As my father used to say, “A man without a center can have no sides.” That saying seems perfectly suited to Michael Cohen, former fixer for Donald Trump, as he was sentenced today to three years in prison despite loudly and vehemently decrying his former boss – to whom he once declared fervent loyalty.
And yet the President sent him clear signals in pardoning Scooter Libby – a man with little need of a pardon, having already had his sentence commuted, regained his voting rights and even having been reinstated to the bar.
Libby was, in fact, a good model for a man who finds himself in his initial position. Libby stayed loyal to VP Cheney and (perhaps?) to President Bush, went to jail quietly and returned with a place to go, the same powerful friends, a life and the ability to earn a living. Why side with Mueller when your ally is a multi-billionaire with pardoning power, willing to use that power in the first year of his term?
Cohen would have been wise to have taken a hint. Manifort surely seemed to in his final days. Upon realizing he was still likely to see prison, Manafort self-destructed as a witness, preferring some time in prison to a lifetime of isolation from friends, colleagues, and his profession.
Cohen it seems was never that smart. Making a career compensating for a lack of skills and work ethic with ethical flexibility, he found himself blowing in the winds of more determined men – and so he finds himself today as he heads off to prison. He is likely to find few friends in jail as a ‘rat’ who turned on his boss, and may find even fewer as he returns home without his profession, friends, or his former self-professed mentor.
Don’t feel sorry for Cohen. He’s a criminal. And what’s more, he’s a buffoon of a criminal who sacrificed his ethics for his boss, and then sacrificed his boss for nothing at all.