The president who promised to “drain the swamp” aka rid Washington of influence peddling, is nothing less than a gleeful participant in the town’s culture of corruption; the examples are numerous and readily available.
So while many of us are inclined to think the $4.4m that flowed through Michael Cohen’s coffers was the asking price for positive influence, it’s perfectly within reason to believe that Cohen, in furtherance of his bullshit, tough guy “fixer” persona, may have been pushing a shakedown scheme of the crude kind: pay me or I just might whisper in Trump’s ear to favor your competition. Or in the case of AT&T, reinforce Trump’s resistance to their merger with Time Warner.
And, of course, there’s the very real possibility that the Grifter-in-Chief made off with some of that $4.4m loot.
Let’s hope we find out how it all went down.
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