469

 

In the Trump/GOP counternarrative, the dossier has been the central bogeyman. The real collusion Trump and the GOP tell us is that Hillary Clinton and the DNC colluded with the Russian government to convince Americans that the Russians themselves interfered to help Trump win. The Russian government, in other words, made up a conspiracy theory that implicates the Russian government.

Now that you put it that way, it makes sense…

This counternarrative on Russia collusion suffers from many flaws, first and foremost the flaw that it’s not true: the dossier was not the proximate First Cause of the Russia investigation but rather Papadopoulos’s loose talk to the top Australian diplomat about what he’d been told about the Russians having incriminating emails on Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: It’s not mysterious how to get Papadopoulos to tell the truth-get him drunk.

Another flaw is that the dossier is actually some very high quality work by a very respected source from British intelligence, Christopher Steele. The GOP grilled Glenn Simpson-who brought Steele in as a contractor on his Russia research after he’d exhausted public sources-for nine hours.

After all that the GOP fought making the transcript public. 

No wonder: in going through them you can’t but be impressed with Simpson’s great intelligence, knowledge-and honesty. When you read through the interviews of the Trump Tower meeting witnesses-Don Jr, Rob Goldstone, Natalia Vesselntiskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin  all of them come across as more or less evasive. Even to the extent that they aren’t lying they are doing everything they can to tell as little of the truth as possible. You could say that rather than answer the questions they responded-in a way to actually not answer the questions before them.

Simpson on the other hand answers the questions and to use a Don McGahn word, fulsomely, and expansively in a way that actually informs you and helps you understand the bigger picture.

For all the testimony of the Trump Tower witnesses before the Senate see here. 

Indeed, despite the relentless campaign of slander and defamation against the dossier it has now been verified on a number of key points. 

And now it just won a significant victory in a federal court.

Now we are seeing new hints that the dossier may have gotten something else right: that Michael Cohen paid off hackers. 

FN: The claim he went there to pay off hackers is as yet to be proven or disproven but it was claim of the Steele Dossier-it would make sense as Cohen did pay the hush money to women Trump had affairs with.

“Did Trump lawyer Michael Cohen secretly visit Prague to meet with Russians in 2016? The future of Donald Trump’s presidency could hinge on whether the answer to that question is yes.”

“That’s because the claim that such a meeting happened is one of the most specific claims in Christopher Steele’s dossier alleging collusion between the Trump team and Russia to influence the 2016 election — and because, since the very first day that dossier was publicly released, Cohen has adamantly denied taking any such trip, and Trump’s team has relied on that denial to dispute the dossier’s accuracy. “I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews,” Cohen tweeted on January 10, 2017, hours after the dossier was posted.

Yet a new report from McClatchy’s Peter Stone and Greg Gordon claims that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did, in fact, enter Prague through Germany at the height of the 2016 campaign, in “August or early September.”

It would fit with his MO as Trump’s hush money guy. The payments we know about were to women he had affairs with but it  logically might have extended to other payments.

And Lanny Davis now seemed to strongly hint to Rachel Maddow the other night that Trump did in fact have prior knowledge of the Russian hacks and, indeed, cheered them on.

If that were true then that’s collusion and that’s the ballgame. Yesterday, legal expert Seth Abramson had some interesting analysis on what Lanny Davis clearly was hinting at. Abramson actually thinks Davis made a mistake in saying this-as it’s not in the interest of his client, Michael Cohen.

The trouble is, as Abramson explains, Mueller wants to have information first that is not public knowledge. By broadcasting it in front of millions, it’s immediately devalued.

Here’s what Lanny Davis later told PBS.

Interestingly, Davis denied categorically to Chuck Todd that Cohen went to Prague in yesterday’s interview. 

“Lanny Davis, attorney for Michael Cohen, trashed the infamous Trump dossier, a document put together by former British spy Christopher Steele, in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on Wednesday.”

“Davis said the part about Cohen visiting Prague to meet with Russians in 2016 “never” happened.” He called it the “so-called dossier” and said it mentions his client in a “false” manner. On Tuesday, a superior court judge threw out a defamation lawsuit against Steele for failing to provide evidence that information in the dossier was knowingly falsified.”

“Can you say definitively whether you know if Michael Cohen was ever in Prague in 2016?” Todd on Wednesday’s edition of Meet the Press Daily on MSNBC.

“Never, never in Prague,” Davis sternly said.

“Never ever?” Todd pressed.

“Never ever in Prague,” Davis answered. “And the reason, just to let your viewers know what we’re talking about, is that the dossier, the so-called dossier, mentions his name 14 times. One of which is a meeting with Russians in Prague. 14 times. False.”

Ok, but let’s hope Lanny isn’t merely being legalistic here. If Cohen never went to Prague did he go to another former satellite of the USSR to pay off the Russian hackers? What’s really germane is not if he went to Prague but if he paid off the hackers.

And, of course, Davis may be simply ‘clamming up to please Mueller’ as Abramson argues.

In any case, Cohen dropped his lawsuit against Buzzfeed soon after the report that Mueller may have evidence he was in Prague. 

Beyond this there is plenty of news for Michael Cohen, the John Dean of Watergate 2.0.

When news of the Cuomo Tax Department’s subpoena  to Cohen regarding his taxes, he personally called them-which is unusual, normally someone receiving such a subpoena would have their lawyers call.

As for what led Cohen to cooperate, the Wall Street Journal had a major piece on it. It seems his Polish father’s exhortation had a big part as a proximate cause. 

To be sure that came after prosecutors built a very strong case with the cooperating of Cohen’s business partners and associates, of David Pecker himself who was not so loyal to Trump he’d risk going to prison for perjury.

FN: Though he later got himself back into hot water with the attempt to blackmail Bezos.

“Michael Cohen had many reasons to play ball last weekend when his legal team sat down to talk to federal prosecutors.”

“The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office had testimony from Mr. Cohen’s accountant and business partners, along with bank records, tax filings and loan applications that implicated not only Mr. Cohen in potential criminal activity, but also his wife, who filed taxes jointly with her husband. Prosecutors signaled Mr. Cohen would face nearly 20 criminal counts, potentially carrying a lengthy prison sentence and staggering financial penalties.”

So his wife was also in Mueller’s crosshairs. What would Trump do if Melania were in the crosshairs? Donald Jr clearly is-would Trump allow Jr to go down for it if it saved himself?

I look at this question in more depth in (Chapter A).

“Adding to the pressure, David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, provided prosecutors with details about payments Mr. Cohen arranged with women who alleged sexual encounters with President Trump, including Mr. Trump’s knowledge of the deals.”

“This account of how Mr. Cohen went from a pugnacious defender of the president to turning on Mr. Trump is based on details provided by people close to Mr. Cohen and others briefed on the discussions with prosecutors.”

“Mr. Cohen’s troubles increased in May, when Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, a New York City taxi mogul who managed taxi medallions owned by Mr. Cohen and his relatives, pleaded guilty to state criminal tax fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their probe of Mr. Cohen.”

“By then, prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service had focused on Mr. Cohen’s personal income taxes. In conversations with a potential witness in June and July, investigators asked “very pointed” questions about various tax filings, according to a person familiar with the conversations.”

“They knew what they wanted, they knew what they had, and they went after it,” the person said.

“In late June, Mr. Cohen openly broke with Mr. Trump.”

“This is when he had that talk with his father who is a Holocaust survivor.”

“A personal turning point for Mr. Cohen was a conversation with his father, Maurice Cohen, a Holocaust survivor.”

“Mr. Cohen’s father urged him not to protect the president, saying he didn’t survive the Holocaust to have his name sullied by Mr. Trump, according to a person who was told about the conversation. The elder Mr. Cohen couldn’t be reached for comment.”

“On June 20, Mr. Cohen stepped down from his position as the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman and tweeted his first public criticism of his former boss: “As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart wrenching.” The tweet no longer appears on Mr. Cohen’s Twitter account.”

Meanwhile, Trump sounds like the mob boss he clearly is:

That’s how Comey described it back in talking to him in February, 2017-like talking to a mob boss. With Cohen Trump goes so far as suggest that cooperating with federal investigators is the real crime. 

And Trump sounds just like what Roger Stone talked about regarding Frank Pentangeli. 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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