Where to start? The president’s own executive branch of the government has such overwhelming evidence of criminality that they felt compelled to seek and were able to obtain the consent of the judicial branch of the government to raid the office, home, and hotel room of Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Fix-It and consigliere, Michael Cohen. And part of what they were authorized to seize were communications between Cohen and Trump that would ordinarily be protected by attorney-client privilege. In other words, they had strong evidence that Cohen and Trump have engaged in a criminal conspiracy or conspiracies.
Is that a good beginning?
Needless to say, nothing like this is ever supposed to happen. Under ordinary circumstances, there in no chance in hell that warrants like this would be sought, let alone authorized by a long list of people from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (who was appointed by Trump), to the acting head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, to the Deputy Attorney General (who was also appointed by Trump), to the U.S. District Court judge. Authorizing raids on the president’s lawyer that seek his presumptively privileged communications is a sure-fire career ender, and anyone in the chain of this process could and would have put an end to the idea if it wasn’t on the most irrefutably sound foundation.
That this happened at all isn’t just glaring evidence that a huge crime is about to surface but also an indication of just how furious the Justice Department and the FBI is with the behavior and rhetoric of the president. They are not going to tolerate it.
As for the consequences, Michael Cohen is the weak spot in Trump’s Death Star. There is probably more evidence of crime in his files than you could find from any other source. The scope of the criminality implicated here is mind-boggling and possibly involves everything from the giant fraud of Trump University to bribes of foreign dignitaries to sophisticated money laundering schemes, to countless payouts for hush money, to a comprehensive list of paramours, to thuggish threats to feed people their own testicles. It also has direct relevance to the Russia investigation on almost every level.
Cohen was negotiating a Moscow Trump Tower with the help of Felix Sater (who is already cooperating) throughout 2015. He carried a message to Michael Flynn on how to implicate the current Ukrainian president in crimes. His brother is married to the daughter of a recently deceased oligarch and he was implicated as the contact with the Russians in the Steele Dossier.
Ordinarily, much of this evidence wouldn’t be usable in court, but Trump won’t be tried in court. The evidence presented against him will come in form of reports and be delivered to Congress. Trump defense lawyers won’t have much success trying to get portions of it thrown out or suppressed by the congressional jury. The public may even see this information.
The chances that the FBI didn’t just gain control of the motherland of impeachable offenses is nil.
The idea that the Republicans will be able to ignore this evidence just went from probable to unlikely. There’s literally nothing that Trump could less afford to have happen than to have Michael Cohen’s files end up in the hands of prosecutors.
Yours is the best analysis of this I’ve yet seen. Thanks for this. (Edit: did you mean motherlode in your penultimate graph?)
probably a sly reference to Russia—famously, the Motherland.
But either word works well…
That was short and sweet and I sure hope you are right. Time to rid ourselves of this evil.
Thank goodness that we’re on the verge of a reprisal strike against Syria; the tail has to start really wagging this flea-ridden dog!
Let the firings begin. But won’t they now be even more evidence of obstruction, oh wise Trumper? It’s getting to be quite a moving target at this point, ha-ha. Is the valiant nut-job Brave Sir Bolton now in control of the entire machinery?
Can’t wait to hear what Trumper’s table talk will consist of in the Fuhrer-bunker tonight….
I’m hoping they fully explore resignation as a way out. First, of course, fire all the bastards.
Then again, maybe not, if No More Mister Nice Blog’s stroll through the rightwing fever swamps is any indication:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2018/04/i-dont-think-deplorables-want-war.html
Summary: The deplorables don’t want anything to do with Syria. Get us the hell out of there is the sentiment.
GREAT!!!
Really.
Now the people of the U.S. will be able to watch the machinations of the various parts of the Permanent Government as it attempts to get rid of this burr under its saddle without indicting parts of itself as well.
As I have said all along regarding Trump, his candidacy and win promised to pull the wool from the eyes of many heretofore ignorant American citizens regarding the criminality of this government and the corporate interests that control it. Whatever happens…and the DC hustle will be in full steam ahead mode over the next several weeks or months, bet on it…another layer (or maybe several) of the DC swamp will become painfully apparent no matter how furiously the Government Media Complex tries to make it look like this is a simple Good Guys/Bad Guys affair.
It’s not.
It’s the Smart Bad Guys versus the Not-So-Smart Bad Guys.
Hooray for America!!!
Another several layers of the truths of the matter are going to become painfully apparent to a heretofore slothful, media-tranced U.S. citizenry. No amount of Warren Commission-level hustle will be able to adequately Febreze the stench this time.
Watch.
AG
Oh my God, Arthur Gilroy. It’s like accidentally drinking spoiled milk.
. . . is just a stimulus for ag to “respond” unresponsively by spewing the same ridiculous blather of pet theories. (That he’s habitually Counterpunchdrunk may have some explanatory power.)
There was no insight in the first spew. Insight:word-count ratio certainly hasn’t improved with the gazillionth repetition. Still zero.
But it’s everyone except ag who needs to WTFU, dontchaknow?
It’s not “everything,” oaguabonita. Just the rotten parts.
If it was “everything,” I wouldn’t praise the Sanders/Warren forces, now would I? I’d attack them, too.
AG
P.S. I love it when you hate on me. It means that I have hit the nail right on the head.
Thank you.
. . . that “everything” was shorthand for “everything posted here that ag ‘responds’ (unresponsively) to”. The context makes that transparently obvious.
(In fact, I’d “bet on it” that it was just as obvious to you, and you’re just pretending otherwise, thereby validating my initial observation above.)
I don’t “hate on” you (another of your endless delusions), I just find you an endlessly, pointlessly annoying blight on this place. (The original, literal meaning of gadfly explains why its more common usage applies so appropriately to you.)
And I do pity you.
But yeah, keep telling yourself
and never mind the vanishingly small odds of that ever occurring except by random accident (stopped clock, blind squirrel, etc.).
Cuz of course that’s the only possible, conceivable explanation of why anyone could ever be critical of the shit you spew here. (LOL!)
Thank you, Jordan.
See my reply below to oaguabonita below. It goes to you, too.
AG
We’ve been through this a dozen times — me and you personally, I mean — but of course it makes no difference; you learn nothing (and you obviously don’t bother to keep track of who we are, so you don’t even remember.)
“Living is easy with eyes closed/Misunderstanding all you see.”
Oh Jordan, you’re a gem today! LOL!
Jessica Jones has the most awesome eyeroll .gif.
I am still kind of stunned at these events. It is really hard to overstate how significant this is. Almost everything that Trump has done in the last 10 years, has been funneled, in some way, through Michael Cohen.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around what is likely now in the possession of prosecutors. One has to believe that Trump is soon going to explode and start doing some very crazy and dangerous shit.
a minor complaint:
“… to sophisticated money laundering …”
NOTHING that I’ve seen since 2015 indicates that Cohen or Trump are smart enough, educated enough, savvy enough or concerned enough to do “sophistication”.
Nah, we’re talking “run this thru the washing machine” level of $$$ launders.
NYT just reported that documentation of the Nat’l Enquirer/Karen MacDougall buy it/kill it story was also what they were interested in.
Ever since we saw the note from prosecutors that Mueller’s team were looking to file a report in June or July it’s seemed worthwhile to reverse engineer the timing of just what will have to happen before then. Likely that will translate into April, May & June being an outpouring of damning news & indictments.
Cohen lost his stream of income to his legal practice yesterday. He can no longer represent Trump. He is facing legal bills for what this raid produces, for the Stormy case and for the connection to the Russia probe. Disbarment is likely. He was a rich man in his own right, but that wealth is now on its way south.
Like most bullies, the smart bet is that he will now fold to hold onto whatever scrap he can save.
And since this may have New York behind it, he won’t get a pardon from his buddy. Maybe that was the idea all along. So he has to give it up and cooperate.
on TV behavior:
Cohen: FBI Was `Extremely Professional, Courteous And Respectful’ During Raids
https://tinyurl.com/y9dj6m9l
not sure how far that goes. This is Preet Bharara’s office which Trump included in his US Attorney firings.
I agree with you. I was thinking that bank fraud or wire fraud could be a state crime in New York. But then I am not a lawyer and we don’t know all the details. Wait and see. In the end I just want Trump gone and if there is a way to take Cohen outside of Trumps pardon ability, I hope he does it.
Ooh, might this pick up the National Enquirer too?
Cohen has been Trump”s enforcer and fixer in a greater capacity than he has been a lawyer, but he is one of Donald’s most loyal hires. He has said he would take a bullet for Trump, and now’s his chance.
Stormy Daniel’s lawyer Avanetti said Cohen will fold like a cheap deck of cards and last night on MSNBC interviews, he basically taunted Cohen about his upcoming troubles. But it remains to be seen if Cohen actually gets taken down and still tries to protect Trump. If we know Trump, Cohen is going to be one more body tossed in front of the bus.
This current revelation and investigation are still fluid, so we will have to be patient to see how these things shake out. Trump is rattled and when he gets pinched, he lashes out. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Ari Melber was saying last night that Trump cannot simply fire Mueller due to DoJ regs that have the force of law. So we will see how that one shakes out. And in the end Trump may not even be able to pardon his consigliere, assuming this is brought in NY. Time for a resignation. Oh make it so.
So is Trump circling the drain? I mean whatever happens to “lock her up” now that we have the evil FBI coming after you. So now you want due process you say. Funny that.
Donnah,
I wonder how Cohen can possibly protect Trump when his files are in the hands of the FBI?
I dunno. He could still claim that whatever payments or expenditures were made came from him and Trump knew nothing about it. He can pretend he doctored information, he could say he didn’t know exactly what Trump had done and was just keeping Trump protected. I don’t know what’s in those files, so my conjecture is meaningless, but I suspect that Cohen has a lot of explaining to do and I still think he’s going to try to cover Trump’s sizable ass.
And so we wait…
And he risks lying to the FBI. We know how that turns out.
I doubt what they took from his office, home and hotel room is the only evidence they have. And it will likely lead them to corroborating evidence or witnesses.
Surely it isn’t the only evidence they have, otherwise they never could have gotten the warrant. They must have had very strong evidence already.
I’m just trying to imagine how Cohen kept files on all this shit. I mean, of course he needed to keep track of commitments and money flows but he also must have had it in the back of his mind that much of this stuff was seriously illegal. Was there some sort of coding system the key to which is in a unmarked storage locker in one of his Brooklyn buildings or what?
Oh Cohen did not do this all by himself. Betcha those children are all in this mess. Why else would Mrs don jr need a criminal atty? Watch who next gets served with a search warrant and it will not be the donald.
Oh I would think the FBI has pretty good software for cracking codes, encryption, whatever.
Yes. Remember the San Bernadino attacker’s iPhone? The Feds initially wanted Apple to help breaking into it, and later figured it out on their own. And the iPhone has really good security.
Right! I wrote a Slate article about that.
Yeah, if someone has actual access to the files and hefty computing horsepower, it’s not likely the encryption will stand up long to a brute-force attack.
“The public may even see this information….”
If only. The public really needs to be jarred with the awful truth, and trust in trustworthy-institutions needs to be restored.
But it’s unclear how it will play out. Former CIA director John Brennan said that it was Trump vs. America, and that America would win. He knows more than me.
Thanks, booman. Your explanation makes the event much clearer than all I read elsewhere about it.
Cohen and his LLC’s may become the money laundering/tax evasion scheme that bring the donald down.
I hope this all comes to pass, but we’ll have to see how much information they are actually able to retrieve.
I really, really, really wish people would stop using the phrase “If Trump fires Mueller”. It conveys to most people that Trump does in fact have the right to fire Mueller so that if and when he does get rid of Mueller it’ll seem to most people that “well perhaps it was something he shouldn’t have done but he had the right to do it”. That’s not the case at all. Trump unequivocally does not have the right or the ability to fire Mueller. He can engage in a scheme where he can try to circumvent the law and get someone in there to do the firing for him, but he himself does not legally have the right to fire Muller. I wish people would stop saying that.
Moreover, it seems, realistically speaking, next to impossible that he could actually get rid of Mueller. First you would have to fire Rosenstein and then simply go down the line of succession in the Justice Department trying to find someone to do the firing for him. I don’t think there’s anyone in that line of succession that would be willing to do it. Whoever would agree to do it would be throwing their reputation as well as their career in the toilet.
Therefore, his next option would be to fire Sessions. But then he would have to get this hand-picked puppet through the Judiciary Committee. With millions protesting every day. It seems inconceivable that whoever the nominee would be would get out of the judicial committee without multiple strings attached to his or her nomination that would prevent them from going after Mueller.
And even if that person did get out of the judiciary committee they would then have to be confirmed by the Senate, which is essentially only 50-49 with McCains illness.
Then, after all that, even if he did get someone in there to do the firing for him, the firing has to be for “Just Cause”. The DOJ must justify why it was done in writing.
And perhaps the most important aspect of all this, and the one that consistently gets left out, Mueller gets to appeal his firing to a federal judge where I seriously doubt he would loose. As John dean puts it:
“Unlike the summary firing of Archibald Cox by Nixon, to remove Mueller or any of his staff would require an investigation and proceeding by the Department of Justice, and would be subject to appeal in federal court. Indeed, these regulations were written to make it difficult to remove a special counsel, and I seriously doubt Trump can succeed. These regulations would have to be nullified by Trump, but I have little doubt Mueller could and would litigate that action, and prevail in federal court because a president cannot remove due process to accomplish his goal of removing the special counsel. Nor with a special counsel as experienced and careful as Mueller, can he exercise any control over the investigation.
So, it seems exceedingly unlikely Trump would be able to actually get rid of Mueller. But the main point is can people please stop talking about this notion of Trump firing Mueller. The question is will Trump attempt to break the law in an effort to get rid of Mueller? Will trump try to circumvent the law to get rid of Mueller? Not” will Trump fire Muller”? Trump does not have the legal right to fire Mueller. Stop conveying that message to the public. Please!
Though I agree with you that I’m tired of hearing it, the power to fire Mueller or not, is not as clear as it should be.
The DoJ directive is not a statute which gives Trump leverage.
The DoJ is under the purview of the Executive and the Executive has the power to fire in that branch. Though it’s a certainty that firing Mueller and/or Rosenstein would be viewed as political suicide and a constitutional crisis it’s pretty certain that Trump has the capacity to understand consequences much less play chess.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/can-trump-fire-special-counsel-mueller-may
be-probe-would-go-n864751
As I noted Ari Melber said about the same thing. So, yeah, we are about to find out if the rule of law means a tinkers damn to this guy or congress. But then maybe he will go for Rosenstein first.
I think it is also approaching treason to be projecting his strike on Syria in advance, the kind of thing he has falsely accused Obama of doing. How can congress let him get away with that?
Circle the drain Trumpy.
I really hope that this search warrant is as fruitful as Martin assesses it to be.
With the proviso that I am completely ignorant of search warrant procedures, I have a couple of concerns. Trust me, folks – if you can convince me that these are the feverish delusions of a paranoid mind, I will be thrilled.
I really hope that this is the “motherload from the motherland.” I want to believe, Martin, that this is Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny delivering extra gifts to those of us who love the rule of law. But I have too much scar tissue from a lifetime of seeing the bad guys win.
Hating Hillary doesn’t automatically translate to loving Trump, let alone being willing to risk one’s career for him — especially given the way he’s been trashing the FBI. And Cohen’s the kind of thinks he’s above the law dirtbag the FBI guys enjoy taking down.
Indeed, and Trump’s done nothing to endear himself to any serving FBI agent. In fact, he’s done the opposite of nothing – he’s been actively pissing off most Federal bureaucracies since Jan. 20 of last year.
Your gentle reminder is a sedative for me. So, I’ll take my tea to bed and hope for a better country in the morning.
I can’t comment on the procedures of the actual FBI on recalcitrant agents who get on the nerves of the bosses BUT:
In the military if you get in the way of the mission, the arm of the service or your commanding officer more than once, you end up in Adak, Alaska.
Every procedural federal crime drama I’ve ever seen, every procedural federal crime book, and several conversations I’ve had with federal agents indicates that if you threaten the mission of the FBI, the bosses orders or the imputed honor of the FBI … you end up in Barstow, CA (trust me, having seen both Adak is better).
I doubt that many of the “rogue” agents from the NY office are still in NY. But then, I can’t be sure. Maybe some here actually knows could address the issue?
And Adak probably has some good fishing. Barstow, not so much.
actually, the fishing near Barstow isn’t all that bad. Trout, catfish, walleye, perch, smallmouth bass and others are found within a 50 mile radius of Barstow.
Not in the city itself, of course. That is just purely ugly.
. . . retires to spend more time with family. No, really. I mean he really said that, not that it’s really the reason.