Another Big Shoe Drops in the Mueller Probe

One thing that supporters of Der Trumpenführer - including far too many Congressional Republicans - seemingly do not want to discuss is how their claims that the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt" simply do not match up with the number of individuals in the Trump orbit, including some involved in the 2016 campaign, who continue to cop guilty pleas.   Congressional Republicans and many in their brain dead base want renewed investigations of Hillary Clinton, yet don't bat an eye that Trump apparently surrounded himself with a bunch of criminals.  Given Trump's past in New York City and elsewhere, of course, his affinity for criminals should come as little or no surprise.  Trump's nouveau riche status was never the only reason old New York society finds Trump so distasteful.  Now, one of Trump consigliere Michael Cohen's business partners has likewise agreed to take a plea and cooperate with prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York.  This event doesn't bode well for Cohen or Der Trumpenführer.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:  

When it comes to seminal moments in the Russia investigation that we will one day look back upon, Tuesday could be one.

The Post's Rosalind S. Helderman confirms that Michael Cohen's one-time business partner, Evgeny "Gene" Freidman (a.k.a. the "Taxi King"), has reached a plea deal with prosecutors and will cooperate with the government (the news was first reported by The New York Times):

Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union long known as the “taxi king” of New York, pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud in Albany County Court. He is a former business partner of Cohen who managed taxis owned by the president’s lawyer for several years.

Both the timing and the circumstances are key. Freidman faced allegations that he failed to pay $5 million in taxes, including four counts of tax fraud and one of grand larceny. As part of the deal, he will serve no jail time. That suggests that he has been able to provide information of some value when it comes to Cohen, who is widely seen as a target for prosecutors to, in turn, flip against Trump.

“Do you understand the nature of the benefit your attorneys have accomplished on your behalf?” Judge Peter Lynch asked Freidman on Tuesday, according to the Times. That question that should frighten both Cohen and President Trump's legal team.

There is no official indication that Freidman has agreed to inform specifically on Cohen, but it's not difficult to connect the dots. . . . . If anybody knows about what Cohen has done wrong, Freidman may have been the most likely candidate — especially if Cohen did keep Trump in the dark about his Stormy Daniels payment and other matters.

Just as it has been clear that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was a target for flipping against Trump, Cohen's fate seems to revolve around whether he might be pressured into taking a deal, like Freidman was.

Cohen has said that won't happen, and Trump wagered last month that Cohen won't flip. But it looks increasingly like we're about to find out just how much pressure Cohen can withstand.

Money launderers and tax cheats - not to mention those with suspicious Russian ties - are the norm in Trump's orbit.  One can only imagine what Trump and/or his family members have done. 

Firm with Kremlin Ties Made Payments to Cohen Firm that Paid Stormy Daniels

While Donald Trump was seemingly hoping that his announcement to blow up the Iran nuclear deal would keep the mainstream news media completely preoccupied so that other breaking news reflecting badly on Trump and/or stories that make the Trump/Michael Cohen operations look even more suspicious and sinister.   Among the stories Trump did not want noticed are (i) Penthouse Magazine's interview with Stormy Daniels - a must read - and (ii) suspicious Russian payments to Michel Cohen's shell entity which ultimately paid hush money to Stormy Daniels.  Risking new wars in the Middle East seemingly is less concern to Trump than covering his large, nasty ass. Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times that looks at the attention getting payments by a Russian oligarch to Cohen's shell entity:

A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.

Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year totaling about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch.

Other transactions described in the financial records range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments by Fortune 500 firms with business before the Trump administration, to small amounts related to unexplained activities in foreign countries.

References to the transactions first appeared in a document posted to Twitter on Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star who was paid $130,000 by Essential Consultants to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump.

The Times’s review of financial records confirmed much of what was in Mr. Avenatti’s report. In addition, a review of emails and interviews shed additional light on Mr. Cohen’s dealings with the company connected to Mr. Vekselberg, who was stopped and questioned at an airport earlier this year by investigators for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Mr. Cohen for possible bank fraud and election-law violations, among other matters, according to people briefed on the investigation. Stephen Ryan, a lawyer representing Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.

Mr. Cohen also used the same company to collect $250,000 after arranging payments in 2017 and 2018 by a major Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, to a former Playboy model he allegedly impregnated, according to news reports last month.

Among the other payments to Mr. Cohen’s company described in the financial records were four for $99,980 each between October 2017 and January 2018 by Novartis Investments SARL, a subsidiary of Novartis, the multinational pharmaceutical giant based in Switzerland.

AT&T made four payments totaling $200,000 between October 2017 and January 2018, according to the documents. AT&T, whose proposed merger with Time Warner is pending before the Justice Department, issued a statement on Tuesday evening confirming that it made payments to Mr. Cohen’s firm. 

“Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration,” the statement said. “They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.”

So far, no proof of criminal activities, but many of the payments would seem inexplicable other than providing a slush fund to Cohen/Trump.

Trump's Unhinged Rant on Fox News

Reportedly Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, rants and yells at the White House regularly when his delicate sensibilities are upset about people speaking the truth and/or opposing his more idiotic policies.  Yesterday, listeners of "Fox and Friends" got to observe Trump's melt down as he called into the show and even the anchors felt the need to shut him down.  For his lawyers, it was an even worse experience as Trump basically indicated that past statements on a number of matters had been lies - something that should surprise no one - and did everything competent legal counsel would caution against.  One former federal prosecutor stated that "For his lawyers, it must be like watching your toddler play in traffic."  There is a reason that no high profile/big firm lawyer wants to represent Trump.  He's a train wreck could likely drag the attorney into legal trouble of his/her own, not to mention he probably would default on paying his legal bills.  A piece in Politico looks at the "emperor has no cloths" episode.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump's penchant for freewheeling chatter on issues being litigated in court landed him in hot water again Thursday, potentially upending his attorneys' strategy in ongoing court battles involving his personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

In a matter of about 90 seconds in a "Fox and Friends" interview, Trump appeared to undercut Cohen's claim that he acted on his own in paying $130,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election and managed to weaken his own attorneys' arguments in an ongoing fight over records the FBI seized from Cohen's home, office and hotel room.

"It's just a complete nightmare for his lawyers," said Ken White, a former federal corruption prosecutor based in Los Angeles. "The problem isn't just what he specifically admits in these statements. It's constantly generating inconsistent statements about issues that are going to be litigated, and that's what he has been doing."

"For his lawyers, it must be like watching your toddler play in traffic," White said. "You've got a client completely out of control."

The phenomenon is hardly new. Trump's tweets about his travel ban policy have been repeatedly cited in court to undermine the Justice Department's legal defense of those orders and were even raised at Supreme Court arguments this week on the subject. Now, he seems to be throwing more personal litigation into confusion.

Trump first seemed to drift off message when he told the TV hosts that Cohen performed only a “tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work. Prosecutors in New York seized on those comments to argue that few of the records the FBI seized from Cohen earlier this month fall under attorney-client privilege protections, despite Trump’s legal team’s arguments to the contrary.

"President Trump reportedly said on cable television this morning that Cohen performs 'a tiny, tiny little fraction' of his overall legal work," prosecutors said in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood. The prosecution team also noted that another Cohen client, Fox News host Sean Hannity, also minimized the volume of legal work Cohen did for him.

"These statements by two of Cohen’s three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents, . . .

Next, Trump turned to Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford and who Cohen has acknowledged paying $130,000 in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

"Michael would represent me and represent me on some things," Trump said. "He represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me."  Up to that point, Cohen and Trump's legal team had sought to preserve ambiguity about Trump's role — if any — in the $130,000 payment.

But in the Thursday interview, Trump seemed to blow up that strategy. ". . . . Trump's statement this morning certainly sounds like an admission that he was involved in the Stormy Daniels hush payment," said Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, which filed complaints in January with the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission over the payment. . . . his remarks appeared to tie him closer to events that federal prosecutors in New York are examining as a potential criminal violation of federal law.

"If there is a federal criminal investigation into the Stormy deal, then Trump definitely supplied a link in the chain by admitting being represented, knowingly, by Cohen," White said. "We don't know exactly what the government's theory is. It's reckless to go out there mouthing off without knowing all the factual circumstances."

"Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen previously represented to the American people that Mr. Cohen acted on his own and Mr. Trump knew nothing about the agreement with my client, the $130k payment, etc.,” her attorney, Michael Avenatti, wrote on Twitter. “As I predicted, that has now been shown to be completely false."

Trump is a pathological liar and mentally unfit to occupy the White House - or any other elected position.   I suspect the Cohen documents will yield a treasure trove of information on shady, if not outright illegal, activities.

Trump's Continuing Michael Cohen Problem

Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, continues to blame all of his legal problems on a "horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media."   The problem with that claim, of course as one commentator noted, is that the witch hunt keeps finding witches as evidenced by the growing list of criminal indictments and cooperating witnesses.  Outside of Paul Manafort - who some believe was Trump's conduit to Russia during the 2016 campaign - Trump's biggest problem is his long time personal attorney and"fixer," Michael Cohen.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's behavior and the absence of the behavior of someone with nothing to hide.  Obviously, when one needs a fixer in the first place to clean up sordid affairs and who knows what other unsavory or illegal actions, there is always a risk that they can "flip" and provide very damaging information.  Here are article highlights:

Trump has not been tweeting like a man with nothing to fear.

Over the weekend, he tried to project confidence that his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen — under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations — will not flip to avoid legal trouble. But in doing so, and skipping a denial of wrongdoing, [Trump] the president implied two things.

One is that Cohen would need to strike a deal with prosecutors to avoid charges or prison time. Trump's tweet did not even entertain the idea that the investigation will turn up nothing because Cohen committed no crimes.

The second is that Cohen possesses damaging information about [Trump] the president. Trump said he believes Cohen will keep his mouth shut, not that Cohen can talk all he wants because there is no dirt to dish.

[O]n Monday, Bloomberg's Justin Sink said the president's Twitter thread “prompts two questions: The first is what the president believes his personal attorney might have done to get him in trouble with the government. And, secondly, what [Trump] the president's done that he is worried Michael Cohen could flip about.” “The president's been clear that he hasn't done anything wrong,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied. . . . I don't have anything to add.”
 It is the absence of “anything to add” that is striking. The simple, playing-it-cool response would be that the president encourages Cohen to cooperate fully with an investigation that will surely end in exoneration. But the White House hasn't said anything of the kind. In fact, the White House appears to be leaving open the door to a presidential pardon for Cohen — which, of course, would be necessary only if there were a crime to pardon. Trump seems clearly worried about Cohen, and he and his White House aren't doing anything to change that perception.

How a Porn Star Became More Credible Than Trump

A piece in Vanity Fair takes a look at why Stormy Daniels is viewed by many as more credible than Donald Trump (I never give him the title "president" since it diminishes the office).  True, Trump is a pathological liar and lies about countless things where only someone brain dead and utterly incurious would know in a heartbeat - or after a quick Google search - that the words flowing from Trump's lips are complete lies or, at best, half truths.  Instead, the piece suggests that porn and porn performers have become more respectable and that as a consequence stigma that once might have destroyed Daniels' credibility has greatly abated.   Indeed, the Bible Belt has the highest use of Internet porn.  Here are article highlights and I'd like to know what readers think:

It wasn’t so long ago that the sort of person who made their livelihood by starring in a film called Sexbots: Programmed for Pleasure, or who staged a nationwide strip-club tour under the banner “Make America Horny Again,” would have had some serious credibility issues. Yet ever since she emerged as a fetching national figure, Stephanie Clifford, the adult-film actress and exotic dancer known as Stormy Daniels, has resoundingly appeared more credible than [Trump]the president. It’s the result, certainly, of Trump’s own complications with honesty, . . . . And it also has something to do with Clifford’s sangfroid as a canny, press-savvy entrepreneur and entertainer.

She seemed preternaturally collected during her much-hyped appearance on 60 Minutes. Indeed, after federal agents raided the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, who offered Clifford $130,000 in hush money, it is [Trump] the president who has seemed ruffled and the porn star who seems demure. One presumes they will both be watching her appearance on The View on Tuesday.

But Clifford’s credibility also owes to a less obvious transformation that took place during the 1990s, when the culture, if inadvertently, was beginning to normalize porn. Long considered a medium that degraded women, exploited actors, and de-valued sexual intimacy, pornography began gaining mainstream traction in the 1980s. It became inexpensive and ubiquitous thanks to videotapes, cable, satellite, pay-per-view, and CD-ROMs, developing into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

After the introduction of the World Wide Web, in 1991, a new boom followed: online porn, which opened the kimono to every age, demo, geographic region, and kink. And with a culturally progressive president occupying the White House, porn prosecutions—which had been on the rise under Ronald Reagan—virtually dried up.

At the same time, baby boomers were coming of age, and many of them, children of the counterculture, considered porn a form of pop-culture camp. The guy and gal next door suddenly realized that they, too, could make a career for a while by getting down and dirty in front of a video camera.

The 90s was also a period of peak erotic indulgence and adult entertainment. Massage parlors and “spas”—fronts for sexual favors—set up shop in suburban strip malls. Several thousand gentleman’s clubs, many of them decidedly upscale, operated across the heartland. The stories and struggles of exotic dancers, adult-film performers, escorts, and sex workers—who were often socially and economically disadvantaged to begin with—surfaced in the press and on the screen.

Which is another way of saying that Clifford’s stock-in-trade had become rather ho-hum—a career so common that it would not disqualify someone like her from comporting (or posing for pictures) with a future president—a man whose name until recently graced Atlantic City’s Taj Mahal, once home to a strip club.

All of this occurred against the backdrop of the tabloidization of the news. In the 80s and 90s, news items that involved infidelity, crime, violence, or graphic footage were referred to, among America’s editors and news directors, as sexy. . . . . Meanwhile, TV newsmagazines and supermarket tabloids were turning the nocturnal exploits of public personalities into addictive serials.

And now, of course, Clifford seems almost a conventional player in a Trump-era news cycle that has brought us Anthony Scaramucci, Don King, and the Mnuchins taking selfies at the U.S. Mint. During these crazy days, a scandal with a porn star is at least a crisis [Trump] with precedent.

Add to all of this Trump's own sleazy escapades and serial adulteries, and perhaps the author is on to something. 

Michael Cohen and the Busting of the Trump Crime Family

Things didn't go well yesterday in court for Donald Trump's consigliere, Michael Cohen - or by extension, Trump himself.  Efforts to quash the evidence seized in the raids on Cohen's office, home and hotel room failed and the federal judge overseeing the case reject White House demands that Trump attorneys be the first to be allowed to review the materials.  Also taking a hit was Trump cheerleader and fake news disseminator Sean Hannity who was identified as another Cohen client.  Despite Hannity's dissembling, one has to wonder what he really engaged Cohen to undertake on his behalf given the cesspool like nature of most of Cohen's "fixing" for Trump and at least one other well heeled Republican hypocrite.  A piece in Talking Points Memo focuses on why Cohen could be Trump's Achilles heel.  Here are highlights:

The most shocking-but-not-surprising aspect of James Comey’s account of meeting Donald Trump is the ease with which he drew upon his experience prosecuting organized crime. Meeting Trump, he told George Stephanopoulos, “I had a flashback to my days investigating the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra.” Trump’s leadership style eerily tracked that of the mob bosses he had studied. “There’s an expression in the Mafia — there’s a distinction between a friend of yours and a friend of ours. A friend of yours is someone on the outside of the family, a friend of ours, an ‘amica nostra’ is the way they talked about it in Sicilian, is part of the Family, capital F.”

It is a pure coincidence, but a revealing one, that Comey’s story has come out at the exact same time that Michael Cohen has emerged as a first-tier, and perhaps pivotal, figure in the prosecution of Trumpworld. Cohen has called himself Trump’s consigliere and is the most palpably moblike character in Trump’s orbit. . . . . The investigation of Cohen, in particular, will reveal just where along that continuum the truth lies.

One of the ways in which Trump’s business closely resembles organized crime is that, because it relies so heavily on morally and legally dubious business ventures, its human-resource strategy de-emphasizes qualifications and relies heavily on loyalty. Or, to put it differently, a person’s willingness to engage in, and keep one’s mouth shut about, Trump’s dubious activities is the most important qualification.  This explains why Trump is not known for hiring bright young minds from leading business schools and relies so heavily on his children, as a mafia boss would. It also explains why he retained the legal (or quasi-legal) services of Michael Cohen, a graduate of the worst law school in the United States.

It was immediately evident that the FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office posed a major and novel threat to Trump.  . . . . the instant reaction may have understated things. Cohen has involved himself in a wide array of shady activities, ranging from business deals involving Russia and/or underworld financing sources to paying off women Trump had sex with or sexually harassed.

There is no question that Trump would pardon Cohen of any federal charge. But that still leaves many open channels through which Cohen’s troubles could implicate Trump. One is that physical evidence seized from Cohen could implicate his boss. Reportedly, Cohen kept recordings of his conversations, and legal mistakes like this are the sort of risk you run when you scour America’s worst law schools for talent.

A second risk is that Cohen might be vulnerable to prosecution for state crimes — and remember, a president can only issue pardons for federal crimes.

Trump has run his business like a mafia operation because maintaining secrecy is the paramount value. Despite the vast trove of public access to Trump’s endless public statements and colorful marital life, a huge amount of his work remains shrouded in secrecy, from his ties to La Cosa Nostra in the New York real-estate world to his casino business in Atlantic City, to his overseas business dealings and the tax returns he refuses to disclose. Mueller’s investigation probably will not result in the literal end of Trump’s presidency. (That would require 67 Senate votes to impeach, a highly improbable outcome.) But it will probably reveal whether he has run his business merely like a crime family or literally as one.

Trump Allies Worry That Michael Cohen Kept Tapes

The shitshow that is the Trump/Pence regime seemingly knows no limits.  Indeed, the regime has become a real life reality show with one insane revelation following the next. It would almost be entertaining but for the severe menace that Trump poses to American democracy and the peace and security of the nation and the world.  The latest shoe to drop - which would explains why Trump is so enraged - is the specter that Trump consigliere Michael Cohen may have kept tapes of his conversations and phone calls.   If the tapes included efforts to commit crimes or fraud, there would be no attorney-client privilege would not apply.  Again, a possible explanation as to why Trump is acting so anxious and out of control.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the possibility of Cohen's possession of tapes which might now be in the hands of federal prosecutors.   Here are article highlights:

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael D. Cohen sometimes taped conversations with associates, according to three people familiar with his practice, and allies of [Trump] the president are worried that the recordings were seized by federal investigators in a raid of Cohen’s office and residences this week.

Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization and is a close confidant of Trump, was known to store the conversations using digital files and then replay them for colleagues, according to people who have interacted with him.

“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” said one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized? . . . Did they find his recordings?” 

It is unknown whether Cohen taped conversations between himself and Trump. But two people familiar with Cohen’s practices said he recorded both business and political conversations. One associate said Trump knew of Cohen’s practice because the attorney would often play him recordings Cohen had made of his conversations with other top Trump advisers.

“It was his standard practice to do it,” this person said. 

Legal experts said Cohen’s taped conversations would be viewed by prosecutors as highly valuable.  “If you are looking for evidence, you can’t do any better than people talking on tape,” said Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor.

Such recordings “would be considered a gold mine,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University who specializes in legal ethics.

“The significance is 9.5 to 10 on a 10-point scale,” he added, noting that investigators know “that when people speak on the phone, they are not guarded. They don’t imagine that the conversation will surface.”  [T]he privilege accorded to attorney-client communications does not apply if the conversation was conducted to further commission of a crime or fraud.

Cohen wanted his business calls on tape so he could use them later as leverage, one person said. Cohen frequently noted that under New York law, only one party had to consent to the taping of a conversation, this person added.

During the 2016 race, Cohen — who did not have a formal role on the campaign — had a reputation among campaign staff as someone to avoid, in part because he was believed to be secretly taping conversations.

Frankly, if Cohen taped his conversations with Trump, I don't blame him.  He probably did it for self-defense if Trump ever turned on him.  And if he did make tapes, I hope the feds have all of them now. :)

Allies Fear Trump Could Go Postal and Fire Mueller

Two things continue to strike me as the shock waves continue from yesterday's FBI raid on Donald Trump consigliere, Michael Cohen.  First, if Trump is completely innocent of collusion with Russia or other crimes, why is he acting increasingly obsessed with closing down Robert Mueller's investigation and acting as if he has cataclysmic secrets and misdeeds he is trying to hide?  Second, if Trump is in fact guilty of crimes or collusion, why did it never seemingly occur to him that once he occupied the White House, eventually all of his dirty linen would eventually come out?  Personally, I suspect that Trump is likely guilty of any number of crimes, treason perhaps being one of them.  Trump's increasingly desperate behavior and attacks on the nation's legal and criminal justice systems only add to my gut feeling in this regard.  Now, as two piece in Vanity Fair - one here and one here - report, fearful that Michael Cohen might be "flipped," Trump may be edging closer to firing Mueller, Rod Rosenstein and/or Jeff Sessions, thereby igniting a constitutional crisis.  Here are excerpts from both pieces:

It was supposed to be the most somber and impressive of presidential moments, a gathering of the national security team at the White House to discuss military options to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a suspected chemical weapons attack on a Damascus suburb that killed at least 60 people, including children. But as the meeting began, Donald Trump was more enraged by a crossed red line much closer to home: the F.B.I.’s raid on his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.

There have been times during Robert Mueller’s investigation—Mueller’s subpoenaing of Trump business records, for instance—when White House advisers worried Trump seemed on the verge of triggering a constitutional crisis by firing Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The stunning Cohen raid is another one of these moments. “He’s sitting there bitching and moaning. He’s brooding and doesn’t have a plan,” a Republican close to the White House said last night. “I could see him having a total meltdown and saying, ‘Fuck it, I’m firing all of them,’” a Trump friend told me. “This is very dry tinder. If someone strikes a match to it, you could see it catching fire,” added a former official.

In the past, Trump’s impulses could be tempered by the calming presence of loyal aides like Hope Hicks and longtime security chief Keith Schiller. But both Hicks and Schiller are gone, leaving Trump to operate largely unchecked. His legal team remains leaderless following the resignation of Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd . . . .

The second piece looks at why Trump's desperation level is growing:

The implications, for Cohen and for Trump, are potentially explosive. “I suppose you could say that it is Trump’s moment of truth,” Bob Bauer, the former Obama White House general counsel, told me. “It is the red line he always seemed to draw in his bitter complaints about the Mueller investigation—now here we are. Cohen would not be a subject or target that Trump would wish to have flipped against him.” Legal experts agree this is a major development. “It’s an enormously aggressive move for any prosecutor to make, particularly given Cohen’s client,” said Sol Wisenberg, a deputy special prosecutor during the Starr investigation. Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general under Obama, described it as “very bad news” for Cohen. “D.O.J. only raids once they have concluded that lesser options—like cooperation—aren’t working and that there is a risk that evidence may be destroyed,” he said.

The barrier to convincing a judge to approve a search warrant would be even higher in a case involving a sitting president. More significant, a judge would require evidence of potential illegal behavior between Trump and Cohen before approving the seizure of any communications involving both of them. “If the warrant specifically authorized the seizure of attorney-client communications, the government would have had to convince a federal magistrate that the crime-fraud exception was in play,” Wisenberg added. . . . . if the client is attempting to use the lawyer, or the lawyer is volunteering to be a part of an ongoing crime, there is no attorney-client privilege.” [O]utsourcing the raid could mean “there is some aspect to what is in Cohen’s office that is outside of Mueller’s jurisdiction,” he added. If the latter is true, Wisenberg noted, “Then it is no longer part of Mueller’s case.” That logic is unlikely to soothe Trump, who is reportedly itching to fire Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller. Still, it provides the special counsel with at least one degree of separation from the initial raid. “To criticize Mueller misses the mark,” Wisenberg continued. “It was wise of Rosenstein to assign the case to another office to take the heat off of Mueller.”

It also establishes a protective barrier between Mueller and one of the seedier Trump scandals. “It is wise that Mueller and Rosenstein avoided the fatal mistake of Ken Starr when he decided to expand his jurisdiction to the Monica Lewinsky matter, a tawdry subject, but not highly serious to the welfare and security of the American people,” William Jeffress, a white-collar defense attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case, told me. “There are several possible crimes that might have been committed by the circumstances of the hush money, but these are appropriately investigated by a U.S. attorney, not by special counsel appointed to investigate Russian interference in the election.”

Will Cohen flip? “You just need to break one weak link to do it,” Hall said. But don’t expect new indictments too soon. “I think that things are going to sound like they are slowing down for a little bit because all of this information has to be pulled, digested, analyzed, inputted into a bigger picture,” he cautioned. “Nixon didn’t resign because of the Ellsberg Papers, but that led to the Watergate break-in, that led to the cover-up, and Nixon’s resignation was tied directly to the cover-up . . . So, to me, as things heat up, the next big thing will be a shift from things like ‘What was the Russian involvement in the campaign?’ to ‘Has the cover-up begun and where is it?’” 

FBI Raids Office of Trump’s Personal Lawyer

Trump and consigliere, Michael Cohen.

In previous posts I have noted the difficulty that Donald Trump has experienced finding reputable legal counsel to represent him in the Russiagate investigation.  The reasons are many, not the least being that having Trump as a client could get one possible disbarred or, worse yet, criminally prosecuted due to the questionable things client Trump might demand.  Today, the FBI raided the offices of Michael Cohen, Trump's long time personal lawyer and, if stories swirling around the Stormy Daniels  scandal, equivalent of a Mafia don's consigliere.   In addition to Cohen's office, federal agents raided also raided Cohen's Park Avenue hotel residence.  Among the materials seized were emails, tax documents and business records.  As expected, Der Trumpenführer ranted and raved about the raid being " a witch hunt" and "disgraceful" even as many wonder what damaging information Cohen's materials may yield.  First, the New York Times looks at the raid itself.  Here are highlights:

The F.B.I. raided the Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Monday morning, seizing business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress.

Mr. Trump, in an extraordinarily angry response, lashed out hours later at what a person briefed on the matter said was an investigation into possible bank fraud by Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump accused his own Justice Department of perpetrating a “witch hunt” and asserted that the F.B.I. “broke into” Mr. Cohen’s office.

It is not clear how the F.B.I. entered Mr. Cohen’s office, but agents had a search warrant and typically would have presented it to office personnel to be let in. The documents identified in the warrant date back years, according to a person briefed on the search.

The prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but most likely resulted from information that he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

In his tirade against the F.B.I., Mr. Trump mused about the possibility that he might soon fire Mr. Mueller. Last June, the president vented internally about wanting to fire Mr. Mueller, but was talked out of it. The president once again railed against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself in the Russia inquiry, and blasted the F.B.I. for failing to investigate Hillary Clinton, “where there are crimes.” He criticized Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who is overseeing the Russia investigation, . . .

In order to obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a federal judge that agents are likely to discover evidence of criminal activity.

As for the basis behind the raid, the Washington Post fleshes out where prosecutors may be headed, including bank fraud. Here is a taste:

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to another person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, the second person said.

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients — including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people.

One person familiar with the probe said investigators have been gathering material on Cohen for weeks, including his bank records.

Two of the potential crimes being investigated — bank fraud and wire fraud — suggest prosecutors have some reason to think Cohen may have misled bankers about why he was using particular funds or may have improperly used banks in the transfer of funds.Cohen has acknowledged facilitating a $130,000 payment in October 2016 to Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

Cohen has said he used a home-equity line of credit to finance the payment to Daniels and said that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him for the payment.

Banks don’t usually require much explanation from customers about how they use such credit lines. However, Cohen may have been asked to provide explanation for the large-dollar transfers he made when he moved the money to a shell company and then to a lawyer for Daniels.

“A search warrant for a law office is extremely rare,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law. “Lawyers are given the courtesy of producing documents in response to a subpoena or a request unless the government believes a lawyer will destroy or conceal the objects of the search.”

To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who was appointed to his role by Sessions in January, as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off. 

The Unexpected Public Contribution of Stormy Daniels

Survey: Daniels more credible than Trump by 41 points

Not to beat a topic to death, but the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes continues to resonate.  Tellingly, a poll shows that 62% of people surveyed believe Stormy Daniels while only 21% believe Donald Trump. That's a 41% spread in favor of the porn star over the occupant of the White House.  I cannot remember anything comparable.  A piece in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson - a former member of the George W. Bush White House and sickened Republican - looks at this stunning situation and the contribution that Stormy Daniels has done to the American public: she has shown that Trump is foul, morally bankrupt, pathological liar. This reality is clear to seemingly everyone but evangelical Christians.  Even Sarah Huckabee Sanders ducked the White House press briefing yesterday in an apparent display that even she would not submit herself to the degradation defending Trump.  Here are column excerpts:

Some who watched the Stormy Daniels interview on “60 Minutes” claimed it contained nothing new. On national television, an adult performer alleged that Donald Trump engaged in an extramarital fling, that his minions legally and physically threatened her to discourage public disclosure of the affair, and that Trump’s fixer paid her $130,000 in hush money to secure her silence immediately before the 2016 election. People should just go back to their knitting. Nothing to see here.

Americans who find this unremarkable have missed an extraordinary cultural moment. Daniels’s allegations are denied by the White House and an attorney for President Trump’s lawyer. Yet who in their right mind would trust Trump’s word over hers? In this case, the porn star has more credibility than the president of the United States. It is not even close.
 If these allegations are true, they reveal a man of poor character. (The technical term in moral philosophy, I think, is “sleazeball.”) Trump seems to regard beautiful women as an employment benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Porn stars and Playboy models are in the same category as a private jet or the key to the executive washroom. This is hardly surprising in our culture of celebrity. To a large number of American males, this represents exactly the kind of treatment they would want as a sports star or rock star.

This type of scandal demonstrates why character does matter in politics. . . . . . Trump feels exempt from the normal rules of honesty and decency. He plays close to ethical and legal lines. And he uses his wealth and influence to shield his embarrassing behavior from view — with hush money, nondisclosure agreements, legal threats and lies from the White House briefing room podium. He forces everyone around him to become complicit in his corruption. Members of Congress, White House staffers, party officials, conservative media figures and religious leaders are all expected to be accomplices. And we are left with a vacuum of integrity at the heart of our government.

Trump has made a career out of paying and manipulating people to be dishonest about him. . . .  This weakness of character is now what moves Republicans in Washington to speak of him as though he were a great leader — bowing and scraping in the hope of getting what they want. Sometimes they do. But in the process they give Trump what he wants: people pretending he is something he is not.

In this scandal, such tactics aren’t working. Trump can’t get the porn star to say he is wonderful and move on. This is the strange, unexpected public contribution of Stormy Daniels.

It is a very sad day when a porn star has more moral integrity and credibility than the occupant of the White House.  Sadly, anyone familiar with Trump's business history over the decades would not be surprised with this result. Everyone, of course, except sanctimonious and morally bankrupt evangelical Christians. 

The Stormy Daniels Interview Should Scare Republicans

I, like I suspect many, I watched the 60 Minutes interview of Stormy Daniels last evening.  My take away?  Donald Trump is an adulterous pig.   In my view, a very unattractive adulterous pig.  Perhaps my favorite part of the interview was this:

Anderson Cooper: You were 27, he was 60. Were you physically attracted to him?

Stormy Daniels: No.

Anderson Cooper: Not at all?

Stormy Daniels: No.

I suspect that this exchange will most enrage Der Trumpenführer since it dismisses his delusional attractive image of himself.   

On a more serious note, what the Daniels interview may do is further alienate women voters - a demographic with whom Trump does poorly - by reminding them of Trump and the GOP's anti-women agenda.  With the 2018 mid terms a little more than seven months away, the last thing Republicans need is more alienation of women voters or, in the alternative, energized women voters out for retribution.  A piece in CNN looks at why Republicans should be worried.  Here are excerpts:

But one way that the Daniels story could have a very real political effect is in its ability to further energize the women's vote, especially that of white college-educated females. From the start of his presidency, Trump has had a gender problem. Hillary Clinton won 54% of the women's vote. The first mass protest against his presidency, the Women's March on January 21, 2017, drew hundreds of thousands of women from all over the country.
 The president has done nothing to allay the concerns that he is a sexist-in-chief who is dismissive of any policies that aim to achieve gender equity and who is prone to espousing the kind of "locker room talk," as he called it, that was on display in the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape that emerged during the election. While many Americans had been hopeful that Clinton's candidacy would signal a historic milestone in the fight for gender quality, the story turned out differently. The victory of Trump felt to many women like a huge step backward. In the period that has his followed his election, many women voters have only become more determined to reverse the damage that his victory caused. The #Metoo movement pushed the issue of sexual harassment to the front and center of our national conversation. Activists brought down numerous leading figures in key industries and have created immense pressure to transform the rules and norms of workplace behavior. The anger among women in the electorate could be decisive in the midterm elections. With a record-breaking number of female candidates running for office, many women are clearly determined to shake up Washington. If women voters who oppose President Trump turn out in large numbers, they can provide the key to electing a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Ronald Brownstein has noted that 62% of college-educated women are planning to vote for Democrats in November. According to an NBC News/Wall Street poll, the president's favorability rating among college-educated white women has fallen from 32% to 27%. And the Republicans only receive positive marks from 23% of this pool. In the special elections in Virginia, Alabama, and Pennsylvania, the Republicans performed poorly with women voters. And [Trump's] the president's numbers have also fallen among blue-collar white women who were important to his victory last November. In RealClear Politics, David Brady and Brett Parker recently recounted how weak the enthusiasm is for his presidency among female voters, and the widening gender gap between the parties. Donald Trump has represented, both symbolically and in terms of the policy agenda, a reactionary presidency toward the feminist movement that has pushed the country toward greater gender equality. The daily tumult in the White House and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation create woes for Trump. But the decisive factor that could put real institutional brakes on this [Trump] President may well turn out to be the women's vote.

The Stormy Daniels Scandal Gets Serious

Alleged Trump mistress Stormy Daniels.

Ironically, most of Donald Trump's problems are self-made and the growing scandal swirling around porn star Stormy Daniels' affair with Trump is a perfect example.  Like so many other of the Trump/Pence regime scandals, this scandal - which would upset evangelical Christians if they actually stood for what they claim - stems directly from Trump's belief that he can do whatever he wants.  A wife and small infant at home, who cares.  Ditto for possible conspiracies with Russia.  Ditto for the stream of daily lies.  The law and common morality simply mean nothing to the man.  Now, the Stormy Daniels scandal seems to be gaining steam and more and more questions grow about possible illegalities that may surround the $130,000 in hush money paid to Danils under a bizarre agreement that seemingly did not use either Daniels' or Trump's names.  A column in the New York Times looks at the mounting scandal which, if Republicans were consistent with the feigned outrage over the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, ought to be resulting in outrage.  Here are column highlights:

In January we learned, thanks to The Wall Street Journal, that Michael Cohen, a lawyer for Donald Trump, arranged a $130,000 hush money payment to the pornographic film star known as Stormy Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. The payment was to stop Daniels from speaking out about an alleged affair she’d had with Trump shortly after Melania Trump, his third wife, gave birth to their son, Barron.

With any previous president the story would have been explosive, but with this one, it felt relatively minor. The real scandal, it seemed, was that there was no scandal, because no one expects any better of Trump. The religious right was willing to give him a “mulligan,” in the words of Tony Perkins, president of the [hate group] Family Research Council. Liberals rolled their eyes at right-wing hypocrisy, but ranked the affair fairly low on the list of Trump outrages.

But Daniels — whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — is a clever capitalist who’s been determined to force the story of her relationship with Trump into the public eye. She has parlayed her new notoriety into a series of strip-club appearances, including two in South Florida on Friday and Saturday. More significantly, her lawyer has filed a lawsuit arguing that the nondisclosure agreement she signed is null and void because Trump himself never signed it. The suit, ingeniously, has given Daniels’s lawyer a pretext to make that agreement public.

[F]or all its sordid details, it isn’t really a sex scandal. It’s a campaign finance scandal, a transparency scandal and potentially part of an ongoing national security scandal. It’s salacious and absurd, but we should take it seriously. Trump’s team certainly seems to; Cohen recently obtained a temporary restraining order to silence Daniels.

Let’s start with the campaign finance piece. On Jan. 22, the nonpartisan government watchdog group Common Cause filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice claiming that the $130,000 payment to Daniels constituted an in-kind contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign, in violation of federal campaign law.

[T]he release of the NDA makes clear that Trump himself was a party to the agreement. If Trump authorized the $130,000 payment, it’s harder to explain away his campaign’s failure to disclose it, as required by law.                               He calls it the “Al Capone problem.” The Daniels NDA refers repeatedly to “property” that she agreed to turn over to Trump, including video images, still images, emails and text messages. Eisen argues that Trump was required to report ownership of this property, as well as any obligations he might have had to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000, in his federal financial disclosure forms. . . . . “Imagine what she could get if she has texts or images. Imagine the millions she could command! So there’s this incredibly valuable agreement, and the L.L.C., Essential Consultants, which Trump now appears to be a beneficiary of. That’s an asset.” But it’s an asset Trump didn’t reveal.

Finally, the Daniels story is germane to the overriding scandal of the Trump administration, the one involving Trump’s relationship with Russia. Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled an infamous dossier of opposition research on Trump, wrote that Russia could blackmail Trump with evidence of his “sexual perversion.” Nothing we know of Daniels confirms the dossier’s outré claims about what such perversion entailed. The NDA does, however, show that Trump was susceptible to blackmail. 

Indeed, Daniels isn’t the only woman who was allegedly paid off after an encounter with Trump. . . . . Steve Bannon told “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff that another Trump lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, “took care” of “a hundred women” during the campaign.  “It all kind of fits together in a way,” Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, said of the Daniels scandal and the Russia one. “It’s really blackmail over sex.”

Ultimately, the details of Trump’s relationship with Daniels will likely come out. . . . Should Daniels prevail in court, we might learn interesting information about the president. Among other things, the NDA forbids her from discussing Trump’s “alleged children” or “paternity information.” But the scandal will lie less in the details of Trump’s degeneracy than in the steps he and his lawyers took to cover it up. “This is early days yet in the unfolding of this scandal,” said Eisen. Like Trump himself, it’s preposterous, but it’s not going away.

I hope Daniels is successful in getting the story out.  I have no desire to see images of a naked Trump cavorting with Daniels - the very though is repulsive and vomit worthy - but I do want all of this rubbed in the faces of the evangelical Christians who threw away morality when they voted for Trump and Republicans only too willing to prostitute them self to Trump and the hideous GOP party base.  I suspect that the only person laughing about all of this is Vladimir Putin who likely has more sexual escapade bombshells in his possession.  As for Melania, I feel sorry for her, but she should have known what she was getting herself into given Trumps adulterous past.