Great googly moogly – if this isn’t a case of grandiose egos exploding all over the city like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at the end of Ghostbusters – and twice as goopy – I don’t know what would be.

In my best Noo Yawk accent, I ask ya, “Would ya jus look at the noive a’ this guy?!”

You will thank me later as I help to save your democracy and your children can make reproductive decisions for themselves! In the meantime, lay off the Botox…it’s interfering with the synapses in your brain! https://t.co/8awMWxiTqi

— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) March 21, 2023

And I’m ded.

Tweeting that takes a pair, I tell you. Especially considering who Michael Cohen is – a convicted perjurer and tax fraud, on a federal level…

Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Eight Counts, Including Criminal Tax Evasion And Campaign Finance Violations
Plea Follows Filing of Eight Count Criminal Information Alleging Concealment of More Than $4 Million in Unreported Income, $280,000 in Unlawful Campaign Contributions

…who also used to be President Donald Trump’s lawyer.

After his sentencing, Cohen spent the bulk of his 3 year sentence time on home confinement thanks to COVID releases from prison. I’ll bet it was so tough.

Michael Cohen, who was former President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer until his 2018 arrest, said Monday that his three-year prison sentence — mostly spent in home confinement — was over as he took another swipe at his former boss and vowed to continue cooperating with law enforcement probes.

A smiling Cohen emerged from Manhattan federal court after signing documents and speaking with authorities about his upcoming three-year term of supervised release.

Upon his release in 2021, he was still talking smack about Trump and helping law enforcement in their pursuit of dirty deed doers.

…He implicated Trump at the time in the campaign finance charges, as he did again on Monday when he said that his release from home confinement “in no way negates the actions I took at the direction of and for the benefit of Donald J. Trump.”

He said he was “cognizant of my responsibilities” and “will not cease my commitment to law enforcement.”

“I will continue to provide information, testimony, documents and my full cooperation on all ongoing investigations to ensure that others are held responsible for their dirty deeds and that no one is ever believed to be above the law,” Cohen said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one with any credibility took him up on it until the new NY DA, Alvin Bragg, was sworn into office in January of last year. In fact at first, even Bragg didn’t want anything to do with the tainted Cohen, and then suddenly?

There was a reversal.

By February of this year, Bragg couldn’t seem to get enough of him, and Cohen was eating the limelight up.

⁦@MichaelCohen212⁩ arriving with attorney @LannyDavis this morning for his 16th sit-down with the Manhattan DA’s investigation into #DonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/ekQ6MhaFxW

— Laura Italiano (@Italiano_Laura) February 16, 2023

Whoop-dee-do, look at me.

For at least a month, witnesses in New York’s criminal inquiry into the finances of Donald Trump have been quietly meeting with prosecutors, driving unseen in and out of a lower Manhattan office building through a guarded, gated service entrance.

But not Michael Cohen.

Cohen — once a senior Trump Organization executive, then Trump’s personal lawyer for his first year in the White House, and ever since a bitter, continual critic — uses the front door.

“I refuse to hide,” he told Insider. “I have nothing to hide from.”

…”They are well versed, they are well informed,” Cohen said glowingly of the probe’s prosecutors, as the cameras clicked and flashed, and as Lanny Davis, his lawyer, stood by, wearing an amused expression.

…Michael Cohen and DANY — short for the office of the District Attorney, New York county — are very much a thing these days, hot and heavy and in the public eye.

Cohen has been touting his newly rekindled relationship — he’s been meeting weekly for a month with probe prosecutors — at every chance, including on his two podcasts, on Twitter, on cable news shows, and in these mini press confabs on the DA’s own doorstep.

Well, huh. After all this time, supposedly Cohen, again, a convicted perjurer and tax fraud, had something of substance to tell a DA’s office that he never had before any of this went down?

I guess that could happen. There are still credibility problems basing your entire Trump witch hunt on this guy’s word, which Bragg seems to have done. As Jazz said in his post this morning, so far it’s still showtime for Bragg in New York.

However. All this has come to pass without taking into account what happened yesterday.

The Trump team requested and received permission, for a defense witness to testify before that same grand jury. The witness’s name is Robert Costello, and he was at one time Michael Cohen’s defense lawyer. “How can that be?” you ask. There have been all sorts of shady things going on with attorney-client privilege, right?

It turns out Cohen waived all his privileges as far as any communication or dealings with Mr. Costello, so the man was free to testify about anything and did.

Costello inside is expected to discredit and attack the credibility of the prosecution's star witness, Michael Cohen giving former President Trump an indirect opportunity to make the case that he shouldn't face criminal charges.

— Rebecca Brannon (@RebsBrannon) March 20, 2023

Testify he did.

Robert Costello, former Cohen attorney: “[Cohen] stating things that he said he’s going to tell grand jury and had told grand jury that were contrary what he told us when we represented him first time in April 2018… when you are willing to give up your life in order to avoid… https://t.co/NiN86EXM7U pic.twitter.com/Q4gPJTeYgv

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) March 21, 2023

Costello basically blew apart what little standing Cohen has (I hesitate to use the word “legitimacy”), testifying that he is a “serial liar,” among other points deleterious to the DA’s case.

There was also additional fallout bolstering the mendacious aspect of Cohen’s reprehensible personality, provided by none other than Cohen himself. Professor Jonathan Turley picked up on it immediately, dumbstruck at the implications for the DA’s star witness and this extraordinarily manipulated case against a former president of the United States.

As I said, Cohen took it upon himself to go on camera and denounce his former attorney. – not once, but several times.

…Cohen then took the signature step of going on television to blast Costello. While prosecutors would likely prefer that he avoid public interviews, Cohen has been maximizing his exposure on the legal matter — a signature throughout his career.

Cohen went on the Joy Reid Show to denounce Costello. With no sense of self-awareness, he accused Costello of lacking “any sense of veracity.” But then he added that “I didn’t know Bob Costello from a hole in the wall” and that Costello “was never my lawyer.” On the waiver, Cohen denied any recollection of waiving the privilege and said “I’d like to know when, how and where.”

Costello then went on Tucker Carlson’s Show on Fox News and held up a signed waiver that he said has Cohen’s signature on the second page.

YOICKS

…However, unless Costello is a forger, Cohen just added another alleged false statement on the eve of the Trump prosecution. If that is his signature, his denial cannot only be used to show his spotty memory of important legal details or, equally damaging, his own lack of veracity….

Turley calls it the opportunity for a “withering cross” of Cohen if this abomination actually makes it to a trial. That’s ever so poetic a way to say Trump’s lawyers are going to eviscerate Cohen.

Now, the grand jury supposedly only wanted to hear from Costello about the contents of 6 emails, so we don’t know what else they heard or didn’t hear. That’s the first thing to consider. The second that this IS a NYC grand jury and they were most probably picked with their minds made up in any event.

Word is breaking that they’ve pushed the arraignment to next week.

The most absurd attempt to persecute a former President in our history. They should be ashamed of themselves. I'm guessing they take the out

— Ron Moore (@RonMoor15432968) March 21, 2023

Huh. Schmaybe there are cracks forming.

The deciding factor is going to be Alvin Bragg. To see if he has one iota of regard left (we already know he has zero reverence) for the justice system, perhaps a modicum of self-respect still. Or if he’s willing to blow everything to kingdom come just to score Trump in cuffs with the high-fives that will come his way while the flames he’s kindled lick around his shiny court jester shoes.

Now we wait.