comment

Michael Cohen is laid to rest. Literally: Among the last documents the court filed in the archive after sentencing Donald Trump's ex-private prosecutor to three years imprisonment is a four-sided confiscation order. There it says that Cohen - in addition to his prison sentence - also has to repay $ 500,000.

In clause 3, Judge William Pauley makes sure that the money goes to the right-wing address: "US Attorney's Office for the District of New York South, Department of Money Laundering and Organized Crime."

This is not a spelling mistake. The case Cohen, file number 18 Cr. 602 (WHP), was overseen by the legendary Mafia Department of the New York Procuratorate. That tells you all about Cohen, whom they called Trump's Consigliere. And about his then boss, whose "dirty things" Cohen wants to have plastered - the US president.

US justice treats Donald Trump and his oracle like a criminal union, only without the murders. Patiently, the investigators dig themselves into the circle of power, from outside to inside, convict first small, then bigger and bigger gangsters, make them witnesses to the charges, and in the end, according to the plan, may catch the biggest gangster.

A total of 17 preliminary investigations revolve around Trump, it is about money laundering, corruption, fraud, tax evasion - all criminal offenses that mafiosi were often fatal.

More and more Americans are beginning to think that they are being ruled by a man who, for once to say the least, surrounded himself for decades with crooks, rogues and demi-monsters. That they somehow sensed this, if they did not know, but overlooked it. That they are all accomplices.

Which domino tilts next?

Trump's family, Trump's friends, Trump's company, everyone is entangled in the net. And almost everyone "cooperates", hardly the charge is delivered. Cohen, ex-security adviser Mike Flynn, ex-campaign boss Paul Manafort, ex-vice-election chief Rick Gates, ex-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos: Which domino tilts next?

From outside to inside, from bottom to top: insiders speak of the "Rico screenplay". "Rico" stands for Racketeer's Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US law from 1970 that made it easier to unravel complex crime gangs by treating all members equally hard. Just Unterlings, so that the chat - "flipping".

This tactic has been proven in years of fighting against the Mafia and its US outposts. So they grabbed about John Gotti, the boss of the New York Gambino family, who was delivered by his hangman Sammy Gravano to the blade. "Rat" is called one like Gravano in mafia slang. "Rat!", Trump now rages over Cohen.

Procedure according to the "Rico-script"

Incidentally, the prosecutor, who put Gotti behind bars, was Robert Mueller. As a mafia investigator and later as a longtime FBI boss, Mueller learned the "Rico script" inside out. No wonder that the procedures that he now triggers as a Russia Special Investigator follow the same script. "Mueller did it his damn life," a former FBI agent told Vanity Fair magazine. "He digs through the layers until he finds the truth."

Can that be a coincidence? Is this really a "witch hunt"? Are those who plead guilty innocent victims of a conspiracy?

Trump calls them either heroes or "rats". That depends on what he has to fear from their confessions.

Michael Cohen, who interacted with gangsters from Russia and Ukraine and knows Trump's most secret secrets, spent 70 hours in interrogation with Mueller as a key witness. So for Trump, he is a "rat", to whom he publicly wished the maximum sentence to the neck.

Trump's ex-campaign boss Paul Manafort, on the other hand, who faces imprisonment for life, is a "good person", as he seems to have said only hesitantly so far. And his ex-security advisor Mike Flynn called Trump "good luck in court" - before the judge Flynn condemned to sing for another three months about his illegal Russia contacts.

Hair-raising interventions in the judiciary

Trump's tweets are not just hair-raising interventions in the judiciary. They could be signals that no mercy is due to those who unpack - but to those who are silent, possibly a presidential pardon. This loyalty vow also applies in the Mafia: who sings, dies.

The New York Procuratorate does not mind that. Many of her investigators later became ministers of justice, federal judges, FBI directors. One who had successfully specialized in the mafia became mayor.

That was Rudy Giuliani. He is today, succeeding Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's private lawyer.