478

No honor among traitors and Trump of course is loyal to no one but himself. So him recent throwing his thuggish lawyer Michael Cohen under the bus should not have surprised anyone; though you hear that Cohen was complaining that Trump didn’t pay him back the $130 grand; how many years has he worked for Trump and this was a surprise?

“President Trump said Thursday that he did not know that his personal attorney paid adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 days before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly accusing Trump of having an affair.”

“The president said he did not know where his attorney, Michael Cohen, got the money for the payment, and he declined to say if he ever set up a fund for Cohen to cover expenses like that.”

“To be sure, while he threw Cohen under the bus, his lawyers surely weren’t jazzed about this either, as just by saying anything, he’s giving the Stormy Daniels and her attorney ammunition.”

“The president’s denial and refusal to comment on whether there is a hush-money slush fund raises a raft of questions and complications for both Trump and Cohen. Ironically, the story comes on the same day Trump is prevaricating about Mexican rapists.”

For his part, Cohen seems happy to be Herr Trump’s fall guy. Ironically if this-rather implausible-story is true that Cohen did it on his own rather than on Trump’s behalf it’s worse for Cohen.

UPDATE: Of course, Cohen would go on to decide that he most certainly didn’t want to be Trump’s fall guy, his G. Gordon Liddy-or for Watergate 2.0, or Stupid Watergate, Paul Manafort.

But Cohen’s Friday went from bad to worse as McClatchy reported that he’s become a major person of interest in the Mueller investigation. 

“Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.”

“Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.”

“Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.”

The ‘former Trump Organization employee’ in question, to be sure, is Felix Sater-who’s not just any employee but someone with a long rap sheet and ties to Russia and the mob.

“It’s unclear how many properties or deals the Mueller team might be looking at; the Trump Organization’s foreign business relationships span the globe from properties in Panama, Brazil and Uruguay to Azerbaijan and Georgia. Trump’s children — Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric — were parties to talks involving many of the dealings. Generally, the discussions revolved around licensing fees for use of the Trump name.”

Then there’s the Russian Trump Tower deal Cohen and Sater pursued during the 2016 campaign.

“His partner in that effort was Russian émigré and former Trump Organization associate Felix Sater, whose involvement in the pursuit of a Moscow-area hotel became public last year at a time when now-President Trump was insisting that he had no business interests in Russia.”

“The two men have said they teamed with a Russian group called I.C. Expert Consulting, and Cohen last year provided a detailed letter to congressional investigators about the deal and why it did not come to fruition. Appearing on MSNBC last month, Sater said that the local developer had sought financing from the Russian bank VTB, a big lender in Russia but one sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in September 2014, with its subsidiaries added to the list the following year.”

So they sought financing through a sanctioned Russian bank-the same one Jared Kushner met up with in December, 2016.

UPDATE: The Trump Tower Moscow project Cohen and Sater worked on would end up leading Cohen being charged with perjury after he falsely told Congress that they stopped pursuing the deal in January of 2016-prior to the start of voting in the primaries-it turned out they continued to pursue it until June of 2016-they stopped only after Guccifer 2.0’s leak of Democratic emails; the big question being if these two facts are connected.

Although Rudy Giuliani in one of his patented dumpster fire interviews suggested they continued to pursue the Moscow TT deal through the election and after-the question being begged if this is another case of Rudy clumsily trying to get ahead of another bombshell in the future.

As I argue in chapter A, the Occam’s Razor interpretation should be that when Rudy makes these boners presume it’s the truth and that the walk back is damage control-after Trump reamed him out.

UPDATE: As of October 9, 2016 Rudy continues to do lots of dumpster fire interviews where he reveals things are every worse than we realized around the Ukraine if you’re listening scandal-‘NY’s Mayor’ has thrown Pompeo and his State Department under the bus by claiming that he spoke to the Ukrainian President at the request of State.

In his very latest he says he’s fine being slapped with inherent contempt for ignoring a House Dem subpoena-but he’s happy to testify before Lindsay Graham in the GOP Senate. 

This seems to be the heart of Trump’s Russia House’s latest epiphany-it’s only fair to expect them to testify if the body of Congress is Republican.

End of UPDATE

For his part, Sater testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday-April 4. Of course, it was behind closed doors-this whole investigation has been done totally behind closed doors which is wrong-there needs to be transparency-how else can the American people regain confidence in the democratic process after what happened in 2016?

“McClatchy reported last year that Trump sought to splash his name across a giant glass obelisk-shaped hotel in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, and that he had taken out copyrights on everything from vodka to hotels across the former Soviet empire and even in Iran.”

“An in-depth investigation by the New Yorker magazine last year spotlighted the Trump Tower Baku in Azerbaijan, where the Trump Organization’s partners on the deal were relatives of a rich government minister whose family had business entanglements with a people tied to Iran’s notorious military unit, the Revolutionary Guards.”

“Shortly before that report came out, the Trump Organization in December 2016 said it was walking away from a deal to have his name atop a planned hotel, condo and casino development in Batumi, a Black Sea city that leaders of the former Soviet republic of Georgia said would become a regional destination. Trump lawyers originally blamed their Georgia partners before changing their tune to say the Trump empire was stepping away from foreign entanglements with Trump about to take office.

That last one about stepping away from foreign entanglements while in office is a howler. 

Remember when Trump and his loyalists were directing what the scope of the Mueller probe could be-that it must be limited to things that only bear directly on the question of collusion? Turns out Mueller doesn’t answer to them-who knew?

 

“This week’s subpoenas by the Mueller team are in line with a lengthening list of potential crimes that have surfaced during his investigation of Russia’s election meddling. That became clearer in a court filing on Monday in Mueller’s related prosecution of former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.”

“In a memo last May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Mueller authority to investigate, with his approval, unrelated crimes that surface during his inquiry. A Monday court filing by Mueller included an Aug. 2, 2017, memo in which Rosenstein listed allegations now within the scope Mueller’s investigative authority. Except for Manafort’s alleged financial crimes related to his Ukrainian political consulting, the remainder of the one-page list of suspected criminal activity by other figures was blacked out.”

 

To be sure, for the GOP to complain about a fishing expedition is rather rich after Ken Starr and the issue of financial crimes could give a larger context to collusion: after all, financial incentives are a major way the Russians recruit agents. A quid pro quo relationship quite possibly could have involved the promise of financial benefits. Beyond that, Trump’s long history of financial ties to the Russians-going back to the 1980s-would give the context in which a conspiracy might have developed.

“Michael Zeldin, a former top official of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said Mueller could have grounds to investigate Trump’s overseas dealings to see whether those transactions led to relationships with Russians and election-related crimes.

“Mueller also is searching for witnesses in his investigation of possible collusion. When he finds solid documentary evidence of crimes involving figures being questioned, those cases can be easy to prosecute, Zeldin said.”

“And incidental to that, it might provide you leverage” to cut a deal in which those individuals become cooperating witnesses in the core investigation, he said.

FN: To be sure Mueller apparently didn’t delve too deeply into Trump’s finances himself-though he spun off a number of lines of investigation including the SDNY hush money investigation. At his  House hearing on July 24, 2019, Mueller refused to say wether or not he’d obtained Trump’s tax returns-in any case we know who will soon see them: the Manhattan AG. 

End of FN

UPDATE: Trump’s attempt to draw a red line around his finances is now-as the UK Prime Minister MacMillan would put it-is ‘now in tatters’ as Adam Schiff has made it clear there are no red lines except what’s necessary to protect the country.

There is a belief that Rosenstein did actually limit Mueller on the financial side-particularly regarding his $1 billion dollars in loans from Deutsch Bank.

“There are no red lines except what’s necessary to protect the country,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said during an interview Monday. Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, told me he plans to request information, perhaps by subpoena, from Deutsche Bank, a major Trump lender, and that “our work on Trump’s finances has already begun.”

“A Deutsche Bank subpoena would be especially sensitive. Trump was enraged by a December 2017 report that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had subpoenaed the bank’s records about its dealings with Trump, telling his then-lawyer John Dowd, “This is bull—-!,” according to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear.”

“The red line apparently held, then. Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow told Reuters: “No [Deutsche Bank] subpoena has been issued or received.” One government source speculates that Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, blocked any attempt to compel disclosure of the bank’s Trump file records to avoid getting himself or Mueller fired.”

“But this ring-fencing of Trump’s finances is ending. Schiff told me: “We do want information from Deutsche Bank, and we have every expectation that they will cooperate with us.”

While I’ve fretted recently about if the Dems are really up to this-in particular I’ve been critical of the idea they don’t need to do anything but sit back and ‘wait for Mueller’ it’s clear that Schiff isn’t doing that.

I’m very happy to hear the investigation of Trump’s finances have already begun-now when is the first hearing on Deutsch Bank coming?

UPDATE: Ok so a lot of water under the bridge since I wrote the above update in February 2019. It seems like many lifetimes ago-but then again that’s true of how it always seen during Trump’s illegitimate reign of misrule-each week seems to be a a few lifetimes in terms of news and scandal.

In retrospect I’m not so sure I was wrong to fret in February. It would take the Dems quite a while to hit second gear-Richard Neal dithered so long over first asking for the tax returns and then going to court that by August we were hearing they wouldn’t acquire them before the 2020 election-sure would be worth it to get it after!

Yes-sarcasm.

Neal also ruled out taking Trump’s NY state returns behind thoughtfully offered by the NY Democrats under the rather paradoxical premise that this would mess up the fight to get the federal returns-yes but if that was such a priority why did he dither so long? And as we now may not see the federal returns at al prior to the election we may as well see the state returns.

Maybe now Manhattan AG’s court victory will grant us a reprieve.

Beyond the tax returns the overall posture of the Dem’s oversight was in slow motion-Pelosi had about 99 different neologisms on why not to impeach Trump meanwhile there was nothing going on-until Mueller’s late July testimony, Michael Cohen had been the only fact witness who testified in public all year.

However, clearly things have changed now-between steadily increasing pressure from the Dem base for impeachment and the smoking gun of the Ukraine if you’re listening call the Dems are finally in a higher gear-though they are going to have to be maximally vigilant and assertive.

UPDATE: As for Cohen while he did go to prison in part for perjury regarding  the Trump Tower Moscow plans he denied under oath to Congress I’ve since revised my view on another McClatchy report about Cohen’s cell phone signal being picked up in Prague-which seemed to further buttress maybe he really did go to Prague. 

I’ve since concluded that EmptyWheel is right in her theory that the Steele Dossier was deliberately misleading in key parts-particularly in its suggestion that Cohen was the arch villain regarding collusion-it even asserted he’d paid Russian hackers.

It’s clear that if there’s an arch villain of Russian collusion it was Manafort not Cohen-as for paying Russian hackers that’s the late Peter Smith.

Chapter A for more

License

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

Share This Book