Michael Cohen scorned

In the months before the election, when Mr. Trump reshuffled his campaign for a third time and named Steve Bannon as campaign chief, Mr. Cohen told associates he had expected to be tapped for the role, according to people familiar with the matter. He also told people at the time he expected to be named White House chief of staff, people familiar with the matter said.

[...]

Mr. Cohen has memorably said he would “take a bullet” for the president. But in a sign of Mr. Cohen’s state of mind, he has in recent months privately groused about being excluded from White House posts he believed he deserved, according to people familiar with his thinking. He has struggled to get Mr. Trump’s attention. And two new business engagements he started during that time that could have profited from his Washington connections have instead languished.

  WSJ

Translation: Michael Cohen was either led to believe or simply miscalculated his value to Trump, but the point is that he believed he was going to Washington to funnel money into his own personal businesses. What would make him think that? I'd say it's because he was fully aware that was the plan for the Trump cabal, and he mistakenly thought he was part of it.

Mr. Trump decided that bringing Mr. Cohen inside the White House carried too many risks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Mr. Trump privately has described Mr. Cohen as a “bull in a china shop,” who when brought in to fix a problem sometimes breaks more china, according to a person close to the president.

Look who's talking. The guy who goes on TV and announces he fired the head of the FBI to try to stop an investigation. The guy who calls up Fox News when his fixer is in a shitload of trouble and admits said fixer made a deal for him with a prostitute.

Mr. Cohen, who as a teenager frequented Brooklyn’s ethnic Russian neighborhoods and married into a Ukrainian family, cultivated a rough-and-tumble, streetwise image.

Gregory Ehrlich invited Mr. Cohen to his wedding and was amused to hear he bragged to another guest that he belonged to the Russian mob. Mr. Ehrlich, who is now estranged from Mr. Cohen, said he doesn’t believe his former friend had any such ties.

That's gonna look really good in the trial, and for Mueller's purposes. And it's not gonna matter whaether Mr. Ehrlich believes it.

Mr. Cohen said he believed he might become Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, which he said would keep their communications confidential. “My sole purpose is to protect him and the family from anyone and anything,” he said in the January interview.

That sounds mightly like a confirmation that he wasn't Trump's attorney, so...no attorney-client privilege.  ("The family.")

Mr. Trump didn’t always demonstrate respect for his employee. After saying he’d attend Mr. Cohen’s son’s bar mitzvah in 2012, Mr. Trump was late, and the blessings were delayed, according to an attendee.

After Mr. Trump arrived, he gave a speech, telling guests he hadn’t planned to come, but he relented after Mr. Cohen had repeatedly called him, his secretary and his children begging him to appear, the attendee said. The guests laughed because “everyone knew it was very realistic-sounding,” the attendee added.

Roger Stone was right about Trump treating Cohen like dirt. Why Cohen had so little respect for himself is the question now.

On Jan. 5, 2017, two weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Cohen, camped in his cluttered office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, a few doors away from the president-elect, still didn’t know what his future role would be.

Mr. Cohen juggled two phones with the backdrop of mixed martial-arts paraphernalia in his office. Mr. Trump “doesn’t operate with timelines,” Mr. Cohen explained to a reporter. Then he corrected himself: “I am not a timeline item,” he said. “He knows that an hour before he leaves, if he calls me and says, ‘I need you in D.C.,’ I’ll be there.”

About a week later, Mr. Cohen had grown more frustrated. He still hadn’t solidified his role. “I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, whether I need to stay here for a while or go to D.C.,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s crazy we’re talking about this three, four days before which everybody starts heading down and I have no idea.”

[...]

During the inaugural festivities, Mr. Cohen and his guests weren’t given priority access, the person said, noting that the hurt was visible on Mr. Cohen’s face: “He was always just at the edges.”

What a sad sack. The last to know; can't take a hint. Too chicken to ask. I'm beginning to think maybe it's true that he really did take out a loan on his house to pay off Stormy Daniels.

But, maybe it's Cohen's turn now.

Privately, Mr. Cohen [complained] to associates, both about being left in New York and about Mr. Trump’s then-failure to repay him for the $130,000 he had drawn off his home-equity line to pay Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter say.

Mr. Cohen even was contemplating “defecting” from Mr. Trump, according to a person familiar with these conversations. Mr. Cohen stopped complaining about Mr. Trump not repaying him around mid-2017, according to another person familiar with the situation. Mr. Cohen has said he wasn’t repaid by the Trump Organization or Mr. Trump’s campaign, but has declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Trump himself repaid him.

In the weeks since the FBI raid, Mr. Cohen has been out on the town, smoking cigars with friends and frequenting tony restaurants such as Nobu in midtown, in what some who know him interpret as an attempt to show he isn’t frightened of what the investigation will bring.

Or maybe he's celebrating having made a deal with the investigators, keeping himself out of prison.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.