575

It’s already been the worst week of Trump’s ‘Presidency’ by far: Paul Manafort was convicted on eight criminal counts, and the  very same hour that broke it also broke that Cohen had pled guilty to his own eight criminal counts. Then Thursday it broke that David Pecker had an immunity deal and was revealing all the catch and kill he’d done on bad stories for Trump.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/08/24/david-pecker-gets-immunity-deal-in-michael-cohen-case/

It’s also pretty clear that the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal stories were not the only ones Pecker killed. After all, you don’t need a safe for two stories. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s mob boss idea of loyalty has taken a real hit with Cohen, Pecker, and Omarosa all turning on him and-to his mind-ratting him out. Of course, Trump’s version of loyalty has always been pretty one sided-maybe Pecker doesn’t want to go to prison or even face the dissolution of his business just to help Trump get away with it scot free.

UPDATE: Though after Pecker seemed to protect himself he muddied things up for himself by making those threats to Bezos.

While Trump may praise Manafort-and hint at a pardon-which all adds up to witness tampering- who can look at Manafort’s path-he faces many years in prison and say that’s for them? No one, other than maybe George Papadopoulos’ wife who keeps talking about him getting out of his plea deal. 

But there is shock among some of Trump’s friends that Pecker turned.

“Pecker’s apparent decision to corroborate Cohen’s account, and implicate Trump in a federal crime, is another vivid example of how isolated Trump is becoming as the walls close in and his former friends look for ways out. “Holy shit, I thought Pecker would be the last one to turn,” a Trump friend told me when I brought up the news. Trump and Pecker have been close for years. According to the Trump friend, Pecker regularly flew on Trump’s plane from New York to Florida. In July 2013, Trump tweeted that Pecker should become C.E.O. of Time magazine. “He’d make it exciting and win awards!”

But there’s a reason why so many close friends and confidantes of Trump find it so easy to flip-for him loyalty is a one way street. It turns out that-like Cohen-Pecker kind of felt unappreciated for all he did for Trump-and he sure did a lot in terms not just of killing lots of stories-again there are many more than the two we know about now-but basically using his publication as Trump’s personal media organ. Pecker was already boosting Trump for President in 2010 and during 2016 the Enquirer made its first endorsement.

“During the 2016 campaign, Pecker provided invaluable media support to Trump by regularly attacking his Republican rivals and Hillary Clinton. At times, it seemed like the Enquirer operated as a de-facto arm of the campaign. In October 2015, I reported that Trump aides were a source for an Enquirer article exposing Ben Carson’s malpractice lawsuits (“Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!”). Pecker denied it at the time. In June, The Washington Post reported that the Enquirer routinely sent stories to Trump to review prior to publication. (The Enquirer denied that as well.) During the transition, rumors circulated that Trump was considering Pecker for a prime ambassadorship. Last summer, Pecker reportedly brought an adviser to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman to meet Trump in the Oval Office to help him expand A.M.I.’s business.”

UPDATE: FN? The recent Bezos bombshell puts the fact he brought the adviser of MBS to see Trump in an even more sinister light-apparently going after Bezos was seen as a way to punish the newspaper he owns-the Washington Post. WaPo had particularly raised ire in the aggressive way it investigated MBS’ murder of their journalist Khashoggi. At this point the heat is only getting hotter as even the GOP Senate has now had it with the Trump Russia House’s lack of cooperation on getting to the bottom of what happened with Khashoggi and Adam Schiff is vowing that his House Intel Committee will be having a very deep dive into what happened to Khashoggi and the larger issue of Trump’s relationship to the Saudis.

UPDATE 2.0: Of course birds have to fly and fish have to swim and GOP Senators have express a few anguished, disapproving words of ‘the President’ but then dismiss taking any action.

“But that was before federal prosecutors investigating Cohen subpoenaed A.M.I. Pecker’s friendship with Trump now seems to be over. According to a source close to A.M.I., Pecker and Trump haven’t spoken in roughly eight months. Howard remains particularly angry at Trump, two people close to Howard told me. “There is no love lost,” one person familiar with Howard’s thinking said. Another person said Howard “hates Trump” and feels “used and abused by him.”

“It’s likely that more Trump relationships will be stress-tested in the weeks to come as Trump’s legal peril escalates. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, has given a series of cable-news interviews intimating that Cohen has valuable and damaging information on Trump to share with Mueller—including the claim that Trump had foreknowledge of Russia’s hacking of Clinton’s e-mails. One source close to Cohen told me Cohen wants to tell Mueller that Trump discussed the release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails during the weekend when the Access Hollywood “grab ’em by the pussy” tape dominated the news cycle.”

 

Wow-that story about Cohen is huge if true. Talk about burying the lede…

 

When Cohen’s tape came out in late July it was big news on many levels, first and foremost, that Trump clearly knew in advance of the payment to Karen McDougal as he and Cohen talked about it very matter of factly as if it were business as usual for them.

But Tim O’Brien-the man who has seen Trump’s tax returns-argued that the biggest catch of all on the tape was when Cohen mentioned Allen Weisselberg’s name-he was going to tell him to make the payment. Weisselberg has been Trump’s CFO for many years and actually started out working for Fred Trump in the 1970s.

He argued that Weisselberg-even more than Cohen-is the huge fish that could truly take Trump down. After all, Weisselberg has seen all of Trump’s tax returns and has intimate knowledge both of the finances of Trump Organization but also Trump’s personal finances.

FN: If Mueller saw Trump’s tax returns-either via Weisselberg or elsewhere he didn’t let on at his July 24, 2019 testimony.
We are now finally getting some potential movement on Trump’s tax returns-the Treasury Dept IG is now investigating wether Trump’s Russia House acted improperly during it’s ongoing fight with the Democrats over his tax returns. 

A focus of the fight is the mandatory audit program that the Internal Revenue Service conducts on the president’s and vice president’s tax returns.

As the fight has intensified, an IRS whistleblower in July filed a complaint with lawmakers and relayed concerns that at least one Treasury Department official attempted to interfere in that audit process.”

Regarding the identity of this alleged interfering Treasury Department official who is Steve Mnuchin? 

And now it’s happened-Weisselberg has an immunity deal in the Cohen case and it’s a potential smoking gun.

FN: I personally never have believed Trump will resign-that always seemed to be wishful thinking by some of my fellow resisters-that Trump will do the job for us, for a long time that seemed to be Pelosi’s hope.

I guess-big if-maybe if Trump really was in danger of being removed by the GOP Senate a la Nixon he might resign. Even then though he might-as usual-be determined to push until there are no more options.

It’s all about follow the money-Weisselberg is privy to the Trump Organization’s most sensitive information. 

Here’s Tim O’Brien:

“Allen Weisselberg is an unassuming, soft-spoken guy who has spent decades avoiding the limelight, first in the 1970s as an accountant for President Donald Trump’s father, Fred, and then as the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer.”

“Those days are over.”

O’Brien has written of the time he met Weisselberg when he wrote that book about Trump that led to him suing O’Brien, for suggesting he’s not a billionaire. Weissleberg met with him one afternoon at Trump Tower to show why Trump really was a billionaire. This proof didn’t really add up. The key with Trump is that he ascribed a huge value to the Trump name. In any case, Trump seemed to forget that in libel suits there’s discovery. If he is a billionaire he was unable to prove it in court.

“The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Weisselberg — who has also watched over the president’s personal finances and tax returns while currently running the Trump Organization with Trump’s two eldest sons — received immunity from federal prosecutors in their case against Trump’s lawyer and self-described fixer, Michael Cohen.”

“Weisselberg’s cooperation is a potentially momentous turn of events for the president. Depending on how prosecutors proceed, it may take the federal tax- and bank-fraud investigation of Cohen — and, more important, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe involving Russian interference in the 2016 election — out of some of the relatively low-stakes legal issues in play so far and into the heart of the Trump Organization and the president’s business and financial dealings.”

“Last month, it was reported that a grand jury had subpoenaed Weisselberg to testify in the federal investigation of Cohen and Trump’s hush-money payments to two Trump paramours during the 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen also mentioned Weisselberg during a tape recording he made of Trump and him discussing a payment to one of the women. Immunity liberates Weisselberg from potential criminal exposure of his own to share more detailed information with prosecutors than he otherwise might have, and heightens Trump’s own legal peril.”

At this point we now have Michael Cohen, David Pecker, and now, Allen Weisselberg contradicting Trump’s claims not to know about the payments. Certainly Weisselberg will be able to fill in a lot of the blanks on Michael Cohen’s tape. But that’s just the start of it, the tip of the iceberg of what Weisselberg knows about Trump’s finances-for starters, potentially more about campaign violations.

“Federal prosecutors have also granted immunity to David Pecker, who publishes the National Enquirer. In 2016, the Enquirer purchased the rights to a former Playboy Playmate’s account of an affair with Trump. Pecker has reportedly shared details about Cohen’s payments and Trump’s knowledge of the deals. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign-finance fraud on Tuesday and said that Trump directed him to pay the hush money, making Trump criminally liable as Cohen’s accomplice.”

“Pecker’s immunity agreement may, therefore, be relatively narrow and limited to the prosecution of Cohen by the Manhattan U.S. attorney. Weisselberg, on the other hand, surely knows things that travel beyond the borders of the Cohen investigation and into the more sprawling landscape of potential crimes that Mueller is investigating — including obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting a fraud, conspiracy against the U.S., and, in the words of the Constitution’s impeachment clause, possible “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the Oval Office.”

“To be sure, the only people who have a complete handle on the parameters of all of this are Mueller and his tight-lipped team of investigators. So it will take time for all of this to be subjected to a more transparent appraisal. Still, Trump has had few loyalists in his operation historically, and Weisselberg is certainly one of the most longstanding members of that tiny club. His cooperation with investigators will resonate personally for the president, and is likely to force an already combative man to lash out in ever more forceful ways.”

Yes, it’s telling how little loyalty Weisselberg felt for Trump-he’d worked for all his adult life for first Trump’s father and then himself. Clearly what Trump calls ‘loyalty’ his friends call: being used by Trump.

“Weisselberg is deeply familiar with the Trump Organization’s financial housekeeping. Trump — a man who rarely trusts anyone — confided in Weisselberg and relied on him to sign off on details of the company’s most significant deals. Weisselberg oversees the trust that Trump set up to manage his interests in the Trump Organization while he’s in the White House, and also had a prominent position inside the president’s troubled charitable foundation. In short, he was privy to decisions at the Trump Organization that Cohen was never allowed to take part in.”

“That kind of knowledge is gold to federal investigators. Mueller’s team signaled long ago that it might take a closer look at the president’s business dealings as part of its examination of Russia’s assault on the presidential campaign. It’s likely that the probe is exploring whether Trump or others on his business and campaign teams — including members of his family — discussed exchanging policy favors (lifting economic sanctions on Russia, for example, or shifting the U.S. stance on Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine) in exchange for financial or political quid pro quos.”

“Trump’s intersection with murky funding from overseas sources, including Russia, goes back years (as I’ve detailed before in columns about the Trump SoHo hotel and Trump’s partnership with the Bayrock Group). In a column about Cohen and Weisselberg in April, I noted that Weisselberg was a possible candidate for a subpoena given the fact that Mueller had already subpoenaed the Trump Organization for business records — and given the fact that Weisselberg has had a front row seat in deals involving transactions like the Trump SoHo.”

It’s been noted by many folks that Trump talks like a mob boss: call him Don the Con. Indeed, in Trump’s mob boss version of history, John Dean was the heavy in Watergate and what was done to Al Capone was very unfair-after all, they wanted Capone on the bootlegging not tax evasion; I mean how, cheap-everybody cheats on their taxes. 

FN: Or Frank Pentangeli

But as O’Brien notes, it was a forensic accountant that brought down Al Capone.

At the end of the day, Trump’s one way version of loyalty isn’t inspiring any actual loyalty. 

I’m sure both Nixon and Capone would agree with him about flippers. 

UPDATE: In retrospect there have been a lot of ‘game changers’ during Trump’s scandal filled ‘Presidency.’

The SDNY investigation led to the game changer that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator-but while Cohen does a three year term for crimes done at Trump’s direction and on his behalf Trump is scott free being called ‘Mr. President’ merrily asking more and more countries to interfere in our election to help him win.

If there is truly a smoking gun it may prove to be his Ukraine phone call.

But regarding SDNY soon after Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter, we heard the SDNY case into Trump’s hush money payments was closed-I’m sure it had nothing to do with political pressure. Yes I’m kidding-have you seen those State Department texts? Trump has totally compromised large swathes of the federal government-the DOJ, the IG-we’re still waiting on Michael Horowitz to release the report on the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump FBI agents-now we’ve seen the extent to which he’s corrupted the State Department.

(Put this update on the bottom)?

UPDATE 2.0: As of October 5, 2019.

The Democrats are in fact now investigating the Trump Organization though as far as Weisselberg’s knowledge of the Trump Org being an article of impeachment it will have to take a number at this point.

There is an ongoing debate among Democrats as to what should be in the coming articles of impeachment-some say-this is apparently the leadership’s view at the moment-focus just on Ukraine.

Others argue it should be everything-or at least everything you can remember that will fit in hundreds of pages…

Amanda Marcotte in her interview with David Brock-who was long an impeachment skeptic and only came out for it after Pelosi got there-did a good job of covering the bases of this debate.

Right now the debate is over how expansive an impeachment inquiry should be. Should it be focused on this Ukraine thing or should it be expansive? Should they look at all the various crimes before he was elected? What about his in-office corruption? I wrote an article for Salon arguing that they should be expansive. What’s your opinion on this?

I would probably say that the kitchen-sink approach, while it’s tempting politically, is probably more fraught because it’s going to take a long time. The issues that could potentially be raised are many. They’re diffuse, and there’s a lot of different directions that one can go in, in terms of gathering evidence.

I think it’s not really in the Democrats’ interest to have a long, drawn-out process. And I don’t know why you couldn’t have more than one bite at the apple, but I think they should probably get this one done because as Nancy Pelosi said, “Strike while the iron is hot.”

I think you just run a risk of trying to do too much and trying to persuade people of too many different things. But I think those things should all be continue to be investigated.

It’s an interesting question because I think the two modern examples people are looking at are Richard Nixon, obviously with Watergate, and Bill Clinton with the Monica Lewinsky affair. And they’re very different. With Nixon, they really did kitchen-sink him. The articles of impeachment were long, and involved everything. With Clinton — well, you were in the midst of it. It was just the one thing basically, right?

Right. There was like a laser-like focus on one event, right. You’re right, they definitely had a full plate of things with Nixon. And with Clinton, it was a laser-like focus on the one thing.

But I don’t think — I mean, I could be wrong — but I just don’t think there’s an appetite for months and months of investigation without a vote on resolving this particular issue. I think there’s a lot of momentum. And they’re not done with gathering all the evidence, but once they have it I think they need to move.”

Let me just say #I’mWithHer-Marcotte that is. The Nixon model is clearly the right one for Trump. As for the issue of how long-should the Dems aim to impeach him quickly or look at everything which would necessarily drag it out I’m with Ryan Cooper-they should drag it out.

“When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced her support for an impeachment inquiry, it raised one immediate question: How would she screw it up? I originally feared she would turn tail and abandon the effort, but it seems she’s settled on a different strategy — stuffing it through as fast as possible. “House Democratic leaders are eyeing a fast-paced investigation into the possible impeachment of President Trump,” report Mike DeBonis and Rachel Bade at The Washington Post. The idea is to have it all polished off by the holidays.

This is a lousy idea. An impeachment inquiry should be extensive and unhurried, for moral, legal, and political reasons. Let me take them in turn.

First, as Alex Pareene notes, it is still very unlikely that the Senate will vote to actually remove Trump, or even hold a trial at all as is constitutionally required. Therefore impeachment in concrete structural terms will almost surely be just a slap on the wrist. (Indeed, this is almost certainly what Pelosi and Democratic moderates are hoping for. They just want to get the vote over and done with so they can go back to cowering in the corner.)

However, impeachment also gives House Democrats a lot of tools to actually achieve some reckoning with Trump’s awesome corruption and abuses of power. They have subpoena power, can hold uncooperative witnesses in contempt (back in the day Congress even improvised a makeshift prison), and will get tremendous media attention. The moderates are taking the Ukraine story seriously because it sort of has to do with national security, and nothing gets moderate blood pumping like Respecting the Troops, but other things Trump has done are just as terrible. Stuffing the White House budget into his own pockets is both an egregious violation of the emoluments clause and literal theft from the American people.

A broad inquiry also strengthens existing efforts to hold Trump to account, as the Post‘s Greg Sargent details. The House Judiciary Committee is currently working to force the administration to hand over additional documents related to the special counsel investigation and to compel former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify as part of what they are calling an impeachment proceeding, which could be undermined by a full-dress inquiry that does not include their subjects. “If the impeachment inquiry is now just focused solely on Ukraine, that could undercut the position Judiciary has taken in court on both the McGahn and the grand jury materials,” former House counsel Michael Stern tells Sargent.

A related point holds for the politics as well. To decide to impeach Trump on one narrow point is to implicitly excuse him on everything else — to say that all the other stuff is not worth impeaching him over. One could argue that it’s simply a tactical decision, but it’s a strained case that few are likely to buy (because it isn’t true).

The politics of impeachment in general clearly favor a prolonged process. Since Pelosi came out for impeachment, Trump has been panicked and flailing, and Democrats have gotten documents out of the administration faster than ever before. Like so many bullies, Trump folds immediately if someone actually throws a punch. Imagine how much more loopy he will be after an impeachment committee has been breathing down his neck for months.

Cooper is 100% correct-impeachment is the only tool that enables the Democrats to take back the narrative from Trump’s racist tweets, and gaslighting pressers-why would you give up such a wonderfully efficient weapon? Prior to Pelosi coming out for impeachment the Dems achieved zero cooperation on  demands for documents and witnesses-since she has they’re getting witnesses, documents-the Ukraine transcript-whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork and agreeing to testify.

Now that you have the gun to this fake ‘President’s’ head why would you possibly take it away until he’s out of there?

So I’m with Marcotte, Cooper and others who argue it should cover everything-or at least a lot-like Nixon and we actually want a drawn out process. I’ve argued-basically since the night of Trump’s fake ‘win’ that the Dems ought to impeach him 11 days before the 2020 election just like the Comey Letter.

End of UPDATE.

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