Trump’s Horrible Day
Even the conservative news aggregation site Drudge Report, normally an influential and sympathetic voice toward the president, ran the headline: “Trump hell hour.” NBC News anchor Chuck Todd called it perhaps “the most consequential day of the Trump presidency — yet.” What does the Cohen plea mean for Trump? Well, the plea agreement with the prosecutors in Manhattan does not require … Read More
Probably Nothing But Still….
Who knows? Maybe it takes a C-list celebrity to get rid of a C-list celebrity president. If so, Tom Arnold is on the job: Tom Arnold—the actor and comedian who’s said he’s on a mission to find incriminating video of President Trump—tweeted a photo of himself with Michael Cohen late Thursday, saying “this dude has all the tapes.” Trump’s longtime … Read More
Breaking: Michael Cohen Resigns From RNC Committee Post
Surprised this didn’t happen long ago: Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime confidant and former personal attorney, has resigned from his post as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee’s Finance Committee, sources close to the RNC told ABC News. In his resignation letter to Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, Cohen cited the ongoing special counsel investigation as one reason … Read More
Adam Serwer: It’s One Scandal
The Atlantic: There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal … Read More
It’s Time To Stop Taking Giuliani Seriously
That’s the title of a Washington Post editorial by Jennifer Rubin, and yes, I agree: President Trump’s TV lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani declared on Sunday that the special counsel plans to wrap up the obstruction-of-justice inquiry into his client by Sept. 1. The press treated this as true, or possibly true, when it is obviously another ludicrous Giuliani utterance (e.g. … Read More
Trump To Instruct The FBI/DOJ To Investigate The Mueller Investigation
On Sunday, Trump’s simmering anger over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s year-old Russia probe spilled over into a series of well-worn recriminations in several tweets, including that the investigation was politically motivated and had its roots in the administration of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Read Sunday AM tweets from @realDonaldTrump: they are a portrait of a man alone, paranoid, isolated, … Read More
Loose Ends From A Crazy News Day
Yesterday was one of those crazy Trump news days. Big story followed big story. But what was odd was a lot of it was retrospective. Things that happened in the investigation that we are NOW just learning. It clearly got under Trump’s nerves, as shown by his tweets this morning. It is a little silly for him to say that. … Read More
Trump Discloses Financials
As I wrote about yesterday, Trump was to disclose his financial liabilities, and there was an open question as to whether he would admit his payments to Cohen as a liability, and how much was paid. Today the public got its answer, sort of. I will attach only the page dealing with financial liabilities. See there at the bottom? He is … Read More
It’s Financial Disclosure Day!
Trump has a choice to make, and today we find out that choice. Normally, a politician completing a financial disclosure form is not worthy of news. But today, this year, with Trump — it is. Today is the deadline for President Trump to file his financial disclosure form for 2017. That fact may seem trivially bureaucratic, but lurking at its core is … Read More
Michael Cohen’s Influence Peddling
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s controversial “fixer,” is in an unfortunate spot. Last week, new details came into sharper focus showing that the New York attorney received undisclosed lobbying payments – through a shell company used to pay hush money to a porn star – from corporate giants hoping to influence his client in the Oval Office. The Wall Street Journal took a deeper … Read More
More News Trickles In On The Trump Fixers’ Money Fund
How Novartis came to give 1.2 million to Michael Cohen: The curious relationship between one of the world’s biggest drug makers and President Trump’s personal lawyer began early last year when Michael Cohen, a longtime fixer for the president, reached out to Novartis’s then-chief executive officer Joe Jimenez, promising help gaining access to Trump and influential officials in the new administration, according to … Read More
Michael Cohen’s LLC Got Secret Corporate Payments – WHY?
Thanks to Stormy Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, we learned last night that Michael Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, whose existence came to light as the vehicle for the hush money payments to Daniels, also had considerable income from Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg as well as corporations including AT&T and Novartis. Billionaire Viktor Vekselberg chairs a company called the Renova Group, and a US-based subsidiary of that company sent hundreds of thousands of dollars … Read More
Cohen Isn’t A Fixer So Much As A Bagman
From an anonymous person “steeped in anti-corruption enforcement (both domestic and foreign) on the prosecution and defense side”: As we already know, Michael Cohen is the prototypical fixer or bagman…. The bagman’s job is to get bribe money to people while insulating and giving deniability to the ultimate payor of the bribe. Having a dirty lawyer as a bagman provides a … Read More