Is it wrong that iâm smiling BIGLY?
Go SDNY!
I found this subject amazing. Trumpâs future is going to be interesting. Iâll bet he wasnât expecting to hear that.
Not at all lol
Iâm all heated up and itâs 16 degrees outside
A fine day indeed.
Minutes later, a Republican lawmaker asked Cohen about terms of his
plea deal that make possible a reduction in his prison sentence for his
assistance to prosecutors.
âThere are ongoing investigations currently being conducted that have
nothing to do with this committee or Congress that I am assisting in,â
Cohen said.
I wish his answer had been, âYou will need to discuss that with the Special Counsel during his briefing to the House.â
Busy at work and trying to get caught up. Did Cohen present documentary or smoking hot evidence of any crimes committed by Preshtident Skanky-Manslut during his time as Preshitident and from the White Hole?
For people like us, mentioning this does not hint at us things we do not already suspect.
For the person who does not follow politics as much, this is important.
So here are the highlights from the hearing. Iâm focused on areas of criminal liability:
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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. Thatâs 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 Buzzfeedâs point, but it also implicates members of Trumpâs legal and political team in a conspiracy to suborn perjury.
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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, âRussia if youâre listeningâ, 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 didnât have indictments lined up. I donât think that Cohen wouldâve even spoken about this conversation this much unless the OSC had the evidence to back it up. I donât think this makes it into the statement otherwise.
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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.
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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.
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Harley Rouda gets Cohen to admit that Trump lied under oath in a civil trial about Felix Saterâs role in the Trump Org and his office on the 26th floor where Trump had his office.
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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 Trumpâs communications with Cohen about 2 months following the FBI raid (this would be in June 2018). (Raja Krishnamoorthi and others).
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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).
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Roger Stone has likely violated his gag order by making at least 2 comments on his case relating to Cohenâs testimony. The reason his attorney didnât make a statement? Probably because what Roger said is not true. I hope he gets brought before the court and sent to jail.
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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.
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Cohen admits that Donald Trump Jr. signed one of the hush money reimbursement checks. That implicates Junior in an additional felony.
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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). Weâve accepted a lot of Trumpâs 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 itâs going to be tougher for Trump to use these tactics after McCabe and now Cohen have provided a sustained critique of Trumpâs illegal tactics. We have to keep political pressure on and force the DOJ to take investigations and prosecutions of these matters seriously.
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In addition, Cohen said he briefed Ivanka and Junior about TT Moscow at least 10 times. That contradicts Juniorâs testimony and Ivankaâs prior public statements.
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Ro Khanna does an admirable job of getting Cohen to identify Junior as Executive 2 in the SDNY docs and for confirming that this was garden variety fraud involving 4 individuals (Trump, Junior, Weisselberg and Cohen) and only 1 of those 4 is going to jail. Weisselberg cooked up the scheme to pay the fees out over 12 months to make it look like a legal retainer agreement, which was approved by Trump. Cohen implies that the matter is continuing to be investigated by SDNY. Khanna brings clarity and urgency to this crime, which the GOP and media have downplayed. The check signed by Trump is a smoking gun. This is fraud. Itâs not directly connected to Russia, but itâs a major crime nonetheless, part of which was committed in the Oval Office. Trump should be removed from office for this alone.
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Cohen admits to Jimmy Gomez that he asked the IRS for a copy of the audit that Trump often spoke of as the reason to avoid releasing his tax returns and got nothing back. There is no audit. Trump admitted to Cohen that he did not want to release his tax returns because he did not want to go under audit. Gomez does a nice job of setting the predicate for subpoenaing the tax returns as a basis to determine whether he is at risk from foreign influence and conflicts.
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AOC was very effective. On AMI, Cohen names David Pecker, Barry Levine and Dylan Howard as the people who would have the âvaultâ of information on all the hush schemes that Pecker and Trump have run together to protect Trump. On asset inflation, Cohen admits that Trump inflated assets for insurance purposes and names Alan Weisselberg, Matthew Calamari, and Ron Lieberman. Cohen also points to the Trump org as the source for the financial statements/tax returns which would yield more information. Next, she goes to the issue of Trumpâs golf courses (Trump Links, Bronx). Trump has engineered schemes of using publicly built golf courses where Trump keeps the money in a sweetheart deal and devalues assets to avoid paying taxes. Trump said that the golf club in Jupiter FL was Wirth $50 milll but for local tax authorities he pitched the value at $5 million. In doing so he engineered deductions by demanding them from the tax authorities based on the artificial devaluation. AOC also ties it to the NYT expose on how Trump undervalued all of the assets transferred to him from his family in order to save money on taxes. He points to Alan Weisselberg and the tax returns for info sources. AOC has perhaps laid the strongest basis for subpoenaing Trumpâs tax returns.
The tRâmp crime family syndicate is on the ropes.
Need more popcorn to go with the cowbell.
Okay, who had âsix daysâ in the pool?
Thanks for the summary. Very helpful since Iâm stuck in an office all day. In my view â this one above is the big kahuna.
Iâve been around until now, but I saw this elsewhere. Itâs like the guy in All The Presidentâs Men who didnât really say it but it applies every time. Follow the money. CFO Weisselberg knows where the bodies are buried since heâs been around since Fred ran the company.
Michael D. Cohen implicated President Trumpâs eldest son, Donald Jr., and the chief financial officer of his company, Allen Weisselberg, in the arrangement of a hush money payment before the 2016 election, and also suggested that Mr. Trump remained keenly interested in the arrangement even after moving into the White House.
Gotta give credit, AOC did a great job. 
Nailed down lines and got clear answers. 
If she does committee work like this it will take away a lot of the showboarding rep she has picked up.
Correct, and this is exactly why I think the bank and tax fraud issue is the biggie. There is almost certainly a paper trail with tax authorities, lenders, insurers, and internal to the trump org. Itâs not going to require testimony from scoundrels that are not credible. There will be a hard paper trail that speaks for itself. Thatâs my opinion, at least. Beyond that â compared with the Russia probe, which is a morass of very complex and difficult to follow threads, I think the general public will have a far easier time piecing together this much more simple con.
h/t @steviedee111
He knows how many ketchup packets are in Trumpâs top desk drawer. If the reports of rampant criminality within the Trump organization are even remotely accurate Weisselbergâs cooperation with Mueller assures the pooch is truly screwed.
AOC can either snowboard or showboat, but she canât do both. 
I donât know whatâs better at this juncture: the listing of crimes by the fucking scumbag, or the withering whoring of the defunct GOP.
Win-win, I suppose.
PS: Kevin McCarthy really needs to put together a Benghazi special committee, stat.
Nice post. I wouldnât be able to put the work into this as did you.
Hey, Rep. Jordan â the word is Kazakhstan. Ka-zakh-stan. Not ka-zik-is-stan.
Trump is busily negotiating with Kim, rocket man gets to keep his nukes, the Dotard is granted asylum and guaranteed that he will not be extradited.