FBI raids Michael Cohen's office

[Howl]

Out of this entire damn shit show, it seems only Cohen is doing serious time.  My only hope for indictment of others are the cases being pursued by the State of New York AG. Cohen is a sleaze bag, but I hope there in someone in prison who can help him manage his bitterness. 

I anticipate everything referred to the SDNY  and tax fraud will be shut down by AG Barr -- the Trump Crime Family Mobligarchy legal consigliere.  And yes, I'll consistently refer to him in exactly this way.  He's utterly corrupt. 

[AmazonGrace]

Cohen can go, Trump has a new fixer now.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Cohen claimed he helped bury personal photographs for Jerry Falwell Jr. before the evangelical leader backed Trump"

Spoiler

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, claimed to have helped prevent the release of personal photographs embarrassing to Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. shortly before the influential evangelical leader endorsed Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in 2016.

Cohen made the assertion, which was first reported by Reuters, in a phone call in March with actor Tom Arnold. Arnold provided The Washington Post with a recording of the call Tuesday night.

“There’s a bunch of photographs — you know, personal photographs — that somehow, the guy ended up getting,” Cohen said on the call. The person who had the photos, who is not identified on the call, was demanding money from the Falwells, and Cohen threatened to report the person to legal authorities, according to Reuters.

Reuters reported that the alleged episode took place months before Falwell’s endorsement of Trump. Arnold told The Post that Cohen told him it occurred during the presidential race.

A statement released by an attorney for the Falwells called the account “not accurate.”

“While the Falwells have a long-standing friendship with Michael Cohen, they never engaged or paid Cohen to represent them in any legal or other professional capacity, and Cohen did not ever resolve any legal matter on their behalf,” the statement said.

The attorney, who declined to be named, said in a follow-up text message that “there are no compromising or embarrassing photos of Falwell, period!”

Lanny Davis, a spokesman for Cohen, declined to comment. Cohen began serving a three-year prison sentence on Monday for tax evasion and campaign-finance violations.

Arnold, a staunch critic of the president’s, said he became friends with Cohen last summer, adding that the longtime Trump confidant sees him as an ally.

Arnold said Cohen did not know that he was recording their March conversation at the time, but Arnold said that he subsequently told Cohen that he had recorded it. He said he indicated to Cohen that he would release details about the Falwell portion of their conversation after Cohen went to prison.

“He knows I’m going to help him,” Arnold said, adding: “I said, ‘As soon as you go in: Jerry Falwell Jr.’ ”

Last month, Arnold shared with the Wall Street Journal his March 25 phone call with Cohen. The Journal reported on other portions of the 36-minute conversation, including Cohen denying responsibility for some of his crimes.

The longtime Trump fixer said he kept a copy of one of the Falwell photos on his phone, Cohen told Arnold on their March 25 call.

It is unclear what the photos allegedly depicted. Cohen described the images as “photos between husband, wife, and the whole bit.”

“I actually have one of the photos,” he said on the recording. “It’s terrible.”

Falwell’s early support of Trump was seen as crucial, giving the candidate a key stage in front of evangelicals, an important group of voters for Trump.

He delivered a glowing welcome to Trump during a campaign visit by Trump to Liberty University in 2016 and formally endorsed him. His continued support for Trump after the “Access Hollywood” video was released was seen as critical to the Trump campaign, although some graduates returned their diplomas over Falwell’s support.

“Jesus said ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,’ ” Falwell wrote in an essay for The Washington Post in 2016. “Let’s stop trying to choose the political leaders who we believe are the most godly because, in reality, only God knows people’s hearts. You and I don’t, and we are all sinners.”

As recently as this week, Falwell made headlines for his lavish praise of Trump. The president shared a tweet over the weekend in which Falwell declared, “Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.”

According to the Reuters report, the Falwells asked Cohen for help with the photographs around the time Cohen was working with Liberty University to promote Trump’s candidacy in 2015.

Cohen flew to Florida, met with a lawyer for the person with the photos and informed him that his client was breaking the law, Reuters reported. Arnold said that Cohen described the Florida trip to him.

Ultimately, the lawyer told Cohen that all of the photos were destroyed, Reuters reported.

“I was going to pay him and I was going to get the negatives and do an agreement where they turn over all technology that has the photographs or anything like that, any copies,” Cohen told Arnold on the call. “And it never happened. The guy just either deleted them on his own or what have you.”

In January 2016, days before the Iowa caucuses, Falwell formally announced his backing of Trump, calling him “a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.”

Along with religious leaders such as evangelist Franklin Graham and Florida megachurch pastor Paula White, Falwell is seen as one of Trump’s most prominent religious supporters.

He is the son of the late televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., a megachurch pastor who helped to organize religious conservatives especially in the 1970s and ’80s. Falwell has taken the school his father started in 1971 in Lynchburg, Va., and expanded it into one of the largest Christian universities in the world, with more than 100,000 students. Last year, the university released a film suggesting Trump had fulfilled a divine prophecy.

One of the largest universities in the country, Liberty is seen as an innovator in online education and has become a prominent platform for politicians to visit. Trump gave a commencement address there in 2017, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke there in 2015.

Falwell is expected to welcome Vice President Pence to deliver the university’s commencement address on Saturday.

 

[Howl]

On 5/6/2019 at 11:11 AM, AmazonGrace said:

Cohen can go, Trump has a new fixer now.

Brilliant observation and sadly true.  And if we think it's bad with Barr now, just wait. My hope is that there are some DoJ employees willing to risk prison to blow the lid off Barr's future bad acts. 

No decent person in the history of our country ever imagined an AG as compromised and corrupt as Barr.  

But back to Cohen. Rick Wilson is writing behind a paywall now at Daily Beast, but a tweeter quoted Rick from his recent article: 

“Think of him [Michael Cohen] as a douchebag Rosetta Stone to Trump’s personal, sexual, legal, and financial shenanigans.” 

Edited to note that Rick Wilson's paywall articles at the Daily Beast are released after about a week or so. 

Here's the full paragraph and why Cohen is still relevant: 

Spoiler

In related good news, a new tranche of Michael Cohen's testimony to Congress has now been released. As I’ve said from the beginning, Cohen may be a lying liar who lies, an utterly shit-tier human being, a wannabe bad guy, and an all-around dick, but he still holds many of the keys to understanding Trump’s financial kingdom. Think of him as a douchebag Rosetta Stone to Trump’s personal, sexual, legal, and financial shenanigans

I highly recommend the full article (no longer behind the paywall), which lays out a compelling argument for delaying the beginning of impeachment hearings. 

DON’T DESPAIR: Pelosi’s Strategy Is Working, and Trump Is One Step Closer to Being F*cked

Edited May 24, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

Some Cohen docs were unsealed today:

 

[fraurosena]

More on the Cohen docs:

Michael Cohen Files Implicate Trump, Hope Hicks and David Pecker

Quote

When the first batch of Michael Cohen search-warrant materials became public, the files disclosed evidence that President Trump’s former fixer secretly worked for a foreign government.

The new materials released on Thursday proved no less significant, detailing the actions Cohen took after the release of the “Access Hollywood” video threatened to derail Trump’s campaign. The day after the release, according to the warrants, Cohen exchanged a “series of calls, text messages and emails” with Trump; his then-press secretary Hope Hicks; the National Enquirer’s David Pecker; and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson.

Before this flurry of activity, Hicks hadn’t contacted Cohen for “at least multiple weeks.”

In detailing Cohen’s illegal hush-money payments to two women, the unsealed pages dispense with the veiling of “Individual-1” used in previous releases to shield Trump’s name from court records. 

“As set forth below, there is probable cause to believe that Cohen made an excessive in-kind contribution to the presidential election campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump in the form of a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, an individual who was rumored to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, in exchange for her agreement not to disclose the alleged affair,” the document states.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III ordered the release of the information a day earlier, rejecting the government’s request to protect the privacy interests of third parties.

“The campaign finance violations discussed in the materials are a matter of national importance,” Pauley wrote. “Now that the government’s investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the materials.”

In March, the government released a trove of hundreds of meticulously documented pages of search warrant materials used to justify the judicially authorized raids of Cohen’s home, office and hotel suite in April 2018.

This story is developing…

This is the first document:

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/cohen-warrants.pdf

 

[fraurosena]

Well now....

 

[47of74]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Well now....

 

Cohen forgot tip #63!