why is michael cohen telling it all to a “conservative” publisher?

Estimated reading time is 3 minutes.

RAW STORY’S TOP STORIES newsletter arrived at 5:51 AM today. The headline that caught my attention was “Michael Cohen is writing a bombshell tell-all book on President Trump to be released before the election.” The story was attributed to Tom Boggioni (April 18, 2020), who acknowledged his source as the Daily Beast in his first paragraph. That first paragraph states that “Michael Cohen is hard at work on a tell-all book about the president that should be published before the November election [and] will ‘spill the beans’ on the president’s antics and dealings.” ¹

Michael Cohen is perhaps best known for his role in the Stormy Daniels Affair, paying the porn star $130,000 in “hush money” not to discuss her affair with Donald Trump. (Why the damn librull media didn’t dub the affair Stormygate and run with it will remain forever inexplicable.) But Michael was infatuated with Donald, for whom he became personal counsel and was often described as Trump’s “fixer.”

At one time or another, Cohen was also:

•  a co-president of Trump Entertainment
•  a board member of the Eric Trump Foundation
•  a vice-president of The Trump Organization

During 2017-2018, Cohen was deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. And this is where he got himself into trouble.

 

Bring back that sunny day

The Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections led Cohen to plead guilty to eight counts including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. He claimed that he violated campaign finance laws at the direction of Trump and “for the principal purpose of influencing” the 2016 presidential election. He sentenced Cohen to three years in prison but was just released due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Apparently, Cohen has been “shopping” the tentatively-titled Trump Revolution: From The Tower to The White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump, since February 2018. He has supposedly signed with Center Street, an imprint of publishing house Hachette Book Group. HBG is one of the largest book publishers in the world.

Here is where it gets interesting: Center Street is the imprint under which Hatchette publishes fiction and non-fiction books for the so-called conservative market. Its authors include Newt Gingrich (Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback), Jeanine Pirro (Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy), Michael Savage (Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama), and Donald Trump Jr (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us).

While I rarely make assumptions in print, I can make the following about Cohen’s book:

• I assume that it will sell millions of copies.
• I assume that it will make millions for its publisher.

So why is it appearing on a specialist imprint alongside authors that will make anyone who is not a rightwinger—which is the vast majority of book-buyers—reflexively question its veracity and possibly refrain from even reading it let alone buying it?

Finally, to read Boggioni’s story, click here.

 

FEATURED IMAGE: The caricature of Stormy Daniels at the top of this page is by H. Edward Brooks. Also featured in this piece is Michael Cohen, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump.

 

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FOOTNOTES:

1  Normally, I would go directly to the source and use that as the foundation for any article that I posted here, but the Beast requires a paid subscription to read so I am using Raw Story instead. The Daily Beast was launched in 2018 with legendary editor Tina Brown at its helm. Its goal was to boldly go where no magazine hand gone before and “seek out scoops, scandals, and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots, and hypocrites.”

Raw Story claims to publish “courageous, progressive journalism.” Wikipedia blandly describes it as “a news site, bringing attention to stories that it sees as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets.” Wiki does note that the site was described by Newsweek magazine as “Muck, raked: If you’re looking for alleged GOP malfeasance, the folks at rawstory.com are frequently scooping the mainstream media.”

2  The Hachette Book Group (HBG) is owned by Hachette Livre and is the largest publishing company in France and one of the largest book publishers in the world. Hachette Livre is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lagardère Group and was formed when Hachette Livre purchased the Time Warner Book Group in 2006.