Michael Cohen Would Like the Hush Money Back Now Please

Here is when you know things have gone terribly, terribly wrong:

For starters, you’re Michael Cohen: already, not going well! When your job is to cover up a presidential candidate’s extra-marital affairs with hush money agreements: time to rethink? When you don’t fully execute the agreements and in doing so, violate campaign finance laws: not good. When the F.B.I. raids your office: not great. When federal prosecutors investigate you for tax evasion and bank fraud: very bad. When in federal court you plead guilty to eight felonies: ah shit. When, in what the New York Times calls an “extraordinary admission,” you implicate your client, now President of the United States, in participating in hush money agreements which violated campaign finance laws: things have gone terribly, terribly wrong. But it’s when you ask for your hush money back because things have gone so off the rails that there is absolutely no denying the fact that you have bungled everything: this is the point at which things are irreversibly fucked.

Cohen’s lawyer Brent Blakely confidently informed CNN on Friday that they “have effectively put an end to the lawsuits filed against them by Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels” by rescinding the NDA which Clifford and Michael Avenatti already publicized and maintain is void because the president didn’t sign it. Blakely says that now Clifford will have to pay them back $130,000 which was reimbursed to Cohen by Trump. She, via Avenatti, already offered to pay them months ago, but circumstances listed in the above paragraph have changed.

On CNN, Avenatti guessed that Cohen’s team is using the NDA release as a tactic to shield both Cohen and Trump from having to testify in court. (The world wants those depositions, #Basta!)

Avenatti and Clifford have filed two suits, one claiming the hush money agreement is void because Trump didn’t sign it and the other that Cohen colluded with Clifford’s former lawyer in trying to get her to publicly deny her alleged affair with Donald Trump. If the NDA is deemed valid, nullifying it could spare Clifford from up to $20 million for having broken it, but Avenatti told the Wall Street Journal he would be “shocked” if she agreed and also said that Trump would have to sign on to void the agreement.