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Wow! What a day. Even though every day of the Trump Russia White House in some way-in may ways makes history-he’s our first illegitimate ‘President’ there because of the efforts of a hostile foreign power-and the FBI-yesterday stands out as the most eventful so far.

Yesterday brought us a new kind of history made-we now have an un-indicted co-conspirator for ‘President.’ True so was Nixon but in this case we actually had someone who was in a senior position both in Trump’s campaign and his organization testify in a federal court that Trump directed him to commit crimes; when you direct someone to commit crimes that makes you guilty of committing crimes.

Yesterday was truly the worst day yet in Trump’s ‘Presidency’-indeed as all the big news broke between 4-5 pm yesterday afternoon, it was the worst hour of Trump’s ‘Presidency.’

Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time, two narratives — both disastrously bad for Trump — emerged:

1. Paul Manafort, the man who spent five critical months leading Trump’s campaign in 2016, was found guilty of eight financial crimes. On the 10 other charges brought against Manafort, the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous conclusion and the presiding judge declared a mistrial on those counts.

2. Longtime Trump personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen agreed to a plea deal with the Southern District of New York in which he admitted guilt on eight charges and acknowledged that he had discussed or made hush payments to two women alleging affairs with Trump in order to keep damaging information from becoming public, at the direction of and in coordination with a candidate for federal office. That candidate, although Cohen didn’t name him, is obviously Donald Trump.

You still have the Trump loyalists quibbling that this is nothing to do with collusion. Couple of thoughts about that.

A. First of all, can you imagine if senior people in Clinton’s campaign had this rap sheet?

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1031977300542337025

If just one high ranking Clinton aide had was indicted/convicted or even accused of anything like this-or anything much less; and heck, it doesn’t have to be a high ranking aide, it could be low ranking, maybe the janitor at her campaign headquarters, or even just her gardener or someone she said hello to at a diner-there would be calls for impeachment-and the MSM would have taken them very seriously.

The double standard of conduct for Clinton vs. Trump is astonishing but very real. After Manafort was convicted on eight counts, Trump complained that it had nothing to do with him, nothing to do with collusion. 

Well, you know, Bill Clinton’s affair with his intern spun out of Whitewater-a nothingburger scandal about a deal that happened in the 1970s yet the GOP still saw fit to impeach him.

Brett Kavanaugh-who Trump selected precisely because Kavanaugh believes that Republican Presidents-even Republican ‘President’s like Trump are above the law. But Kavanaugh most certainly didn’t think Bill Clinton was above the law-quite the contrary, he was very self righteous in declaring that Clinton got no ‘slack’ from him and asked him a bunch of sexually obscene questions about the details of the affair with Lewinsky-in a bid that was meant to force him to either admit to perjury or resign. 

Michael Cohen, Trump’s mob lawyer for many years, testified in a federal court that Trump directed him to make two hush payments to alleging affairs with him to prevent the damaging information from going public just before the election. So does Kavanaugh believe Trump should resign?

As Politico notes, when Obama was President the GOP thought there should have been an investigation into him chewing gum.

It’s amazing how squeaky clean Obama was and they still were talking as if he was Nixon or something. But then this is the party who once investigated the Clinton’s Christmas list for 100 hours in Congress. As Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out last night, testimony in a federal court accused Trump of more than Bill Clinton was impeached for. He also got this great old footage of Lindsay Graham inveighing very sanctimoniously and self righteously that impeachment is not about punishment, it’s about cleansing the office, it’s about restoring honor and integrity to the office.

They should but this tweet of his last night makes it pretty clear he no longer thinks ‘cleansing the WH’ is so important now that there’s a Republican ‘President.’

Oh ok. So now cleansing the office, restoring integrity and honor, this is no longer the most important thing. Now what matters is that ‘there was no collusion.’ Bill Clinton didn’t collude with anyone either. And even after the conviction of Trump’s campaign manager and the pleading guilty of his long time lawyer and fixer, Graham is attempting to intimidate the investigation by pushing it to ‘just finish already’-even though Benghazi went on much longer, as did Whitewater, and he and his Republican friends are still talking about the emails-Clinton’s, not the many Trump staffers who have used private email for government business. 

And can we just get past false equivalence already?

https://twitter.com/Prison4Trump/status/1031743530069315584

B. So if Clinton or Obama were President simply saying ‘there was no collusion’ would get you nowhere. On the other hand, they are presuming this had nothing to do with collusion too hastily.

Manafort and Gates both have many ties to collusion. Manafort:

1. Asked Konstantin Kilimnik-himself an old KGB agent-how he could use his position as Trump’s campaign manager to get whole with Oleg Deripaska a sanctioned Russian billionaire who Manafort owed $10 million dollars in loans to.

2. In early August, Manafort proposed a private campaign briefing with Deripaska-again going through Kilimnik.

3. Met with Kilimnik in early August of 2016 where by his own admission they discussed the campaign. While insisting that somehow a conversation between a Russian intel figure and the Trump campaign manager had merely a ‘casual’ conversation about the campaign, he does admit that one of the topics was: the Russian hacks of the DNC.

Post the Mueller Report it’s pretty clear that Manafort was as deeply involved with Russian collusion itself as Roger Stone was-likely they worked together on it.

Then there’s Michael Cohen. Last night his lawyer-who was Clinton’s lawyer during Lewinskygate and remains a close family friend to this day-broke some major news on Rachel Maddow last night-maybe the biggest news of all. He was coy but he said that Cohen would know wether or not Trump knew about the hacking advance and, indeed, cheered it on.

I don’t know about you but that strongly suggests to me he’s saying that Cohen can testify that Trump knew about the hacking in advance and, indeed, encouraged it. If that’s true, that’s collusion-and that’s the ballgame.

No-that doesn’t mean Trump will be impeached in the next few days. Until there’s a Democratic House that’s not going to happen.

UPDATE: With the amount of dithering in the Dem House leadership it’s not clear if it’s going to happen at all and if so we will regret this historically if not politically and Alan Litchman says the Dems will lose 2020 if they don’t impeach him.

End of UPDATE

But give it time-as Michael Avenatti said last night, we’re only in the 2nd quarter right now.

FN: To be sure Avenatti’s legacy doesn’t look so hot in retrospect.

But clearly what Lanny Davis is saying is that on the central question at the heart of the investigation-did Trump collude?-Michael Cohen knows the answer; and that makes me think the answer is yes. After all, if Cohen had no evidence that Trump colluded what would be the use in teasing that? Do you really think that Davis would be teasing that Cohen can exonerate Trump on the main charge?

So this was potentially the biggest news of the day, of the entire Trump ‘Presidency’ and it’s totally buried. Indeed, Politico swallows it here. 

“The attorney for Michael Cohen said Tuesday night that his client has information that would bolster special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation.”

“I do know,” attorney Lanny Davis told CNN’s Don Lemon, “Michael Cohen has information that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller in his probe of a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy.”

Davis also said: “There is no doubt that Donald Trump committed a crime and, more than that, a cover-up of the crime. Because he did not want to write the check to Stormy Daniels.”

Right-but Poliitco leaves out what he told Maddow:

“but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.”

It turns out the dossier wasn’t wrong about Cohen.

The Steele dossier alleged Cohen went to Prague to pay off the Russian hackers. We know that Cohen was the guy who made the payments. If Trump knew of the hackers in advance it stands to reason he’d have to pay them off.

 

https://twitter.com/TwitterMoments/status/1032239468915380225

This was something I’d argued when Davis first took Cohen on-it can only mean that Cohen has flipped. No way would Davis help Cohen get a pardon.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/07/05/has-michael-cohen-joined-the-resistance/

It was just on Monday I’d argued that if Cohen wants to be John Dean 2.0 he’d better hurry up.

https://lastmenandovermen.com/2018/08/20/if-michael-cohen-wants-to-be-john-dean-2-0-he-better-hurry-up/

In legal terms you can now say that this was ‘asked and answered’ as Cohen has now cemented his role as the John Dean of Watergate 2.0. Fittingly, Lanny Davis has been speaking to John Dean a good deal the last few weeks. 

According to Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox, who has a great deal of access to Cohen and his world, this was not a tough decision for Cohen in terms of taking Trump down. 

“DONALD TRUMP DIRECTED HIM TO COMMIT A CRIME”: MICHAEL COHEN NAILS THE CASKET SHUT ON HIS FORMER BOSS

“The president’s former attorney wanted to avoid a perp walk at all costs, according to people familiar with his thinking. But he did not hesitate to take Trump down with him.”

In still more Cohen news Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr and ranking Democrat Mark Warner want to hear from Cohen again-as he perjured himself the first time.

He had told them Trump didn’t know about the Trump Tower Russia meeting but last month it was revealed that he now asserts Trump did know-Don Jr. told him.

In other news, on the day the Trump campaign manager is convicted, and his lawyer confesses to crimes at his direction, George Papadopoulos-the Coffee Boy who started the entire Russia probe seems to be listening to the very bad legal advice of his wife and blowing up his plea deal. 

Like Rick Wilson warned his fellow GOPers-those who continue to defend Trump are just smearing themselves with his own crimes. This is only going to get worse.

UPDATE: Regarding the claim that Cohen had information regarding ‘the computer crime of hacking’ and wether Trump  knew in advance and even cheered it on’ it now appears what Davis had in mind was that Cohen-according to his testimony both to Mueller and the House in March, 2019-witnessed Stone tell Trump about the soon to be leaked DNC emails on July 18 or 19 of 2016.

As for going to Prague that remains a loose end neither corroborated or disproven.

Lanny Davis further declares that Cohen will not accept a pardon.

Papadopoulos went on to serve 14 days in jail that didn’t seem to exactly chasten him-he called prison in Wisconsin ‘Trump country’ when he was on Ari Melber-who failed to push him on many important points of substance-see Chapter A.

Yet another of the many questions the Dems need to ask Mueller is the status of another FBI investigation opened into the glorified Coffee Boy regarding a huge business deal he was working  on even after the campaign with Russia that he boasted could make him a fortune.

 

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

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