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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-in fact has lied all his life. And he’s also been so-called ‘President Trump’ s 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.’

FN: Of course Rudy himself has been lying all his life lying his years. 

UPDATE: Speaking of Rudy’s lies and co-conspiring for Trump here’s just the latest chapter.

To be sure, the media has noted this. 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 argues 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 ‘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 deals 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.

Exactly-we’re not in a vacuum which is where Trump wants us-a moral vacuum. So as much as the defense will attempt to demonize informants-aka ‘rats’-they tend to be more trustworthy than the defendants themselves.

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.

Regarding the Trump-Giuliani argument that you can’t believe Cohen who just lied to give Mueller what they want this is exactly the Frank Pentageli’s argument when he perjured himself in the Senate claiming not to know the Godfather in the Godfather 2.0. Pentageli has been in the public conversation recently after Roger Stone’s indictment was made public and we saw that in Stone’s threats to Credico to coerce him into lying for him, he urged Credico to do a Frank Pentageli.’ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUjjzwIrebQ

See around 2:57-Pentageli literally voices the mobster argument of Trump and his GOP co-conspirators-that the FBI wanted him to say ‘Michael Corleone did this and Michael Corleone did that-because that’s what they wanted.’

FN: In the latest, Stone’s attorneys tried to block the government from playing this clip under the premise it might convince jurors Stone’s a mobster. But, of course, it was Stone himself who asked Randy Credico to do a Frank Pentagali. 

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 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 who lie a lot-that people will not see the forest, they will treat each new scandal as a one off., as a single leaf-this is how much of the MSM has covered Russian collusion even as they break new investigative bombshells they fail to relate it to the previous 160 bombshells and treat it like a one off-a he said she said. 

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: To be sure, Cohen states there were several other witnesses so we will also be able to factor their testimony in. Off the bat my question is: is one of the witnesses Hope Hicks?

UPDATE 2.0: A lot of water under the bridge since then. Cohen has since testified and pled guilty to eight criminal counts-including making the hush money payments at Trump’s direction effectively making ‘the President’ an un-indicted co-conspirator. In December while Mueller recommended no prison time the SDNY drew a harder bargain and Cohen ended up with three years in prison. This was a quite a surprise, the consensus was he’d get no or little prison time for his cooperation as Mueller argued but the Sovereign District of New York felt otherwise.

Michael Flynn also got a rude awakening at his sentencing where the judge warned him he couldn’t assure him no prison time-Chapter A-Flynn took the hint and accepted the Judge’s recommendation of a three month delay

Comparatively while Manafort got 7 and a half years cumulative in his two trials it was still somewhat on the low end of what he could have gotten-though he is currently in the middle of a trial for state charges which could be more.

Flynn for his part has now gone totally Fox News-his metamorphosis seemed to complete itself after Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter-perhaps somehow Flynn felt emboldened?

So we’re seeing some tough judges/sentences but from the point of view of the Furies, Poetic Justice of the Highest Order as all those who were calling for Hillary to be locked up-Stone, Flynn, Cohen-are now in danger of being themselves.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, there’s a time for New Testament Justice, this is not one of those times. This is a time-our current American legitimacy crisis- for Old Testament Justice not to mention the Justice of the Furies-for whom the difference between revenge and justice is a distinction without a difference-when mortals sin against the Laws of Mother Right they must be punished most severely.

It’s often said that the American people are forgiving, they believe in redemption. True but they also believe in accountability-this is why cynicism soared after Nixon was pardoned, or the Reagan-Bush Irangate conspirators were pardoned-by William Barr, Trump’s current nominee for AG-and Obama and the Dem leadership let the Bush-Cheney co-conspirators off the hook.

FN: True enough, however, that George W. Bush was a lot smarter than Trump and went out of his way to foster a positive relationship with Nancy Pelosi-who was the Speaker than and now. While as the old African-American saying has it only the truth hurts and George W. Bush was not a legitimate ‘President’ he was clearly a better man than Trump would ever dream of being. As noted in Chapter B, Trump is notable in having almost no positive human traits-very few.

UPDATE: Having said that Trump thanked Pelosi for saving him from impeachment and she’s still carrying water for him to this day apparently.

I have to agree with Abramson-Pelosi may shrug he’s just not worth it but that makes those of us in the Dem base and #Resistance wonder why we went to all the trouble to elect the Dem House-and Pelosi Speaker-we could have stuck with Paul Ryan if all we wanted were a few  disapproving words-ok with the Dems in charge we also get a lot of meaningless messaging bills-if that’s all Pelosi thinks the Blue Wave was about she really doesn’t get it-maybe her critics were right about her.

And as it’s clear she doesn’t care about the Rule of Law-only political calculus-she has to know that trying to beat him without impeachment is a bad strategy.

 

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

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