Trump's ex-lawyer Cohen links Falwell's endorsement in 2016 to suppression of racy photos

[iluvtennis]

Spiro Agnew’s Ghost@SpiroAgnewGhost·3h
BREAKING: Trump's ex-lawyer Cohen links Falwell’s endorsement in 2016 to suppression of racy photos

BOOOM. I predicted this would come out. This is blatant extortion.

Link to tweet

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trump extorted the evangelcial endorsement - surprise, surprise .

[Thomas Hurt]

1. Personally, I think Trump makes J Edgar look like a piker...

Makes you wonder what he has on Rand Paul and Graham.

[iluvtennis]

2. Exactly. nt

[grumpyduck]

3. Does anyone have any more info on this?

Not having read the book, the reference gets a little lost.

[malaise]

4. Some of us knew this was coming

and apparently si did Falwell.

Rachel interviewed him - we'll see it tonight

[dalton99a]

5. Kick

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-falwell-endorsement/ex-fixer-for-trump-links-falwells-endorsement-in-2016-to-suppression-of-racy-photos-idUSKBN25Z2S0

September 8, 2020
Trump's ex-lawyer Cohen links Falwell’s endorsement in 2016 to suppression of racy photos
Aram Roston

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In his book released today, Michael Cohen, the former fixer for U.S. President Donald Trump, ties for the first time the 2016 presidential endorsement of Trump by American evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr to Cohen’s own role in helping to keep racy “personal” photographs of the Falwells from becoming public.

As Reuters reported last year, the Falwells enlisted Cohen to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public, Cohen said in a recording, made surreptitiously by comedian Tom Arnold. “I actually have one of the photos,” he said, without going into specifics. “It’s terrible.”

In “Disloyal: The Memoir,” Cohen describes thinking that his involvement in the Falwell photo matter would be a “catch and kill” — the practice of American tabloids to obtain and then suppress unfavorable stories about celebrities — “but in this case it was just going to be kill.”

He later writes: “In good time, I would call in this favor, not for me, but for the Boss, at a crucial moment on his journey to the presidency.”

Cohen has said that he helped persuade Falwell to endorse Trump just before Republican voters gathered in Iowa in February 2016 to nominate a presidential candidate. Falwell not only publicly vouched for Trump’s Christian virtues but also barnstormed with the candidate. His backing of Trump — a twice-divorced candidate who had talked about grabbing women’s genitals and engaged in extramarital affairs — was one of the major surprises of the 2016 campaign.

In the book, Cohen doesn’t explicitly say that the endorsement was the favor he sought in return for his help in having kept the Falwell photos from getting out. But his account marks the first time he has linked the two issues.

[iluvtennis]

6. thanks for adding the Reuters link. nt