Michael Cohen Apparently Made Interesting Pals in Jail

Former "fixer" Michael Cohen went on MSNBC Monday night and had serious things to say about President Trump's recent spate of pardons. But people appear to be more interested in Cohen's passing comment about two of his former fellow inmates—"Tony Meatballs" and "Big Minty." Yep, those names are correct, and the Hill notes that the resulting clip went viral on Twitter. Cohen mentioned them in the context of his push for prison reform and the ability of inmates to earn early release. "I made a promise to guys back at Otisville ... like my buddies Tony Meatballs and Big Minty, that I wasn't going to stop once I got out," he said in the interview. Which had a lot of people asking: Wait, what?

"Wasn't Tony Meatballs a character on The Simpsons?" tweeted Jeet Heer of the Nation. "Was this a dare? Did he lose a bet or something?" asked another observer. Sadly, no more context was presented on the pair. As for the serious part of the interview, Cohen suggested that Trump's pardons of people such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone could come back to haunt him, reports Business Insider. "This produces a very significant problem for Donald Trump in the fact that once you receive that pardon power, once you get that pardon, you're no longer able to invoke the Fifth Amendment—the right against self-incrimination—because you cannot be charged." That could make it easier for prosecutors going after Trump to get information from Flynn, Stone, and others, he said. (More Michael Cohen stories.)