Cohen rats out his Client – End Game?

(CNN)Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.

More: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/26/politics/michael-cohen-donald-trump-june-...

So, the square becomes a box, and this can go only one of two ways -either resignation or Mueller lays out the Conspiracy case just before the midterms. Then, there is a fork with a terrible choice for the Congressional Republicans. Vintage 1974.

We all know where Mueller is going with this. Here’s a good primer on the law of criminal conspiracy: http://open.lib.umn.edu/criminallaw/chapter/8-2-conspiracy/ Just put it together with the CNN article about Cohen ratting out his client and a bit of context. Let’s go back a bit, shall we, to the beginning . . .

Yes, this all started with apparent multiple felony violations of Sec. 793(e) and/or (f) of the Espionage Act by Hillary during the period February 2009 through her departure as Secretary of State. And, yes, Fusion GPS (the Brennan CIA and MI-6) set up the Tower meeting using Hillary’s emails as bait. (But, that raises the question, was the Chappaqua server not always salted bait?)

And, yes, Fusion GPS has for years been working with Deripaska and other Russian oligarchs with their own designs on the Kremlin, but Putin had to know that – so, perhaps, this has long been a Putin Psyop or counter-coup operation, after all – one that worked spectacularly well. But, nobody will ever admit that.

The net result has been the utter chaos and rendering apart of the American political process, the exposure of how deeply the Deep State-Intelligence Industrial Complex (Facebook, oops, the telcos, and the rest of the dataminers) really runs the country, and the inevitable capital flight this sort of disruption entails.

Well played, the winners are . . .

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@leveymg @leveymg

As for this whole ‘meeting’/collusion fiasco, I think Clinton & Co. are going to skate for any and everything they’ve done.

Trump, his idiot sons, and the low-rent scum that surrounds him did enough stupid things, NOT illegal things but thuggish and ignorant things,that The Clinton Creature’s actiual guilty acts will be glossed over. No one will really dig for her dirt because even Repubbies are starting to get sick of Trump and his constant lying and the embarrassment he’s brought along with him.

EDIT: several typos

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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

The Aspie Corner's picture

The funny thing is, even if Billary had managed to squeak out a victory regardless of Crosscheck, the exact same shit would be going down with regards to conspiracies and distractions.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

detroitmechworks's picture

Again, TPTB blaze away at Trump, and shoot out another wall that holds up society. If people cannot talk to a lawyer without their words being later used against them, they have NO reason to trust an attorney.

If attorneys are now just going to be informants when their price is met, there's no difference between them and the pigs.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

The Aspie Corner's picture

@detroitmechworks ...you only have as many privilege as the capitalists (amd money) allow.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

snoopydawg's picture

@detroitmechworks

it's plastered on every website I've visited today which tells me that it's just another Russia Gate ploy. Why would this information have been leaked and who leaked it? Why if Cohen is under investigation for something would he just volunteer this? Or did someone in Mueller's office leak it when there hasn't been any leaks coming out of it before? Or is the press pulling it from their asses?
Here's a few sane comment on this:

Cohen hasn’t even been charged with anything yet. He won’t be giving up his negotiating leverage for free.

If he gives up everything publicly, he then has nothing to offer prosecutors for a deal.

Then this stupid idea:

I suspect also, that everything Cohen says and does, is affected by not wanting his kids to find their Cornflakes dusted with Novichok.

I too wondered why this isn't covered under attorney client privilege? Yes if an attorney helps his client break the law then it isn't covered, but what evidenced allowed a judge to sign a warrant for Cohen's office? And rifle through everything he has related to Trump>? At first this was just supposed to be related to whether Trump broke campaign laws by paying off Stormy or someone else with campaign funds and then it flipped to his involvement in Russia Gate and supposedly the Steele dossier. I'm hoping that our resident attorney will weigh in on this.

But it stinks. Besides Don Jr. or anyone else had every right to find dirt information on the opposition. Hell, Her did just that, but she got to use her party's intelligence agencies to help her. Including trying to entrap them into taking meetings with known Russians.

Random thoughts that might not be coherent. My brain is allergic to mornings and that's why I rarely comment in the a.m. But this just does not compute.

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CB's picture

@detroitmechworks
Trump attorneys waive privilege on Cohen's secret recordings: report

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edg's picture

@CB

Privilege was waived on one specific recording. And that recording had nothing to do with the subject of this essay.

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CB's picture

@edg @edg
these stories. Every few weeks, a rehashed "scandal" pops up, followed by a flurry of meaningless accusations, only to fall back into obscurity again. It's all meaningless smoke and mirrors to distract from real issues.

Trumps' trysts with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels just proves his statement that, if you have lots of money and power, some women will let you "grab them by the pussy". At least Trump's debauchery occurred before he was an elected official, unlike Slick Willy.

The entire Russian collusion charge against Trump is only an attempt to prevent revealing the fact that the real crime is Hillary's personal server and the "pay to play" collusion with Russia to sell them US uranium in return for Clinton enrichment. I would bet that the missing 30,000 emails would prove this.

Watching this recurring crap being played out again and again and again tells me one thing, a very large percentage of the American public can be herded like stupid sheep.

"Well played, the winners are . . ."

The Duran has just put out an interesting discussion about Putin's mastery of judo and how he uses it politically. This something I have brought up here in C99 on a number of occasions.

Putin’s love of judo has often been used to represent the strategy he employs when dealing with geopolitical matters…employing patience (the long game), understanding your opponent, and using your opponent’s “weight and momentum” to your advantage.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=46&v=mvXLysMg7dk]

Edited header.

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EdMass's picture

@detroitmechworks

that he didn't give the tape to CNN!

Bwahahahahahahaha

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Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!

Firesign Theater

Stop the War!

snoopydawg's picture

Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting

CNN)Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, claims that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton, sources with knowledge tell CNN. Cohen is willing to make that assertion to special counsel Robert Mueller, the sources said.
....
To be clear, these sources said Cohen does not have evidence, such as audio recordings, to corroborate his claim, but he is willing to attest to his account.

Sources with knowledge? Just who are those sources who have knowledge of this and where did they get their knowledge from? As in most explosive headlines regarding this shit it the information is never verified. People who say say something, but they weren't authorized to say it are as trustworthy as my dawgs telling people that I never feed them or take them for walks.

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That was reported last week: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/397993-special-master-in-cohe...

About 1,400 documents seized by the FBI in Cohen's home, office and hotel room were released to the prosecutor in an unrelated financial fraud case. The leak would likely have been from the US Attorney's office in NY in that case, not Mueller.

In a second round of releases, an additional 1,200 docs were given to the government.

More here: http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/398659-special-master-reject...

[Special Master Barbara] Jones has examined thousands of additional materials in recent weeks to determine whether they are privileged, and released her findings in batches. In early June, Jones determined that only 162 documents out of an initial roughly 300,000 were considered privileged or partially privileged.

Cohen's legal team has argued that more than 12,000 documents seized during the April FBI raid should be protected by attorney-client privilege. Earlier this month, Jones said that 2,633 of the next 4,085 she reviewed were, in fact, privileged.

Special Master Barbara Jones said in a court filing Tuesday that 595 of 1,262 items examined in her latest review are protected by attorney-client privilege. Two were deemed “highly personal,” while the remaining 665 documents are “not privileged,” Jones said.

Lawyers for Cohen objected to two items being considered “not privileged,” Jones said in her filing. However, they do not intend to raise those objections in court.

Clearly, expectations were not in line with reality when it came to Mr. Trump's relationship with his lawyer(s).

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or is the natural assumption that she was acting under Diplomatic Cover only convenient cover, after the fact, for actual felony mishandling of classified materials and gross insubordination?

Obama denied a few years ago that he knew she was using the private server for her official email, yet he exchanged official messages with her to the hdr22@clintonemail.com address. Peculiar enough, one would think, that someone at NYT or WaPo might have looked further into it and shared what they found out with us. Curiouser and curiouser.

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EdMass's picture

Everyone knew he was a philanderer. Goes back decades. Just dig up his appearances on the Howard Stern show.

Those that voted for him knew and didn't care. They won't care in 2020.

Oh the outrage!

Oh Dems never f'd around, never. The party of the pure. Unless of course you go back in history. like the Reconstruction thing and the Jim Crow and Robert Byrd and the Kennedy brothers and the Clinton Creatures male appendage and and and and

This is BS. Can't touch him on this crap or Russia or "secret" meetings with other heads of State.

Can't touch me?

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Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!

Firesign Theater

Stop the War!

@EdMass
Here's the real thing:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEE0qpfeig]

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Beware the bullshit factories.

EdMass's picture

@Timmethy2.0

Peter's was funnier imho.

Heh!

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Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!

Firesign Theater

Stop the War!

edg's picture

This time for sure we'll get those meddling kids and their pesky dog, too!!!!!!!!

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Pluto's Republic's picture

Alan Dershowitz was feeling great angst about it and warned: "We must find out who is the source of this damaging leak — damaging to all Americans who place their faith in the promise of confidentiality from the professionals in whom they confide." He seems to blame Cohen, since Cohen unethically recorded it without his client's permission.

Meanwhile, an adjacent story — Cohen Ready To Flip: Will Tell Mueller Trump Knew About Trump Tower Meeting — claims that Cohen is now turning on Trump. All in all, I thought the Tylers did a pretty good job of putting this entire bait and switch pandemic into perspective.

Although the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, has always insisted she went to New York to lobby the Trump campaign about reversing the Magnitsky Act — I was skeptical. She flew to New York — six months before the election — to lobby a toss-up candidate? Why not wait to see who wins the election, then lobby a President? We know from subsequent Congressional testimony that no opposition research on Hillary changed hands, and Trump had no "dirt" on Hillary to offer during his campaign, so that part was a lie. To top it off, we find out that Veselnitskaya received special permission by the Obama DOJ to enter the U.S. and take that meeting. To me, this looks like a sting operation.

Next, we discovered from subsequent congressional hearings that Rob Goldstone, the UK publicist who set up her meeting with Trump Jr., was a Fusion GPS associate. Fusion GPS is the firm that created opposition research for Hillary Clinton — the fake Steele Dossier. This dossier was immediately used to trick the court into issuing FISA warrants, which allowed the FBI to legally infiltrate and spy on the Trump campaign.

Goldstone said during Congressional testimony that he believes the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was a "bait and switch" by the Russian lawyer/lobbyist who had promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Goldstone admitted that he used hyperbolic language on purpose to ensure that the meeting would take place.

“I, therefore, used the strongest hyperbolic language ["dirt on Hillary"] in order to secure this request from Donald Trump Jr. based on the bare facts I was given,” said Goldstone.

“It was an example of, I was given very limited information, and my job was to get a meeting, and so I used my professional use of words to emphasize what my client had only given bare-bones information about, in order to get the attention of Mr. Trump Jr.”

Goldstone remarked that afterward, "it seemed to me to have been a bait and switch by somebody who appeared to be lobbying for what I now understood to be the Magnitsky Act" — which sanctions Russian officials thought to be involved in the death of a Russian tax accountant.

Natalia Veselnitskaya is described as a "Trump-hating attorney" and it turns out that she is also a Fusion GPS associate. She represents Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, who is keenly interested in overturning the Magnitsky Act. Last JUly 2017, the Washington Post, reported that a spokesman from Trump's outside legal counsel, Mark Corallo, described the involvement of Fusion GPS:

Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.

On June 3, 2016, Goldstone sent an email to Trump Jr. to set up the meeting. Writing from the UK, Goldstone was effusive with admiration for his father and told Trump Jr. that Russia supported him. Using what Goldman later described to the Congressional Committee as his "professional use of words" he suggested the Russian lawyer had some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary in her dealings with Russia.

Trump Jr. was eager to contribute to the campaign's ongoing opposition research on Hillary. He replied to Goldstone that “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” But the "official documents" were never produced in the meeting, which ended early. Also attending the meeting was a Russian-born Washington lobbyist testified before the Congressional Committee that he also had a business relationship with Fusion GPS.

Both before and after the Trump Tower meeting, where she lobbied against the Magnitsky Act on behalf of her Russian client, Natalia Veselnitskaya met personally with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

So, how much did Hillary pay to buy all that?

The heavily redacted Fusion GPS bank records given to the Congressional Committees investigating this operation showed the Clinton Campaign's law firm, Perkins Coie, paid Fusion a total of $1,024,408 in 2016 for opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump - including the infamous "Steele dossier."

There you have it — Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the Russian oligarchs worked together on this masterpiece with the FBI, James Comey, Ron Rosenstein, and the embedded neocon authorities and psychopaths to push this savage nation toward a profiteering global war.

::

Now we learn that Donald Trump also spent some money to control information that was oppositional to his campaign — a comparatively tiny amount. And he didn't collude with the Russians to get the job done.

[Edits, typos]

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Fusion GPS is indeed the hub that connects the Ohrs, the CIA, MI6, with Clinton, the DNC, Veselnitskaya, Katsyv and Deripaska.

One may also characterize this as a multinational coup operation operating inside a highly sophisticated political dirty tricks shop.

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