Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Business Partner of President's Lawyer Pleads Guilty on Tax Charges
For years, Evgeny "Gene" Friedman was the business partner of Michael Cohen, one of the president's lawyers. Mr. Friedman and Mr. Cohen owned taxi medallions, which allowed them to operate yellow cabs in New York City, a highly valuable license. Thanks to Uber, Lyft and others, the value of such a medallion fell from $1.3 million in 2014 to less than $200,000 today. In trying to stay solvent, Mr. Friedman neglected to pay more than $5 million in taxes. Yesterday, he took a guilty plea on not paying $50,000 and will serve five years' probation. He won't be going to jail for years because he has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The pressure on Mr. Cohen has increased dramatically.
Mr. Cohen got into the taxi business back in the 1990s, long before he was on Mr. Trump's radar. His father-in-law, Fina Shusterman, drove a cab, and invested in medallions, owning nine at one point. Mr. Shusterman introduced him to Symon Garber, and he and Mr. Cohen went heavily into medallions. The New York Times reported, "Mr. Cohen borrowed from a half-dozen banks and credit unions to buy taxi medallions. Then he used the medallions as collateral to borrow more money to buy more medallions, former colleagues said. He quickly amassed 30 medallions, each then worth about $250,000, but racked up millions in debt. Together, the two men managed 260 cabs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some for other owners. Drivers paid them $100 a shift. Millions of dollars in cash flowed in."
As the value of the medallions rose, Mr. Cohen used them as collateral to buy real estate, including properties from Mr. Trump. At some point, Messrs. Cohen and Garber broke up the business, and Mr. Cohen found Mr. Friedman, who operated the largest fleet of taxis in New York. He called himself the taxi king, and he and Mr. Cohen began working together.
At the end of April, Bloomberg reported, "Michael Cohen, already under pressure from a federal criminal investigation into his business and financial dealings, has been hit this month with more than $185,000 in new state warrants for unpaid taxes on his taxicab companies.
"Added to his previous tab, that brings the total to $282,000 owed to New York state by 16 taxi medallion-holding companies owned by Cohen or members of his family, including Mad Dog Cab Corp., Smoochie Cab Corp., Golden Child Cab Corp. and N.Y. Futon Taxi Corp. A lawyer for Cohen declined to comment."
Those are the known facts. Based on these, it is pretty easy to tell where this is going. Mr. Cohen, in addition to everything else, has a tax problem with New York State. A presidential pardon won't take care of that; only the Governor of New York could pardon any related crime.
Mr, Friedman is cooperating with the government in exchange for a very lenient sentence. The odds on him knowing the locations of the holes beyond these tax issues in Mr. Cohen's finances are pretty good. If Mr. Cohen has so much as missed a decimal point, Mr. Friedman probably can help the authorities find it. And if there is a serious crime lurking there, Mr. Friedman will sing like a bird about it.
Mr. Cohen is in deep trouble, and he just got in a whole lot deeper. He has infamously said that he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump. Maybe, he still would. But no one is shooting at him. Instead, they are threatening him with decades in a federal prison. There is nothing dramatic nor heroic about that. It's just waste of a life.
Mr. Cohen is looking at more and more jail time, and at some point, the authorities are going to make him an offer he can't refuse. He has been likened to Tom Hayden, the family lawyer, in the Godfather. He isn't. He's more like Fredo Corleone, the ne'er do well son who eventually sells out the family because he wanted his own place in the sun.
© Copyright 2018 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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