UPDATE: Is this chapter needed?

In the last chapter (Chapter A) we looked at the still outstanding question of wether or not Cohen went to Prague. The question has been at an impasse. While many assume this particular claim in the dossier to be stillborn as Cohen continues to deny it despite him now cooperating with Mueller-where a lie would be calamitous for his deal-there are still a number of loose ends keeping it very much alive.

He denies it but then that may be at Mueller’s request-Mueller may have asked him to continue to lie about it in public. It’s clear that back in July, Cohen’s then attorney, Lanny Davis, went way too far and said way too much-for Mueller’s taste that is. On the Rachel Maddow show Davis had suggested that Cohen has firsthand knowledge of Trump’s collusion a claim he subsequently pulled back considerably on. It all goes to the vexing questions regarding unreliable witnesses with a history of lying: were you lying then or are you lying now? 

The MSM tends to assume that Lanny Davis was lying when he suggested Cohen had knowledge rather than now that he’s taking it back and while everyone belabors the fact that Cohen’s a liar-as Rudy ironically puts it he’s been lying for years-sure, on Trump’s payroll and Rudy himself praised him fulsomely just a few months before he called him an inveterate liar-yet on ‘I never went to Prague’ the media tends to believe him.

This again goes to the tendency of the MSM to presume that absence of evidence is evidence of absence as anti anti Trumper Byron York takes it to mean here. 

Remember Prague? In Michael Cohen plea deal, Mueller says nothing about key collusion allegation.”

This takes it even further-absence in the plea deal is evidence of absence. The trouble with this is it presumes that Mueller showed all his cards in the sentencing memo but it’s clear from the langue in it-‘certain discrete Russian matters’-that there are many cards he’s not ready to play yet.

This piece from the Trump hacks at the Washington Times is even more misleading:

Michael Cohen adamant with Mueller: He’s never been to Prague

But he wasn’t adamant with Mueller but with the media-and maybe that’s what Mueller wants him to be.

The fact is there remain some loose ends on I never went to Prague:

After categorically denying it and taking out a lawsuit against Buzzfeed for publishing the claim, Cohen suddenly withdrew his lawsuit very soon after the news broke that Mueller may have evidence he was in Prague during the late Summer of 2016. 

Two questions clearly beg:

1. Why did Cohen withdraw his lawsuit against Buzzfeed if he in fact never went to Prague and was the story.

2. And what about the McClatchy report back in April, 2018 that Mueller has evidence Cohen did go to Prague? 

Was it simply mistaken?

Time will tell, but generally speaking, no one should be presuming that the only information Mueller has regarding Cohen’s activities for Trump are those contained in the memo-wether or not there’s truth in the specific allegation Cohen went to Prague-or some other neighboring former Soviet Satellite in late August-early September 2016.

Everything Mueller has done until now makes it crystal clear that he wants to get to the bottom of the issue of collusion itself-not only what Trump and his GOP co-conspirators dismiss as ‘mere process crimes’-like they impeached Bill Clinton for. Indeed, a ‘process crime’ seems to be any crime Trump might have committed that’s not clear evidence of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. If we find out he really did shoot someone on 5th avenue the GOP will answer ‘but this proves nothing about collusion…’

So my assumption is that he hasn’t wanted to ‘prove collusion’ yet-he’s building to it.

As for the larger issue of the Steele dossier-Prague is just one of its many allegations regarding collusion-it continues to be a real lightning rod for criticism on many sides. The GOP co-conspirators decided to make it the centerpiece of their parallel narrative of ‘no collusion’ and that the ‘real collusion’ was by the Democrats and the Deep State, etc.

The GOP disinformation campaign made the dossier central to the point of repeatedly misstating that the dossier was what opened the counterintelligence investigation at the end of July-and later had to admit in the Nunes Memo that actually Papadopoulos opening his big drunken mouth to Australia’s top diplomat was the proximate cause-chapter A.