Latest Book Tour - Cohen

 

Latest Book Tour Begins (continues?)

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastics 12.12 (KJV)

In past year over ten best selling tell-all books about Trump have been released. These have been written by wide variety of insiders, experts, the reporters Woodward & Bernstein who ‘brought down’ President Richard Nixon, and by Trump niece Mary L Trump, PhD. [Note: as of now a new book, with tapes, is pending from Bob Woodward)

That’s just “scratching the surface” however. According to ‘Biography of Donald Trump’ on Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

“Prior to his 2016 campaign, Trump was already the focus of many books describing his life as a businessman and politician… Almost one year after his inauguration as president, The Guardian noted more than 4,500 English-language books about Trump had been published since he took office, compared to just over 800 works about predecessor Barack Obama during his first year in office.”

Now comes Disloyal: A Memoir – The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump by Michael Cohen, September 8 2020, distributed by Simon & Schuster Publishers

First, the obvious, Cohen is an admitted liar. At this point, though, while still technically a federal prisoner, he has to tell truth or face more jail time (and libel lawsuits). It should be noted fifteen-year business manager for Trump Family, Beverly Res, stated in televised interview she had read the book and didn’t find anything to which she’d object or which she found false.

All Cohen’s book can do, anyhow, is confirm the amoral, unethical, and at best law-skirting way Trump did the Family business. All of which has previously been chronicled in the prior revelations. The independent National Public Radio (NPR) review of Disloyal includes:

“Over Disloyal's 400-plus pages, Cohen rips through accounts of dozens of incidents, ranging from Trump allegedly cheating mom-and-pop vendors for services rendered at Trump properties to incidents of the president making racist remarks to his own involvement in trying to make a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. That's in addition to Cohen's narrative of the payoff that Trump made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election — which was made via Cohen.”

However, one book does not necessarily reveal the completed picture. Not one eye witness. Not one piece of admissible evidence. Not one undisputed fact. It is the accumulation of these pieces making a case presented before an open-minded, fair jury of peers. Following are some of the pieces I have noted as they pass across my laptop screen.

BOOKS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED (Descriptions in Notes at end)

These best-sellers are vetted and fact-checked, with no ‘libel’ or ‘slander’ suits filed to date.

TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Timothy O'Brien, October 2005, Grand Central Publishing. (updated 2016)

IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston, January 2018, Simon & Schuster Publishers.

DARK TOWERS; Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich, February 2020, Harper-Collins Publishing.

TRUE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: The Investigation of Donald Trump by Jeffrey Toobin, August 2020, Penguin-Random House Publishers.

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES (Descriptions in Notes at end)

Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob March 2016, British Broadcasting Corporation Newsnight documentary is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3B-tw2sB0&list=WL&index=54&t=0s

How Donald Trump Got Involved in a Global Fraud August 2017, The New Yorker Magazine available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKhxohwYTc

The Family Business: Trump and Taxes November 2018, Showtime documentary available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQwsPcToCQQ&t=930s

*********************************************************************************************************

In this opinion, and solely in this opinion, it will take years to reveal and unravel the corruption and crimes of Trump and his administration. Meanwhile, if Candidate Trump is re-elected to the Office of President, Constitutional ‘rule of law’ will cease to exist in the United States of America, and the truth may never be unraveled. America will begin the decent into darkness demanded by the course of human history.

The reader certainly retains right to unilaterally defend against all comers the infallibility of their champion. The defense of “don’t believe” any fallibility in your champion, though, is no response. It’s been said “ignorance is bliss” – but it is still ignorance. And willful ignorance is still willful.

If you support Trump and don’t care whether the above is true or not, then vote for him with my blessing. But, forget not that none escape consequences of the eternal law ‘you will reap what you sow’.

Accept it, deny it, ignore it, in this opinion, and solely in this opinion, the reader has been warned.

*******************************************************************************************

NOTES:

BOOKS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED

TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Timothy O'Brien, October 2005, Grand Central Publishing. (updated 2016)

Once upon a time — long before The Apprentice and the golf courses and the TRUMP-branded-underwear-vodka-mattresses-steaks-wine-and-who-knows-what-else and the questionable online education venture and the choreographed wrestling farces and the phallic skyscrapers and the sprawling casinos and the boxing matches and the magazine covers and the beauty pageants and the fisticuffs with City Hall and the serial bankruptcies and the bungled real estate deals and the yacht and the airline and the shady, thuggish business partners and the three marriages and the football team and the 2016 presidential race and the size of his Trump junk and the litany of DOPES! and LOSERS! and the guerrilla takeover of GOP debates and the flagrant race-baiting and the Great Wall of Mexico and the proposals for deporting eleven million people and the 6.6 million Facebook friends and and the seven million Twitter followers and the brawls at political rallies and the flip-flopping on abortion and the punishments for abortions and the nuclear weapons for Japan and South Korea and the white supremacists and Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle and John McCain’s war record and Hillary Clinton getting schlonged and Barack Obama’s birth certificate and Mitt Romney’s kneeling — Donald set his sights on Hollywood. –Timothy O’Brien, introduction to “TrumpNation”

IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston, January 2018, Simon & Schuster Publishers.

David Cay Johnston is an investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. He has followed and reported on the business career of Trump since his arrival in Manhattan. Leaked to Johnston was the only publicly available Trump tax return (video reference below). In 2016 Johnston wrote an unauthorized biography, “The Making of Donald Trump”. Johnston states in his book: “...reminded us of what every con artist knows: people see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe, and let their hopes and wishes vanquish their skepticism. Unless and until some fact they cannot reconcile slaps them hard in the face, the con’s marks will keep seeing the world through the credulous and distorted lens they fashioned for themselves.” Johnston has publicly stated Trump has roots in the American Mafia and had used his private airplane to transport illegal drugs for them; and that he has profited from Russian connections. Johnston has followed these allegations with challenge for Trump to sue.

Dark Towers; Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, by David Enrich, February 2020, Harper-Collins Publishing.

From National Public Radio review: “Trump's murky relationship with Deutsche Bank is still under congressional investigation, so Enrich's story is necessarily incomplete. Still, the book has enough detail to make its case that Deutsche Bank was more than just one more rogue bank; it is a cautionary tale of what happens when a bank pursues profits at any cost, without being weighed down by pesky moral scruples.”

True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump by Jeffrey Toobin, August 2020, Penguin-Random House Publishers.

Toobin is a lawyer, blogger, best-selling author and legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker. During the Iran–Contra affair, he served as an associate counsel in the Department of Justice, and moved from government into writing during the 1990s. This book is “a real-life legal thriller about the prosecutors and congressional investigators pursuing the truth about Donald Trump's complicity in several crimes--and why they failed.”

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES

Donald Trump's Business Links to the Mob March 2016, British Broadcasting Corporation Newsnight documentary is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3B-tw2sB0&list=WL&index=54&t=0s Whatever is believed about this documentary, BBC has ‘no dog in the fight’ and there were reasons the questions needed asking.

How Donald Trump Got Involved in a Global Fraud August 2017, The New Yorker Magazine available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKhxohwYTc Business reporter Adam Davidson followed the money trail with one of President Donald “Trump's past deals – the construction of a new Trump Tower in the Republic of Georgia. Through a series of shell companies and shady deals, connecting the dots leads all the way to Vladimir Putin.”

The Family Business: Trump and Taxes November 2018, Showtime documentary available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQwsPcToCQQ&t=930s Directed by Emmy nominee Jenny Carchman and produced by Oscar nominees Liz Garbus and Justin Wilkes, short-film on unraveling of Trump family tax frauds.