#Michael Cohen shares ‘theory’ of what Trump will do if he loses 2020 election

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Michael Cohen during an appearance on Rachel Maddow’s TV show
MSNBC

If President Trump loses to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in November, he will resign as commander-in-chief in order to allow Vice President Pence to take over and pardon him for any alleged crimes.

That’s the theory of the commander-in-chief’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, he revealed Tuesday night.

The 54-year-old disbarred ex-attorney — who is currently one year into a three-year prison sentence on charges of lying to Congress, tax evasion and campaign finance violations — shared his hypothesis in an interview with MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Maddow pressed the convicted felon on a point he makes toward the end of his new book, “Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump,” which Cohen was there promoting.

“You say at the very end of the book that the president and Attorney General William Barr ousted the US Attorney of New York and tried to install, effectively, the president’s golfing buddy as the new US Attorney there because the president, in your view, wanted to arrange for himself to be indicted while he’s still in office because that would give him the opportunity to pardon himself after he lost the election,” she said.

“Well, my theory is that if he loses, there’s still the time between the election and the time that the next president would take office. And during that time, my suspicion is that he will resign as president, he will allow Mike Pence to take over, and he will then go ahead and have Mike Pence pardon him,” Cohen responded.

The former fixer went on to compare the effort to that of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned and was granted a “prospective pardon” by his former VP, newly-sworn-in President Gerald Ford.

“It’s a very, let’s just say it’s a very Nixon-type of event and it was probably discussed between Roger Stone and President Trump at some point. That this is certainly one way to avoid any potential prison time,” he continued.

Stone was a Nixon confidante, especially in the former president’s later years, but the two had a longstanding relationship dating back to 1967.

Cohen is serving the remainder of his sentence in home confinement from his New York apartment after being released from prison because of concerns about coronavirus.