For the record, the official Ethics Alarms title for the now nearly full-speed second-wave ethics train wreck emerging—again!—out of the biggest and longest-running ethics train wreck of them all (unless you count the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck, which you probably should), the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck, is the Stormy Daniels-Donald Trump Prosecution Ethics Train Wreck. I was going to do a full review of the all-star list of current passengers thus far— Trump and Daniels, of course; Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, George Soros, Senator Elizabeth Warren and all of the Democrats foolish enough to shatter the rules of ethics estoppel by bleating “No one is above the law!,” the cheerleading mainstream media, Ron DeSantis, Kevin McCarthy, Rand Paul, Rachel Maddow—assuming that the indictment would come down today and Trump would be arrested.

But it did not, and he wasn’t. (You would think, wouldn’t you, that after specializing himself in deliberately changing his plans once the news media engaged in what Ethics Alarms calls “future fake news” and announced that he was about to do something outrageous, Trump wouldn’t fall into the same trap by announcing that his arrest was imminent.) Instead, this post will focus on the Manhattan’s Democrats’ current “Get Trump!” Javert’s “star” witness, the ridiculous, slimy, reptilian, formerTrump fixer, Michael Cohen.

It was in 2015, back when I assumed that there was no way on earth sufficient numbers of Americans would be reckless enough to vote for Donald Trump in a primary, never mind an actual election, I first discussed Trump’s lawyer-fixer, Cohen in a Rhode Island legal ethics seminar, using him as an example of the archetypal untrustworthy lawyer, and declaring Trump as foolish for employing someone so clearly dishonest as well as incompetent. It wasn’t hard. Cohen had just given an interview in which he made the legally wrong claim that it was legal for a husband (in that case, Trump) to rape his own wife. Then he threatened The Daily Beast, saying…

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me? You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet … you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it.”

He’s not just an unethical lawyer; he’s a bad one, and thus to boot. I wrote a post about him in 2015 too: “What A Surprise: Donald Trump Has An Unethical Lawyer!” I wrote, “Any self-respecting Presidential hopeful with a respect for the media and the public would have fired this clod within 20 seconds of hearing his embarrassing comments, but you know—Trump.”

Sure enough, the former President kept Cohen around as a loyal legal advisor and bagman long enough for Cohen to decide his best interests lay in joining the opposition. Now Cohen is disbarred, a convicted felon, a proven liar, and yet he is being used as the most important witness in the likely prosecution of Trump on a very dubious federal election law violation theory.

Now one of Cohen’s past attorneys has come forward to say that in his experience Cohen lies constantly, which I could figure out 8 years ago. Robert Costello, who formerly served as deputy chief of the criminal division for the U.S. attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York. claims he has a written waiver of attorney-client privilege from Cohen (otherwise he couldn’t tell us this), but Cohen denies it. Which is kind of funny, when you think about it.

Cohen is a manifestly unbelievable witness: I wouldn’t believ him if he identified me as me. Any defense lawyer would begin drooling like Spuds (my lovey pit bull mix) when I offer him a spoonful of peanut butter at the prospect of getting the chance to impeach Cohen’s credibility on the witness stand. The classic line, “You were lying then, why should we believe you now?” could have been invented for Cohen

As a former prosecutor myself, I can’t imagine going forward with a case if someone like Cohen was my main witness, no matter how certain I was of my target’s guilt. It seems to me to be flat-out prosecutorial misconduct.

Then there is this: Trump, Gov. DeSantis, and others without partisan axes to grind like Jonathan Turley and Allen Dershowitz have branded this a political prosecution, which of course it is. Guess who Cohen’s attorney is.

Lanny Davis...the Clintons’ fixer!