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The truth is not the President’s friend. These  were the cryptic words that a Cohen friend was quoted as saying in a Vanity Fair piece that came out just yesterday morning. And I’m not talking about marginal issues. 

“DID THEY THINK I WAS JUST GOING TO ROLL OVER AND DIE?”: THE COHEN VS. TRUMP BATTLE RATCHETS UP

What might Cohen know about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Don Jr., Kushner, Manafort, and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who promised to provide them with “dirt” on Hillary Clinton? “When Michael says that he wants the truth out there, and that the truth is not the president’s friend, he is not talking about marginal issues,” says a person close to Cohen. “He’s talking about core issues at the heart of the Mueller probe.”

It almost reminds you of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: I won’t be ignored.

These words, of course, have been proven not just quixotic but eerily prophetic. That they did is not really surprising but how fast gives you a certain amount of whiplash. The general principle you can always follow regarding Trump-Russia-really all Trump scandals-is no matter how bad it looks, it’s always even worse-much worse than you think.

The Trump legal team led by his lawyer/partner in corruption, crime, and treason, Rudy Giuliani is fighting this latest bombshell the only way they can-with more lies and prevarications. You got to play the hand that you’re dealt, and like Cohen says ‘the truth is not the President’s friend.’

So before looking at their latest lies-that will be proven as lies in the near future, let’s take a step back. Let’s recall how much they previously said about this story they’ve already had to walk back. Just before the election and many, many months after, the Trump team pretended to know nothing about this. 

“The Wall Street Journal first reported four days before the November 2016 election that McDougal had been paid by the National Enquirer. At the time, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks called McDougal’s claims “totally untrue.”

“We have no knowledge of any of this,” she said.

We have no knowledge of any of this. In retrospect the Trump team might try to claim this was accurate-as they didn’t make this particular payment. But they also claimed to have no knowledge of any of it and have since had to backtrack completely on this false assertion.

And note that even if this particular payment wasn’t made, they did make other similar payments. And Trump and Cohen talk about this in the kind of matter of fact way that suggests this was a drill they’d run through many times.

Indeed, last week the Trump team itself had to admit how much Trump knew about this beforehand in releasing-false info-about the tape. And this turned out to be a huge miscalculation as it put Cohen in his current Glenn Close mode-did they think I was just going to role over and die?!

It’s also clear that Cohen is flipping.

Indeed, in light of their preemptively burning Cohen this quote by Giuliani is particularly surreal:

Giuliani said he spoke to the president Tuesday night and described him as “discouraged.”

“He’s disappointed his own lawyer recorded him,” Giuliani said

Uh, you folks were the one who started leaking about it.

UPDATE: This sure seems a long time ago now with Rudy being the Trump lawyer currently being investigated by SDNY for Trump related issues-decidedly not minor.

As John Bolton puts it America’s alleged Mayor is a hand grenade that’s going to take down Trump and a lot of his co-conspirators.

End of UPDATE

By the way, on Reason #3 I notice that Michael Avenatti is loudly insisting that Cohen is not flipping that he’s actually just angling for a pardon.

But what is Avenatti’s basis for believing Cohen is angling for a pardon?

So what info is he referring to here? Evidently there was a meeting planned between Avenatti, Cohen, and Cohen’s lawyer-arch Clinton loyalist, Lanny Davis for Monday.

According to Avenatti, he learned something after his Sunday morning interview with George Stephanopoulos that made him call the deal off. What did he learn? He states that Cohen refused to do the ‘right thing’ regarding the suit he and his client, Stormy Daniels have against Cohen. Is that the real-entire reason? Stay tuned.

I will say this-I find it hard to believe that Lanny Davis would agree to represent Cohen if it were to help Trump pardon Cohen. I’ve got to think the only way he’d represent him is if he were going to flip.

UPDATE: Lanny Davis responds:

“Shortly after the tape was aired on CNN late Wednesday, Michael Avenatti, an attorney for adult-film star Stormy Daniels, tweeted that Cohen “is not innocent nor is he a victim.” Daniels is suing Cohen for defamation and to void a non-disclosure agreement related to her alleged affair with Trump.”

“They are playing you & aiming for a pardon,” Avenatti tweeted, apparently addressing Davis.

Asked about the tweet Wednesday morning, Davis denied that Cohen is looking for a pardon.

“And Mr. Avenatti is in litigation. People in litigation say things about one another then they settle and everything is fine,” he said.

“What he’s saying about Mr. Cohen is not true,” he added. “It’s part of a litigation attack and it happens between lawyers.”

More on what Lanny Davis calls Cohen’s ‘turning a corner in his life.’

Speaking of Avenatti, he did have a very funny confrontation with arch Trump defender, Alan Dershowitz on Stephanopoulos. 

UPDATE: Cleary on this Avenatti was totally wrong-probably as Davis said it was a litigation tactic. Since then Avenatti has had a personal fall from grace-Chapter A for more.

The confrontation with Dersh remains hilarious-these days Dersh’s full time role seems to be defending indefensible ‘President Trump’ and arguing that somehow attempting to extort via the withholding of badly needed military aid a foreign power to investigate your  leading political opponent-which helps one of our leading geopolitical foes in Russia thereby further subverting this nation’s foreign policy-is maybe not the greatest kind of conduct but not impeachable-what would OJ’s lawyer consider to be an impeachable offense or did the Founders make a mistake?

Maybe he can explain sometime where James Madison and Alexander Hamilton went wrong.

End of UPDATE

 

Interestingly, there is one thing Cohen and Avenatti agree on-there are many more tapes. Right now, as Abramson notes in Reason #1 Trump and Giuliani are pretending that this is the only tape out there.

What this newly released tape does show conclusively is that Trump knew all about the plans for payments and this was clearly about the election.

Giuliani who is a surprisingly bad liar for how much he lies put out this statement:

“On Tuesday night, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani disputed the idea that the recording shows that Trump knew about the McDougal deal.”

“It doesn’t,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That’s open to interpretation, and we can have a fight about that.”

“To me it sounds like Cohen is explaining something to [Trump] that he doesn’t understand,” Giuliani said, adding: “He doesn’t seem that familiar with anything. There is nothing to indicate he knew anything in advance.”

Really? Ok let’s fight about that. 

“Donald Trump appeared familiar with a deal that a Playboy model made to sell the rights to her story of an alleged affair with him when Trump discussed the matter in September 2016 with his attorney Michael Cohen, according to a transcript of their conversation.”

“The transcript, which was provided by President Trump’s legal team, shows that the then-GOP presidential nominee does not register confusion or surprise when Cohen refers to a plan to purchase the rights to model Karen McDougal’s story from American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer.”

“AMI, whose chief executive is David Pecker, had signed a $150,000 deal with McDougal in August 2016 for her story but never published it.”

“Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” Cohen says, according to the transcript.

“So what do you got to pay for this . . . one-fifty . . .” Trump says.

“Yes,” Cohen replies. “Um, and it’s all the stuff.”

I mean Trump himself says ‘What are you going to pay for this-one-fifty?’

That sounds like someone who’s confused or surprised? It sounds like someone who is clued in and is just confirming a few details.

Note also Cohen’s reference to a ‘shell company regarding our friend David.’

The David in question is not David Pecker from AMI but to Trump’s alias for dealing with extramarital affairs, David Dennison.

Let’s look at the transcript itself which makes clear that

1. Trump knew all about this.

2. This was clearly about killing the stories before the election.

COHEN: Great poll, by the way.

TRUMP: Yeah?

COHEN: Seen it. Great poll.

TRUMP: Making progress.

COHEN: Big time

So right away they engage in election talk-and as it proceeds the entire call is clearly election talk.

COHEN: Um, so, we got served from the New York Times. I told you this — we were …

TRUMP: To what?

COHEN: … To unseal the divorce papers with Ivana. Um, we’re fighting it. Um, [Trump attorney Marc] Kasowitz is going to —

This is huge. This was the story that led to Cohen’s own disgusting threats to do ‘something disgusting’ to  a DailyBeast reporter if he printed anything about Ivana Trump’s claim years ago in the divorce proceedings that Trump raped her.

Cohen made his disgusting threat to do something disgusting back in the Summer of 2015. Now, here we are, on the tapes in September, 2016, under two months before the election.

Yes. By the way, regarding the question of who wanted to pay cash and who wanted a check the obvious interpretation is Trump wanted to pay cash-to hide the payment.

COHEN: And, I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …

TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?

COHEN: … Funding . . . Yes. Um, and it’s all the stuff.

TRUMP: Yeah, I was thinking about that.

COHEN: All the stuff. Because — here, you never know where that company — you never know what he’s —

TRUMP: Maybe he gets hit by a truck.

COHEN: Correct. So, I’m all over that. And, I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be —

TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?

As this passage shows, pointing out that this particular payment wasn’t made doesn’t get anyone off the hook as this was only precautionary-if Allen Weisselberg gets ‘hit by a truck.’ He didn’t and so the payment they made to him during the Summer to kill the McDougal story was enough.

UPDATE: Actually for the record we don’t know the payment wasn’t made-the Trump campaign says it wasn’t but who wants to stake anything on a denial by the Trump gang?

Back to the transcript:

COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something.

TRUMP: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] pay with cash.

So here Trump clearly says to make the payment with cash not ‘No-that would be wrong.’ Or ‘payment for what? There was no affair!’

COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it.

TRUMP: Check.

More on the Ivanna Trump rape allegation.

COHEN: Never. Never. Kasowitz doesn’t think they’ll ever be able to. They don’t have a —

TRUMP: Get me a Coke, please!

COHEN: They don’t have a legitimate purpose, so —

TRUMP: And you have a woman that doesn’t want this.

COHEN: Correct.

TRUMP: Who you’ve been handling.

COHEN: Yes. And —

TRUMP: And it’s been going on for a while.

COHEN: About two, three weeks now.

TRUMP: All you’ve got to do is delay for —

All you’ve got to do is delay for… Delay for what? Obviously until after the election.

COHEN: Even after that, it’s not ever going to be opened. There’s no, there’s no purpose for it. Um, told you about Charleston. Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that — I’m going to do that right away. I’ve actually come up and I’ve spoken —

No doubt Cohen is confident that it will never be opened-after all the threats he made. And it’s true-the marital rape story has totally fizzled. Until now.

UPDATE: To be sure Ivanna’s rape allegation never did get discussed by the MSM which should be seen as part of the ‘Savvy’ MSM pattern of burying all allegations of sexual misconduct and assault made against the fake ‘President’ both during the campaign and through to this day-Chapter A for more.

End of UPDATE

 

But then the truth is not the President’s friend including the fact that he’s not the legitimate President.

UPDATE: While the Trump loyalists and some MSM pundits claim there’s nothing to see here as there’s no crime why has the audio material been turned over to prosecutors?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/nyregion/michael-cohen-audio-fbi.html?ref=oembed

UPDATE: Looking back in retrospect-the above chapter was written July, 28, 2018-we still haven’t heard of any other tapes-as Abramson and I argued there are. However, it’s a mistake to simply infer from this that there are no other tapes. True, Mueller didn’t mention any other tapes in Cohen’s sentencing document either but again absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 

We have no grounds to simply presume Mueller put everything he had on Cohen in the memo. That there was nothing about other tapes may be because that’s all he has or it could be that he wants to stay ahead of public opinion-in general, whatever the truth on if there are more tapes, Mueller wants information that the public doesn’t have.

This is where those hungry, enterprising, ambitious, journalists I mentioned in Chapter A to investigate  bombshell lines of inquiry that have neither been proven of disproven.

UPDATE: There are enough such lines of inquiry so that those hungry, enterprising, ambitious, journalists never go hungry again.

 

 

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

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