Under the circumstances, it’s not too surprising that the Republican National Committee is going after Michael Cohen with a vengeance today. After all, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer” is testifying before Congress — a dramatic display generating national television coverage — and implicating the president in criminal activity.
GOP members of the House Oversight Committee are doing everything possible to tear down Cohen’s credibility, so it stands to reason their national party would do the same.
Here, for example, is one of the messages the Republican National Committee published to Twitter this morning:
“Michael Cohen is a convicted felon who has consistently engaged in deceptive and misleading criminal behavior including tax evasion, lying to financial institutions, and lying to Congress.”
Every word of that, for what it’s worth, is completely true. It’s one of several items published by the RNC this morning — some of which were more accurate than others — targeting Trump’s former fixer across multiple media platforms.
There’s just one important detail the RNC keeps overlooking: up until fairly recently, Cohen used to enjoy a prominent leadership role with the Republican National Committee.
As regular readers may recall, in April 2017, the RNC issued a press release introducing the members of its finance team. Casino mogul Steve Wynn would serve as the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman, while Elliott Broidy and Michael Cohen were among a small handful of Republicans who would serve as national deputy finance chairmen.
Wynn was forced to resign from the RNC earlier this year following sexual misconduct allegations. (The RNC refused to return his money.)
Broidy, who’s at the center of multiple, ongoing controversies, also resigned in the wake of an unrelated sex scandal.
And then there’s Cohen — the “convicted felon who has consistently engaged in deceptive and misleading criminal behavior including tax evasion, lying to financial institutions, and lying to Congress” — who stepped down from RNC post just eight months ago.
When Republican National Committee officials turn their rhetoric guns on Cohen, the party is targeting one of their own.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."