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UPDATE: Is this better as another media criticism chapter or in the Cohen chapter?

This is something you are seeing a lot the last few days after the bombshells from Cohen’s tape and then the news that he asserts he saw Donald Jr tell the faux ‘President’ about the #TreasonMeeting with his own eyes.

Much of the hot take from the media seems to be ‘well lets wait until someone more credible comes along, as Michael Cohen clearly can’t be trusted.’ It’s true that Cohen is an inveterate liar. But this is pretty rich coming from Giuliani. 

“He’s been lying all week, he’s been lying for years,” Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Thursday night, adding that the evidence revealed in a recording of Trump and Cohen talking about a hush payment to a former Playboy model further proves the “serious lies” he’s told over the years.

“I don’t see how he has any credibility,” he said. “There’s nobody that I know that knows him that hasn’t warned me that if he’s backed up against a wall he’ll lie like crazy, because he’s lied all his life.”

He’s been lying for years. And he’s also been so-called ‘President Trump’ so-called lawyer for years. And, of course, just a few months ago Giuliani spoke in glowing terms over ‘this honorable man, this honorable lawyer.’

 

To be sure, the media has noted this.

FN: Then again Rudy himself has been lying for years-he even admitted recently that he worries they’re going to put the words ‘he lied for Trump’ on his tombstone. g

But at the end of the day it still leaves Trump and Rudy where they want to be-ok so Trump’s a liar, Rudy’s a liar, and Cohen’s a liar. Guess as they are all liars we can’t begin to even attempt to arbitrate the conflicting version of events until St. Peter comes over and tells us what really happened. 

And this is the narrative you’ve seen-Ok Cohen is saying Don Jr told Trump but Don Jr, Kushner, and Trump say he didn’t so it’s a crapshoot. Of course, you can further note that Cohen himself in his testimony before Congress had testified that Jr didn’t tell Trump as well.

So everyone’s a liar but it’s 3 to 1 backing up Trump so… And note that this false narrative is Trump’s modus operandi. It’s how he ran against ‘Crooked Hillary.’ He doesn’t even try to defend himself against all the totally accurate allegations against himself, rather his objective is to play on public cynicism-yeah he’s bad but they’re just as bad and at least he’s honest about it.

It’s how he always responds to allegations-Hollywood Access? But what about Bill Clinton? Russia collusion but Clinton and the Democrats paid for the Steele dossier so it’s even-steven. Before the House GOP got it over and shutdown the Russia investigation they hatched a bunch of counter investigations into Clinton’s emails-again-into the Clinton Foundation-again-into Uranium One-again. The key is to bring everyone down to his own level in the pond scum.

It’s true that Cohen himself is a dishonest thug-who represented Trump for years. But as Seth Abramson shows this doesn’t mean that we just have to throw up our hands and say ‘Gee it’s a bunch of scoundrels making accusations and counter accusations, I guess we’ll just forget about it until St. Peter gets here.’

As Abramson-with his background as a criminal lawyer-points out, cases between bad guys happens everyday. If prosecutors could only accept the testimony of St. Peter and the bus full of nuns he travels around with, they’d never secure any convictions. Often to get a really bad guy-a big fish-you need other bad guys, who are bad guys but somewhat smaller fish to turn on him and-as Trump and Rudy put it-‘rat on him.’

A big part of the trouble is the media doesn’t understand the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence in a court of law-and wrongly think that only direct evidence has currency.

Which is a total fallacy-you have to factor in the tremendous trove of circumstantial evidence currently public-as it’s quite plausible that for a lot of this circumstantial evidence Mueller has some direct evidence; though, again, circumstantial evidence is not to be sneezed at as it has its place in a criminal trials as well.

So this setup-simply assessing the direct evidence presented by Cohen and Trump/friends-while factoring in the low amount of credibility on both sides-totally plays into illegitimate ‘President Trump’s’ hands.

Abramson now gets to the point I touched on above-that in criminal investigations and trials prosecutors have to make deal with bad guys to bring down other bad guys-who are bigger fish-everyday. So on the question of credibility an important factor in handicapping is what does each side have to gain by lying vs. telling the truth.

Cohen’s incentives work the opposite way. If his only salvation is a deal with Mueller the last thing he wants to do is get caught offering up more false testimony-like he did when he testified before Congress-of course, that was with arch Trump loyalist and traitor, Devin Nunes, running the show and this is Mueller we’re talking about.

His incentives to tell the truth are very strong. Again, this is the oil of our legal system-if juries could never believe any bad/dishonest guys in bringing down other higher priority bad/dishonest guys these bigger fish dishonest guys would walk every time. This confusion is one Trump gets a lot of mileage playing on.

FN: The idea that you can’t believe the cooperating witnesses because they’re just lying about the defendant as that’s what the prosecutor wants them to say is straight out of the mob boss playbook as shown by  Frank Pentagelli himself-who Stone actually referenced in his witness tampering efforts on Randy Credico. 

Abramson then lays out that beyond the fact that in this context Cohen is more credible than Team #TreasonTrump he points to some of the massive circumstantial evidence which makes it clear that Cohen’s story here is believable.

Staggering. Let that sink in.

One of the biggest challenges in such a huge case as this is somehow being able to see the forest for the trees-when the forest is so massive. When many of the trees themselves are so massive. It’s very easy to mistake even some of the leaves for the entire forest. And this is a big part of what Trump counts on as well-beyond counting on the fact that many don’t understand the law and will just presume it’s a moral vacuum between a bunch of guys lying-that people will not see the forest, they will treat each new scandal as a one off.

It’s vital that we not take the bait and avoid this trap that Trump and his friends managed to ensnare a good part of the country with in 2016. We don’t live in a moral vacuum, don’t let Trump trick us into believing otherwise, because that’s how he wins.

UPDATE: It’s not clear that this point has ever gotten through to much of the MSM. As for Cohen himself the fact that he’s in prison for the next three years for committing crimes as Trump’s direction and to his benefit while Trump gets to play ‘Mr. President’ in an Office he didn’t win legitimately makes Trump’s boast that he could get away with shooting someone on Broadway an open question.

While Maxine Waters tweet yesterday gave the punditry that welcome opportunity to play false equivalence

it remains the fact that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator and that the only reason he’s not indicted and convicted is a questionable DOJ precedent.

To be sure the idea that Trump himself will ever be ‘locked up’ seems a long shot to me and an argument I’ve made repeatedly in this book is that impeachment-indictment of his ‘Presidency’ is more important than an indictment of him as Individual One-which is not to say I oppose his personal indictment or that it would be unwarranted.

With Ukraine if you’re listening we finally seem to have a simple enough for the MSM not to mess up the basic framing-it’s true Baquet and the Times has tried to argue that somehow the very fact that Hunter Biden was doing a foreign deal is somehow ‘troubling.’

This was exactly how the MSM generated such faux outrage over the emails-sure there’s no wrongdoing but the optics: it just looks bad. And if you’re going to place the alleged bad optics of something involving Clinton or Biden with actual demonstrable wrongdoing from ‘President Trump’ you have your false equivalence-every time a report on Ukraine if you’re listening comes up the pundits feel they have to also add in the bit about but Hunter Biden had a job he wasn’t qualified for-that’s just as bad! 

 

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

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