On the Cohen plea
I think this comment at Powerline is quite descriptive of the Michael Cohen plea situation:
So the real trick here is pretty simple. Threaten a man with 8 counts that would cost him millions to defend and could send him to prison for decades. Embed within them counts that implicate your true “target”, then accept a plea, which includes pleading guilty to the counts that implicate said target. So doing effectively makes the target appear to be guilty without ever going to trial, which is the real point of the exercise. Then delay sentencing until we see how strong his testimony is against the target…There is something fundamentally wrong with this.
It is a technique akin to that sometimes used to get known gangsters or organized crime figures convicted and put away. The prosecution decides who they want to get, then they nab some underlings and associates—often on technical violations that commonly involve tax evasion—and they throw the book at them to get them to squeal on the real target. “Squeal” must be language I got from some Grade B movie watched in my youth, but that was the sort of thing I recall, and it goes back a long way.
What I’ve never seen is this sort of general technique used by partisans of one party to get the president of the United States, although I’ve seen something like it on a lower level; Ted Stevens comes to mind. In Stevens’ case, the name of the Michael Cohen figure was Bill Allen, who (unlike Cohen) at least was not Stevens’ lawyer. A little tiny memory refresher here [emphasis mine]:
On July 29, 2008, Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of failing to properly report gifts, a felony, and found guilty at trial three months later (October 27, 2008). The charges relate to renovations to his home and alleged gifts from VECO Corporation, claimed to be worth more than $250,000. The indictment followed a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for possible corruption by Alaskan politicians and was based in part on Stevens’s extensive relationship with Bill Allen. Allen owned racehorses, including a partnership in the stud horse So Long Birdie, which included Stevens and eight others, and which was managed by Bob Persons. The FBI not only had calls between Allen and Stevens, made after Allen became a cooperating witness, but they had thousands of wiretapped conversations involving the phones of both Allen and VECO Vice President Rick Smith. They had also videotaped meetings between Allen and state legislators at VECO’s hotel suite in Juneau, the state capitol. Allen had testified in court that he bribed Ted’s son Ben, the former Alaska Senate president. A former VECO employee said he did campaign fundraising work for Stevens while on VECO’s payroll, a violation of federal law. Allen , then an oil service company executive, had earlier pleaded guilty—with sentencing suspended pending his cooperation in gathering evidence and giving testimony in other trials—to bribing several Alaskan state legislators. Stevens declared, “I’m innocent,” and pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal district court on July 31, 2008. Stevens asserted his right to a speedy trial so that he could have the opportunity to clear his name promptly and requested that the trial be held before the 2008 election.
Stevens was found guilty, and just about everyone in both parties pressured him to resign from the Senate. That was the true goal of the prosecution, I believe—not to necessarily put him in prison, but to create a climate that would ruin him politically. But he lost his election instead.
What happened next was the discovery (initially through a whistleblower) of an enormous degree of prosecutorial misconduct, including the following:
the discovery of a previously undocumented interview with Bill Allen, the prosecution’s star witness, that raised the possibility prosecutors had knowingly allowed Allen to perjure himself on the stand. Allen stated that the fair market value of the repairs to Stevens’s house was around $80,000—far less than the $250,000 he said it cost at trial. More seriously, Allen said in the interview that he didn’t recall talking to Bob Persons, a friend of Stevens, regarding the repair bill for Stevens’s house. This directly contradicted Allen’s testimony at trial, in which he claimed Stevens asked him to give Persons a note Stevens sent him asking for a bill on the repair work. At trial, Allen said Persons had told him the note shouldn’t be taken seriously because “Ted’s just covering his ass.” Even without the notes, Stevens’s attorneys claimed that they thought Allen was lying about the conversation…
Stevens’s attorney, Brendan Sullivan, said that Holder’s decision was forced by “extraordinary evidence of government corruption.” He also claimed that prosecutors not only withheld evidence but “created false testimony that they gave us and actually presented false testimony in the courtroom”—two incidents that would have made it very likely that the convictions would have been overturned on appeal.
On April 7, 2009, federal judge Sullivan formally accepted Holder’s motion to set aside the verdict and throw out the indictment, declaring “There was never a judgment of conviction in this case. The jury’s verdict is being set aside and has no legal effect,” and calling it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen.
Disgusting. But these revelations came too late for Stevens, who had been narrowly defeated in his re-election bid. So the forces desirous of bringing Stevens down were fully successful, even though their duplicity was later discovered. The full report didn’t come out till 2012, two years after Stevens’ death in an airplane accident. But at least he lived to see some vindication.
I’ve gone into so much detail about the Stevens case because although it’s not a perfect analogy, it’s relevant, and it should anger every single person who reads about it, no matter what political side that person might be on.
The goal with Stevens was to force him to lose his election, resign, or face expulsion from the Senate. The goal with Trump is to get him impeached and even convicted, if possible. I happen to think the first option is very possible if the Democrats win the House, but I doubt conviction would occur in the Senate unless a great many GOP moderates went along, and I don’t quite see that happening.
The war on Trump by the Deep State, which represents the permanent “party” in Washington, would exhaust a lesser man. Trump’s resilience is amazing. I have subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for over 30 years. I am amazed at the number of Trump haters who post comments at every article that is seen as favorable to the President. An example is Kim Strassel’s column today. I must assume that lots of these people are profiting from government misrule. It certainly is puzzling.
Conrad Black has been making the case for some time that the federal prosecutocracy is a monster which needs to be chained up. One element of that would be ending unqualified immunity for prosecutors. Another would be to scarify the federal criminal code and re-calibrate sentencing. A third would be to discourage over-charging by requiring the U.S. Attorneys and the Divisions to indemnify defendants for each count on which they could not win a conviction.
Conrad Black has an excellent biography of Trump. His introduction is interesting. The first time he met him was when they were going to rebuild the Sun Times building in Chicago. Black owned it at the time. He had heard of Trump and was concerned about his reputation as a wheeler dealer. He rote that everything about the project was exactly square and the project was completed on time and under budget.
I did read many of the comments appended to Kim Strassel’s latest (very good) column, and I felt as though I might have been reading WaPo (aka Pravda on the Potomac) or the now thoroughly disgraceful NYT. It augurs badly that so many readers of even the WSJ are incapable of analyzing Trump with even a modicum of good sense and rational thought.
The next Democratic President deserves not a moment of peace after all this.
It augurs badly that so many readers of even the WSJ are incapable of analyzing Trump with even a modicum of good sense and rational thought.
I just am puzzled by who they are. Why subscribe to the WSJ, which isn’t cheap, and ignore 250 years of Economics. Do any of them know who Bastiat was ? Milton Friedman ? It’s a mystery.
There is zero chance of a successful impeachment. Zero.
Imagine trying to get re-elected as a Republican if you had impeached a Republican president on less than absolutely solid charges. Anyone who voted to impeach Trump would lose half their support forever, and they know it.
The odd one coming to the end of their time *might* roll over, but nowhere near enough.
The Democrats want to impeach Trump as revenge for Clinton. They don’t care if the Senate does not convict, It was a strategic error for the GOP to impeach Clinton although they had real grounds to do so. He had lied under oath and to his cabinet. Still, the failure to get him out was a loss and he turned far left at the end to attract the nuttier wing of the Democrats. If I recall, Diane Feinstein recommended a censure instead, which would have been a better denouement.
“The next Democratic President deserves not a moment of peace after all this.” Ken
As things currently stand, the next Democratic President will be the last President from the democrat party. “Fundamental Change” on steroids is what we can expect. No way are they ever going to allow another Trump to gain office. And that will precipitate Civil War II.
“There is zero chance of a successful impeachment. Zero.” Chester Draws
Perhaps. Certainly the amount of political cover needed by Republicans in Congress to vote for impeachment and conviction is high. But conviction, while desirable for Trump’s enemies is not an absolute. Trump’s enemies can settle for damaging him enough that he either loses or isn’t even the nominee in 2020. The RNC is likely looking at procedural reforms so as to make it impossible for another outsider like Trump to ever be nominated again.
Trump is changing much in government but I see little change in the Republican party’s basic philosophical makeup. The majority are still for big business/big government and, “going along to get along” with progressive cultural change is still their M.O.
It is obvious that Mueller is out to get Trump. When Rosenstein appointed Mueller he didn’t even specify any crime to be investigated. It was in effect a bill of attainder.
You still haven’t seen it. Republicans control DOJ and the FBI. Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, and Christopher Wray are Republicans, hand picked by President Trump. The latter 2 supervised the Cohen case.
Cohen’s case was referred to DOJ by Robert Meuller, a life-long Republicans. There is no evidence of him being a never-Trumper. He appears to have been willing to serve under Trump. There is no evidence of him engaging in politically motivated Witch Hunts, which is why his critics are reduced to some Whitey Ford gibberish.
SDNY is not an arm of the Democratic Party. This case had to go thru many hoops, including judical review.
Its truly a testament on How Clean Trump truly is when he had the most powerful elites from both parties collaborating with the intelligence community diligently working 24/7 looking under every rock to try to find something to bring this President down and after almost 3 years now all they have is a technicality that has yet to be determined if it was in fact a violation, and his son fallen to a setup clearly collaborated by the Clinton campaign and fusion gps (the alleged female operative was an associate of or related to fusion GPS)
After being in the most cut throat business for 50 years they can’t even find some bank frauds or tax evasion crimes to charge him with. 50 years of being a playboy with liberal billionaires everywhere willing to pay any women any price to frame trump they couldn’t even find a woman to claim Trump raped her.
many people try to convince us Trump is a despicable villain, but giving his lifestyle, his career history and how many rich powerful people willing to offer anything for something to bring him down, Trump is relatively clean and moral man all things considered
Dave — In a little-remembered comment, Charles Lane (or it might have been Bob Woodward) said during the campaign on Fox News Sunday, that the WaPo had a hundred reporters assigned to dig up dirt on Trump. Obviously, they never were able to. That project was never mentioned again.
Here’s the problem. You could not throw a rock in a crowd in DC and not hit someone who has done worse than the sort of things being used here to try to damage Trump. No one is saying that tax evasion is OK. No one is saying that “Well, so-and-so did it too,” is some kind of defense. The issue here is politically motivated, inconsistent enforcement and treatment, that undermines what the rule of law is about. The rule of law involves sane, consistent and expectable enforcement of law, applied equally to all people. This is turning into the clown show that law enforcement south of the border is – a tool used by TPTB to keep people under control and punish anyone that looms a threat.
Essentially, what’s happening here is this: if a cop were patrolling the same street on the same day, and encountered three people doing exactly 10mph over the posted speed limit, and:
1) Didn’t pull over the person with the HRC bumper sticker;
2) Pulled over the person with no bumper sticker, gave them a warning and let them go;
3) Pulled over the person with the Trump bumper sticker, gave them the most severe possible ticket for doing 10mph over the speed limit on that street, then spent an hour searching the car and inspecting it top to bottom while issuing the most severe possible tickets for any other problem that they were able to find.
Repeat, day after day, until you finally find someone who has something somewhat serious to hide, and then say, “We’ll not pursue charges on that baggie of pot under the seat that could get you 150 years in jail If convicted, if you’ll agree to squeal on Trump for something.”
Meanwhile … “Boy that Trump is one bad egg – look at all these criminals associated with Trump. And umpteen years of no convictions of Clinton people!”
And when you see this grotesque miscarriage of justice going on, which runs counter to everything you once thought this country was about and no one is stepping up, are you going to take that risk of getting a life sentence for that baggie of pot?
Are you going to slap a Trump bumper sticker to your car?
No, and no. This is what the hard left wants. Isolate the enemy and anyone who dares to stand with him. In this case, it’s not even that Trump is some magical knight in shining armor. All he had to do was not be the democrat candidate, and win.
Manju,
In future, do us all a favor and refrain from regurgitating CNN and MSNBC ‘talking points’.
“Republicans control DOJ and the FBI.”
The DOJ and FBI’s actions demonstrate otherwise and actions demonstrate the actual reality at play.
“Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein, and Christopher Wray are Republicans, hand picked by President Trump.”
It’s true that Trump picked Sessions and Wray. Sessions has been a grave disappointment. Wray’s failure to act to drain the swamp, demonstrate him to be one of its members. Rosenstein was already assistant director under Comey. His actions demonstrate him to also be part of the Deep State.
“The latter 2 supervised the Cohen case.”
Which tells us all we need to know about those two corrupt officials.
“Cohen’s case was referred to DOJ by Robert Meuller, a life-long Republicans.”
Mueller’s action in loading down his team with pro-Hillary lawyers and continuance over 500 days with nothing to show for it demonstrates his lack of integrity and motivations. Right there is your evidence of anti-Trump bias.
Neither Cohen nor Manafort were tried for anything to do with the DNC’s invented “Russian collusion”.
“He appears to have been willing to serve under Trump.”
Mueller has never served under Trump. His sole position is as an ‘independent’ Special Counsel for the DOJ.
“There is no evidence of him engaging in politically motivated Witch Hunts, which is why his critics are reduced to some Whitey Ford gibberish.”
Willful blindness and/or intellectual dishonesty does not alter the truth.
“SDNY is not an arm of the Democratic Party.”
Are you that naive or that dishonest?
“This case had to go thru many hoops, including judical review.”
And the one honest judge in this travesty of justice has repeatedly and publicly stated this to be a Witch Hunt to get Trump. A bureaucratic attempt to overturn a lawful election for the President of the United States. Which is more than sufficient evidence of treason. Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, Brennan, etc. are examples of the “domestic enemies” mentioned in the Constitution and in the oath of loyalty which our military officers are bound by.
Members of the Deep State belong to both major parties, it provides political cover. Their ‘loyalty’ is to the administrative and bureaucratic fiefdoms they control.
Finally, here’s a warning; take care of that which you wish for… if you get it, it will not end well for you and yours.
So the forces desirous of bringing Stevens down were fully successful, even though their duplicity was later discovered.
DS antics, far beyond the paygrade and level of most Americans.
When Amis thought it a good idea to make the “press” into an elite specialized class, the Republic was bound to die. As time went on, it became easier and easier to outsource the individual’s responsibility to some other body or government regulation.
Now Amis want their power back? Sorry, Deep State does not do refunds. Take it up with Georgia Guidestones.
Meanwhile … “Boy that Trump is one bad egg – look at all these criminals associated with Trump. And umpteen years of no convictions of Clinton people!”
I already told people in 2015 and 2016 that Trum’s self proclaimed mission to clean up DC or the swamp, wasn’t going to be as easy as his supporters wanted to believe. Of course, I doubt anybody was paying attention to my analysis.
Trum the hero king is going to save America? First he has to save himself and prevent himself from getting Nixoned or JFKed.
What the nevertrumpers try to ignore is the fact that all the enormous number of crimes they imagined trump had committed that has yet to be discovered and will be eventually exposed if they look hard enough most likely never happened out of the simple fact that trump only has 24 hours to spend just like everyone else. He simply didn’t possibly had the time to commit all the crimes they imagined he committed. Committing crimes and covering them up while eliminating every piece of evidence so they won’t be discovered over a period of 50 years is not an easy job and is exhausting, and on top of that he had to manage a real estate empire, hosting and co producing one of the most successful show in the last 20 years, millions of other ventures, and running a campaign that won him the presidency including having a rally nearly every day around the country for overall 2 years as a 70 yo elderly. it’s not humanly possible on top of all those duties he had to perform on the surface he had to all run an intricate underground criminal empire including colluding with Russia and money laundering for criminals all over the world while having any energy left to cover up his tracks so his crimes couldn’t be unearthed by the thousands of the best liberal journalists on top of fbi and CIA who were on his tail 24/7 to try to take him down. Use some logic, whatever cnn proposed that trump had violated are less likely to have happened than Alex Jones’ so called conspiracies.
Yammy loves “clever” little insults for all the lesser folk of this country; “Amis” was the slang used by German soldiers (fighting for Nazi Germany) in WW2 to refer to Americans. But it also refers to an Asian people group from Taiwan. Which oh, which could he be inferring these “Amis” to be?
https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5606
And on top of all the things I mentioned above, he is also very stupid, claimed by the self righteous sociopathic left wing fake news media.
” the Stevens case … should anger every single person who reads about it”
manju was pumping his fist when Stevens lost. And laughed afterwards when it was revealed how fraudulent the case was.
I’m wondering if the offer and granting of immunity to the Trump Organization CEO and the head of the National Enquirer is another trick. If you have a mafia underlying you’ve probably guaranteed his death with just an offer, since it sends a signal that he’s talking and he has something or else why offer him the deal? In this, a political case, an offer of immunity sends a signal to the populace that these people are talking and they have something to deal for that immunity. Which increases the belief that there is something “there”.
Geoffrey Britain, Judge T. S. Ellis III stated, rather colorfully, that Mueller, by prosecuting Manafort, was outside of his purview. Since the charges had nothing to do with Russian interference with the election, they were only prosecuting him in order to get him to cooperate, or so his argument goes.
Mueller & Co argued otherwise. This case actually does happen to have something to do with Russian interference, above and beyond simply pressuring Manafort, or so their argument went.
They presented their evidence, much of which we do know. But Ellis, clearly sympathetic to your argument and frankly probably still so, does know. He ruled in favor of Mueller. They followed the money, he wrote.
Now, I can sit here and speculate as to what that evidence is. It’s not too hard to imagine, if your paying attention. But my style is more fact-based: like Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller are all life-long Republicans.
However, if you’d like me to elaborate, I’d be happy to.
Nobody wants more DNC memos regurgitated, so please abstain.
“The RNC is likely looking at procedural reforms so as to make it impossible for another outsider like Trump to ever be nominated again.”
Dartmouth did this after TJ Rogers, a highly successful alum, was nominated by petition. The fix quickly descended and Dartmouth continued on the path to the left.
I suspect the RNC might have similar intent from its donor class.
The “life long Republicans” are always calling Rush Limbaugh and regurgitating DNC talking points so we are familiar with the method.
Manju:
We wait with bated breath for your inside knowledge of the true connections between Manafort’s guilt in this case and Russian collusion of which he was not charged. I know that this judge was unusual in not trying Manafort for a crime that the prosecutors did not accuse him of. That judge is a true outlier these days. How quaint. And yes it is so relevant that Meuller and Rosenstien are staunch, lifelong Republicans who can’t somehow find any Russian collusion or any thing else, jaywalking for example, in the Hillary campaign, It is one of those mysteries of the universe. But do tell all Manju.
And who was head of the FBI when Ted Stevens was railroaded? Why, it was Robert Mueller!
Please see my post of July 19, 2018, entitled “Those Republicans, Comey and Mueller.”
The “life long Republicans” are always calling Rush Limbaugh and regurgitating DNC talking points so we are familiar with the method.
I take it you mean upChuck, the alleged lawyer from Detroit, who graces the Althouse forum. My wager about him is that he’s a careerist on the payroll butt-hurt about the failing grade Republican voters gave the Capitol Hill / K Street nexus in 2016, sort of a lower-echelon John Kasich. I’m actually quite curious to learn which aspirant buckraker he works for. Since he’s never uttered a word which indicates the slightest interest in any ideology or programmatic preference, I don’t think he works for Ben Sasse or anyone like Ben Sasse.
Wasn’t Ted Stevens’ conviction “Exhibit A” for Sarah Palin’s supposed claim to fame of having drained the swamp of corruption in Alaskan state politics?
Wasn’t Ted Stevens’ conviction “Exhibit A” for Sarah Palin’s supposed claim to fame of having drained the swamp of corruption in Alaskan state politics?
Stevens was a federal politician. Sarah Palin’s conflicts were with Gov. Murkowski and his camarilla.
The real purveyors of Russian collusion – a Ukrainian lobbyist who Mueller will never indict.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/25/finally-proof-of-russian-collusion-just-not-the-sort-the-left-was-hoping-for/
“Jordan Schachtel, national security correspondent for the Conservative Review, has uncovered the fact that Michael Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, “is on the payroll of a pro-Moscow Ukrainian oligarch with direct ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
…
As principal lobbyist for Firtash, Davis draws a monthly paycheck of $60,000, plus expenses, totaling around a million dollars a year. More interesting still is a report by a Ukrainian news site indicating that Firtash wired him $80,000 just two weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
Owing to Davis’s long-held ties to the woman who ran against Trump in the 2016 election, his fiduciary arrangement with a Ukrainian oligarch might be worth Mueller’s time to look into — or at least it would be if the special counsel were genuinely in knowing the truth.”