Obviously devastated that his moment in the sun — where he has made a boob of himself trying to impeach President Biden — is drawing to an embarrassing close, Rep. Jamie Comer has decided to stick his nose into another place it doesn’t belong – the trial of Donald John Trump.
Comer (R-TheFrankfortLoop), the man who is Kentucky’s answer to Lonesome Rhodes, wants to make folks aware that the case against his pal the former president is a bunch of hooey. It is based on the testimony of Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who he maintains is a lying liar who lies, rendering him an unreliable witness.
In a post on the social media site X, Comer claimed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “star witness Michael Cohen is a convicted felon, disbarred attorney, and perjurer. Cohen pled guilty to lying to the IRS & Congress. Cohen’s former attorney even says he’s ‘on a revenge tour’ against President Trump. No one should trust Michael Cohen.”
Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, followed up on that assessment by joining fellow right-winger, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, in a letter to the Department of Justice requesting that some action be taken against Cohen.
“Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office,” Comer and Jordan said in the letter. “In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the Justice Department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress.”
The pair added later, “a popularly-elected, partisan prosecutor (Bragg) is using this convicted liar (Cohen) to carry out his politically motivated prosecution of a former president.”
Now first let it be acknowledged that Cohen has, in the past, had only a fleeting relationship with the truth, having lied hither and yon, he admits, to protect his old buddy Trump, who, it should be added, isn’t a strict observant of the Ninth Commandment himself. That character flaw is obvious despite the ongoing devotion of his religious conservative allies who seek to keep him awash in holy water.
Birds of a feather and all that.
Cohen has indeed done a spell in the pokey, two months to be exact, for lying to both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about a proposal to build a Trump tower in Moscow, a deviation from the truth he attributed to his desire to protect his old boss. He also was sentenced to three years for campaign finance violation, tax evasion, and sundry other charges, part of which he served in home incarceration.
So, Cohen obviously is not the perfect witness against Trump. Folks embroiled in extended conspiracies seldom are. But his story has remained consistent since turning on Trump. And Trump’s defense lawyers are taking great pains to convince jurors in the case that Cohen’s statements can only be taken with something less than a grain of salt.
That’s fine. That’s why they have trials.
But why, at this stage, is Comer contributing his two cents? He is not in the courtroom on a daily basis to determine just how persuasive the witnesses – including Cohen – might be. He doesn’t know what the judge’s jury instructions will look like or whether Trump will deign to testify in his own behalf.
Comer is always talking about accountability, specifically as it relates to President Biden. At the same time, he has expressed no interest in holding Trump to the same standard and his sudden interest in affecting the outcome of the former president’s trial – still ongoing – seems to establish that his interest is cheap politics, justice be damned.
Who’s the real partisan here?
Comer is not alone. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) made a cameo at the trial on Tuesday and immediately declared it a “sham.” Others, including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) – now there’s a pair for you – have also put in some face time.
Vance, reputedly on Trump’s short list for vice president, suggested the “main goal of the trial is psychological torture.”
The only torture is listening to Trump whine about the proceedings and complaining about the cool temperatures in the courtroom.
The primary argument proffered by this Republican rogues’ gallery is that partisan Democratic interests are ganging up to keep the orange-hued wonder off the campaign trail, thus inhibiting his chances of winning a second, non-consecutive term for the nation’s highest office this November.
“It is election interference,” Johnson said. “And the American people are not going to let this stand.”
A grand jury determined otherwise. And Trump’s own actions form a greater basis for his predicament than anything a partisan prosecutor can do. Blaming Democrats is easy, as is proving the case, a requirement only the prosecution must bear. If he’s found guilty and that’s a big if — it will be because of his own wrongdoing, not persecution from Democrats.
Trump is facing three other trials in the near or distant future. It’s already been determined by a civil court jury in New York that he raped a woman. Another court in the Empire State fined him $355 million for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties in order to attract loans. And don’t forget he instigated an effort to overthrow the American government after he lost his re-election bid in 2020.
Yet Comer and other Republicans assert Trump is the true victim here, displaying no faith in the jury, thus attacking the nation’s judicial system except in those instances where verdicts go their way.
The case at hand isn’t overly complex as presented by the prosecution. During his initial presidential campaign in 2016, one that proved successful, Trump became concerned that a tryst with an adult film star known as Stormy Daniels might become public, negatively impacting his electoral chances. Trump thereupon arranged through Cohen a $130,000 payoff to Daniels, with the money marked down as legal expenses in the Trump company ledger books. That led a New York grand jury to indict Trump on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records connected to the reimbursement, one for each of the documents involved — 11 checks, 11 invoices and 12 ledger entries.
Daniels testified about an icky sexual encounter in vivid detail — no one will ever think about satin pajamas in the same way again. And Cohen discussed the financial arrangement. Trump’s defense team has sought to undermine the testimony of both – Cohen because he’s a convicted liar and Daniels because she’s, well, a porn star, although what that that has to do with truthfulness has not really been explored.
The prosecution is thought to be nearing the close of its case and the big question hanging over the proceedings is whether Trump will testify – he announced back in April that he intended to do so. He has publicly denied having sex with Daniels and maintains Cohen, his erstwhile fixer, is lying about the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
After years covering trials in Northern Kentucky in state and federal courts the one thing I can testify to is, you never know what a jury is going to do. And they don’t need the likes of Jamie Comer coming in to muse about the injustice of it all.
Of course, given his handling of the Biden impeachment fiasco, it might be Trump telling Gomer Comer to mind his own business.
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