Michael Cohen is skewered on the horns of a dilemma and he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. First of all, he just lost his lawyers over a fee dispute, according to ABC News, which is problematic to say the least since he’s involved in a costly and high profile legal battle after the FBI raid and secondly he’s trying to keep his fleet of taxicabs on the road when revenues have fallen 80% due to competition from Uber and Lyft. Things are not going well to say the very least, and he’s had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. First, his lawyers jumped ship and not at the most propitious time, since he may be facing arrest or indictment soon.
That’s true enough. It’s also true that Cohen’s taxi cab companies are now in a “troubled debt restructuring” plan, and that Cohen had to put up his home as collateral. Bloomberg:
Cohen is one of three taxi clients of Sterling National, and the other two were already in a debt restructuring process at the end of 2017 or were not making payments, filings for that period show.
During the first quarter of this year, the bank moved its third client, with $12.8 million of debt, into a category it calls a “troubled debt restructuring” -- defined by federal bank regulators as a concession a creditor grants to a debtor facing financial difficulties -- according to a bank filing on May 4. The timing matches the issuance of new liens issued by Sterling against Cohen’s assets. [...]
Cohen and his wife have now pledged their apartment in the Trump Park Avenue -- a 10th-floor spread combining three units -- as additional collateral to the bank, which valued it at $9 million, according to filings of the April 22 transaction.
“It looks to me like the lender probably said you have to guarantee these existing loans, and by the way you have to pledge your real estate to backstop your guaranty," said Joshua Stein, a Manhattan real-estate attorney who reviewed the public filings.
Cohen has temporarily fixed his cash flow problems but that doesn’t address his legal ones. Here’s a meme that first appeared on Bill Maher.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani came out of seclusion and went on Fox News Wednesday night to do damage control. He assured the troops that Trump was ”clean as a whistle” and that, “He’s [Cohen] not cooperating nor do we care because the president did nothing wrong,”
Let’s see what happens in the next 32 days left in Michael Avenatti’s prediction.
[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]