Do you wonder how Trump lawyer Michael Cohen might be persuaded to flip? Harry Litman on Lawfare has some details based on his experience with Sammy “the Bull” Gravano:
For this sort of defendant, the adroit prosecutor must deploy a gradual and nuanced psychological campaign to wean them from a total identification with the family and its values, and a disgust at the mere thought of talking with the government. As John Gleeson, the prosecutor who led the prosecution of Gotti and flipped Sammy the Bull, told me, “It’s not something that happens instantly. The heart of it is convincing the would-be cooperator that there is no such thing as honor among thieves. If the tables were turned, the guy he’s reluctant to give up would throw him under the bus in a heartbeat.”
To be sure, the prospect of a long time in jail is a strong start. In fact, few people realize that it was the passage of long mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes—justly controversial in other settings—that, in combination with the mobs’ ill-fated decision to go into the drug business in the first place, broke the back of organized crime. The refrain of the Sammy the Bulls of the world had been, “I can do a nickel standing on my head,” meaning they were more than willing to serve a five-year sentence and keep quiet. That calculus changed with ten- and 20-year sentences.
If Cohen faces a sentence, it will be driven by the amount of money at issue in his putative financial crimes. Given their possible number and magnitude, his exposure could potentially be very long—certainly long enough to deprive Cohen, by all accounts a family man, of seeing his children grow up.
But for Cohen to agree to flip, he’d likely need to undergo a gradual transition that permits him to feel justified in breaking the Trump camp version of the omerta, or code of silence. As Cohen has pledged, “I will always protect Mr. Trump.”And with the intense focus on the case, it is likely that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York would want to apply a soft touch and avoid possible charges from the president’s supporters of overbearing treatment.
Step one in that transition is the isolation of the lieutenant from the family and the daily social life, which usually consists largely of a lot of hanging out and killing time and not all that much actual criminal activity. That much seems already to have happened, notwithstanding that Cohen has yet to be arrested. The Times reported recently that Cohen has told associates that he feels isolated since the FBI search.
With the spell of daily connection to the family broken, the feds will seek to persuade the made man that the Don doesn’t esteem him—or worse—doesn’t even respect him.
Since Trump doesn’t appear to treat his subordinates with much respect, this might be easier than one might think.
