The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress. ... The payments to Ms. Clifford are only one of many topics being investigated, according to a person briefed on the search. The F.B.I. also seized emails, tax documents and business records, the person said.Pass the popcorn.
Also, this, in which Trump Organization lawyers are trying to threaten Panama. Threatening to use the power of the United States to move the needle on a business dispute involving Trump shows that there is no separation between the Trump Administration and his businesses.
In other words, it's all about the grift.
11 comments:
The hotel stuff will hurt in the long run. The lawyer raid will hurt now. The countdown is on to the firing of Mueller, and there seems likely to only be two people who might be able to stop Donnie from sliding down the slippery slope. Both are on the outs right now (Kelly and Sessions) but I still suspect they will talk him down. However, one of the next few mornings, Fox News will cause the downfall of the President. A Fox contributed or anchor will say Donnie should fire Mueller, and at 6AM EDT, Donnie will instigate a true Constitutional crisis and his likely impeachment.
CP88, Trump himself cannot fire Mueller, only Sessions can, and Sessions has delegated that authority to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. So Trump can order Sessions to order Rosenstein to fire Mueller. At which point Sessions says "I can't do that, Donald" and Trump fires him and promotes Rosenstein to acting head of the DOJ. Then Trump orders Rosenstein to do that. At that point I expect Rosenstein to submit his resignation rather than fire Mueller and Donnie goes down the chain of command to whoever is under Rosenstein promoting them to Acting A.G., until he finally finds someone willing to fire Mueller.
I expect all this to happen on a Saturday night.
Because history.
I’m aware of the chain, just cut to the chase for simplicity. As for when, I’ll take Wednesday morning, for $1000, Alex. As a public service, a stock tip...sell!
Interesting that Mueller dealt this off to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a recent Trump appointee who donated to Trump's campaign and was previously a partner in Giuliani's law firm.
Does that mean that whatever they showed the judge to get the warrants was iron-clad, perhaps?
-Doug in Oakland
Word is that Mueller showed what he had found to Rosenstein, who told him that subject wasn't in his wheelhouse and to pass it off to the appropriate Federal prosecutor's office.
The other thing is that getting a search warrant to raid an attorney's office isn't just a matter of a FBI agent going to the assigned prosecutor and then to the judge. There are between five to seven other people in the application chain, including DoJ HQ, who have to sign off on it before it's presented to the judge.
That suggests to me that what they have is pretty damned solid.
And Berman recused himself...more and more interesting.
Comrade: I stole your comment from above and used it elsewhere with attribution. I hope you don't mind.
-Doug in Oakland
Not in the slightest!
I'm curious--If Trump were to succeed in firing Mueller, what then happens to all of the information the investigation has compiled to date?
I'm assuming that there's plenty of information, on any number of actors, and that if any charges are forthcoming that will only happen once the respective cases are well enough supported to be viable in court. If Mueller is fired does that information just disappear, or will the public get to see it? In terms of a political career, the court of public opinion might be every bit as ruinous as a court of law.
JM
JM, it's not going to disappear. Trump fires Mueller and, if the midterms then go the way they're looking, Devin Nunez isn't going to be in a position to obstruct anything.
The only way that Trump fires Mueller will be another Saturday Night Massacre. He's going to have to fire a lot of people in order to get to Mueller.
And then, if the House goes to the Dems, you can start the impeachment clock.
Not to mention that there are reportedly very quiet parallel state investigations. Cohen might find the NYS prison system to be less enjoyable than the Federal one. I kind of suspect that he's not going to do 20 years or so for fraud in order to protect Trump. And Trump cannot touch a state investigation.
Considering that the Watergate team smuggled out documents when it went down, a single flash drive can probably fill in and there will be a shitload of people willing to carry a copy. Honestly, I suspect there’s also some form of cyber backup somewhere too. One, just one, would probably be all it would take. Firing Rosenstein or Mueller is likely a suicide mission for Donnie, where he can probably survive almost any revelation that have, unless he was extremely careless. That being said, he would be a crippled, lame duck.
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