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Michael Cohen you had me at Shame on your Mr. Jordan. 

No Cohen’s not a hero but his testimony was almost heroic. The title of last chapter was ‘John Dean 2.0 comes through in a big way’-what I was referring to was his successful jamming of those Democratic leaders-particularly Adam Schiff-who didn’t want the public to hear anything about Russia.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 2.0:

As Sam Nunberg himself among others pointed out yesterday, unlike the first John Dean-who admittedly was a much more admirable figure than John Dean 2.0-everything about Watergate 2.0 is shabbier. more corrupt and as John Oliver says stupider starting with comparing Nixon to Trump on down the line-Cohen actually had evidence.

FN: Nunberg is a Trump co-conspirator now sort of working for us in a way.

Again, Cohen rightfully spoiled the plans of some Dem leaders to continue to hide information about Russia collusion from the public. Indeed, this is the one thing Jim Jordan said yesterday I agreed with-the Russian collusion side of this needs to be public. To be sure, even a busted clock is right twice a day and Jordan and his GOP co-conspirators had control of these Committees for the last two years and had zero public hearings on Russian collusion-so demanding it now is just their usual obstructive theater on their boss’s behalf-Nunes, Ted Yoho, and friends have made it clear they don’t see us, the American people, as their boss but rather this illegitimate ‘President’, this illegitimate ‘man.’

For his part I was struck that Cohen hit almost the perfect note stylistically.

The attitude of Americans is complex. On the one hand, the American people believe in redemption-but you have to be truly sorry. They hate bullies-but they don’t respect doormats who never fight back against the schoolyard bully.

Cohen managed to maintain his posture of contrition and regret-expressing not worry about himself but of his wife and children while at the same time not letting Jim Jordan-Mark Meadows and friends get under his skin. He deftly pointed out that they kept reiterating his own crimes-perjury, tax evasion, bank fraud, but ignoring Trump’s crimes-he is after all an un-indicted co-conspirator. As Cohen pointed out he is going to prison for his crimes while Trump has so far had impunity for his ‘dirty deeds.’

Cohen-aka John Dean 2.0-then went on to point out that the American people were watching this hearing not to talk about Michael Cohen’s crimes but Donald Trump’s. He rightly pointed out that the GOP asked not a single question about his allegations against their Dear Leader. That was the entire basis of the GOP’s strategy yesterday-not to attempt to contradict any matter of fact Cohen alleged but rather just attacking Cohen’s character conveniently ignoring that much of Cohen’s criminal activity was on Trump’s behalf-as noted in the previous chapter-the RNC until very recently had Cohen as it’s deputy finance chairman. 

https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/1100936943976763394

Indeed, the GOP’s attempt to discredit anything Cohen said utterly failed.

Cohen said something to Jim Jordan that many of us would like to tell him: Shame on you, Mr. Jordan. If anything summed up just how bad a day it was for the House GOPers-who ran the place for the last eight years it was Paul Gosar who was literally reduced to saying ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’ and time ran out as he was furiously looking through his notes-Gentleman’s time has expired. 

The GOPers visibly showed their frustration as none of their punches connected to Cohen-a number of times they punched themselves in their co-conspiring faces.

Then Cohen twisted the knife telling the GOPers that he was responsible for their silliness he had done what they were doing-‘protecting Mr. Trump’ for 10 years. 

And perhaps this is why he was so effective in pushing back-while retaining his veneer of contrition-he knows their tricks as this is what he’s done for so many years. He wouldn’t even agree not to write a book-and he seemed to have made at least one sale!

I should say two as so do I-assuming I’ve finished my own marathon of a book by then! Should be soon-assuming you can describe a book I started on December, 2017 finishing in March, 2019 as soon. Assuming it’s finished in March-it should be. I had vowed no more new chapters but then John Dean 2.0 day happened…

So Cohen did very well overall, though I don’t actually understand his claim that he can’t prove collusion-maybe not direct evidence but he himself provided an important piece of circumstantial evidence on the call Trump took from Roger Stone he overheard.

He denied the truth of the ‘elevator tape’-or the pee tape:

Cohen’s testimony brought discussion of two never-proven videos — the so-called “elevator tape” and “golden showers” tape — into full public view. But in a win for Trump, Cohen said he did not believe they are real, even as he recited a slew of other accusations against his former boss.

Cohen said under questioning from Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, that he has heard rumors of a tape in which Trump supposedly struck his wife Melania in a Trump Tower elevator, and that the video was sold to an unknown buyer at auction. But he denied it was real.

A win for Trump. I don’t see how you can call yesterday a win for Trump. As for the specific allegations what’s weird about the elevator tape is someone purchased it at an auction.

“Actually I’m certain it’s not true,” Cohen said. “I don’t believe that auction was real and… don’t believe Mr. Trump ever struck Mrs. Trump, ever.”

Cohen was praised for saying this-showing that he’s not just willing to say anything to damage Trump. But I’m skeptical-I’d like to see the story of the auction definitively knocked down-after all, why pay for a tape if it’s false?

As for the idea that Trump would never strike Melania, ironically Cohen himself threatened to do something disgusting to Tim Mak if he wrote a story that mentioned the allegation that Trump raped his first wife, Ivanna Trump in 2015.

Until now, news outlets have attempted legalistic write-arounds to explain what is said to be on the elevator tape — if there is a tape.”

Even if you believe the media silence on the elevator tape is warranted-as its existence is not verified-I’m not saying it’s warranted just that it’s a coherent argument-how does the MSM explain it’s silence about the Trump campaign aide who’s now accused ‘President Trump’ of forcibly kissing her during the campaign?

I’m skeptical that if the elevator tape was about Bill and Hilary Clinton the media would have been so ‘legalistic’-I’m certain if there were a woman who accused Clinton of forcibly kissing her just a few years go the MSM would be covering this wall to wall.

Ruth Marcus-and Kirsten Gillibrand-still want Clinton to resign over a consensual affair with an intern-Marcus sputters that the fact that it was consensual or that she was of age doesn’t matter in her view it’s just as bad as if she weren’t of age and it wasn’t consensual-have also been conspicuously silent about this very recent allegation. So Clinton needs to retroactively resign 20 years later-Trump who’s in office now, though not legitimately, gets to keep the job and is spoken of by the Ruth Marcuses of the world with reverence-the President, Mr. President, President Trump…

No better crystallization of the Clinton vs. the Trump rules.

Even now the media acts like Trump’s defense attorneys-Ken Dilanian still acts like maybe there’s just nothing there-after all we already know from public information.

Dilanian was on tv and had argued that ‘if Cohen can’t prove collusion’ it probably can’t which is rather absurd. First of all, his own revelation as a strong piece of circumstantial evidence. In any case, it’s not clear that Cohen was the point person for the emails-that’s Roger Stone-Jerome Corsi-Peter Smith territory.

Again, I think Seth Abramson is quite right-MSM pundits like Dilanian just wish this story would go away and have been late to the party throughout this entire scandal-going back to Dean Baquet’s ‘exoneration’ of Trump with the help of the FBI anti Clinton pro Trump agents after the Times’ But Her Emails! freakout on October 28, 2016.

Cohen also assured us that Trump may have known in advance of the Wikileaks email dump of July, 2016 but didn’t know the content-how exactly does Cohen know that?  How does he know Trump and Stone didn’t have other conversations about it?

I should say with all the legitimate praise you can give Cohen-starting with his jamming Schiff and friends who didn’t want us to hear anything about Russia yesterday, we wouldn’t be here if not for Stormy Daniels.

My favorite part of yesterday may have been the chance for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to get a measure of vindication-remember the most proximate and immediate victim of the leak of DNC emails-that we now know Roger Stone told Trump about-was DWS who was forced to resign as Chairwoman the first morning of the 2016 Dem convention.

FN: I sure hope by now folks understand why the issue of wether or not they think she was a good Chairwoman is totally not the point here. If someone is raped the correct response is not-well I thought she was doing a poor job so who cares?

Personally I think she was unfairly maligned-her faults were greatly magnified; there is perhaps something to the argument that the DNC chair should be someone who doesn’t have another full time job-but this view point isn’t necessary to realize what a violation this was.

DWS now says she wants the Trump kids-Ivanka, Jared, and Donald Jr-to testify before Oversight.

Cohen’s revelation about Trump’s call from Stone advanced our knowledge as previously we only knew of the Trump campaign’s prior knowledge of the October, 2016 email dump-but now we  know Trump also knew of the July dump in advance.

We now have a fairly decent thumbnail sketch of collusion coordination:

1. On about July 18-19 Roger Stone told Trump about the coming email dump as overheard by Cohen. While Cohen presumed Trump didn’t know the content of the emails we don’t actually know if he had other subsequent conversations with Stone prior to July 25 when DWS is forced to step down.

2. This dump couldn’t have been more successful as DWS is shouted down on that Monday morning and is forced to resign by the Bernie Bros who are wrongly trying to blame Bernie’s landslide loss on DWS correctly calling Tad Devine an ass. Ironically, it turns out Bernie himself came to see Devine as an ass as the two men haven’t spoken post election-more recently Devine turned out to be a Manafort alum out in the Ukraine and testified against Manafort in August,. 2018.

During the evening of July 25, the Berners kept trying to shout everyone associated with Hillary Clinton down inside the convention while out on the street a contingent of Bernie Bros chant ‘lock her up!’

Again, this is simply a home run politically for the DNC email dump-it was because it was so optimal that I-and it turns out US intelligence-started to suspect something was going on between the Trump campaign, Wikileaks, and Russia.

3. Fully recognizing what a home run it actually was, that anonymous senior Trump aide-Manafort?–at someone else’s direction-Trump himself?-emailed Stone and told him to find out what else Wikileaks had. Stone then delegates this task in an email to Jerome Corsi. Stone sent this email to Corsi on: July 25, the very day DWS had to step down.

Corsi then delegated the task to Ted Malloch, a right wing commentator in London.

4. On August 2, 2016 Corsi emails Stone back:

  • Eight days later, on August 2, Corsi touched base with Stone to tell him about the upcoming document dump. “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” Corsi reportedly wrote to Stone. Corsi was likely referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been seeking refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012. “One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct,” Corsi wrote. “Impact planned to be very damaging.”
  • “Time to let more than [Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC,” Corsi reportedly added, referring to Clinton. “That appears to be the game hackers are now about.”
  • A little over two weeks later, on August 21, Stone tweeted that Podesta would “soon” be targeted.
  • On October 7, WikiLeaks published a damaging batch of emails belonging to Podesta.

We can add Trump’s last press conference of the election on July 27-Russia if you’re listening. We learned subsequently that Russia was indeed listening.

On the very same day-August 2-that Corsi was emailing Stone the information that the Trump campaign sought-Manafort handed Russian operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, 75 pages of detailed polling data at the Cigar Club. 

At this same dinner at the NYC restaurant, they also discussed: ending Russian sanctions and the leaked DNC emails.

Meanwhile, the October 7 dump was just and hour and 40 minutes after Hollywood Access raising the question of wether Wikileaks coordinated the timing with the Trump campaign.

As noted above in Cohen’s response to DWS and other questioners, he thinks that Mueller has more in terms of corroboration. But how Ken Dilanian’s big takeaway is ‘so no collusion..’-again it’s coordination not collusion-just shows you how desperate many MSM pundits are for this to end soon-if it were Hillary they’d be writing editorials to impeach her-with the NYT’s leading the way. I mean Manafort. the campaign manager is going to prison for up to 25 years. That fact alone would make the MSM declare she should also be in prison. They wanted her in prison even though there was no crime with the damn emails.

But this thumbnail sketch neatly lays out some pretty clear coordination between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks-who as carrying the water of Russia.

UPDATE:

UPDATE: Even John Dean himself agrees Cohen’s the John Dean 2.0 of Watergate 2.0

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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