Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Charge of grand larceny, a big stack of charges involving a large amount of money and potentially a large amount of jail time. The story they uncovered at the courthouse that day, for some reason, friedman had gotten this huge Criminal Liability he was facing winnowed down to almost nothing. All the prison time and felonies evaporated. Instead of being tried for evading 5 million in taxes, prosecutors let him plead guilty to one count of evaluating 50,000 worth of taxes. Not 5 million, 50,000. Instead of decades in potential prison time the deal he cut with prosecutors got him zero prison time. People do plea deals all the time they offer their testimony for prosecutors letting them off the hook and going easier on
them. This was like the mother of all plea deals. The amount he offered must have been very very valuable to the government given how sweet the deal was he got from them in return. That happened in late may.
immediate response. a source with knowledge tells the daily news shortly after the subpoena went out michael cohen personally contacted the tax department to talk. the source would not say what the response was from the tax department but typically in such cases where someone has a lawyer, investigators deal with their counsel and not directly with the person. in new york state, barbara underwood and the tax department are the ones that brought these devastating charges against gene friedman, the taxi king all these movement felony, put that pressure on him and flipped him. it appears that cooperation deal probably led to the charges michael cohen just pled to. boom. now the same dynamic duo, new york attorney general barbara underwood and tax department of new york state are investigating