People are in a spectrum, and at the national level, especially today in the Trump Republican Party, honesty and integrity are actively discouraged, but a few still exist.
Not if they are American Republicans. First of all none of them are honest. Second of all, none of them have read too many books. Third of all, the Spanish Anarchists who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War are the only honest libertarians I am aware of. All the warmed over anti-New Deal, anti Federal Government, anti-Federal Income Tax States’ Righters that have found it fashionable to call themselves Libertarians are typical American Snake Oil salesmen and bullshit artists.
One interesting answer is how Cohen described the family buying at Trump tower, in response to a question from Amash:
In 2006 Don Jr** came to me about a problem they were having at Trump World Tower. He asked because I had an apartment there as an investment, my parents had an apartment there, my in-laws lived there, friends of mine … we bought as a block from a brokerage company, got a good price…
Maybe totally above board, condos weren’t selling fast enough so a block became available at a discount.
** The same Don Jr who said in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia”.
The argument that Cohen is a convicted felon and liar so nothing he says can be believed would invalidate every mob conviction ever obtained. You don’t get saints testifying against mobsters because they don’t tend to hang around together. The real question is: Why did Trump hire a crooked lawyer like Cohen?
When someone says they are a Libertarian I know they are not deep thinkers. Scratch beneath the surface and most libertarian ideas fall apart when in contact with the real world. However I also find that most Libertarian principles are “I’ve got mine, fuck you. And I’ll screw you over to take more.”
That said, Amash has more consistent principles than most Republicans. Only one of the few “Strict Constitutional Constructionist” who wasn’t a hypocrite and voted against Trump’s Emergency.
I disagree with his politics most of the time but respect his consistency.
ETA: Shorter post: Amash isn’t as much of a hypocritical hack as most Republicans.
So here are the highlights from the hearing. I’m focused on areas of criminal liability:
Cohen admitted that he met with Trump, Jay Sekulow to discuss his testimony to Congress in advance (Gerry Connolly and others). Trump reiterated the false talking point that he expected Cohen to align to. That’s subornation of perjury. More than that, Cohen shared the draft of his statement with Sekulow and Abbe Lowell (!!!). They edited that document and focused specifically on the material issue of the timeline. The main false message was that TT Moscow discussions ended in Jan 2016 before the Iowa caucuses. That was a lie. They stayed alive through Election Day. This not only proves Buzzfeed’s point, but it also implicates members of Trump’s legal and political team in a conspiracy to suborn perjury.
Cohen has a very good memory of the conversation on July 17 or 18, 2016 between Roger Stone and Trump on the speaker phone in which Stone relayed to Trump that Wikileaks had DNC data and was about to do a release. He also said on more than 1 occasion that the Special Counsel likely has the evidence to substantiate the Trump-Stone conversation. The date is significant because that is the exact date that wikileaks received data from GRU (this is in the GRU indictment). This confirms that Roger Stone was connected and almost real-time to the discussions that the Russians were having with WikiLeaks to use WikiLeaks as a release point for stolen DNC/Clinton campaign emails. In addition, went from said the following week during the middle of the democratic convention, “Russia if you’re listening”, he knew that there was a connection between the Russians and WikiLeaks. Transactions in this regard are part of a criminal conspiracy. He knew the Russians and WikiLeaks had a thing going on to hack and release emails. He encouraged it, never reported it to the FBI, and saw to take advantage of it when his campaign needed the help. Again, I have a hard time believing that the special counsel would allow calling to speak on this matter if they didn’t have indictments lined up. I don’t think that Cohen would’ve even spoken about this conversation this much unless the OSC had the evidence to back it up. I don’t think this makes it into the statement otherwise.
The Democrats and others (including Amash) did a good job of getting Cohen to explain how Trump induces people to lie and suborns perjury. This is very mob like and is the kind of thing that people like Mueller have been prosecuting for a long time.
Katie Hill got Cohen to admit that Trump coordinated and directed false statements made by Cohen to the media about the Stormy Daniels matter. Others elicited from call when the admission that trunk was fully aware of how: was to be reimbursed for the payments, and how stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall were to be paid off. He also confirms that drums primary motivation and keeping the payment secret was to prevent a political controversy from corrupting days before the vote. In other words, individual one has met the threshold for criminal liability under the campaign finance laws. This is why the SDNY named individual one.
Harley Rouda gets Cohen to admit that Trump lied under oath in a civil trial about Felix Sater’s role in the Trump Org and his office on the 26th floor where Trump had his office.
Cohen admits that he is working with the SDNY on several other investigations, including at least one involving Trump (feels like more though). It is tied to Trump’s communications with Cohen about 2 months following the FBI raid (this would be in June 2018). (Raja Krishnamoorthi and others).
Cohen admits that David Pecker ran a hush money scheme with Donald Trump for years relating to women and several other matters. (Carolyn Maloney and others).
Roger Stone has likely violated his gag order by making at least 2 comments on his case relating to Cohen’s testimony. The reason his attorney didn’t make a statement? Probably because what Roger said is not true. I hope he gets brought before the court and sent to jail.
Trump may have committed loan/bank fraud. As one example, he overvalued his assets in order to secure a loan from Deutsche Bank to buy the Buffalo Bills.
Cohen admits that Donald Trump Jr. signed one of the hush money reimbursement checks. That implicates Junior in an additional felony.
I would also add that both Cohen and the Dems have done an admirable job of describing and condemning the witness intimidation tactics of Trump and his crew (including Gaetz). We’ve accepted a lot of Trump’s harassing statements as normal. This hearing brought us back to a time when we would normally punish such behavior as anti-social and illegal. I think it’s going to be tougher for Trump to use these tactics after McCabe and now Cohen have provided a sustained critique of Trump’s illegal tactics. We have to keep political pressure on and force the DOJ to take investigations and prosecutions of these matters seriously.
In addition, Cohen said he briefed Ivanka and Junior about TT Moscow at least 10 times. That contradicts Junior’s testimony and Ivanka’s prior public statements.
As for the general tenor of the questions from Republicans, one comment. Those who want to establish a criminal conspiracy seek out disreputable and morally compromised people to join in that conspiracy and engage in the crimes and frauds that follow. If the President had surrounded himself with Boy Scouts who would never agree to lie and commit crimes with him and on his behalf, he could not have achieved the ends he was seeking. Unraveling conspiracies in court always involves calling witnesses who are compromised, often lower-level members of the conspiracy who have themselves lied and committed crimes. If the Republicans are troubled by that, they will be appalled by what goes on in criminal courts across America on a daily basis.
I’m sure Mueller vetted Cohen’s written testimony as well as everything Cohen was allowed to discuss today. We STILL do not know the worst that Mueller has on Trump. I bet Cohen was given VERY strict instructions on what he could and couldn’t discuss.
His hesitation and refusal to answer this fishing question told me Trump is truely and totally f’d. Like we don’t even know what we don’t know. Like they could have transcripts of Trumps private conversations with Putin. Stuff like that.
