11/29-30/18: President Trump departs for the G-20 Summit in Argentina on Thursday. You wonder if he’ll come back.
Mueller apparently has documents!!!
____________________
“Because I think that would be a conflict.”
President-elect Trump
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Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who worked for Trump for many years, opens a Pandora’s Box brimming with legal and ethical questions when he admits lying in court about the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
Cohen lied, he says, to ensure his story meshed with the tall tale Candidate Trump was telling at the time.
And it won’t be just a case of, “Cohen said, the president
said.” Mueller has documents to back up what Trump’s fixer said.
 |
When you kick over a rock in Trumpistan, a felon is exposed to the light. Felix Sater, left. |
First the lies: Cohen previously testified before Congress that efforts to win a contract for a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. Thursday, he admitted that contacts with Russian officials continued into June.
In other words, Cohen was trying to cover up the fact that Team Trump was working on a lucrative deal with Russians while Candidate Trump was deep into a campaign to become the next President of the United States.
How lucrative? Some experts say it could have been Trump’s biggest deal ever. The deal was big enough to convince Cohen and other Trump associates to offer to sweeten it by gifting Putin a penthouse worth $50 million.
“NO COLLUSION,” Trump loves to tweet. Well, then, how about a $50 million bribe, offered to the leader of a hostile foreign power?
At the same time we know Candidate Trump was telling anyone who would listen, that he did not have financial ties with Russia. “How many times do I have to say that?” he asked at a news conference in July 2016. “I have nothing to do with Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia.”
With Trump, of course, the lying continued. In a presidential debate on October 16 he responded to Hillary Clinton’s claim that Russia was interfering in the election, in hopes he’d win:
I notice, anytime anything wrong
happens, they like to say the Russians are – she doesn’t know if it’s the
Russians doing the hacking. Maybe
there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they
blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know –
I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there. I have no
businesses there. I have no loans from Russia.
That statement, read today, obviously includes a series of
brazen lies. By then his advisers already knew the Russians were doing at least
some of the hacking; his campaign had already been offered dirt on Clinton by
Russians; and he had been dealing in Russia, just not with success.
As president-elect, Trump continued lying. At a press conference on January 11, 2017, he told reporters, “So I have no deals, I have no loans and I have no dealings. We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to. I just don’t want to because I think that would be a conflict. So I have no loans, no dealings, and no current pending deals.”
That statement contains an additional falsehood and a fundamental truth. First, he’s lying when he says he doesn’t want to make a deal.
Second, here’s the fundamental truth. Trump is aware that
efforts to land a deal in Moscow while running for office would have been a
conflict.
*
TODAY, WE KNOW that a confluence of events occurred in June 2016. The “Fake News” people and investigators have slowly laid this out. George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide, met in March and April with a man he believed could provide dirt on Clinton. Papadopoulos lied about it later and the man he met disappeared. Roger Stone met with a Russian in May and later told Congress he didn’t. The Russians knew Trump and his team were open to cutting a deal. In June, the two sides – Trump campaign and Russians – came to an understanding of some sort.
Mueller is still working to find out what that understanding was. But he’s gathering documents.
That month, the Trump campaign/Russian support starts to mesh:
June 3: Rob Goldstone, the agent for the Russian singer Emin Agalarov, who Don Sr. and Don Jr. know from working with Emin and his father on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, sends Don Jr. an email.
Goldstone says an official high in the ranks of the Putin government is “offering material that will incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
Don Jr. doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t notify the F.B.I. He
responds within hours: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
June 6: Trump knocks out his last remaining opponent in the Republican primaries: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.
Cohen claims that top campaign officials and Don Jr. held a strategy meeting that day to discuss plans to meet with the Russians and see what dirt they could provide; and Don Sr. was aware of and green-lighted the meeting.
(BLOGGER’S
NOTE 5/23/22: This particular meeting has never been proven.)
June 7: Candidate Trump announces to the nation:
I am going to give a major
speech on probably Monday of next week [June 13] and we’re going to be
discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.
I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend. Who knows? Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return. It’s a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens.
(See:
Trump Tower deal in Moscow!)
June 9: Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort meet secretly at Trump Tower in New York City with Russians they believe are bearing gifts, frankincense, myrrh, and dirt on Hillary.
June 10: Leaders of the campaign suffer
an attack of mass amnesia. No one in the meeting the day before remembers
having had the meeting, discussing it beforehand, talking about it after, having
dreams and/or nightmares about it, what was discussed by participants, or who
participants were.
June 13: Monday comes and goes. The major speech promised by Candidate Trump fails to materialize.
June 14: It’s Flag Day. Members of the Trump campaign seem confused about which flag they serve.
According to the latest Mueller indictment, revealed this week, it is then, on June 14, that Trump and his people finally pull the plug on the Moscow deal. Suddenly, they realize Trump could be elected.
The Russians know a victory is a longshot but they’re more
than happy to help, because Putin hates Hillary. And they know Trump and his
lackeys are willing to accept any aid they can provide.
*
AS TRUMP FLIES OFF to Argentina he has to understand something ominous is brewing. Mueller has documents – he’s gathering more – and the president knows it. On Thursday, F.B.I. agents raid the Chicago offices of Ed Burke, a man the Chicago Sun-Times describes as having “dodged dozens of federal investigations over five decades in Chicago politics.” Agents “kicked everyone out and papered over the windows.” Later they debarked with boxes of documents and computers in hand.
Burke has previously done property-tax-appeal work for Trump.
Could this raid be related to the president’s burgeoning legal problems? We don’t know. We do know Cohen did the dirty work for Trump for years and knows where the rotting corpses are interred.
And we’re still not done listing suspicious characters and corporations. In Germany, a wave of police, prosecutors and tax authorities descends on the Frankfurt headquarters of Deutsche Bank. Electronic records and documents are seized at five locations as part of an investigation “into whether the lender helped criminals launder money through offshore tax havens.”
Greed drives everyone in this story.
Again, we can’t know if this has anything to do with Trump; but if you don’t think the people he hangs with and does business with aren’t willing to commit every imaginable crime to reap fortunes, you’re watching more Fox News than is good for your mental health. Seek counseling at once. Deutsche Bank was fined $425 million last year “for helping clients of its Moscow office illegally move $10 billion out of Russia.”
The bank has been fined before for failing to monitor transactions that involved cash going to terrorists.
Does Trump do business with Deutsche – known for working with money-launderers? Of course! This past May it was reported that Mueller subpoenaed bank records related to our fearless leader’s finances. Market Watch reported that the president had liabilities (basically: outstanding loans) totaling between $356 million and $480 million, including $175 million owed to Deutsche.
Here’s what we do know. None of these developments prove that the President of the United States is a gigundous crook. But we know greed drives him and everyone in this story.
If all else had failed, and Clinton had defeated him, Trump could still hope to land a huge financial windfall in Moscow by building his hotel.
Or: with Russian help, he could win the highest office in the
land.
*
WE DEFINITELY KNOW that Special Counsel Mueller takes Cohen’s plea deal seriously. Mueller signed it himself, a first during the investigation.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PLEA AGREEMENT
If you want to understand which witches investigators might be hunting, you need go no further than the first sentence of the charging document recently revealed in Cohen’s latest plea agreement.
The case laid out in United States v. Michael Cohen begins:
From in or around 2007 through
in or around January 2017, MICHAEL COHEN, the defendant, was an attorney and
employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). COHEN held
the title of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to the owner of
the Company (“Individual 1”).
For months now, “Individual 1” has been firing shots at Mueller and his team, if nothing else, in hundreds of tweets.
Here you have the first fire returned by Mueller, directed at “Individual 1,” Donald J. Trump.
The sad fig leaf of denial Trump has been trying to position to shield his orange privates is stripped away.
Last April, when evidence – again including documents – of Cohen’s role in payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal began to blow up, Trump tried to downgrade his relationship with Cohen. In an interview with Fox News, he insisted, “This doesn’t have to do with me. Michael is a businessman. He’s got a business. He also practices law. And they’re looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business.”
Asked how much legal work Cohen did for him, Trump claimed, “As a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction.”
In August, when Cohen plead guilty to an array of crimes and started cooperating with investigators, Trump tried to downgrade their ties even further. Suddenly, all the president’s sycophants began clamoring, “Cohen is a liar!” Trump said nobody should hire Cohen for legal work, he was a terrible lawyer, and only worked for him for a very short decade. If you listened to Trump, he would hardly have recognized Cohen if he walked into the Oval Office and said, “Hey, Boss, do you want me to pay off the porn star or not?”
Mueller starts off the latest charging document by blasting
that fantasy defense to bits.
Cohen was a Trump guy.
The legal meat of the matter is easy to explain. In January 2017, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”) in the U.S. House of Representatives began to investigate possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. The Senate panel managed to develop a level of bipartisan cooperation. The House panel, led by Rep. Devin Nunes, couldn’t have found a Russian if Nunes and the other Republicans on the committee jetted to Moscow and roamed the streets for a month.
“Individual 1.”
Mueller now makes it plain. Cohen lied to both committees. Cohen had testified that the project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow was ended in January 2016. Cohen, himself, testified, “I determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.”
Cohen had provided a legal shield for his boss. “To the best of my knowledge,” he said at the time, “[Individual 1] was never in contact with anyone about this proposal other than me on three occasions…I did not ask or brief [Individual 1], or any of his family, before I made the decision to terminate further work on the proposal.”
Cohen further claimed that he never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the Moscow project. He “never considered” asking “Individual 1” if he should go. Instead, he claimed he “primarily communicated” with a Moscow-based company “through a U.S. citizen third-party intermediary, [Individual 2].”
(“Individual 2” would be Felix Sater.)
Sater asked Cohen to travel to Moscow to push the deal
forward. Cohen claimed he “never agreed to make a trip to Russia.” He never
asked Individual 1 “to travel to Russia in connection with this proposal.” Yes,
he testified, he did send Russian officials several emails about the project;
but there was little interest. So, in January 2016, “I decided to abandon the
proposal… [and from that time forward] do not recall any response to my email,
nor any other contacts by me with [Russian Official 1] or other Russian
government officials about the proposal.”
By the time of the Iowa caucuses, in February, the story was, Trump had terminated all contacts with Russians about building business ties in that country. Cohen issued a public statement to that effect in September 2016. On October 25, 2016, he so testified before Rep. Nunes’ GOP-controlled committee.
Mueller’s team now has documents and can lay out all kinds of lies. If you’re the president or one of his many shady friends, you immediately start to perspire. It’s not just Cohen agreeing to cooperate that represents a threat. Investigators have documentation. Mueller makes the case:
In truth and in fact, and as
COHEN well knew, COHEN’s representations about the Moscow Project he made to
SSCI and HPSCI were false and misleading. COHEN made the false statements to
1. minimize
links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1 [emphasis added] and
(2) give the false impression
that the Moscow Project ended before “the Iowa caucus and . . . the very first
primary,” in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations. COHEN
attempted to conceal or minimize through his false statements the following
facts:
a. The Moscow Project was
discussed multiple times within the Company and did not end in January 2016.
“Instead, as late as approximately June 2016,” investigators know, Cohen and Sater were still discussing efforts to obtain Russian government assistance with the project, and Cohen “briefed family members of Individual 1” about the proposal. Cohen made plans to travel to Moscow to pursue the deal – and he and Individual 1 – by then the presumptive nominee for president – discussed plans for Individual 1 to travel to Russia.
It only gets “better” as you continue to dig through the evidence. Cohen asks “a senior campaign official about potential business travel to Russia.” The official is not named; but like every other member of Team Trump, that official apparently forgets ever having had the discussion.
Russians willing to cooperate with the campaign.
In fact, as late as May 2016, the project seems more on than off. Sater writes to Cohen on May 4:
“I had a chat with Moscow.
ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention .
. . Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but
the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert.”
COHEN responded, “My trip before Cleveland. [Individual 1] once he becomes the
nominee after the convention.”
The next day, Sater writes Cohen again, assuring him that,
[Russian Official 1] would like
to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia’s Davos
it’s June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to
either [the President of Russia] or [the Prime Minister of Russia], as they are
not sure if 1 or both will be there. . . . He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects are on
the table to discuss.
Note that last line – the willingness of the Russians to cooperate with the campaign on any subject they might introduce.
On May 6, Sater asks Trump’s lawyer to confirm those dates, if they would work for him to travel. Cohen replies, “Works for me.”
On June 9, we know, Don Jr., Jared Kushner and now-convicted-felon Paul Manafort agree to meet with Russians in Trump Tower, offering anti-Clinton gifts. Mueller’s investigators have proof that
From on or about June 9 to June
14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel,
including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14, 2016,
COHEN met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company’s headquarters to inform
Individual 2 he would not be traveling at that time.
Does that mean the Moscow project is on hold, or even dead, at last? Or does it mean the people at the top of the Trump campaign know an even better deal has been placed on the table?
That is: do they realize the Russians are willing to offer direct assistance to help defeat Hillary Clinton? This would be a switch from the mad pursuit of cash to what would, in wartime, amount to treason. If Trump and Cohen and other top aides know Russia is willing to help them – and they’re now willing to jump into bed with a hostile power – you can understand why they’ve been fighting so hard for more than two years to wipe out their tracks.
POSTSCRIPT: By the time Trump hired Sater, the latter had been convicted of multiple felonies, including participation in a $40 million securities fraud scheme. He stayed out of jail in that matter only by turning informant for the F.B.I.
Naturally, any thoughtful individual would be inclined to
ask: “What kind of businessman would hire this kind of guy?”
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