Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo said on Fox News Wednesday that he believes Michael Cohen is telling lies in order to get leniency from federal prosecutors in his criminal case. According to Fox News Insider:
Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, on Tuesday struck a plea deal with prosecutors admitting to violating federal campaign finance laws by arranging hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal “at the direction” of then-candidate Trump during the 2016 race.
Caputo, who has held various Republican positions on Capitol Hill, has been put through the wringer himself by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators. Earlier this year, he told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer that the entire Russia investigation was a vindictive witch hunt designed to break members of the Trump team financially. “If you’re not going to be investigated, if you’re not going to be indicted, if you’re not going to jail, they’re going to break you financially because it’s about ruining every single one of us,” he said.
Caputo told Fox News’ Sandra Smith on Wednesday that Cohen appears to have cracked under the pressure.
“It’s very interesting how just in February, Michael Cohen was saying for all the world to hear that this was not a campaign contribution or campaign expenditure — that it was on the up and up,” he said.
“As soon as he got jammed up in crimes that had nothing at all to do with the president, he seems to have changed his tune — and I’m pretty sure that was non-negotiable,” he added.
Smith asked Caputo to comment on the following statement tweeted out by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Tuesday:
.@realDonaldTrump: today your personal attorney confessed under oath to committing federal crimes at your direction.
You maybe a slick salesman, but not even you can divert from that.
NY has had your number from the beginning, and now the rest of the world does too.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) August 22, 2018
Caputo said people sometimes lose their mind on Twitter, and Cuomo’s tweet was a good example of that.
“The irony’s not lost on me that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own right-hand man/fixer just like just like Michael Cohen, Joe Percoco, is going to jail for high crimes and misdemeanors himself,” he explained. “A lot of corruption right there in the governor’s office. So the fact that he didn’t have the self-awareness to know that he was touching a third rail that already had his fingerprints on it? I think that’s hilarious.”
Caputo added, “I think it’s entirely possible that Michael Cohen will make up a story to try to get some leniency for crimes that he’s committed that didn’t involve Donald Trump at all.”
“I believe that’s what happened here. They say he’s not cooperating but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck — it’s probably a duck,” he declared. “This is cooperation in its finest form.”
Caputo said that he suspected that the DOJ offered Cohen a reduced sentence if he would plead guilty to the campaign finance offenses that implicate the president.
“I’m sure that was non-negotiable when he got a better deal for the crimes that he committed and I’m sure he’ll get more leniency in the future if he tells more lies,” he said.
Caputo added that it was amusing to him that the same reporters who told him for two years that “Michael Cohen is the most unreliable source on the planet” are now acting like he’s some “paragon of virtue.”
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