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Good morning. I'm James Holman from the Washington Post and this is the Daily

202 for Thursday July 26th. President Trump and the head of the EU agreed to

de-escalate the trade war. A group of House

Republicans files articles of impeachment for Rod Rosenstein and the

president has postponed his next meeting with Vladimir Putin until after the midterm

elections.

But first, the big idea.

Michael Cohen, the president's long-time attorney, once vowed that he'd take a bullet for his

boss. But in making public their recorded conversations, he might be the one pulling the trigger.

In the nearly four months since FBI agents raided his Manhattan properties as part of an investigation into bank fraud and other crimes,

Cohen has felt wounded and abandoned by Trump. He's waited for calls that never came,

or even just a signal of support publicly.

Cohen got frustrated when Trump started talking about him in the past tense.

Then last month he panicked when he thought the president no longer cared about his plight at all

and he became furious when Rudy Giuliani criticized him on TV.

In Cohen's gravest hour, as one associate describes it, Trump is quote, leaving him out in the wilderness.

The result? Open warfare. Cohen's actions appear to be driven more by his outrage over the

president's indifference and a feeling of betrayal than by a legal strategy to

help his own case. Tuesday's public release of the Trump-Coan audio came as a surprise to federal prosecutors who are investigating Cohen in New York.

Current and former law enforcement officials questioned why someone like Cohen, who is seen as angling for a plea deal,

...