2016 ELECTION/LEGAL/MICHAEL COHEN/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “About a month before Michael Cohen released his recording of a sensitive conversation he had with Donald Trump, the President’s longtime attorney and adviser was agonizing over the silent treatment he was getting from his former boss…Federal prosecutors were bearing down on him over his business dealings, some involving Trump, and Cohen was looking for a sign of reassurance from the President, a man he regarded more as family than as a boss…Over the next month, Cohen began sending up flares, signaling that he was considering cooperating with federal prosecutors and that his ultimate loyalty would be not to Trump, but to his ‘family and country.’ The rupture with his former boss was a startling shift for Cohen, who enjoyed nearly daily access to Trump and his entourage for more than a decade during which he served as Trump’s fixer, political adviser and fiercest public defender. Cohen’s friends and associates said that as he has fallen deeper into legal trouble this year, the New York lawyer still held onto hope that he would receive Trump’s support. He was ‘looking for a sign’ from the President or others around him that his longtime boss had his back, and became increasingly distraught as he realized help wasn’t coming.”
-Jeremy Diamond and MJ Lee, “Michael Cohen sent up flares, but Trump never came to help,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 26, 2018 11:21 am