Hmmm: Mueller got search warrants for Cohen almost immediately; Update: Rosenstein sticking around a bit longer

So client/attorney privilege rears it’s head again. So much of what Booby has done seems totally over the line to me. But this secret back door investigation into Trump through his attorney is really unsettling.

Hmmm: Mueller got search warrants for Cohen almost immediately; Update: Rosenstein sticking around a bit longer

Robert Mueller’s team of investigators raided Michael Cohen’s office and residence in April of last year, but that was hardly the beginning of his interest in Donald Trump’s fixer. Redacted warrants released today as part of a FOIA demand shows that Mueller got search warrants for Cohen’s communications almost a full year earlier. That might revive some discussion about attorney-client privilege and the special counsel’s investigation — as well as speculation as to why redactions conceal allegations of campaign-finance violations:

*

After Cohen became a reluctant cooperator, that issue largely dropped off the radar screen, but one has to wonder whether it will re-emerge now. Privilege attaches to the client, not the attorney, and anything captured by prosecutors before the raid might well have been privileged. In fact, it’s almost a certainty. Did they hold all of that material for the special master? Was it also vetted — and if so, how, and to what standard?

Update: Worth noting, but only barely:

https://apple.news/A0pNONADPQqGF5SnVzZwTrA

(Posted the Rosenstein tweet because it was mentioned in the title of this OP.)

I hope this does revive the questions regarding attorney/client privilege. Booby has trampled all over the rights of everybody he’s accused of acting in a criminal matter. He needs to be investigated himself. Can you imagine the things we would find out then????

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

snoopydawg's picture

I thought the first office raid was sketchy unless there was definite proof that Trump or Cohen broke the law, but to hear that he was targeted much earlier really raises suspicion.
Hopefully our resident lawyer will weigh in on this.

Glad that you brought this here. I saw it earlier but skipped over it.

But the bottom line is Herheinous still skates on everything she has done. Blehh!

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

... memories, and analysis of the 2016 election in hindsight. It definitely appears that when Hillary got sick during the the campaign (and started wearing clothes made out of pot holders) the Families decided to dump her and go with Trump. The Deep State was already occupying Trump's campaign — and now they hold every key position in the White House and in the Cabinet. It looks like it was Hillary's Big Donors who pulled her under on election day. Russia is an excellent cover.

But the bottom line is Herheinous still skates on everything she has done. Blehh!

Perhaps. But once you throw out the distracting Russian Hoax, it pretty clear that her campaign was a controlled demolition. They messed with numbers for sure on election night, but not in the way they promised Hillary they would. With her share of the popular vote so high, it's statistically impossible that she lost. (I've read some remarkable and convincing statistical analysis on that.)

Of course, with endless elections to match the endless wars, this Potempkin democracy will unravel only so far. Beyond a certain point, it will start to get dangerous to push it.

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
TheOtherMaven's picture

@Pluto's Republic

and Benjamin Harrison (1888) and especially Rutherford B. Hayes (1876).

In 1876 the LOSER (Samuel J. Tilden) got the MAJORITY (not just a plurality) of the popular vote, but political horse-trading screwed him and the entire Black South.

Statistics can only tell you so much, and they may not give you the whole story.

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@TheOtherMaven

You have an astonishing array of knowledge, especially in American history. Have you been on Jeopardy?

Okay, I going to drop this in in hope that you might find it entertaining. What follows is an excerpt taken from a much longer PDF sent to me. It was written by a physicist whose work I am familiar with. Smart guy, and not really political. This was written about a month after the 2016 election. He was waiting for all the numbers to come in. He was unaware of the Russia Hoax until a month later. The final addendum refers to that.

Addendum, December 15, 2016:

The final popular vote is now in, and Hillary didn't win by 1.5%. She won by 2.1%. That's a very comfortable margin in a Presidential election, and — based on all past results and prior data — should have guaranteed an Electoral College win. If we combine that with data from recent polling, including exit polling, we have a slamdunk. Instead, we are told she will get only 43% of the Electoral College votes. That means she will win the popular vote by 2.1%, and lose the Electoral College vote by 14%. Again, not only has that never happened, it has never gotten close to happening. It is so far off the curve and so far outside of any statistical analysis it should be setting off alarms in mathematics departments and statistics departments all over the country.

Instead, I am being answered that it was bound to happen. I am being sent manufactured analyses from fake mathematicians, and they are telling me it is not so strange after all. They are finessing numbers to show me it could have been even worse. I say these analyses are manufactured because they always rely on the assumption that one candidate can win selected large states by huge amounts, while the other candidate wins selected large states by tiny amounts. Why can't that happen? Because real elections don't work that way. How do we know? Because real elections have never worked that way. Even stolen elections have never worked that way. The fact that it hasn't ever happened or even gotten close to happening should have been the first clue these fake mathematicians were ignoring basic facts.

Since this has never happened and never gotten close to happening, any logical person would assume the odds were very much against it. He or she would then study the numbers to see why the odds were very much against it. But no one is doing that, are they? Instead, they are spinning furiously to make it look normal. That by itself gives them away. Instead of asking rational questions of irrational numbers, they are bending over backwards to make those numbers look rational. That is the definition of anti-science. I know because I have been fighting anti-science for 15 years. I know what it looks like by long acquaintance. Let me give you some more reasons these numbers should look very unnatural to you.

• The 2.1% margin in the popular vote was matched in 1976, when Carter beat Ford. That election wasn't considered especially close, since Carter ended up with 297 Electoral votes. That's a 57 vote win. So we should have expected something along those lines for Hillary. We see a 2.1% popular win going with a 10% Electoral win.

• What about 1968? Nixon beat Humphrey by .7% in the popular vote, which is exactly three times closer. But he still won the Electoral vote by a huge amount: 56% to 35.5%. So we see a .7% popular win going with a 20% Electoral win. [**These numbers are also highly suspicious, but I won't go there here.]

• We are skipping landslides, so let's go back to 1960. Kennedy beat Nixon by just .17% in the popular vote. But that was still enough to win the Electoral College by a large amount: about 12%.

• Before that, we have to go back to 1916 for a close election. Wilson beat Hughes by 3.1% in the popular vote, and won the Electoral vote by only 4%.

What does this historical analysis of real US Presidential elections tell us? It tells us that when the popular vote is close, the candidate who won the popular vote is extremely likely to win the Electoral vote. If he doesn't win, he will lose the Electoral vote by a hair. In fact, the only time he didn't win was in 1876, 1888 and 2000, elections almost as fishy as this one.

The 1888 election is the only one that compares to this one at all. There, Harrison lost the popular vote by .8%, but won the Electoral vote by 16%. However, although this one is fishy, it is far less fishy as a matter of statistics than the current one. Why? One, because there were only 401 Electoral votes on the board. The lower the total number, the higher the probability of off-curve results. Two, and more importantly, back then the entire election could swing on one state, and it did. If Cleveland had won New York, he would have won the Electoral vote. The popular margin in New York was about 1%. So the Electoral margin of 16% is deceiving. The Electoral margin was 1% of one state.

I will be told the same can be said of the current election, where if Hillary had won Texas, say, it would have reversed the outcome in the Electoral College. True as far as it goes, but it doesn't go anywhere because she wasn't even close in Texas. If we give her enough popular votes to win Texas, her national popular vote gap goes up to around 3.5%. Or, four times larger than the gap in 1888. So, with a pool 26% larger, the 2016 election is about 400% farther off-curve than the election of 1888. Making the current election about five times less likely as a matter of statistics than the 1888 election. Don't get me wrong: I think the 1888 election was also stolen; I am just saying the 2016 election was stolen in a way that was about five times as obvious as the previous record.

To give you something to compare it to, it would be like someone beating Usain Bolt's world record time in the 100 meter dash with a time that was five times greater than the previous gap. He beat his own record by .11 in 2009, so multiply by five to get .55. So it would like someone running a 9.03 100m tomorrow. Would you be suspicious? Well, that's roughly how suspicious I am of the current election.

Those critiquing my analysis above have seized on my use of the word “impossible”. They say the current numbers aren't strictly impossible. Well, a 9.03 100m isn't strictly impossible, either, as a matter of pure math. But life isn't pure math. Life generally conforms to previous expectations and results, and when it doesn't we should at least do it the courtesy of being suspicious and demanding further proof. Given the current human body, a 9.03 time is impossible, so if we see a 9.03 tomorrow, we can assume someone tweaked reality in some way. When I see the current numbers in the election, I assume someone tweaked reality in some way. Those who don't even consider this possibility are the ones you should be looking at sideways, not me.

.

His statistical approach has more situational probability befitting a complex system, I think. It is unorthodox, but this and other related discussions I've read, strike me as persuasive. I'm starting to see the contextual variables that are missing from much [easily manipulated] statistical analysis [and polling]. We can do better with the Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Entanglement added to the mix. He wrote The following addendum when he got wind of the Russia Hoax in late January 2017.

Addendum addendum: the big news this week is that Russia allegedly hacked the election in favor of Trump. I told you to be on alert for more hijinx, and they are already arriving.

Is there any chance Russia or Putin hacked the US election in any way? No. It is cover for something else. The controllers don't even need to hack actual machines anymore, since they can control the numbers more directly. As I said above, they just make them up out of thin air and then report them via the media.

It is all a virtual reality. There is no longer any connection between the voting machines and the numbers reported, so there is nothing for Russia or anyone else to hack. They would have to hack the report of the manufactured numbers between Langley and Google, for instance, or between Langley and CBS, in real time. There is no possibility that happened.

So what is this all about? It is difficult to say. If they needed a diversion larger than normal, even larger than a Presidential election could provide, they must have something special planned this time. Do I know what it is? No. We can now be sure it will all be utter BS manufactured to keep your eyes off the real action. They clearly want you in these factional political arguments rather than seeing any truths.

.

Since he has no idea of the things we on this site have discovered and the evidentiary distance we have traveled, I find his first impressions informative. He has, since, begun to pay attention to the political charade unfolding. He began investigating and including his discoveries in his work. He has also started having problems with his server, his emails, and his access.

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

You have an astonishing array of knowledge, especially in American history. Have you been on Jeopardy?

I'm amazed at the things she knows about and I once messaged her to see why that was. Love the facts from way back when that she brings here.

ETA

If they needed a diversion larger than normal, even larger than a Presidential election could provide, they must have something special planned this time. Do I know what it is? No. We can now be sure it will all be utter BS manufactured to keep your eyes off the real action. They clearly want you in these factional political arguments rather than seeing any truths.

This is a darn good question isn't it? Trump himself has been one big distraction after another, but what else could be in the planning process? The stage is set for martial law here by previous president's executive orders so might it be another economic crisis and then the bank bail ins? Having banks keeping people's money sure would create a lot of havoc. War with Iran would just be the continuation of the war of terror so I don't think that's it. Don't forget that every department of the government has bought lots and lots of bullets. Think that the social security office or NASA needs lots of bullets? The CDC? FDA? Anyone else want to take a guess at what could be in the pipeline?

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

I thought about it this morning while reading some article about something that Trump is doing that in no way would Hillary have been able to get it done. As the other maven points out the Florida election was looking like it went to Gore, but then "something happened" and Bush got in.

They messed with numbers for sure on election night, but not in the way they promised Hillary they would.

Bingo. Tax cuts, rolling back regulations, more deregulation of the banks and the other stuff that has sailed through the Trump presidency. One of the worst things coming from him is the number of right wing judges that Schumer and lots of democrats are pushing through after McConnell held them up during Obama's tenure. Think that democrats couldn't have forced McConnell to give them their chance? Or for him to put Garland up for a vote? There were many procedures that democrats could have done to stop congress in its track until McConnell played ball.

But why do the democrats want those right wing judges on federal courts? Because they are rolling back lots of legislation that was passed decades ago that made worker's lives better. Abortion is most probably going to be illegal again because the PTB needs under educated and under paid workers and military grunts.

And again Nancy is not going to do anything to get Trump out of office because she likes what he's doing just like she did during the Bush years. Remember this: "put us in power and we will roll back the Bush abuses"? And we know what she did after that. The powder will stay dry.

Heh.."wearing suits made out of pot holders". I wonder if I still have the picture of her wearing that gawd awful suit.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

Case in point:

Heh.."wearing suits made out of pot holders". I wonder if I still have the picture of her wearing that gawd awful suit.

I think we both got a little bit of brain damage from seeing that, which I will mercifully not post here.

In general, I thought she dressed well. But there were some serious fashion mistakes made:

Hill2.jpeg
up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Thanks, Pluto. But we do need to show that glorious pot holder pant suit. Didn't she have slippers that matched?

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

...with a designer with a penchant for pockets that looked like pot-holders. That probably didn't help her numbers. Here's the dress/thing that gave us both ptsd:

hill15.jpg

hill8.jpg

Is she wearing pajama bottoms with that housecoat? Kudos to her if she is.

She was at a fund raiser, no less. Looking pretty needy.

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
travelerxxx's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Now I know where she got it....

up
0 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

...on Roger Stone, with Mueller tipping off CNN and then having a swat team drag Stone and his wife outside in handcuffs in the middle of the night and parading them in their nightwear before the CNN News team. Who does shit like that? Mueller must have taken leave of his senses. It was clear months earlier that there was no connection between Stone and Assange; no Russian connection, nada. No evidence of anything that hadn't been completely resolved, in writing and sworn statements.

The collusion investigation has been over for months (years, actually). The case (there really is no case) against Stone will evaporate. Even the judges are pissed at the way they are being used, knowing full well that this sort of corruption was the price of admission that got them on the bench in the first place. I guess there is a lower limit to the judicial slime after all.

Anyhow, why would Mueller stoop that low? What was the point? I guess that's part of his MO, since every case he touches is a cover-up and it turns to shit in the end. You've all seen the data.

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

The reason given was that they didn't want him to destroy evidence. BS! Is there such a thing as malicious arrest? Maybe Stone should sue and see if it goes anywhere?

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

so they weren't "shot resisting" like too many other unfortunate victims of brutal surprise-smash raids.

There need to be laws against unjustified SWAT attacks, and they need to have some real teeth.

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg
that bothers Mueller so much. The guys been a weak political hack for years. His heyday was back when he “swift boated” Kerry. At least IMO. Now he’s a desperate old man wandering around saying stupid shit and pretending to be relevant.

This mess is BASED on corrupt acts committed by ‘The Left’ to obtain the wiretaps against Trump and his campaign. If we were to start will illegal acts, that’s #1. That allowed them to put the ‘insurance policy’ into payoff mode.

There’s so much ‘collusion’ between the Clinton Creature’s Campaign, the DNC, Obama, an ex-British spy, our intelligence community, and who knows that even I could whip up a dandy case under the RICO statutes against these people. And yet, they’re all still free and trying to influence the next election and morons like Stone are going to jail. For ‘lying’. Something that the Dims have been doing since June or July 2016. Stone is a putz. Of all the cast mates in this bad drama, he’s actually irrelevant. Because this guy had nothing to do with Assange and Wikileaks.

up
0 users have voted.

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@Amanda Matthews

a loose cannon, and he says crazy stuff especially when rattled, kind of like Trump. What the sleazoid Deep State media combine has is POWER, which they flaunt and flail away with hoping to shake someone into saying something self-incriminating just in reaction to the flagrant abuse of power thrown at them.

up
0 users have voted.
Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

...is that it was such a Nazi thing to do. It sets an example.

Of course, that horse has probably left the barn some time ago....

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Here's another article on this.

Legal filings unsealed on Tuesday said investigators working for Mueller were granted access to Cohen’s personal email account on 18 July 2017 on the basis that he may have broken several laws, including those on unregistered foreign agents.

Cohen’s suspected efforts were not detailed in the documents. Cohen, one of Trump’s closest advisers for a decade, was known to have been paid in 2017 for consulting work by a state-controlled South Korean aviation company and a bank in Kazakhstan.

The filings said Mueller’s investigators were looking in Cohen’s Gmail account for records on any “funds or benefits” he received from foreign governments or companies, as well as any files revealing efforts by Cohen to work on their behalf.

It sounds like Mueller was allowed to go fishing for things that he thought Cohen might have done. Thought and might being the operative words here. But what gave him the suspicion that something might have happened? Maybe something from the illegal wiretapping that the British did before the FBI got their FISA warrants? Still looking like fruit of the poisonous tree.

Will we ever hear anything about what Tony Podesta was doing when he was working with Manafort? Ever?

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

....must have been working for the right people. There are quite a few that screwed the pooch and walked away — Susan Rice and James Comey come to mind. Three of them have the goods to blackmail most of the elected government.

up
0 users have voted.

____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato