New reporting from Rolling Stone PROVES Tom Arnold lied about his meeting with Michael Cohen

Greg P. | 8:31 PM on August 12, 2018

Remember this photo that Tom Arnold posted with Michael Cohen?

I love New York pic.twitter.com/J7AJg1HiHo

— Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) June 22, 2018

We asked at the time if Vice was going to cancel his show after questions about Arnold’s truthfulness in an interview with NBC News surfaced shortly after he posted it:

Dear @Vice: Are you going to cancel Tom Arnold's show after he lied about Michael Cohen? What else is he lying about? https://t.co/lCoBEpgJO3

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 22, 2018

Well, now we know the entire story, via Rolling Stone reporter Brian Hiatt, who was actually with Arnold at the time and took the photo. Hiatt writes that Arnold was lying in his CNN and MSNBC interviews:

Within seconds, Arnold tweets the picture. Cohen will, in the following weeks, make it clear he’s turned on Trump, but posing with Arnold — who once received a legal warning from Cohen’s associate Keith Davidson — is an early, blatant message. Arnold realizes it right away, as do some savvy reporters. He ends up on CNN and MSNBC, in segments that have friends calling his wife to ask if he’s OK. He goofs around, staying silent for an agonizing 25 seconds of live television when CNN’s Poppy Harlow asks him if Cohen has flipped. (Someone posts it on YouTube as “The worst interview, ever!”) Arnold also exaggerates his association with Cohen, spinning that brief encounter into a plan to “spend the weekend with Michael Cohen.” It’s the first time I catch him in a lie.

Aghast, I ask Arnold if he’s somehow had more contact with Cohen since the evening we met. He tells me they’ve been texting, and I ask to see the texts. To his credit, Arnold shares them, and what they reveal manages to make me feel bad for Cohen: Pretty much every text I see consists of the lawyer begging Arnold to stop lying about him for the sake of his family. Arnold blames the whole thing on “trolling Trump” and says he’s always honest with me.

Arnold’s tactics are, to say the least, unjournalistic: He’s willing to say things of dubious accuracy in the interests of bull-goring. He wants to move the story forward, to win, whatever it takes. In that moment, he reminds me of someone.