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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 13:41 - Apr 10 by Humpty
According to Bannon the Stormy deal is one of a hundred of similar deals Trump has made.
I dare say he’s right, though the whole tycoon/politician tryst with a floozy scenario is hardly a new one, Hump. What I think sets Trump apart and is behind the hush money is the nature of the revolting sexual practices he apparently favours.
I have to say as well having read quite a few of the articles in the ‘serious’ papers, I’m finding this recently discovered prurience of the chattering classes to be as comical as it is selective.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:10 - Apr 10 with 4283 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 13:52 - Apr 10 by Lohengrin
I dare say he’s right, though the whole tycoon/politician tryst with a floozy scenario is hardly a new one, Hump. What I think sets Trump apart and is behind the hush money is the nature of the revolting sexual practices he apparently favours.
I have to say as well having read quite a few of the articles in the ‘serious’ papers, I’m finding this recently discovered prurience of the chattering classes to be as comical as it is selective.
It's not recently discovered. This country has never accepted much scandal from our politicians. The scandals that have happened over the years have largely been before everyone knew about such things. The ones these days get our politicians kicked out pretty sharpish.
I recently heard a rather lovely story about my great grandmother and her sister. Both worked in the steel mill so were tough women (this would have been the 1900s / 1910s). My great grandmother's sister in particular was quite political and had a picture of David Lloyd George above her fireplace. When stories emerged later on about him being a womaniser, she turned the picture round to face the wall. Never took it down, never turned it back round.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:25 - Apr 10 with 4271 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:10 - Apr 10 by londonlisa2001
It's not recently discovered. This country has never accepted much scandal from our politicians. The scandals that have happened over the years have largely been before everyone knew about such things. The ones these days get our politicians kicked out pretty sharpish.
I recently heard a rather lovely story about my great grandmother and her sister. Both worked in the steel mill so were tough women (this would have been the 1900s / 1910s). My great grandmother's sister in particular was quite political and had a picture of David Lloyd George above her fireplace. When stories emerged later on about him being a womaniser, she turned the picture round to face the wall. Never took it down, never turned it back round.
That gave me a smile, thank you.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:39 - Apr 10 with 4253 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 13:43 - Apr 10 by Shaky
Inside the West Wing with Trump enraged By Mike Allen
Axios, 10 April 2018
Sources close to the president say that a political dispute with special counsel Robert Mueller has turned visceral and personal after the feds' raid on the New York offices of Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer and fixer.
What we're hearing: One of the sources said: "Mueller's investigation has been drip, drip. This was a giant leap forward ... a personal hit. ... They were moving in inches. Today, they moved a mile."
* Until now, when storms hit, Trump could turn to Hope Hicks to explain things to him, suggest wording, simmer him down. With her departure from the White House, we saw the president working out his fury in real time. * The source continued: "This is the first crisis post-Hope Hicks. ... This was different: I've never seen him like this before. ... This is the president you're going to see more of from here on out: unvarnished, untethered." * Another source close to Trump said: "He takes the Russia stuff as a political hit job. This was a personal affront. This was the red line" of intrusion into personal financial matters.
The president – arms crossed defiantly – held a stunning on-camera venting session during an appearance with his senior military leadership where a potential strike on Syria took second billing to Michael Cohen ("With all of that being said, we are here to discuss Syria tonight").
* The WashPost cites three sources as saying Cohen "is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations." * A statement from Cohen's lawyer, Stephen Ryan, said: "The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients."
During the 10-minute rant, Trump ... * ... used "disgrace" seven times and "disgraceful" twice. * ... fumed about an action by agents of the government he heads: "I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys – a good man. ... It's a total witch hunt." * ...accused those agents of his government of "an attack on our country, in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for." * ... said, repeating back a question: "Why don't I just fire Mueller? ... Well, I think it's a disgrace what's going on. We'll see what happens. But I think it's really a sad situation when you look at what happened. And many people have said, 'You should fire him." * ... referred to the investigation as "the most conflicted group of people I've ever seen. The Attorney General made a terrible mistake ... when he recused himself. ... [W]e would have ... put a different Attorney General in." * ... quadrupled down on firing FBI Director James Comey: "One of the things they said: 'I fired Comey.' Well, I turned out to do the right thing, because if you look at all of the things that he's done and the lies, and you look at what's gone on at the FBI with the insurance policy and all of the things that happened – turned out I did the right thing."
Be smart: Close aides are recommending against firing Mueller. But that means little these days.
The big, surreal picture: Take a minute to think about the history unfolding before our eyes. You have the president’s top lawyer getting raided by the FBI, prompting the president to warn of an epic attack on government and signaling he might try to can the special counsel investigating him.
* This is on the eve of the arguably most powerful and well known CEO of our generation getting grilled by Congress, in part because the Russians used his platform to try to elect the man at the center of it all. * History books will be written about this – and you were there to see it all unfold.
>> Inside the West Wing with Trump enraged By Mike Allen Axios, 10 April 2018 >> * This is on the eve of the arguably most powerful and well known CEO of our generation getting grilled by Congress, in part because the Russians used his platform to try to elect the man at the center of it all.
Cambridge Analytica worked for Trump campaign not 'Russians'.
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:52 - Apr 10 by sotonswan
>> Inside the West Wing with Trump enraged By Mike Allen Axios, 10 April 2018 >> * This is on the eve of the arguably most powerful and well known CEO of our generation getting grilled by Congress, in part because the Russians used his platform to try to elect the man at the center of it all.
Cambridge Analytica worked for Trump campaign not 'Russians'.
Sean Parker, Chamath Palihapitiya - Facebook is 'Ripping Apart Society'
I don't know anyone who's had one of these Facebook letters. I can only assume some people don't spend endless hours doing those stupid questionnaires, quizzes and personality tests that the feed is littered with.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 16:58 - Apr 10 with 4205 views
Why the F.B.I. Raid Is Perilous for Michael Cohen – and Trump By Ken White
NYT, April 10, 2018
After a year of almost weekly revelations about Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, even indictments and guilty pleas of campaign officials have grown familiar. It’s not that the special counsel, Mr. Mueller, is crying wolf; it’s that we’ve gotten used to real wolves. Only truly startling developments engage a lot of us.
The F.B.I. search of the office, home and hotel room of Mr. Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen is such a development. It’s historic, even in the lofty context of a special counsel investigation of the president.
This is what we know, in part from Mr. Cohen’s attorney: The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, acting on a referral from Mr. Mueller, sought and obtained search warrants for Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room, seeking evidence related at least in part to his payment of $130,000 in hush money to the adult actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by her stage name, Stormy Daniels. There are reports that the warrant sought evidence of bank fraud and campaign finance violations, which is consistent with an investigation into allegations that the Daniels payment was illegally sourced or disguised. (For example, routing a payment through a shell company to hide the fact that the money came from the Trump campaign – if that is what happened – would probably violate federal money-laundering laws.)
What does this tell us? First, it reflects that numerous officials – not just Mr. Mueller – concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room contained evidence of a federal crime. A search warrant for a lawyer’s office implicates the attorney-client privilege and core constitutional rights, so the Department of Justice requires unusual levels of approval to seek one.
Prosecutors must seek the approval of the United States attorney of the district – in this case Geoffrey Berman, the interim United States attorney appointed by President Trump.Prosecutors must also consult with the criminal division of the Justice Department in Washington. Finally, prosecutors must convince a United States magistrate judge that there’s probable cause to support the search. Faced with a warrant application destined for immediate worldwide publicity, the judge surely took unusual pains to examine it. This search was not the result of Mr. Mueller or his staff “going rogue.”
Second, the search demonstrates that federal prosecutors and supervisors in the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to preserve and turn over documents voluntarily. The same regulations that require prosecutors to seek high-level approval for a warrant to search a law office also instruct them to use the least intrusive means to obtain evidence from a lawyer, and to consider requesting voluntary cooperation or serving a subpoena. Mr. Cohen’s lawyer has loudly protested that he had been cooperating. This search warrant means that prosecutors – including the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the criminal division at the Justice Department – believed that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to respond fully to a subpoena or might destroy documents.
Third, the search suggests that prosecutors most likely believe that Mr. Cohen’s clients used his legal services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud. Attorney-client communications are privileged, which is why it’s so unusual and difficult for prosecutors to get approval to search a law office. Justice Department regulations require federal prosecutors to set up a system to have a separate group – a so-called dirty team – review the files and separate out attorney-client communications so that the investigators and prosecutors won’t see anything protected by the privilege.
But if a client is using a lawyer’s services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud, there is no privilege. The very aggressive search of Mr. Cohen’s office for attorney-client files suggests that the prosecutors believe they can convince a judge that communications between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen fall under the crime-fraud exception. If you think they can’t pull that off, think again – they’ve already done it once: Mr. Mueller persuaded a judge to apply the exception to compel testimony from Paul Manafort’s lawyer, arguing successfully that he engaged her services in order to commit fraud.
Finally, it’s significant that Mr. Mueller sent this matter to the federal attorney’s office in New York for it to pursue. Mr. Mueller is empowered to investigate both alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and any matters “that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” Mr. Mueller’s referral of the Stormy Daniels matter to New York suggests he believes it is outside that scope of his investigation. Perhaps it arose from press coverage of Ms. Daniels’s incendiary claims and from the bumbling and inconsistent public responses of Mr. Cohen and President Trump. In other words, this could be an own goal by the president and Mr. Cohen.
A federal criminal defense lawyer’s favorite advice, delivered with varying degrees of diplomacy and accompanying obscenities, is “shut up.” Mr. Cohen would not be the first person to ignore such advice, nor the first person to talk himself into trouble. Many of the people Mr. Mueller has snared to date have fallen into that category, finding themselves charged for lying to the investigative team.
But consider this: The Stormy Daniels payout may be outside the scope of the Russia investigation, but it’s possible that Mr. Cohen’s records are full of materials that are squarely within that scope. And the law is clear: If investigators executing a lawful warrant seize evidence of additional crimes, they may use that evidence. Thus Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, with their catastrophically clumsy handling of the Daniels affair, may have handed Mr. Mueller devastating evidence.
It’s easy to conclude that after so many bombshells, this is just another overfrantic news cycle. It’s not. It’s highly dangerous, and not just for Mr. Cohen. It’s perilous for the president, whose personal lawyer now may face a choice between going down fighting alone or saving his own skin by giving the wolves what they want.
Ken White is a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor at Brown White & Osborn LLP in Los Angeles.
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 11:36 - Apr 10 by londonlisa2001
What I finding hard to understand with this whole Stormy Daniels situation is why Trump is trying so hard to silence her. His base don't remotely care about him having an affair with a prostitute - not even slightly (their religion is always nothing if not fluid and opportunistic, largely reserved for abortion and gay bashing).
So why make so much effort to stop her speaking?
Because its an election year. While Trump is not up for re-election, two-thirds of the house and senate are. While he has a large base that would support him if he declared himself Dictator for life, that base is not as likely to show up and vote in November since he's not on the ballot. Historically, American Congressional elections are won by the party that has more reason to show up and vote. Democrats have already won two special elections for departing senators in the last few months in Trump held states. If that trend continues, the Republican Party could lose control of congress and Trump will go from finding it difficult to enact his policies to darn near impossible.
He has to keep himself on a straight line right now because every time he opens his big mouth it gives a group of Americans who historically never vote more of a reason to show up on Election Day.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 19:42 - Apr 10 with 4093 views
FBI Raid on Michael Cohen Is the Most Dangerous Day of Donald Trump’s Life; The president’s low-rent Ray Donovan can bully porn stars, but not Robert Mueller. The shtick is up. By Rick Wilson
Daily Beast. 04.10.18
". . . Cohen, though, should be understood as an almost perfect metaphor for the Trump era, the Trump White House, and everything else orbiting this president like the hot chunks of waste spinning around the central oscillator at a sewage-treatment plant. He truly brings it all: the shoddy, hair-trigger temperament, the indifferent education and understanding of the world outside of dalliance-cleanup duty and real-estate branding deals, the malfeasance, the petty corruption, general shitheel behavior, the impulsivity, the tantrum-as-negotiation style, and the overall sketchiness of the Trump administration."
If I were going to pay some hooker to keep her mouth shut I'd use MY OWN money, not campaign funds. So it's another fishing trip. And there will be more. Not exciting at all.
If you want exciting......the award for most creative plot twist goes to Grody Observant for his Trojan Horse theory.
Expecting this all to fizzle out though. Like it always does.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 09:30 - Apr 11 with 3969 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 23:38 - Apr 10 by sotonswan
If I were going to pay some hooker to keep her mouth shut I'd use MY OWN money, not campaign funds. So it's another fishing trip. And there will be more. Not exciting at all.
If you want exciting......the award for most creative plot twist goes to Grody Observant for his Trojan Horse theory.
Expecting this all to fizzle out though. Like it always does.
Mike Cernovich is insane.
And a faker of smears against Democrats like the pizza-gate nonsense and a less well publicised attempted hatchet job against Chuck Schumer exposed almost before it got off the ground, to name but two examples.
I expect Trump to be out of office by the end of the year, one way or another.
And that the current crowd of #MAGA boosters like the idiot liar Cernovich will crawl back into some hole in the ground never to be seen again. It will take another +40 years before the US is ready for similar bout of collective madness, by the time the fallout from the current crisis has cleared.
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 23:38 - Apr 10 by sotonswan
If I were going to pay some hooker to keep her mouth shut I'd use MY OWN money, not campaign funds. So it's another fishing trip. And there will be more. Not exciting at all.
If you want exciting......the award for most creative plot twist goes to Grody Observant for his Trojan Horse theory.
Expecting this all to fizzle out though. Like it always does.
You think this is going to fizzle out? What events over the last 18 months have given you that impression?
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 10:54 - Apr 11 with 3936 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 23:38 - Apr 10 by sotonswan
If I were going to pay some hooker to keep her mouth shut I'd use MY OWN money, not campaign funds. So it's another fishing trip. And there will be more. Not exciting at all.
If you want exciting......the award for most creative plot twist goes to Grody Observant for his Trojan Horse theory.
Expecting this all to fizzle out though. Like it always does.
I don’t think that’s the allegation.
As I understand it, the “hush money” should have been declared as campaign funds because it was paid in connection with the campaign - ie to keep the campaign on the rails, as much as the trump campaign ever was on the rails. Therefore, the breach of the campaign financing laws is that the hush money obviously wasn’t declared.
I agree this is not the end. Or the beginning of the end. But it’s very entertaining.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 14:17 - Apr 11 with 3901 views
Things are heating up nicely on the US political front.
Ultra Trump lapdog and chariman of the House intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, is now calling for the impeachment and removal of the new FBI director.
This a man who was hand picked by Trump to lead the FBI after he sacked the former guy Comey, and was previously the personal lawyer for Chris Christie, a very important political ally and key Trump campaign team member!
As the article notes, to get impeachment proceedings underway, Nunes needs the speaker of the House on side, but he has just announced to friends his intention to resign that post (second in line for the presidency according the US constitution) at the elections later this year. He's had enough!
Donald wants a war.. Sending civilians in due to the financial constraints of cling on peasantry.
Fighting a war for the peasant half bloods.. f*ck that.. a military ceasefire should be issued. America and Russia can fight this one alone. I want no part of this shenanigans.
That should be the view in the UK Gov't.. pull them out. This is not our fight.
Trump Thought He’d Picked His Perfect U.S. Attorney in Geoffrey Berman. He Was Very Wrong.; For the Michael Cohen raid, Rosenstein, filling in for Sessions, gave the go-ahead to Khuzami, filling in for Berman. All four are Republicans.
By KYLE CHENEY
Daily Beast, 04.11.18 5:08 AM ET
President Trump must have figured Geoffrey Berman would make the perfect prosecutor.
Like Trump, Berman is the son of a real estate developer.
Like Trump, Berman graduated from Wharton School.
Like Trump, Berman once owned a New Jersey sports franchise, in his case a minor league hockey team in Trenton, the Titans.
Berman was a Republican and a managing shareholder at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig, home to Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s blindest supporters.
Berman had even donated $5,400 to Trump’s campaign in 2016.
So, after interviewing him in person, Trump decided Berman was just the one to become the new interim United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
That being the venue that covers Trump Tower and the rest of Manhattan, so the one venue other than Washington, D.C. where Trump was most likely to face legal jeopardy.
And the Trumpian wisdom of the nod seemed affirmed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s characterization of it.“Deeply disturbing considering the conflicts of interest inherent by his potential jurisdiction on matters that could affect the president personally,” she said the Berman appointment.
But what did this seemingly perfect prosecutor do when the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office got a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller concerning Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen?Did Berman wink?
Did he stall?
Did he go on the attack in the way of Trump’s mentor, the deceased, but never departed Roy Cohn?
No, this guy Berman immediately went and recused himself like some Yankee version of Attorney General Jeff Session.How was Trump supposed to know that Berman has actual principles?
In retrospect, there were hints of integrity early on, when a young Berman joined the Iran-Contra investigation. He was part of the three-prosecutor team that secured the probe's sole conviction, sending Thomas Clines of the CIA to prison.
And the actual differences between the two real estate scions might have been obvious to anyone who followed the hockey team that Berman founded and then managed during a brief time when he joined his father in the family's real estate development business. Berman’s Trenton Titans were a big success and he sold the team at a big profit. Trump’s New Jersey Generals lost $22 million and took down a fledgling football league with it.
Now Trump seems poised to take down himself, or at least his lawyer.
And with the recusal by Berman the developer’s son, the referral from Mueller is being handled by the deputy U.S. Attorney, Robert Khuzami. He is the son of two professional ballroom dancers.
That’s right, Mr. President, his dad and mom are ballroom dancers!
Deputy U.S. Attorney Khuzami is a Republican and even spoke at the 2004 Republican convention in support of George W. Bush.
But that will only make it harder for Trump to say he is the victim of Democrats.
And Khuzami is an expert at financial crimes, having ordered the arrest of 120 people for securities fraud in a single day during his earlier time as a Manhattan federal prosecutor. He subsequently served as head of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Khuzami was also a lead prosecutor in the biggest terrorism case to date, involving the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman. The Sheik and his codefendants were found guilty of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, as well plotting to bomb simultaneously the New York FBI headquarters, the United Nations and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels.
Khatami’s work on the case earned him the Attorney General's Exceptional Service Award for "extraordinary courage and voluntary risk of life in performing an act resulting in direct benefits to the Department of Justice or the nation.
”The Blind Sheik’s attorney was Lynne Stewart, who was suspected of relaying messages to and from her client that enabled him to continue running his terror organization from prison. FBI agents who worked the case remember the hand-wringing within the Justice Department when they sought to secure a search warrant for Stewart’s office.
The lawyers of the Department of Justice were hugely reluctant to authorize the search the sanctum of a fellow lawyer, even one who was facilitating terrorism. The agents had to establish highly probable cause and they had to detail exactly what they expected to find in the office. Even then, some in Justice were hesitant.
But the Justice Department and then a federal judge finally signed off. The agents raided Stewart’s office. She was convicted and sentenced to a decade in prison, but granted compassionate release after four years. She died of cancer in 2017.
By then, Khuzami had become a partner in a law firm, earning as much as $11 million in a year. He nevertheless returned to public service to become Berman's deputy in January.
Berman's recusal made him the one in charge as the U.S. Attorney’s office moved to secure a search warrant for another well-known New York lawyer.
If securing a warrant for a lawyer aiding a terror leader who bombed the World Trade Center was tough, imagine how difficult it must have been to secure one for the lawyer of a sitting president in a case involving alleged hush money over consensual sex with a porn star and a playmate.
With regard to all such searches, the U.S. Attorneys' Manual says: “There are occasions when effective law enforcement may require the issuance of a search warrant for the premises of an attorney who is a subject of an investigation, and who also is or may be engaged in the practice of law on behalf of clients. Because of the potential effects of this type of search on legitimate attorney-client relationships and because of the possibility that, during such a search, the government may encounter material protected by a legitimate claim of privilege, it is important that close control be exercised over this type of search.”
Before taking the application to a judge, prosecutors must submit to their higher-ups a form “containing relevant information about the proposed search along with a draft copy of the proposed search warrant, affidavit in support thereof, and any special instructions to the searching agents regarding search procedures and procedures to be followed to ensure that the prosecution team is not ‘tainted’ by any privileged material inadvertently seized during the search.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, filling in for the recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is said to have given the final go ahead to Deputy U.S. Attorney Khuzami, filling in for the recused Berman. All four are Republicans.
The prosecutors and agents then had to convince a judge, who surely wanted the most probable of probable cause and a precise description of what was being sought.
At 7 a.m. Monday, FBI agents searched Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room that he had been using.The very fact that the Department of Justice had approved the warrant and a judge had then signed it suggests that Cohen is in considerable trouble.
“There’s got to be something to it,” an agent who worked the Stewart case said of the Cohen case.
On hearing of the search in a jurisdiction where he had appointed the seemingly perfect prosecutor, Trump declared it “an attack on our country… (and) what we all stand for.”
Trump subsequently tweeted, “Attorney—client privilege is dead!” and “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT!”
In fact, the agents at each search location were accompanied by a “privilege team” of colleagues not involved in the investigation, but charged with preventing any intrusions into protected materials beyond the very specific parameters of the search. The case agents cannot even glance at a document or a computer file or phone data until the privilege team has given the okay.
“While every effort should be made to avoid viewing privileged material, the search may require limited review of arguably privileged material to ascertain whether the material is covered by the warrant,” the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual says, “Therefore, to protect the attorney-client privilege and to ensure that the investigation is not compromised by exposure to privileged material relating to the investigation or to defense strategy, a ‘privilege team’ should be designated, consisting of agents and lawyers not involved in the underlying investigation.”
The manual goes on, “Instructions should be given and thoroughly discussed with the privilege team prior to the search. The instructions should set forth procedures designed to minimize the intrusion into privileged material, and should ensure that the privilege team does not disclose any information to the investigation/prosecution team unless and until so instructed by the attorney in charge of the privilege team. Privilege team lawyers should be available either on or off-site, to advise the agents during the course of the search, but should not participate in the search itself.”
Had the folks in Salem followed rules such as the manual details for searches and all other aspects of prosecution, the hunt would have been for naught. Not a single witch would have even been charged.
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 10:02 - Apr 11 by acejack3065
You think this is going to fizzle out? What events over the last 18 months have given you that impression?
>> acejack3065 >> You think this is going to fizzle out? What events over the last 18 months have given you that impression?
(Sorry the correct quoting mechanism is opaque to me here.)
Because the Mueller investigation has not found any evidence of collusion with 'Russia' whatsoever, even though the Trump campaign was being phone tapped via FISA warrant for 6 months before he became president.
The Mueller big catches so far -
Mike Flynn lied about having a phone conversation with the Russia ambassador (after Trump had won the election) regarding Obama's sanctions and something he would have had direct influence over when Trump was inaugurated. Stupid to lie, but not handing over state secrets - just smoothing out policy a month before the presidency handover.
Paul Manafort - tax evasion charges relating to a period way before he joined the Trump campaign. - working as an unregistered agent for Ukranian interests (again way before Trump campaign), when he was doing so along with Sen. John McCain and Podesta Group. http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/27/podesta-group-subpoenaed-in-russia-probe/
Wholly unimpressive. Why would this latest fishing trip be any more productive? Mueller will move on to the next, and the next.
The zeal with which Mueller is investigating the tax affairs and non-disclosure agreements of peripheral characters to Donald Trump is quite starkly in contrast with the total lack of effort to investigate Hilary Clinton's mail server (the FBI never looked at it at all) where National Security was at stake.
When was the last time a sitting president had a full time prosecutor looking for any reason to impeach? And it has moved on to *any* now. Not just Russian collusion.
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 18:30 - Apr 11 with 3793 views
For those who are truly baffled by Donald Trump's behaviour if you are only watching mainstream media, here is a speech by Jerome Corsi (yesterday I believe.) Remember, Donald Trump didn't have to be President. The claim he was recruitrd by the military appears around the 6 minute mark.
CORSI EXPOSES TRUTH | TRUMP RECRUITED BY MILITARY!!!
It's high stakes. The venom aimed at him starts to make sense now. It will get a LOT worse than this. So buckle up.
And here's some more
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Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 19:35 - Apr 11 with 3768 views
Breaking News: FBI Raid Trump's Lawyer on 13:45 - Apr 10 by londonlisa2001
Well one's doing it for a film and one in 'real life'.
Both get shagged for money so blokes can get their rocks off. Not that there’s anything wrong with that as long as all parties are consenting, happy with the situation and aren’t coerced or pressurised into it. But it’s prostitution whichever way you look at it.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Raid on Trump’s Lawyer Sought Records on ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape By MAGGIE HABERMAN, MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
NYT, APRIL 11, 2018
The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, according to three people who have been briefed on the contents of a federal search warrant.
The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
It is not clear what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played regarding the tape, which was made public a month before the election. But the fact that the agents were seeking documents related to the tape reveals a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen that is being led by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
The disclosure comes a day after it was revealed that the authorities also sought documents from Mr. Cohen related to payments made to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump, Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford, as well as information on the role of the publisher of The National Enquirer in silencing the women.
The new details from the warrant reveal that prosecutors are keenly interested in Mr. Cohen’s unofficial role in the Trump campaign. And they help explain why Mr. Trump was furious about the raid. People close to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen regard the warrant as an attempt by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to pry into Mr. Trump’s personal life – using other prosecutors as his proxy.
Mr. Mueller’s spokesman declined to comment.
Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, referred to his earlier description of the raid as “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” He has described it as an overreach by prosecutors into the privileged communications between Mr. Cohen and his client, Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cohen served as part fixer, part attack dog for Mr. Trump. He has acknowledged paying $130,000 to Ms. Clifford, a pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, who said she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. She signed a nondisclosure agreement, promising not to discuss the matter. Agents also sought documents related to deals with other women.
Federal prosecutors are investigating Mr. Cohen for possible bank fraud, but they are also scrutinizing whether these efforts amounted to improper campaign donations to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump, who had been planning to make a decision this week about whether to sit down with the special counsel for an interview, has taken a more adversarial tone toward Mr. Mueller since the warrant was executed on Monday. Although he had said for months that he wanted to be questioned by Mr. Mueller, his stance has changed since Monday, and the prospect of him willingly being questioned is far less likely, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The National Enquirer, a Trump Rumor, and Another Secret Payment to Buy Silence; How the media organization protected the Presidential candidate early in his campaign.
By Ronan Farrow
New Yorker, 12 April 2018
Late in 2015, a former Trump Tower doorman named Dino Sajudin met with a reporter from American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. A few weeks earlier, Sajudin had signed a contract with A.M.I., agreeing to become a source and to accept thirty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to information he had been told: that Donald Trump, who had launched his Presidential campaign five months earlier, may have fathered a child with a former employee in the late nineteen-eighties. Sajudin declined to comment for this story. However, six current and former A.M.I. employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared legal retaliation by the company, said that Sajudin had told A.M.I. the names of the alleged mistress and child. Reporters at A.M.I. had spent weeks investigating the allegations, and Sajudin had passed a lie-detector test, during which he testified that high-level Trump employees, including Trump’s head of security, Matthew Calamari, had told him the story.
The New Yorker has uncovered no evidence that Trump fathered the child. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization denied the allegations, including the assertion that Calamari told Sajudin the story. When I reached out to the alleged daughter, she declined through a representative of her employer to answer questions. Her mother did not respond to repeated requests for comment. I spoke with the father of the family, who said that Sajudin’s claim was “completely false and ridiculous” and added that the Enquirer had put the family in a difficult situation. “I don’t understand what they had to pay this guy for,” he said. The New Yorker is not disclosing the family members’ names, out of respect for their privacy. Regardless of the veracity of Sajudin’s claims, legal experts said that A.M.I.’s payment to Sajudin is significant because it establishes the company’s pattern of buying and burying stories that could be damaging to Trump during the Presidential campaign.
Sajudin met the A.M.I. reporter at the McDonald’s that winter night to sign an amendment finalizing the transaction and adding a million-dollar penalty if the ex-doorman were to disclose the information without A.M.I.’s permission. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, the two of them signed the amendment–an unexecuted copy of which was obtained by The New Yorker–and Sajudin remarked that it was going to be “a very merry Christmas.” Shortly after the company paid Sajudin, the chairman and C.E.O. of A.M.I., David Pecker, who has spoken publicly about his friendship with Trump, ordered the A.M.I. reporters to stop investigating, the sources told me. One of the employees involved said, “There’s no question it was done as a favor to continue to protect Trump from these potential secrets. That’s black-and-white.”
A.M.I.’s thirty-thousand-dollar payment to Sajudin appears to be the third instance of Trump associates paying to suppress embarrassing stories about the candidate during the 2016 Presidential race. In August, 2016, A.M.I. paid Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story about a nine-month affair with Trump, and then never published an article about it. (A.M.I. said her story was not credible.) In October, 2016, Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Stephanie Clifford, an adult-film actress who performs under the name Stormy Daniels, a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to keep her account of an affair with Trump secret. (Clifford’s agreement was distinct from McDougal’s in that it was arranged directly with Cohen. A.M.I. was not party to the contracts between Cohen and Clifford that have been released.)
Two of the former A.M.I. employees said they believed that Cohen was in close contact with A.M.I. executives while the company’s reporters were looking into Sajudin’s story, as Cohen had been during other investigations related to Trump. “Cohen was kept up to date on a regular basis,” one source said. Contacted by telephone on Wednesday, Cohen said that he was not available to talk. Subsequent efforts to reach him were unsuccessful. On Monday, F.B.I. agents raided Cohen’s hotel and office. The Times reported that the agents were looking for records related to the payments to McDougal and Clifford, as well as correspondence between Cohen, Pecker, and Dylan Howard, A.M.I.’s chief content officer.
The White House declined to comment. A source close to the White House said that Trump “did not have an affair. This is a totally false accusation. And I’d refer you to A.M.I.”
Texts and e-mails from November of 2015 show that, before reporting was halted, the National Enquirer team was pursuing leads and trying to confirm Sajudin’s story. Reporters had staked out the homes of the alleged mother and daughter. The company had also hired an outside private investigator named Michael Mancuso, a former criminal investigator and the owner of Searching for the Truth Investigative Services, who administered the lie-detector test. (Mancuso declined a request for comment.) Lie-detector tests are notoriously flawed, and the test assessed only whether Sajudin had heard the story, not whether there was truth to the underlying claim.
Sharon Churcher, one of the lead A.M.I. reporters on the story, told me, “I do not believe that story was true. I believed from the beginning it was not true.” Other employees at A.M.I. had questions about Sajudin’s credibility. In 2014, a Web site registered through a service that obscures the identity of the author claimed that Sajudin had made similar accusations against a Trump Tower resident named Lawrence Penn III, and that those accusations were false. (Penn could not be reached for comment. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and he is currently serving a six-year prison sentence. Penn’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.) When I reached out to Sajudin, he responded, in an e-mail, “My time is valuable. What’s your offer??” After being told that The New Yorker does not pay sources, Sajudin declined further requests for an interview.
Although many of the A.M.I. sources I spoke with expressed skepticism about Sajudin’s claims, all six agreed that A.M.I. made a concerted effort to shut down the story. Several said that they believed the coverup, rather than the story itself, was of public importance. One told me that, after the polygraph came back positive, “the decision was made at a high level to pay this source those funds and to put this thing to rest without an investigation taking place.” A.M.I.’s decision was unusual even in the context of the company’s other efforts to purchase stories in order to bury them, a practice known as “catch and kill.” Another source, who believed that A.M.I. suppressed the story to help Trump, said of Sajudin, “It’s unheard of to give a guy who calls A.M.I.’s tip line big bucks for information he is passing on secondhand. We didn’t pay thousands of dollars for non-stories, let alone tens of thousands. It was a highly curious and questionable situation.”
A.M.I. later attempted to prevent other outlets from reporting on the story or the company’s payout. In the summer of 2017, the Associated Press began investigating A.M.I.’s suppression of the story. At one point, reporters were hours away from posting a piece, but A.M.I. assembled a legal team to lobby against publication. The team included Lanny Davis, a crisis manager and longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton who did similar work on behalf of Harvey Weinstein. Davis and Howard met with a reporter, an editor, and a lawyer from the Associated Press. Citing attorney-client privilege, Davis said that he could not reveal the legal advice he gave Howard, but he described some of what happened in the meeting. Davis told me that Howard presented the A.P. with claims that cast doubt on Sajudin’s character, including the allegations on the anonymous Web site. “When Dylan told me he had these documents and he hoped he would kill the story, my opening statement was, ‘I am not here to kill any story. That’s not what I do for a living,’ ” Davis told me. “I encouraged my client, Mr. Howard, to reveal what he had about the source of the story.” Davis said he told the A.P., “It’s up to you to decide whether to write the story as a ‘he says, he says’ or not.” At the time, the A.P. did not run the story.
On Wednesday, thirty minutes after The New Yorker contacted A.M.I. for comment about the payment to Sajudin, Radar Online, an A.M.I. publication, posted a story acknowledging the thirty-thousand-dollar payment but saying that the former doorman’s story was false. The Radar Online piece quoted Howard saying, “When we realized we would be unable to publish, and other media outlets approached the source about his tale, we released Sajudin from the exclusivity clause that had accompanied his $30,000 payment, freeing him to tell his story to whomever he wanted.” Two A.M.I. employees told me that they’d never seen such a release during their time at the company. A.M.I. has said that Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model, has a similar amendment to her contract, but McDougal argues that the company continues to try to prevent her from talking to the press.
Early Thursday morning, shortly after the Radar Online piece, the A.P. ran a story describing the payment to Sajudin and the legal obstacles it encountered. “During AP’s reporting, AMI threatened legal action over reporters’ efforts to interview current and former employees and hired the New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, which challenged the accuracy of the AP’s reporting,” the story said.
On the surface, it seems surprising that A.M.I. would pay a substantial sum of money for an unverified story. The National Enquirer’s circulation numbers suggest that the payouts to Sajudin and McDougal came at a time of declining circulation for the publication. Two A.M.I. sources said they believed that the catch-and-kill operations had cemented a partnership between Pecker and Trump, and that people close to the President had subsequently introduced Pecker to potential sources of funding for A.M.I. One A.M.I. source told me, “Pecker’s not going to take thirty thousand dollars from company funds to shut down a potentially damaging story about his buddy without making sure it got back to him so he could get credit.” In 2017, the company began acquiring new publications, including Us Weekly and Men’s Journal. According to the Times, last July Pecker visited the Oval Office and dined at the White House with a French businessman known for brokering deals with Saudi Arabia. Two months later, the businessman and Pecker met with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
McDougal is now suing A.M.I. Her complaint states that she was not aware that A.M.I. consulted with Cohen during her negotiations with the company, as was later reported by the Times, and argues that A.M.I. was attempting to “illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.” (A.M.I.’s lawyers, in a response, argued that the company’s actions were protected by the First Amendment and that it was being unfairly penalized for its editorial decision not to run a story.) Stephanie Clifford is suing Cohen for defamation and for a release from her nondisclosure agreement. Her suit alleges that Cohen’s payment was a violation of campaign-finance law, because it suppressed speech “on a matter of public concern about a candidate for President.” (Cohen has said that Clifford’s story is false and that he made the payment with his own money to protect Trump and his family. Trump has said that he did not know of the payment.)
A nonprofit watchdog organization and a left-leaning political group have filed formal complaints requesting that the Justice Department, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Federal Election Commission examine whether the payments to Clifford and McDougal violated federal election law, since Trump did not include them on his financial-disclosure forms. Federal election law bars individuals from making contributions of more than five thousand four hundred dollars to a candidate during an election cycle.
Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said of the payment to Sajudin, “As with the payment to Stormy Daniels and the McDougal matter, there’s certainly enough smoke here to merit further investigation. However, there are questions of both fact and law that would be relevant before concluding that there’s a likely campaign-finance violation.” One question would be whether the intent was to help the campaign. The timing, months after Trump announced his Presidential candidacy, could be “good circumstantial evidence” of that. Hasen added that the cases involving A.M.I. raised difficult legal questions, because media companies have various exemptions from campaign-finance law. However, he said, “If a corporation that has a press function is being used for non-press purposes to help a candidate win an election, then the press exemption would not apply to that activity.”
Stephen Braga, a white-collar-criminal-defense professor at the University of Virginia’s law school, told me that the payment had potential ramifications for ongoing criminal probes of Trump, particularly given the claims of Cohen’s involvement. “Now with this third event it looks more and more like there’s a pattern developing. That may be one of the things that the F.B.I. was trying to find evidence of with the search warrant,” he said. “The pattern seems to be ‘We use third-party intermediaries to pay off individuals with adverse information that may harm the President.’ That is just a shade away from what the special counsel will be looking for in terms of intent on the obstruction-of-justice investigation.”
In 2011, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted the former Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards for violating campaign-finance laws by “secretly obtaining and using” nearly a million dollars of political donations to conceal his mistress and their baby while he was running for President in the 2008 election. Edwards denied that the payments violated federal election law. A jury acquitted Edwards on one of the charges brought against him and deadlocked on the rest. Federal prosecutors dropped the case, but Edwards never returned to politics. Edwards’s affair, and the existence of his illegitimate child, were first reported by the National Enquirer.
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