demo

37

“For the irst time,” says former federal
prosecutor David Axelrod, “we’ve
seen, in court, evidence strongly
linking the President to criminal acts.”
That testimony, ofered under oath
by the President’s former lawyer, will
only embolden Mueller and energize
Trump’s Democratic opponents. It
left West Wing stafers scrambling to
soothe their furious boss. And it carried
unmistakable echoes of John Dean’s turn
against Richard Nixon in 1973, along

with the growing sense that a presidency

sufused with scandal is confronting its

toughest ight yet.

IN A FITTING TWIST for a President

from New York City, the trouble began

with taxis. In addition to his day job

as a Trump Organization executive,

Cohen dabbled in real estate, medical

businesses and even an ofshore casino

boat. By 2010, according to court

documents, Cohen had also bought a

portfolio of taxi medallions, the metal

placards that allow drivers to operate

cabs in cities like New York and Chicago.

Cohen leased the medallions to drivers

and, according to his plea, failed to

report all of the proits to the IRS. In

one scheme between 2012 and 2016,

Cohen earned more than $2.4 million

in interest from loans he made to a taxi

Trump at an Aug. 21 rally in Charleston,

W.Va., hours after the Cohen bombshell