Whose lies are they, anyway?

Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters, via The New Yorker.

Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 27, 2019

This time it’s different🙄 https://t.co/KmFbYC2k80

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 27, 2019

It's remarkable that these people keep working to discredit Cohen's testimony by reminding us of the crimes Cohen pleaded guilty to—"He's a convicted liar so why should we believe him now?"—as if nobody had any way of finding out what he was lying about when he told the lies for which he's going to jail, or on whose behalf:

last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual #1.

For the record: Individual #1 is President Donald J. Trump.

When Cohen now says that, contrary to his previous assertions, he really did illegally pay off Daniels and McDougal to keep quiet during the presidential campaign about their romances with the future president, or that he witnessed Trump directing negotiations for his Moscow project through the whole of the campaign, suborning the entire US electoral system to use it as a branding opportunity for his hotel-and-condo business, or that big Donald was fully aware of the crimes Junior and others were committing when they plotted with Russian intelligence personnel to exploit confidential political materials stolen from the Democrats, we know Cohen is telling the truth because the federal judiciary has already concluded he is.

On the basis of the whole of the evidence it has studied and evaluated, you know.

That's kind of the bottom line. We don't have to worry about whether Cohen is telling the truth about these matters in particular, because Judge Carter has already told us. And of course when Big Donald and Junior tell the same stories that Cohen used to tell before the guilty pleas, they are lying too. Big Donald was aware of the crimes committed on his behalf and running them himself. If you were in any doubt.