The raid on the office of Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen
What’s so disturbing is not just the raid on the office (and home, and hotel room) of Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, but the broader context in which it took place.
What I mean by “broader context,” is the vendetta nature of our entire political discourse for quite some time now; I hesitate to say when it started, but certainly by the time of the Clinton impeachment it was in place at least somewhat, and probably even before that. You may indeed disagree with me on the Clinton impeachment, but I have never seen any reason to change my judgment of that action (which I don’t want to rehash now, but please see this, this, and this, for example).
We don’t know a whole lot about the Cohen raid, except that it was so egregious in terms of violation of the attorney/client privilege (and for the president of the United States, at that) that it had better be for an excellent reason, because this action is extreme and unprecedented.
Meanwhile, the anti-Trump press is making the most of the “Trump is fuming” story. Well, I’m fuming too, and not because I’m so intent on protecting Trump or any other Republican. It’s because I want to see people protected from over-reaching fishing expeditions (see the John Doe prosecutions), and certainly don’t want to see partisan witch-hunting prosecutions of any president for minor matters. And make no mistake about it, if Trump’s lawyer really did make some sort of $130K payment to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet (ordinarily a completely legal action) and it is thought to somehow be a campaign contribution because there was an imminent election at the time, that is a matter so iffy in terms of interpretation (reasonable minds may differ on whether it was a violation at all, even if the worst comes out) and so essentially trivial that it’s not worth a raid that violates the attorney-client privilege and it’s not worth an impeachment—although of course a president can be impeached for just about any reason if the political winds happen to blow that way.
There’s so much more in this story—and so much that’s not yet known—that I have turned to my usual legal go-to people, lawyers I have seen over time, in many situations, as the most non-partisan and fair of all. One is libertarian Jonathan Turley, whose take on this mostly involves Cohen, and sees him as bait to lure Trump into some sort of misstep in reaction:
…[W]e still are unclear as to whether Cohen was acting for himself or his client or his shell company in paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels just days before the election.
Cohen signed the now-infamous nondisclosure agreement with Daniels on behalf of “EC LLC,” which is basically himself. He allegedly never conferred with Trump or got his consent for paying $130,000 in hush money. Moreover, Cohen has talked about securing $20 million in penalties from Daniels for himself, not for Trump.
Even when a valid, clear attorney-client relationship exists, that privilege can be set aside in cases of crime or fraud…
The president could ultimately pardon Cohen, while the special counsel could give him a deal. Some at the Justice Department may be counting on Trump’s aggressive tendencies to do the rest. In running to Cohen’s rescue, the president could easily find himself the prize rather than the predator in this conflict.
That seems to take as a given that Trump is the quarry, but doesn’t really address the question of whether this is a proper behavior for a special prosecutor appointed to investigate another matter entirely: to use other courts (in this case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York) to launch an iffy prosecution in order to pressure a president into a reactive misstep, and to violate the confidentiality of his communications with his own attorney along the way.
Let’s look at liberal-but-usually-fair lawyer Allan Dershowitz; who said that the silence of the ACLU on this—which “would be on every TV station in America jumping up and down” if it happened to Hillary Clinton, but is instead issuing forth a “deafening silence”—is “appalling.”
Note also that the article I just linked puts forth an idea common to most writers on the subject of the Cohen raid, which is the assumption that it was Trump appointee Geoffrey Berman, Acting Southern District U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who approved the warrant being sent to the judge for the ruling. The idea that a Trump appointee approved this was used as justification for the idea that it must have involved something very serious and egregious, with lots of probable cause.
But it turns out that Berman had already recused himself, and we don’t know why. What we do know is that he had nothing to do with this.
There is also a discussion between Mark Levin and Andrew C. McCarthy on the Cohen raid (McCarthy is usually especially good on the law), which you can listen to here. The reason I’m not commenting on that is that it’s long and I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet myself, so I don’t know what McCarthy and Levin say. I may weigh in on that later, but I wanted to get this post up ASAP. So this is my quick take on the whole thing so far.
[ADDENDUM: This is also part of what I mean by “broader context”—the incredible double standard of the law. One of the strongest foundations of our legal system is that justice should be blind, which means (among other things) that it should not be differentially applied to members and/or leaders of different parties.
And yet:
Trump voters and even fair-minded middle-of-the-roaders consider the crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and wonder at the double standard. She and her team smashed phones and computers to bits after the evidence therein was subpoenaed. Oops. Hillary Clinton and her chief minion Cheryl Mills claimed attorney-client privilege when Mills, herself, was under investigation for obstruction. Did Hillary answer any of the FBI’s questions? We don’t know as they didn’t record the session. Oops. And then, classified emails showed up on Hillary’s assistant’s husband’s computer who is in prison for pornographic interaction with a minor online. Has the Clinton Foundation or Huma Abedin’s home or Hillary’s bathroom been no-knock raided yet?
No.
And then there’s the business of how this Russia investigation started: opposition research that turned out to be specious was used as evidence to wire-tap a Trump associate who had ticked off the number two at the FBI, Andrew McCabe. So the FISA system was used to harm political opposition ”” the leadership of the FBI, DOJ, and the FISA court were used as a way of “insurance” against Trump. And, boy, has it worked! The investigation prompted by a butt-hurt James Comey based on made-up evidence based on illegal leaks by Comey to the press now leads to scooping up all communications between Donald Trump and his attorney to be revealed to FBI investigators. Sounds fair!
Stipulate to the fact that Michael Cohen made some illegal payment to Stormy Daniels and it somehow entangles the President and the President is pressured to resign or face impeachment, what is this doing to the body politic?
Very Righteous Republicans claim that the moral high road demands justice or else justice is mocked. Really? This whole dog and pony show doesn’t seem like it’s mocking justice? When all of America knows, even the most delusional Democrat, that no Democrat would be subjected to this circus, justice is a joke. (The inevitable mocking response by Republicans keen on calling out hypocrisy doesn’t change the warped justice: “But Hillary!” Two sets of rules is not justice.)
There is no winning here. The cheerleaders for the investigation pull, pull, pull at the ever finer thread holding the states united. They seem to have no idea what fearsome forces they play with. Americans rightly see this fiasco as the intent to undo an election that nearly everyone “important” finds revolting.]
Of course the people on the left do not believe for one minute that if their side had all the power it needs, it would do differently than the all the other despotic regimes based on the same ideas…
(and hitlers excursion was the Magyarr strugle which then became My struggle in english… duh… it was a book by Engels talking about a world storm that would exterminate certain cultures)
but attorny client privelege is dead…
unless what happens?
and thats ok, as we forgot that Obama destroyed business contract law by allowing the state to rewrite contracts ex post facto!!!
oh, and dont worry… all those laws created that are not being used so they dont get tested? they will be used and there will be no way to oppose it.
but if you think this is over, its not
meuller just redefined the whole schope of what such can do and how far they can go and how no on, not even the president short of taking on huge pain, can put the brakes on.
several left things have no breaks
meuller
feminists
racialists
socialists/communist
those trains have no handles..
they all crash and burn…
i said this way long ago…
and its from the people i work with that are similar
how this for the biggest laugh goof of all..
what if, everyting trump does is on the up and up legally?
what if, he has discovered the power of that?
as i said he has and many i know, they are assumed to cheat, but they dont.. they follow the rules at the time – which may not be nice, but its what is their right… while others add fake rules having to do with their money, ideas, etc.
i said way beck before the election… that such a man, who is disliked and attacked and prevented and so on… all around… he would be insane to break rules and hand his head to his opposition on a platter never to be heard from!!!
but in all these years, all this time, and all this watching..
and what has anyone ever found on him about anything?
which leads me to the punch line..
the supreme confidence such brings you in such times as now, becasue you know what they dont and they refuse to believe, and so, you dont have to act.
the longer you wait and let them do their thing, the deeper they get and the more shocking and so on.
its Al Capones secret vault writ large on washington
with Meuller playing Geraldo Rivera…
Hosted by TV personality Geraldo Rivera, the special centered on the opening of a secret vault in the Lexington Hotel once owned by noted crime lord Al Capone, which turned out to be empty except for debris.
how long before meuller and “Live from Al Capone’s Tomb!” gets associated if not already?
and the jokes that would come when its all over, and the wreckage is there, and at the very end of it, they have…
nuttin…
Artfldgr:
The point of the Turley article is that Trump may be in trouble even if everything he’s done re Stormy Daniels and Cohen and everything else is on the up and up, because even if it was only Cohen who was guilty of wrongdoing on his own, the idea is that Trump will commit some error in trying to defend Cohen. Like firing a whole bunch of people and causing a firestorm (politically) through that. The idea is that Cohen being in trouble, and the violation of Trump’s attorney/client confidentiality, will cause some sort of politically and/or legally fatal misstep by Trump.
I don’t know if that will happen, but that’s the idea that Turley is advancing.
Also, what makes you think that we have forgotten that Obama violated basic contract law? I wrote about that quite a bit at the time, for example see this.
This road, if taken, ends in guns.
“Americans rightly see this fiasco as the intent to undo an election that nearly everyone “important” finds revolting”
Besides Dershowitz’s view about violation of civil rights and the ACLU’s silence, I think this raid is a very big deal. When I heard about it I got a bit of a pit in my stomach. As you say Neo, it’s another step along the road to undo an election that the Dems have never accepted.
What gets my stomach going, and one may say it’s hyperbole on my part, is I see a progression towards either a slow coup by the Deep State/Dems, or at worst the steps towards a hot civil war.
The Left is so blinded by their hatred, that as Neo prophetically says, “They seem to have no idea what fearsome forces they play with.”
“… fearsome forces they play with”
Yes, they have no idea. They should have read Unintended Consequences by John Ross. This will not end well.
A comment by Thomas Collins from a thread over at Just One Minute:
“Re Red Pill’s What Ifs: What if this is exactly what is staring us in the face, namely, an investigation into every nook and cranny of Trump and his business associates and family enabled, if not actively facilitated, by influential elements in DOJ, FBI and the intelligence communities, with the intent to eviscerate Trump’s political support so that the 2016 election results can be reversed? What if even Trump appointees will ultimately have loyalty to their professional associates in DOJ, FBI and the intelligence communities? What if Trump, because he is an outsider, needs to rely on too many insiders for appointments? What if what seems obvious in regard to Flynn, namely, financial ruin, really is the case? What if the idea is to show those still supporting Trump that financial ruin, if not jail time, is also in the cards for them?
I could go on, but you get the idea.”
This is what I was thinking, only said much better– in that they’re not looking as much for prosecutions, but squeezing Trump associates into compliance with the program.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you? Where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
CapnRusty:
Yes, but in this case the letter of the law may have been followed.
Some jurist or pundit said (I forget who, and don’t have the time to search for it right now) that all of us break many laws every day, and/or that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. The point is that if you want to get someone, you can always get that person for something. So the law can be used wisely or unwisely, prejudicially or unprejudicially. Laws are only as good as the people who administer them, although it is important to come up with the best and fairest laws we can.
So where are our little “respect for process” harpists so evident here before the election?
Those would be the ones whose interest in the rule of law evaporated as soon as their own interest in illegal alien migrations seemed to be threatened by the strict application of the law.
Hypocrisy, is much too mild a term for what we are witnessing.
So the Mueller team, say commentators, are going to try and indict Trump on a payment his lawyer made to a prostitute, because the benefit derived from her keeping mouth closed for once in her life, may have constituted a campaign benefit received … and thus an illegal campaign contribution.
This is the warped vision which gave us Wickard V Filburn; the tentacles of which now constitute the perverted core of progressive legal reasoning.
DNW:
Trump may not be indicted for that; see my comment at 3:36 PM. This may be a trap for him, however.
Maybe this is being done to stop Pres. Trump in 2020. Imagine all of the “leaks” that will come out of this “investigation”. Look what was done with dossier, Imagine what kind of creative editing can be done to all of this information.Very few people could withstand that onslaught or would be willing to put their loved ones through that.
Neo the idea is that Trump will commit some error in trying to defend Cohen.
why would he defend cohen and take the risk? [whats the reward?]
In business everythign is about risk, and i work with these kinds they pay their lawyers, just as i do, to be the point of risk My accountant is paid because they will appear in court and defend the things they do for me.. why would i have to defend them? that kind of negates the point of such privelege and having one!
he wont defend cohen – there wont be a need to
you keep acting as if your not learnign from what he does and so on keep revertting to the original idea and never away from that despite First westerner to sit with Xi in the forbidden city Got Norks to come to the table Got Xi, today, to announce a lowering of tarrifs and opening up the nation
each disaster turned out to be win, and what are we learnign? nothing we keep thinig this billionaire is jsut lucky or a cheat, and that no man can be that otherwise
it colors our views and is obvious to me.
Neo: Like firing a whole bunch of people and causing a firestorm (politically) through that. The idea is that Cohen being in trouble, and the violation of Trump’s attorney/client confidentiality, will cause some sort of politically and/or legally fatal misstep by Trump.
well he has answered that question about a half dozen times, but i guess the make up horrors have you notice your scenario is made up, not real, has no basis other than YOU… [i even saw two interview clipson film where basically he is goign to let them hang themselves]
he gets everyone to project THEIR fears and then he uses them to win
Neo: I don’t know if that will happen, but that’s the idea that Turley is advancing.
who gives a durn about the IDIOT Turley? FEAR IS CONTAGEOUS and we are programmed to focus on it whether we want to or not, which is why scicne has devolved from great future and wonderful things, to be afraid of eveyrhing in the universe…
and i am allowed my opinion from my experience and i am not allowed to really delve and write huge things to justify 50 years of study in the subjecvts outside the main politically correct view! [they get cut]
your swimming in shiza and cant tell where the stinkis from but how many times do i have to say over and over how can we in one breath go nutters as to the lies, made up ,and chicken little fear games but then, as soon as a scary story that suits our preloading for decades pops up we forget that and then go for it biting hard and then explaining how its some other smart person
its inane… but its constant..
because its the ONLY water to drink!!! its like complaining the water is dirty, but then using it to drink, clean and take a dump in
Neo: Also, what makes you think that we have forgotten that Obama violated basic contract law? I wrote about that quite a bit at the time, for example see this.
easy.. i NEVER see arguments in the whole, always the way we are taught, to take them apart – i am never sure about the specific forgetting, but i see it all the time… (and they are usually the things that are meant to be left out or something we are kind of reflexivly make excuses for.. why? it wont do that for you)
you dont ever discuss 30 years of such tick tocks and lsit them all out
we jsut jump from the latest one in the past few years.
it goes back before obama, before bush… i posited the question (from reading documents from gobvernments as to how to change the law and things) about the laws that are not enforced (selective inforcement allows you to inject laws and thigns without ability to address them because courts require a harmed person, which a non enforced law never has until when?)…
its nice we discuss puzzle pieces apart..
but direction requires more than one point, a point is not a vector
same with trends…
but we never ever (not just here) try to put the pieces together
they are all separate incidents.
so we dont put together what is going on now with all the other stuff as if there is a strategy
Here is something i know before reading this and was taught to:
nice.. soooooo… what do we do when we discuss that that is in mind when we discuss things? no… but our leaders and everyone else does.. and when i speak to security people at conferences that include the secret service, NSA, etc… THEY speak about it as its a given, they dont avoid it, and we are trained in it as corporate personell whose companies and systems can be compromised by such.
but since the 70s/80s it changed to keeping he public in the dark and not admit to that, and not say things and that is the public take. (call it blow back from vietnam getting the news to change outcomes of leaders. putting media in charge of what should be in charge]
we do NOT include historical events from the spy agencies, despite they keep cropping up [like assasinations… which we dont looko at as a whole, but incidents that catch us]
do we treat factory owners or anyone from there as the above is true? or the 1995 party line? its the 1995 party line that now has us in the crapper as they never changed, and we pretended they did (want to read about that from poli sci)
why do i bring it up? well, you have the administration trying to prove Russia did this and that, and all thes thigns..
but who is going to ask Zuckerberg about the above? it was these russian companies that heavilyinvested and controlled the early days of facebook and twitter.. Yuri Milner was key (why not search and see what i wrote years ago about this day coming?)
things are avoided as too (whatever) other things are ignored despite being central to the discussion but since they are from the dirty water sources we pretend they dont exist!!
and we refuse to make them exist by including them…
[so when a poisioning incident happens, we have little knowlege as to how to think about it. we dont have the endless history of one entity, we are even willing to entertain isreali action. why? what point? we did not discuss the restart of Kamera, or the other agencies i said were being ramped up years before the events]
ESPECIALLY if they are from the college courses womens studies stuff which places the blame, or heroic outcome, in their lap and lists them they admit it, they celebrate it,and the only ones that dont are the ones that dont believe it even more so, the broken logic and so on is incredible so incredible no one believes that, that is what is in charge!
thats why i think that
and i am allowed to think that (and it shouldnt bother you, i am a nothing who will never be something -thanks to the left and their games that you know about)
and part of it is the various trainings i get
and i will never have the space to formaly list out
and i dont argue well this turn but better with facts
in fact, this was not the reason i came to post here..
so i get hit.. but thre is no way for me to bring up the huge amount of stuff that is missing… in fact i kind of stopped trying as i got too many cut endings… why waste my precious live energy to do that?
soooo… i can only do what otehrs do. assert and everyone has to live with it… i am too wordy, and have too much informatino to put down easy, and there is no way to shorten this.
there is whole sections of libraries devoted to parts of these subjects
not my circus not my monkeys
i just watch and study and read and remember
CapnRusty Says:
April 10th, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
* * *
We (that is, the DOJ et al.) certainly gave Obama benefits they are not extending to anyone else other than Hillary, of course.
McCarthy has covered the legal aspects as well as the existentially-partisan ones, but here is what he reminded us of particularly:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/the-cohen-searches-and-trumps-de-mini-mess/
“Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was caught hiding the sources of 1,300 large campaign donations, aggregating to nearly $2 million. The campaign also accepted more than $1.3 million in unlawful donations from contributors who had already given the legal maximum.
Under federal law, such campaign-finance violations, if they aggregate to just $25,000 in a calendar year, may be treated as felonies punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment – with offenses involving smaller dollar amounts punishable by incarceration for a year or more. (See Section 30109(d) of Title 52, U.S. Code, pp. 51—52 of the Federal Election Commission’s compilation of campaign laws.)
The Obama campaign did not have a defense; it argued in mitigation that the unlawful donations constituted a negligible fraction of the monumental amount it had raised from millions of “grass-roots” donors. Compelling? Maybe not, but enough to convince the Obama Justice Department not to prosecute the Obama campaign – shocking, I know. During the Christmas holiday season right after the 2012 campaign, with Obama safely reelected and nobody paying much attention, the matter was quietly settled with the payment of a $375,000 fine.
Is the $130,000 in hush money Donald Trump’s personal lawyer paid to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election a campaign-finance violation? Probably, although it’s a point of contention. Even if we stipulate that it is, though, we’re talking comparative chump change.
Yet, as that lawyer, Michael Cohen, has discovered, what was not a crime in the Obama days is the crime of the century now.”
Just as what was not a crime for Hillary & Co. gets everyone else thrown into jail without compunction, as the quoted writer declared in Neo’s post.
This will not end well, even if, as the Dems seem to believe, they achieve their goal of taking down President Trump by impeachment or implosion.
Especially then.
Brian E. is probably right, but Trump’s official associates are squeezable legally; the electorate that supports him is not.
Yet.
Neo says this may be a trap. Of course it is, and given his personality Trump will likely fall into it.
Yuri Milner took the stage for a Q. and A. at a technology conference in San Francisco
when someone asked a question that had swirled around his Silicon Valley ascent – Who were his investors? – he did not answer, turning repeatedly to the moderator with a look of incomprehension.
Now, leaked documents examined by The New York Times offer a partial answer: Behind Mr. Milner’s investments in Facebook and Twitter were hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kremlin.
-=-=-=-=-=-
one thing i can tell you…
one reason to do that is not the money
its the fact that any business that does not protect itself (like where i work they dont believe it either, its the academic ideal), will find the data stolen..
so twitter and faceboook from a GRU FSB point would be what? a goldmine.. worth more than anything else… it would give you psych profiles of kids to watch to tag later or affect..
why bother discussing arts?
they dont happen
but wouldnt knowing that facebook was started by russian oligarchs explain a lot and note… zukerberg is on the hotseat and whoever guided things would not be known, ever… but do not think that tthe investment board has no influence on the choices of where and what policies a company has.
and one reason for its meteoric rise was help… from other points on the same side, committing to allowing it in and forcing its presence…
what about Alibek?
and about that poisoning? you know… they interviewed the man who invented it, and so on. and there are other facts about it
same with things like crypto ag (Saddam hussein, and a prior story of supergun which also had assasinations)
oh, and the anthrax that was around for a bit? that still makes us scared when white powder appears? it was weaponized by russia… everyone knows as there was ony two places that had the special fumed silica… among other obscure facts that people dont discsuss
heck
we didnt want to discuss he ny times release of the CIA missive to treat this stuff as conspiracy theory to insure that the publiuc would not discuss it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zhivago was up on google
CIA Publishes Doctor Zhivago in Russian and Exposes Life in USSR under Communism
hey..
try to find the ny times article in which they reveal the idea of conspiracy theories was from the united states and was to help control the peoples regard for events and kind of neuter them
here is one for you neo!
have you read, any of the following books?
Remember archives been open adn things are released once enough are dead
and then do we take time to updat ourselves?
or do we, as the socialists say, have to die out before the new knowlege is known?
The Sword and the Shield – Book by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
you look for changers and yet ignore the most interesting ones
not the fool who thought one thing and got run over socially and is not harmed
but generals, academics, bio warfare professors…
and people who get on the list of those to assasinate, and as in the UK, they do get them
you like Victor david hansen
but what about Christopher Andrew?
Christopher Maurice Andrew (born 23 July 1941) is an Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Cambridge with an interest in international relations and in particular the history of intelligence services
i have rotten refferences… eh?
Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, former Chair of the History Faculty at Cambridge University, Official Historian of the Security Service (MI5), Honorary Air Commodore of 7006 (VR) Intelligence Squadron in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, Chairman of the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, and former Visiting Professor at Harvard, Toronto and Canberra.
so lets not read him at all and not know what ghandi did and all the other things
in ten years i hve not gotten you to read one thing i listed.. and mention it.
over 30 books…most free… many out of print… all key histories
many people erased… forgotten… like willi munsenberg… gone, erased, out of the mind
but they changed how you think… they changed you..
and you dont knwo them..
and you dont want to know them either. its nicer to believe that this was all spontanous
but then willi said “the most important thing is to never let them know these ideas are not theirs”!!!
🙂
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/04/09/muellers-raid-trumps-lawyer-good-news-bad-news/
“Whatever happened in the Stormy Daniels situation, no sane person thinks it had anything to do with “Russiagate.” (Her encounter with Trump, whatever it entailed, was in 2006.)
Finding out what Cohen’s files say about Stormy Daniels is clearly not important enough to justify bypassing due process (in a civil suit, at that — or even if it interested the Federal Election Commission, as urged by “Washington-based groups”). It is well outside Mueller’s charter. As a reminder, he is chartered to investigate potential Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election as a counterintelligence matter, and to prosecute any obstruction he comes across in the process of doing that. Stormy Daniels has nothing to do with his special counsel charter.
That actually means that if he did refer Michael Cohen for investigation over Stormy Daniels, then Mueller himself was looking in the wrong places, given what is legitimately of interest to him.
…
This event has the feel to it of the Rubicon being crossed. Either we have the rule of law, or we don’t. No one gets appointed in America to simply root around in as many people’s business as necessary until he can find some way to undo the results of an election.
…
Trump has been adhering to the rules, waiting on due process of law. Mueller has shown more than once that he is not. It’s starting to create an exceptional trail of bad faith in the legal system – something America, as we know her, won’t survive. This has gone on long enough.”
The saddest thing is that this sort of lawless behavior by the guardians of the law is not new; it happens in almost every political generation, and no one ever seems to be held accountable for the lawlessness in and of itself. Only a few people are (mildly) censured when they get caught, if that.
This is all about regaining power through a soft coup. Whether Trump’s conviction in the Senate, or his defeat in 2020, they mean to seize power by whatever means are necessary and never relinquish it again. They then plan to use Federal agencies and the military to put down any armed resistance. Totalitarian ideologies do not share power for any longer than necessary.
Comments seen today on a blog post addressing totally unrelated subject matter, but, hey, it’s the internet.
“Two Russians walk into a bar.
The bartender says, “Hey, what is this, some kind of joke?”
So Mueller takes all the bartender’s stuff.”
“they once drank a White Russian at a bar…
RACIST!!! COLLUSION!!!!”
“The Evil Empire is dead, and we have their booze.
Life is good.”
“One of my student’s smart-watch malfunctioned this afternoon, and the others at the table chorused, “Russian ‘bot!”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/10/robert-mueller-laid-trap-president-trump-marking-investigation-subject/
(by George Parry, not Andy McCarthey)
“So, how does the prosecutor get the “target” to voluntarily submit to interrogation or testify before the grand jury? He tells defense counsel that the “target” is merely a “subject” of the investigation. Believe it or not, this frequently causes defense counsel and their clients to think they may have a chance of talking their way out of trouble.
But frequently, after the so-called “subject” has given his version of events, the prosecutor changes the witness’s designation from a mere “subject” to a “target.” This usually takes place about a nanosecond before the “target” is indicted.
Mueller’s reported designation of the president as a mere “subject” of the investigation is not only meaningless, it is a reprise of one of the oldest prosecutorial tricks in the book. He is setting a trap in the hope that the president and his legal team will think he is almost in the clear and, accordingly, should voluntarily submit to interrogation in order to clear up any misconceptions.
This move is all the more alarming given that it appears to have been prompted by reports that the president’s lawyers are actually considering whether their client should voluntarily submit to an interrogation by Team Mueller.
So, based on my 20 years of conducting federal and state grand jury and street-level investigations and another 25 representing “subjects” and “targets,” permit me to offer this advice to the president’s legal team. Don’t be encouraged or misled by Mueller’s designation of your client as a mere “subject.” He’s simply baiting the trap and crossing his fingers that you and your client will be dumb enough to grab for the cheese.
Also, be aware that you are not involved in some kind of gentlemanly legal contest with reasonable, high-minded adversaries. These people are thugs with law degrees. If they can get a crack at your client in an interrogation, it won’t end well for him.”
I do not believe that we have seen anything like this, any struggle for power with such grave consequences for all of us, in the history of our country. Other countries yes, us–up until now–no.
This is basically an attempted coup d’etat; members of the Deep State occupying key positions in the Congress, DOJ, State, Justice, the FBI, the Intelligence Agencies, and the Court system using the investigatory and prosecutorial powers of their offices, aided by, justified, and cheered on by the MSM, to eliminate a President who is a grave threat to their continued hold on power, and the course that–up until now–they have charted for our country.
Aiding them in all this are Obama holdovers in government and never Trumpers in Congress and elsewhere in our government.
Of course, this raw grab for power–or should I say to maintain it–is gussied up with their preferred “narrative,” and all sorts of pseudo-legal justifications, but a brutal, bloody, bar room brawl, a struggle for ultimate, decisive power is what it is.
The Deep State actors have given up any real pretense of acting evenhandedly and within the law, and are just doing anything they wish, justifying their actions with flimsy excuses that their allies in Congress, the Executive Agencies, the Courts, and the MSM pretend are normal and justified.
Our famous “checks and balances,” our supposed “three co-equal branches of government,” the Rule of Law and equal justice under it are being destroyed, stomped on and ground into the mud, right before our eyes.
Just one case in point among many–
How is it that the DOJ and FBI feel they can and do defy multiple requests, demands, and subpoenas from their supposed oversight Committees of Congress (who have created these organizations in the first place, and fund them) for some 1.2 million documents, can stall and slow walk their response for months, and then contemptuously produce a couple thousand heavily redacted documents?
It seems to me that the DOJ, FBI and other Executive Agencies believe that they are above the law, in fact, make the law, and make it whatever they want it to be, Congress, the Constitution, the people, and the President be damned.
It’s a real coup d’etat folks and, if the Deep State wins, then, we are no longer really Free (if we ever really were).
The functionaries of the Deep State can do anything to anyone and get away with it, and whatever they might say or pretend to be the case, whatever false front of “normalcy” they might present, or the MSM deceive tens of millions of citizens into believing, the Rule of Law, equal justice, are done here in America, and Presidential elections are meaningless.
Our democratic Republic, the Constitution, and our rights laid out in the Bill of Rights are in fact meaningless, dead, here in America.
I would hope that Cohen’s and Trump’s lawyer would already be in court this morning arguing for a suppression motion, or a least a judge to supervise the “cleaning.” I know I would be.
Sessions should call the AUSA who applied for the warrants on the carpet and ask him to justify them, and if he or she can’t, reprimands or fire him/her.
GB says:
This is all about regaining power through a soft coup. Whether Trump’s conviction in the Senate, or his defeat in 2020, they mean to seize power by whatever means are necessary…
Reluctantly agree.
Roger Simon on the outcome of a possible soft coup:
…these adversaries, ambitious and vengeful as they are, have little idea of the chaos that will ensue in this country should Trump fall, the ruptures that will occur. And if they do understand that, they are the vilest of men and women. It is a chaos that will engulf Western Civilization itself…
Hyperbole? Or truth.
Neo dismisses the criminality of the actual payment to S. Daniels as minor or unprosecutable. Then there is the other alleged crime which is lying on a bank loan form. It was a home equity line of credit and presumably Cohen wrote something like “home repairs” on the line labeled “Purpose.”
When I read about the 2nd one, I thought that it sounded pretty bad. A home equity loan was used to pay off S. Daniels? But how did that work?
There must have been a Cohen Law LLP bank account and a different M. Cohen personal bank account and the HELOC money went into the latter. Did he pay Daniels out of his personal account? Also, money is fungible, so if he said he was going to do repairs or buy a boat with his HELOC money, did he? Who is to say which money went where? A HELOC isn’t even a specific amount of money, though it has a specific limit to the amount of the loan.
_________
It doesn’t sound far fetched that Mueller is trying to trick Trump into some untoward action. But, … pardoning Cohen sounds like a clean maneuver to me. Many pundits would complain about it, but those complaints pale in comparison to the egregious nature of Mueller’s attack. Is the media whining the trap? I don’t see it, but I could be wrong.
______
Speaking of campaign finance, what about M. Zuckerberg and his Facebook minions serving up profiles on millions of US citizens to the Obama 2012 campaign? I know we’re supposed to focus on Cambridge Analytica, but how many millions of $$ was that Facebook data worth to the Obama campaign? $100M? Much more? I doubt it was disclosed to the FEC.
It bears all the hallmarks of SWATting. And, in light of Obama/Clinton/DNC’s Water Closet, which was Deep Plunged, but never drained, let alone treated, the hopes and motives are likely to coincide.
TommyJay – “Speaking of campaign finance, what about M. Zuckerberg and his Facebook minions serving up profiles on millions of US citizens to the Obama 2012 campaign? I know we’re supposed to focus on Cambridge Analytica, but how many millions of $$ was that Facebook data worth to the Obama campaign? $100M? Much more? I doubt it was disclosed to the FEC.”
Even if it was disclosed — without fanfare or notice from the MSM, if not in total secret — from the “most transparent administration in history” — the FEC unquestionably did nothing or very little, along the lines of the campaign finance violations I linked to above.
TommyJay; AesopFan:
See this.
You’re losing it here, neo-con.
The only one losing it is Trump. He’s about to start a war in Syria to divert attention away from his domestic problems.
Human livestock don’t have rights. They only think they do, in this deluded Matrix.
This “news” isn’t new to me: OP topic.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
April 10th, 2018 at 6:02 pm
This is all about regaining power through a soft coup. Whether Trump’s conviction in the Senate, or his defeat in 2020, they mean to seize power by whatever means are necessary and never relinquish it again. They then plan to use Federal agencies and the military to put down any armed resistance. Totalitarian ideologies do not share power for any longer than necessary.
GB’s analysis is similar to what I had in 2010. But given recent revelations and additional sources, I have changed that analysis given the number of factions that I know now have their hands in the pot.
There may still be a coup de tat or emergency martial law ruling, but it won’t necessarily come from the Leftist alliance.
Also, be aware that you are not involved in some kind of gentlemanly legal contest with reasonable, high-minded adversaries. These people are thugs with law degrees. If they can get a crack at your client in an interrogation, it won’t end well for him.”
That is what humans advise but what does the Holy Ghost and Godhead advise?
RE Pine: that is incorrect. The feds did something similar before with Nixon and Nixon fell for the trap.
Our democratic Republic, the Constitution, and our rights laid out in the Bill of Rights are in fact meaningless, dead, here in America.
The US Republic has been dead for quite some time now. About time for people to wake up from their utopian fantasies.
Re: Syria
My main problem with this is that we apparently have no/cannot obtain any definitive proof that the Syrian government was responsible for this CW attack.
There are weapons floating all around the Middle East, and I would imaging those weapons include chemical weapons.
There are Muslim factions fighting each other here, and also involved are the Syrian government, the Russians, and the Iranians, with military actions swirling around in a very chaotic area that is surrounded, and–according to one news report yesterday–the U.S is having trouble getting anyone into that area, on the ground, to inspect the “scene of the crime.”
Then, there is the fact that Muslims are very adept at disinformation and staging provocations.
So, given all these circumstances, can the U.S. really determine, with any great deal of certainty, just who carried out this attack?
I wonder, and I wonder if an educated guess is sufficient for us to stage a major attack against the Syrian government, and get sucked back into a war that President Trump is trying to extract U.S. forces from?
It is becoming increasingly clear, virtually by the minute, that a lot of the supposed “news” we are being fed is disinformation, propaganda deliberately created to blind us to certain facts, to misdirect us, to make us think and behave in certain ways, to incite, to “nudge” us to make this vs. that decision.
Yes, we are being shown videos purporting to show that somebody attacked civilians in Syria, including children, possibly with a Chemical Weapon.
I am certainly no fan of the Syrian government, and can also well believe that they might have done this.
But, how do we know that any of the things we are being told about this video are true, when this footage is no different than the scenes and situations we see created for any number of U.S. TV shows?
How is this any different from the play on emotion of “it’s for the children”–that the Democrats and the Left always very successfully employ to get us to rely on emotion rather than intellect, as a way to get all sorts of bad policies put in place?
Who took the video? Who transmitted it to Western news sources? Are we seeing the entire video that was sent to some news organization here in the West? Who was it that asserted that this video showed the aftermath of a Chemical attack. What is the scientific evidence that a CW agent was used? Who came to the conclusion that the Syrian government was behind this attack?
Could this be an example of a “false flag” attack, a ploy to get us ever more enmeshed in the fighting in Syria?
Knowing what we now know of the actions of the CIA and NSA over the last couple of years, can we trust in the truth of any analysis they might make, and any conclusions they might come to?
It’s a shame, but right now I, and I expect a lot of other people, have very little faith in what many of our Executive agencies and the MSM are telling us is the “truth.”
What I see on this Syria CW attack issue is far too much emotion–they gassed children!!!–and far too little analysis and cold calculation of the type that we always ought to employ before committing U.S. blood and treasure to a cause, especially since President Trump is apparently trying to extricate U.S. forces from Syria, not to get them more deeply involved in that country and the fighting there.
Pine is asking the right questions. That is the beginning of wisdom and the ability to penetrate the deception of this World.
The answers do not need to be absolutely correct, but the ability to question Authority must remain unsullied for the process to unify.
The George Papadopoulos incident is how the Russia investigation started. You can find this of all places in the last paragraph of the Nunes Memo, oddly enough.
Stick with me, this will ultimately relate to the topic of this thread.
Here’s something of great–actually critical importance–that you probably have not heard anything about. It might have been mentioned in passing in the news, but I remember hearing nothing substantial about this project at all.
Just attended a lecture yesterday outlining the immense scope of China’s multi-Trillion dollar, ambitious, grandiose, aggressive, and very threatening “One Belt, One Road” project–already we’ll under way–that is intended to immensely expand China’s trade, presence in regions outside of China, and their influence in the World by linking China to more than 65 other countries through a myriad of new roads, railways, pipelines, airports, seaports, and trade routes that they are buying/building/establishing all over Asia, the Pacific, and into Europe.
From this, it was quite obvious that they are a far more aggressive, dangerous, and capable threat to the U.S. than Russia.
One small part of this project is China’s gaining control of the sea lanes, of trade routes, of key coastal facilities–like their current ownership of facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal, for instance–and ports covering all the major choke points around the world, through which passes the vast majority of sea borne traffic, especially that in petroleum, which are obviously of great strategic/military importance.
China very obviously wants to be “the Middle Kingdom” again–the dominant nation and the Center of the World–with all the other “barbarian” nations in the world playing the ancient role of suppliants, paying homage and tribute to her.
In the context of this thread, and thinking of “false flag” operations, wouldn’t it be, for instance, to China’s very great benefit to see the U.S. more deeply involved in and bogged down in the war in Syria, and elsewhere around the world?
I might also remind people that, in the past few years, various Muslim groups have also been caught staging atrocities, and using children’s bodies to do so.
So, I would be very wary of just accepting at face value that this attack was carried out by Assad’s regime, and would want some very careful boots on the ground analysis–preferably by U.S. military personnel experienced in investigating possible CW attacks–before accepting the truth of the claim that “Assad did it,” because maybe the Russians “did it,” or maybe one of the Muslim groups involved in this conflict staged it, for some perceived harm to their enemies, or benefit to themselves.
One of the universally applicable problems here is that, over the course of the Obama administration–as we are increasingly finding out–some parts of, perhaps sizable parts of our intelligence agencies, among other Executive agencies, have abandoned whatever neutrality they might have had, and been turned into weapons to be launched at the Left’s/Obama’s political opponents.
Thus, any analyses and conclusions coming out of those agencies are now suspect or, perhaps, I should say, more suspect than they had been before.
So, how do you verify that a chemical attack has taken place, and who the attacker was?
Well, first you need people on the ground.
Have we been able to get neutral, trained, and competent investigators in to examine what is supposedly the “scene of the crime”?
Have they been able to confirm that CW agents were used, which ones they were (and did they have any particular chemical signatures that could reveal who manufactured them and their origins), and were they used in the places, aimed at the targets, and in the way that “witnesses” say they were?
Has a careful examination been made of the claimed victims, and their stories and backgrounds checked?
Who were the “witnesses” to this attack, what is their credibility, and what agendas might they have?
If they are members of some Muslim political organization, or group of Muslim fighters, have they ever been involved in a prior claim of CW attack, and what were the conclusions about their claims about that attack?
If those involved, as is most likely, are all Muslims, I would be very skeptical of anything that they might relate to non-Muslims, and if they were partisans in the fighting going on in the area, I would be even more skeptical.
As Muhammad famously said “(All) war is deception.”
Then, how were these chemical weapons delivered, and by whom?
Is there any video evidence, that is backed up by radar and even satellite imagery, showing aircraft leaving a Syrian military base believed or known to contain chemical weapons, flying to the alleged site of the attack, and dropping the CW weapons on the target?
Finding out what really happened here and who was responsible while under, what I am sure, are very tight time constraints is, it seems to me, going to be a vary iffy and arduous process.