On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s former lawyer provided Congress with sworn testimony (and corroborating documents) implicating the president in multiple crimes. But the Republican members of the House Oversight Committee refused to waste the American people’s precious time on the trivial question of whether the commander-in-chief is a criminal. Rather, they chose to focus on what really matters — whether Michael Cohen is now, or was ever, under contract to write a book.
This line of inquiry might have struck some viewers as odd, myopic, or like a painfully strained attempt to run interference for the president. But New York has found otherwise. In an exclusive scoop, we have confirmed that — contrary to Cohen’s sworn testimony — he currently has not one, but ten separate book deals. Here is quick rundown of everything the “Joyce Carol Oates of white-collar criminals” has been writing:
I Know Why the Caged Fixer Sings
Publisher: HarperCollins
Synopsis: A coming-of-age memoir about a 50-year-old boy looking for paternal love in all the wrong places.
If I Did It: Confessions of a Prague Visitor
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Synopsis: Everyone knows Michael Cohen never visited Prague. What this book presupposes is — maybe he did?
Donald Trump’s Kids Say the Darndest Things (About Black People) Publisher: Random House
Synopsis: Transcripts of recordings taken at Donald Trump Jr.’s 37th birthday party.
How to Make Friends With a Total Piece of Shit and Influence History
Publisher: Penguin
Synopsis: Six ways to make sociopaths like you. Twelve ways to secretly record them. Nine ways to get them to compensate you for that home-equity loan you took out to buy the silence of the porn star they watched shark documentaries with ten years ago — without arousing resentment.
The Corrections 2
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Synopsis: Ten years later, the Lambert family is still very white and unhappy, in this unauthorized sequel to Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 best seller.
The 7 Habits of Highly Sleazy Long Islanders
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Synopsis: A holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for becoming a more stereotypically seedy resident of Nassau County.
Everybody Poops Blood (Right?)
Publisher: Dial Books For Young Readers
Synopsis: A diet-pill-addicted real-estate developer makes a big bloody poop. An anxious constipated lawyer facing indictment makes a tiny bloody poop. But everybody bleeds from their anuses. Right? That’s like, normal, yeah?
The Winds of Winter (co-authored with George R.R. Martin)
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Synopsis: In the sixth installment of A Song of Ice and Fire, Victarion Greyjoy heads to Griffin’s Roost to see the young man who is calling himself Aegon, while Tyrion Lannister settles into his exciting new life in the taxi-medallion business.
Trump, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason
Publisher: Verso Books
Synopsis: In this incisively impenetrable Marxist discursion, Cohen explains that the Trump Organization represents the apotheosis of the post-Fordist model of accumulation, a firm that simultaneously embodies — and parodies — neoliberalism’s most intractable contradictions.
This Will Also Be a Film: Why I Sold My Story
Publisher: Macmillan
Synopsis: In this explosive tell-all book, Michael Cohen offers readers an insider’s account of the various lunches he had with publishers, agents, and Hollywood producers while trying to monetize his insider’s account of Donald Trump’s campaign.
