Josh has a good piece out front on the implications of this with the mildly enticing title “Tonight’s Staggering Revelations.” Life is interesting lately, no?
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AT&T has already admitted that it paid Cohen 200k for “insights” into Trump.
Insights. Access. Potato, potahto
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OT yay!
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I’m mindful of that and one has to be restrained in these crazy days. But this is as close to in flagrante delicto as it gets.
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“Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star, was paid $130,000 by Essential Consultants to keep quiet…”
I’d pay $130,000 out of my own pocket if it would get Trump to shut up.
For G-d’s sake, Davos, pass a hat or something!
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I feel like DiCaprio would make a great Avenatti, but Jason Statham IS Avenatti.
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Well Avenatti is suggesting that $130,000 of that money was used to pay back Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money. If so, none of the (approximately) $420,000 that Trump paid him for his “retainer” went to the Daniels pay-off. Where did it go? My theory is that this money, as well as the rest of the extra money that Cohen had at his disposal in the last 90 days of the election ($1.24 million by some estimates) was used to pay hackers, exactly the arrangement described in the Steele dossier.
Meanwhile, if they haven’t done so already, everyone should read this article ( http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/theory-playboy-model-had-affair-with-trump-not-broidy.html ) outlining a very well-supported theory about the real purpose of the $1.6 million payoff to Broidy for his supposed affair with Bechard, the Playboy Playmate who he impregnated and who went on to get an abortion. The theory is that this was all cover for the fact that it was not Broidy who had the affair with Bechard but Trump.
One thing that both these stories illustrate is the peril of taking the Trumpsters at their word about anything even cases where they seem to be confessing guilt. If this article is right, the media was duped by Broidy’s “confession” and has not bothered to investigate it. If my theory is right, Rudy made his “confession” about Trump’s knowledge of the hush money to Daniels to distract from the Russia story; again the media has been played. It is simply criminal for the media to accept the Trump people’s story about any issue whatsoever.
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He is sickening to listen to…and I thought “W” Bush bullshitting his way through was annoying. He’s like Aristotle compared to Trump.
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We’ve already got Ben Stiller as Cohen, De Niro as Mueller, and Scarlett as Ivanka. And, of course, Alec Baldwin as Trump. They can all play it as straight drama.
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I think every male actor in the world and quite a few of the females would be fistfighting to play him and they’d do it for union scale. Role of a lifetime.
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So, we have all this info about money coming in … stay tuned for the info on where that money was paid out. I really doubt it’s sitting in an account other than one from which Trump benefits.
Pay to Play, Baby! Pay to Play.
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And Kate McKinnon as everybody. She could do the whole film herself.
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Is that Italian for balls deep??
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Yeah, close enough. 
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Several days ago, in the wake of the courtroom shenanigans in NYC, Avenatti made the point that Broidy was not named as a party, and hinted that it was tRump.
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Now wouldn’t that be a sweet little cherry on top…
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To quote Josh’s editorial comments:
In other words, just through this single shell company Cohen was receiving major payments from a Russian oligarch and additional moneys from various Fortune 500 companies looking for access to President Trump. On the US corporate side these are classic off-the-books pay-for-play payments to what appears to have been a slush fund.
So, Drumpf’s got garden variety political corruption mixed in with a direct connection to Russia, which was paying for…?
I think it qualifies for the atomic explosion: Nixon, after all, only got national players to donate to his slush fund.
I guess the hunters found the witches.
Edited – see reply for correction…
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Rachel providing good context and background, as usual.
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In the overall picture, more like a candy sprinkle, or, as they’re called in New England, a “jimmy”.
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It is simply criminal for the media to blindly accept any Republican’s story about any issue whatsoever.
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