520
The Steele dossier-which has not been ‘debunked’ as Trump and his GOP allies claim; and has actually been shown to be accurate on a number of points-alleged that Cohen went to Prague in August of 2016 and paid off the hackers. From January, 2017, when the dossier first came out, Cohen made heavy weather of the the idea that ‘I’ve never been to Prague.’ The claim he’d never been there was the basis for his lawsuit against Buzzfeed. and Fusion GPS.
To be sure the ‘evidence’ he put forward to debunk his Prague visit was hardly decisive. He put out a passport that didn’t have a Prague stamp. This is hardly a slam dunk defense.
5/ It's believed COHEN was in a nation from which you can travel to Prague with no stamp in the exact time-frame the STEELE dossier alleges he went there.
The only person to (allegedly) examine COHEN's passport for evidence of a Prague trip was TRUMP. Who claimed it looked fine.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 5, 2018
However, recently the McClatchy reported that Mueller has evidence Cohen did go to Prague.
And it explains why no Prague stamp on Cohen’s passport doesn’t prove he didn’t go. According to McClatchy, Cohen got there via Germany-from where you don’t need a passport to travel to Prague.
UPDATE1/ A reader reminds me that—4 months after the Prague allegation was published—COHEN finally *did* let media see his passport. It *confirmed* that COHEN was in a nation you can travel to Prague to with no stamp—Italy—between July 9 and July 17, 2016. https://t.co/4p8j2IQScP
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 5, 2018
In any case, Cohen dropped his lawsuit against Buzzfeed and GPS soon after.
This week we learned thanks to Rudy Giuliani’s penchant for saying things he shouldn’t say, that Trump reimbursed Cohen for about $470,000 dollars after the election.
“Mr. Giuliani said this week that the reimbursement to Mr. Cohen totaled $460,000 or $470,000, leaving it unclear what else the payments were for beyond the $130,000 that went to Ms. Clifford. One of the people familiar with the arrangement said that it was a $420,000 total over 12 months.”
Well, presumably another $150 grand went to Karen McDougal-a Playboy bunny Trump also had an affair with. That would account for $280,000 out of the roughly $470,000. But Cohen’s total war chest was more than the $470 grand Trump ultimately reimbursed him for.
9/ TRUMP inexplicably gave COHEN $470,000 on a $130,000 bill. TRUMP is known to wildly *underpay* rather than *overpay* subordinates. These facts have led to speculation COHEN used the rest of the money for something else. But COHEN also had $774,000 more: https://t.co/mloPkmLgJX
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 5, 2018
So Cohen’s total cash on hand during the election was more like $1.11 million. And what did he do with this sum? We have the $280 grand in payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. That still leaves roughly $830,000 unaccounted for.
Now you suspect that a good deal of the rest of it went to other women with stories to tell. While, Daniels and McDougal alleged consensual affairs, in October, 2016 after the release of the Hollywood Access video a total of 14 women came forward with accusations that Trump harassed/assaulted them. It seems plausible that he paid some of them off.
But in addition, it’s at least plausible that Cohen used some of this $1.11 slush fund to pay off the hackers just as the dossier alleged.
PS/ The now-acknowledged DANIELS payoff confirms that COHEN was the "fixer" TRUMP turned to when he had to secretly pay someone who could blackmail him over conduct that could destroy him professionally. So payoffs to hackers would fit *perfectly* into COHEN's *established role*.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 5, 2018
Regarding the dossier, the other big Trump GOP co-conspirator lie, of course, is that the ‘dodgy dossier’-as Carter Page-of all people!-calls it was the catalyst for the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump-Russia in July, 2016. This particular GOP big lie has the advantage of being doubly false-the dossier isn’t dodgy-and Carter Page sure is!-and this eytomology is false as the proximate start of the investigation was Papadopoulos’ drunken boasts to Alexander Downer, Australia’s top diplomat. It is a fact that the way to the truth with Papadopolous is to ply him with liquor-Chapter A for more.
Regarding the dossier, the MSM has tended to be too susceptible to the zombie idea that the dossier is ‘dodgy’ when not only has much of it been confirmed but none of it has been disproven which is rather astonishing.
One claim clearly confirmed is the importance of Aras Agalarov to what Trump was up to in Russia:
“Two well-placed sources based in St. Petersburg … knew Trump had visited St. Petersburg on several occasions in the past and had been interested in doing business deals there involving real estate. The local business/political elite figure reported that Trump had paid bribes there to further his interests but very discreetly and only through affiliated companies, making it very hard to prove.”
“The two St. Petersburg figures cited believe an Azeri business figure, Aras Agalarov (with offices in Baku and London) had been closely involved with Trump in Russia and would know most of the details of what the Republican presidential candidate had got up to there.”
UPDATE: Mueller was never able to get the testimony of Aras-or his son Emin-but it’s clear that the meeting was the brainchild of Russia’s chief prosecutor, Yuri Chaika who had Aras set it up through his son and Rob Goldstone.
Perhaps the Grand Jury testimony the Dems appear close to getting will have more on Aras and Yuri.
UPDATE 2.0: Mueller did indeed make Cohen cooperate in the Russian Collusion investigation-where he revealed that he overheard Stone give Trump prior knowledge of the DNC email hack and release in July. However, I’ve since come to revise my view and no longer agree with the premise of this chapter; I’ve come to agree with EmptyWheel-see Chapter A for more-that there was significant Russian misinformation in the Dossier one major case was the claim that Cohen was the ringleader on collusion-this is clearly false. Cohen was clearly a quarterback in facilitating Trump’s hush money payments but there’s actually very little evidence that he had any involvement with collusion.
To the contrary to the QB on Russian collusion was clearly Manafort; as for making payments to hackers we have Peter Smith’s conspiracy scheme.