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FBI raids Michael Cohen's office


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43 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Hannity is concerned about his own skin 

 

Hannity: "I did not have legal relations with that lawyer! "

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43 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Hannity is concerned about his own skin 

 

If he was not a client then all of their conversations aren’t privileged right?

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Seth Abramson has a thread out on the legal ramifications of the tape(s). 

 

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30 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Seth Abramson has a thread out on the legal ramifications of the tape(s).

Wow, thanks @fraurosena - this really makes the transcript more understandable.  I'm looking forward to the release of all the tapes.  I'm hoping Trump eventually sinks under the weight of all this evidence.

:obscene-tolietcrapper:

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They banned a pool reporter for asking questions about Michael Cohen.

Everyone should ask questions about Michael Cohen.

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"‘I’m not going to be a punching bag anymore’: Inside Michael Cohen’s break with Trump"

Spoiler

For the past decade, Michael Cohen worked as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer. He was an eager supplicant, executing the wishes of his celebrity boss and forever seeking his attaboy affection. He said he would take a bullet for Trump, and, even after the president passed him over for a White House job, Cohen still professed his eternal loyalty.

But in Trump’s world, eternity has limits.

By releasing audio of his covertly recorded conversation with Trump about purchasing the rights to a Playboy centerfold’s story of an extramarital affair, Cohen made a decisive break from his longtime client. The move punctuates the steady deterioration of a relationship between Cohen and Trump and raises concerns in the White House that the former could spill secrets about the latter to the FBI.

In the nearly four months since FBI agents raided his office, home and hotel room, Cohen has felt wounded and abandoned by Trump, waiting for calls or even a signal of support that never came. Cohen got frustrated when Trump started talking about him in the past tense, panicked last month when he thought the president no longer cared about his plight, and became furious when Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani contradicted some of his accounts, according to his associates.

In Cohen’s gravest hour, as one associate described it, Trump was “leaving him out in the wilderness.”

The result is open warfare between attorney and former client. Cohen has chosen to morph from Trump’s pugnacious defender to a truth-teller without regard for any possible political or legal ramifications for the president, according to Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s attorneys.

“He had to hit a reset button,” Davis said in an interview. “He had to say he respected the FBI. He had to say he believed the intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the election. He had to describe the Trump Tower meeting as extremely poor judgment at best. And, ultimately, he said, ‘I’m not going to be a punching bag anymore,’ which he had been when he said, ‘I’ll take a bullet.’”

Cohen’s actions appear to be driven more by his outrage over the president’s indifference and feelings of betrayal — coupled with the personal and financial weight of the criminal case being assembled by federal prosecutors — than by a legal strategy to help his case.

Tuesday’s public release of the Trump-Cohen audio came as a surprise to prosecutors handling the Cohen case in the Southern District of New York, according to people familiar with the matter. Current and former law enforcement officials questioned why Cohen — someone seen as angling for a plea deal — would choose to make potential evidence public. That kind of maneuver generally angers investigators and can make it harder to cut a deal, these officials said.

As part of their inquiry into campaign finance issues involving Cohen, federal investigators have recently expressed interest in what Cohen’s interactions with the Trump campaign were, including his role in handling the accusations of sexual impropriety from various women. They also are trying to discern if anyone other than Cohen had prior knowledge about two such women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, before they were named in news inquiries and reports.

In their search warrant, federal investigators asked Cohen to turn over any communications the two men or campaign aides had about a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that captured Trump boasting about grabbing women’s body parts, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Inside the White House, Trump raged about the release of his and Cohen’s September 2016 conversation about financing the deal with McDougal, a former Playboy model, to sell the rights to her story of an alleged 10-month affair with Trump to American Media Inc., the owner of the National Enquirer, which never published her account.

The president is angry that his personal attorney was recording him without his knowledge, though he had known before this week that the audio file existed, according to people familiar with his thinking.

“What kind of lawyer would tape a client?” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. “So sad!”

The government has seized more than 100 recordings that Cohen made of his conversations with people discussing matters that could relate to Trump and his businesses and with Trump himself talking, according to two people familiar with the recordings. Cohen appeared to make some recordings with an iPhone — without telling anyone he was taping them.

A significant portion of the recordings is Cohen surreptitiously recording reporters who met with or questioned Cohen about Trump during the campaign and after Trump’s election, the people said.

Trump’s voice is on several of the recordings, but only in snippets — typically when he is returning a call from Cohen or asking Cohen on a voice-mail message to call him back, the people said. The only recording in which Trump and Cohen have a substantive conversation is the one that Davis released Tuesday, according to these people.

“Michael Cohen had the habit of using his phone to record conversations instead of taking notes,” Davis said. “He never intended to make use of the recordings and certainly didn’t intend to be deceptive.”

Trump’s advisers are privately debating whether they need to seek a ruling from the court overseeing these recordings on Cohen’s indiscriminate release of material or whether they should release tapes that they describe as unflattering to Cohen, according to two Trump allies.

Trump has been asking outside advisers about Cohen’s business interests and work outside Trump Tower. The president views Cohen as a turncoat who profited off his association with Trump, associates said. One of them described Trump’s attitude as: “Who is this guy to betray me? He would be nobody were it not for his relationship with me.”

Another factor that worries Trump is the impact the latest disclosures will have on his marriage, as it thrusts allegations of his infidelity back into global headlines, according to a Republican operative in frequent touch with the White House who spoke anonymously to share private details. The timing of McDougal’s alleged affair was shortly after Trump’s marriage to his third wife, Melania, and the birth of their son, Barron, in 2006.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman, issued a statement Wednesday saying it was “kind of silly” of reporters to worry “if she heard some recording on the news,” and instead should focus on other issues, such as neonatal abstinence syndrome or bullying — issues the first lady has focused on.

Within Trump’s political orbit, the uncertainty about what other damaging information Cohen may possess — and if he plans to weaponize it against the president, as now seems possible if not likely — has allies worried.

“The general feeling inside and outside the building is that if there was anything, this would be the guy who would know it and now give it up,” said the operative close to the White House.

Trump’s legal team considers Cohen’s chess move inexplicable, arguing that the release of the recording does not hurt the president and questioning what Cohen may be trying to accomplish.

Some Trump loyalists believe Cohen betrayed the president by hiring Davis, a fiercely partisan Democrat who for decades has been a friend and adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton. (In February, Hillary Clinton attended a party in Georgetown celebrating Davis’s book “The Unmaking of the President 2016: How FBI Director James Comey Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency.”)

Early Wednesday, Trump aides and allies exchanged grousing text messages about the Cohen-Davis relationship, while hosts of “Fox and Friends,” the pro-Trump morning show on Fox News Channel, voiced sharp criticisms of Cohen on their broadcast.

“We all think he’s being used by Lanny, who has a vendetta,” said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg, who worked with Cohen for years. Referencing Roger Stone, another former Trump adviser and a self-described master of political dark arts, Nunberg said, “I’m still a Stone-ite, and we eat Clintons for breakfast.”

Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is now one of Trump’s personal attorneys, has been punching at Cohen for, as he put it in a Wednesday tweet, “leaking falsely privileged and confidential information. So much for ethics!”

Davis said Cohen feels isolated and is “suffering” and “sees himself as alone against the president of the United States, Rudy Giuliani and the whole administration.”

Cohen’s feud with Trump could make him an unlikely hero of the resistance movement. Davis recalled walking through New York’s Pennsylvania Station on Wednesday following his interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and people slapped him on the back and said, “Please tell Michael Cohen, ‘Thank you for telling the truth.’ All of a sudden, millions of people have invested their hopes in Michael Cohen.”

In the search warrant served on him in the FBI’s April 9 raids, Cohen learned he was under federal investigation for bank fraud as well as possible campaign finance violations as part of his informal role in Trump’s campaign. FBI agents were scrutinizing whether Cohen had lied on bank and loan forms or had seized evidence that he had vastly inflated the value of his taxi medallion business to seek additional financing. Cohen told friends in the early summer he expected he could be arrested any day.

In the immediate aftermath of the raid, Cohen expressed an interest in talking directly to Trump, but lawyers repeatedly and strenuously worked to block such a conversation out of fear it would appear Cohen was seeking to shape his story in talking to the president. Trump’s attorneys stressed that the president faced a similar but larger political risk of being accused of comparing notes with a witness who had potentially embarrassing information about him.

Trump did call Cohen four days after the raid for a brief check-in, which was first reported by the New York Times, but the two men have not spoken since.

Cohen got what he considered a strong signal in June that Trump had turned a cold shoulder on his legal jeopardy, according to two people familiar with his account. After the raid, the Trump Organization and Cohen had agreed to an arrangement under which Trump’s business would pay for a portion of the legal work to determine which documents seized from Cohen’s home and business were protected by attorney-client privilege and should not be shared with investigators.

But after several months, Trump Organization officials began complaining about — and later balking at paying — what they considered unusually high legal fees from Cohen’s law firm to review the records. There remains a dispute between the two sides about whether Trump Organization stopped payment or simply threatened to. Cohen complained to friends about his mounting legal bills and feared he was being cut off from Trump’s world.

An attorney for the Trump Organization, Alan Futerfas, declined on Wednesday to answer questions about the Trump Organization’s payment arrangement with Cohen. He had previously told the New York Times that any suggestion “that people stopped payment, that is not true.” Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the payment dispute.

Some have argued Cohen has been seeking a back-channel commitment from Trump that he would pardon him if he faced criminal charges. But Davis has said in media interviews that his client is not currently seeking a pardon, and Giuliani told The Washington Post on Tuesday night that discussing a pardon would be “extremely inappropriate at this point.”

“I’m certain there are no talks about pardons for” Cohen, Giuliani said. “Any pardon is up to the president.”

During his decade in Trump’s employ — first as a lawyer for the Trump Organization and then as his personal attorney — Cohen professed and displayed his fealty. This is in part because of the nature of his work for Trump, which was not of the typical legal counselor. Cohen described his approach as akin to that of Ray Donovan, the fictional fixer in the Showtime series of that name who makes the problems of Hollywood stars disappear.

But the respect and allegiance was not always mutual, according to Tim O’Brien, author of the biography “TrumpNation.”

“He always treated Michael like a lap dog, as somebody who would perform tasks for him, but not someone he considered a peer or ever really treated with professional respect,” O’Brien said. “You constantly get this impression that Michael is trying to please the paterfamilias, and Trump is barking quick requests about what he wants to get done.”

Cohen’s loyalty to Trump began to fray in recent months as he felt neglected by his longtime patron.

Last week, Cohen invited the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights advocate who has been at loggerheads with Trump, to meet for breakfast at the Regency Hotel, where Cohen has been staying. Cohen chose a table in the middle of the see-and-be-seen restaurant, Sharpton recalled.

“He’s totally turned on him,” Sharpton said. “It was clear to me in our conversation that Michael felt betrayed. He kept saying, ‘I’m going to do what’s right for my country.’ He clearly wanted me to know he was not Team Trump anymore.”

Sharpton added, “He was hurt, and the hurt has turned into bitterness. He said, ‘Look at what I’m going through. Why me? Nobody is helping me.’”

 

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Cuomo is told that the metadata of the audio clip shows it's been edited where it ends with hi don how are you

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Golf is gonna be lit this weekend

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399015-trump-organization-finance-chief-called-to-testify-before-jury-in

A source told the Journal that Weisselberg didn’t know about the payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, when he authorized Cohen's retainer.

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 IDK why he's litigating this in the news and not in an interviews with Mueller

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Ooh never mind it didn't come from Michael Cohen 

Notice that is not a no though

So how do Trump's people know this is gonna come out anyway? Is there a tape?

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Or are they putting out things that Cohen supposedly said just so they can call him a liar?

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IDK about this... Does anyone think Michael Cohen is the sort of person who would cheat on his taxes? Witch hunt!

 

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On 8/19/2018 at 8:48 PM, AmazonGrace said:

If you don't want to click on the link:

Michael Cohen, Trump’s Ex-Lawyer, Investigated for Bank Fraud Over $20 Million

By William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Maggie Haberman
Aug. 19, 2018

Federal authorities investigating whether President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, committed bank and tax fraud have zeroed in on well over $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses that he and his family own, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators are also examining whether Mr. Cohen violated campaign finance or other laws by helping to arrange financial deals to secure the silence of women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The inquiry has entered the final stage and prosecutors are considering filing charges by the end of August, two of the people said.

Any criminal charges against Mr. Cohen would deal a significant blow to the president. Mr. Cohen, 52, worked for the president’s company, the Trump Organization, for more than a decade. He was one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal and visible aides and called himself the president’s personal lawyer after Mr. Trump took office.

The bank loans under scrutiny, the total of which has not been previously reported, came from two financial institutions in the New York region that have catered to the taxi industry, Sterling National Bank and the Melrose Credit Union, according to business records and people with knowledge of the matter, including a banker who reviewed the transactions.

Federal investigators in New York are seeking to determine whether Mr. Cohen misrepresented the value of his assets to obtain the loans, which exceed $20 million.

They are also examining how he handled the income from his taxi medallions and whether he failed to report it to the Internal Revenue Service.

The two lenders were cited in the search warrants for raids that federal agents conducted this spring on Mr. Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he was staying, several of the people familiar with the matter have said.

Sterling received a grand jury subpoena seeking records related to the loans, one of the people said.

There is no indication that either bank suffered a loss as a result of the loans or that Mr. Cohen missed payments, which are ordinarily important aspects in a bank fraud case. While bank fraud without a loss is rarely charged on its own, it is sometimes charged in conjunction with other crimes, which may be what happens in Mr. Cohen’s case.

At this late stage of the inquiry, it is still possible that Mr. Cohen may plead guilty rather than face an indictment. He has hinted publicly and has stated explicitly in private that he is eager to tell prosecutors what he knows in exchange for leniency.

A cooperation agreement would likely include a provision that Mr. Cohen also provide information to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating possible involvement by the Trump campaign in Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

It is unclear whether the prosecutors and Mr. Cohen’s lawyers have had detailed discussions about a potential cooperation deal, but it is unlikely that the government would bring charges without having done so.

But if a plea deal is not reached, either because Mr. Cohen and prosecutors cannot agree on the terms or because prosecutors determine he does not have valuable information or is not credible, the government would likely seek to bring charges well before the midterm elections.

If the matter is not finalized by the end of August, prosecutors probably will wait until after the election, one of the people familiar with the inquiry said in recent weeks. That schedule would conform with the Justice Department’s informal policy of avoiding bringing politically sensitive cases that could influence voters close to an election.

Mr. Cohen and his lawyers declined to comment on the investigation when contacted over the weekend and last week.

Federal officials in New York and Washington also would not comment.

The investigation into Mr. Cohen burst into public view on April 9, when federal authorities searched his home, office and the hotel room, a move that sent a seismic wave through Washington and rattled Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

The investigation began under Mr. Mueller, who then referred the evidence to the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan. That office is now leading the inquiry along with the F.B.I. and I.R.S., which have conducted an extensive review of Mr. Cohen’s personal business activities.

Days after the search, Mr. Cohen went to court in an attempt to limit the evidence prosecutors could review, claiming much of what was seized was covered by attorney-client privilege. Mr. Trump joined the effort.

During that litigation, prosecutors revealed that they had been investigating Mr. Cohen for fraud for “months” and had previously obtained a search warrant for his email accounts.

Mr. Trump railed against the investigation on Twitter and complained that “attorney-client privilege is dead.” His lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, referred to the agents who carried out the searches as “storm troopers.” (The normally combative Mr. Cohen, for his part, told an interviewer that they were “were extremely professional, courteous and respectful.”)

At the time, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers came to view the investigation into Mr. Cohen as more dangerous to the Trump presidency than Mr. Mueller’s inquiry.

In recent decades, Mr. Cohen has had a wide range of personal business interests, in addition to his work for the Trump Organization. He was a real estate investor, had a personal injury law practice and was involved with a gambling boat in Florida.

But federal investigators appear to be especially focused on his work as an investor in taxi medallions, the permits that drivers need to legally operate yellow cabs in New York City.

A review of court filings, business and property records and interviews with people with knowledge of the matter has provided the clearest picture to date of the scope of that inquiry.

The search warrants for the Cohen raids sought records and communications relating to the two financial institutions, Sterling National Bank and the Melrose Credit Union, as well as documents regarding the payments to women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump, among other materials, several people with knowledge of the inquiry have said.

The investigation into possible bank fraud has focused at least in part on a series of loans for more than $20 million that the two institutions made in December 2014, according to a review of business records and interviews with people with knowledge of the matter.

Publicly filed financing statements indicate that Mr. Cohen used 32 taxi medallions as collateral for the Sterling loans. The medallions were then valued at more than $1 million each, and generated more than $1 million a year in income.

The loans were made to 16 separate companies controlled by Mr. Cohen and his family, each company owning two taxi medallions, the person who reviewed the transactions said. Mr. Cohen and his wife also personally guaranteed the loans, according to the filings.

The tax fraud aspect of the investigation has been focused in part on whether Mr. Cohen properly reported the income from the medallions, which was sometimes in cash, people with knowledge of the matter said.

One witness who could provide evidence about the possible bank and tax fraud is Evgeny Freidman, Mr. Cohen’s longtime friend and former business associate who began cooperating with federal prosecutors this spring.

Mr. Freidman, known as the Taxi King for his once vast and longtime holdings in that industry, managed taxi medallions owned by Mr. Cohen and his family between 2012 and 2018. In 2016, a federal judge found that Mr. Freidman, a lawyer who was disbarred earlier this year, had transferred more than $60 million into offshore trusts to avoid paying debts. New York City regulators have barred him from continuing to manage medallions.

Mr. Freidman was facing up to 25 years in prison in an unrelated state fraud case in Albany involving his taxi business. But he struck a deal with state prosecutors under which he avoided prison in return for cooperating with federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen.

Several people with knowledge of the matter have said investigators are focusing, in part, on precisely what was done with the monthly payments of the income from the taxi medallions that Mr. Freidman made to Mr. Cohen, what representations Mr. Cohen made to the banks about those payments, and whether they were reported on Mr. Cohen’s taxes.

Mr. Freidman’s lawyer, Patrick J. Egan, said on Friday, “It would be against Mr. Freidman’s interest to make a public statement regarding an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Andrew MacMillan, a spokesman for Sterling, declined to comment, and a spokesman for Melrose did not respond to a message seeking comment.

A Long Island accountant who worked for Mr. Cohen and Mr. Freidman could also provide testimony about the payments, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. The accountant, Jeffrey A. Getzel, has testified before the grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Getzel’s lawyer, Peter J. Larkin, declined to comment.

It is unclear whether prosecutors might seek to charge Mr. Cohen with conduct related to the presidential campaign or his work for Mr. Trump.

Legal experts have said that the payments to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump could become part of a campaign finance case. Neither woman, after being paid, spoke publicly about Mr. Trump in the weeks before the election.

One of Mr. Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny J. Davis, revealed a possible piece of evidence for such a case last month when he released a recording of a September 2016 conversation Mr. Cohen had with Mr. Trump. On the recording, they discussed a $150,000 deal the tabloid publisher American Media Inc. struck with one of the women, the former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The audio was not protected by attorney-client privilege, and Mr. Davis said at the time he released it to contradict a claim that Mr. Giuliani made about what Mr. Cohen had said on the recording.

The company, which publishes The National Enquirer, bought the rights to her story and declined to publish it, a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch and kill.”

Prosecutors have examined whether Mr. Cohen planned the payment in conjunction with A.M.I. to protect Mr. Trump’s election prospects, and they could use the recording as part of the basis for charges that the deal represented an illegal campaign contribution or that there was a conspiracy to make an illegal contribution.

Corporations are prohibited from spending money to influence campaigns in coordination with candidates. Prosecutors could also charge that a $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, better known by her stage name of Stormy Daniels, was improper.

Mr. Cohen paid Ms. Clifford out of his own pocket, and although Mr. Trump reimbursed him many months later, the initial outlay could also count as an illegal contribution to Mr. Trump’s candidacy, several legal experts have said. Federal campaign finance laws prohibit individuals from donating more than $5,400 per election cycle to a federal candidate.

With the release of the recording, Mr. Cohen and his attorneys seemed to be signaling a willingness to cooperate with the federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Mr. Davis, a longtime supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, has said the tape was released because Mr. Cohen is “on a new path — it’s a reset button to tell the truth and to let the chips fall where they may.”

Mr. Cohen, who once said that he would “take a bullet” for Mr. Trump, also hinted he might help prosecutors during an interview on “Good Morning America” in July, saying “I put family and country first.”

“To be crystal clear,” he added, “my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country, have my first loyalty.”


Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting. Susan Beachy contributed research.
 

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