet-cash funneled to porn star Stormy Daniels.
“Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms. Clifford [Daniels], and neither reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payment directly or indirectly,” Cohen lawyer Stephen Ryan said in the Feb. 2018 letter.
In the 2018 letter to the Federal Election Commission, Cohen said that he “used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford.”
The latest twist to the unfolding saga came as Bragg on Wednesday scratched a planned session of the grand jury investigating the case, even as law enforcement braced for what has been widely reported as a looming Trump indictment. The grand jury is expected to reconvene on Thursday.
Trump wielded the Cohen letter like a jackhammer Wednesday on Truth Social, excoriating Bragg.
“This is totally exculpatory, and must end the Manhattan District Attorney’s Witch Hunt, immediately. Cohen admits that he did it himself,” Trump wrote. “The D.A. should get on with prosecuting violent criminals, so people can walk down the sidewalks of New York without being murdered!”
Legal minds conceded that the letter might prove problematic for Bragg’s case.
“I think it’s just going to open the door to additional questions of [Cohen’s] credibility and give more opportunity for further cross-examination — as though they didn’t have enough,” former Brooklyn prosecutor Julie Rendelman told the New York Post.
Cohen was already under fire as the prosecution’s star witness, with his former legal advisor questioning his credibility.
“Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” Robert Costello told NewsNation. “This guy, by any prosecutor’s standard, and I used to be deputy chief of the criminal division in the Southern District in New York, I wouldn’t have touched a guy like Michael Cohen.”
The Cohen letter was the latest setback for Bragg, who earlier this week was accused of withholding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence. Costello claimed that the grand jury had received only “six cherry-picked documents” of the reams he had given to Bragg.
