4/9/18: The day starts badly (at least for President Trump), when F.B.I. agents bearing search warrants raid the office, home and New York City hotel suite of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
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“All the people who would know the worst about you.”
Mark Zaid, Washington D.C. lawyer
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This is not a good look for the President of the United States, or even a mafia don. The Chicago Tribune and every reputable news outlet in America pick up the story. “This search warrant,” former U.S. attorney Joyce White Vance tells a reporter, “is like dropping a bomb on Trump’s front porch.”
The Tribune elaborates:
Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer,
said the seizure of Cohen’s records “should be the most concerning for the
president.”
“You can’t get much worse than
this, other than arresting someone’s wife or putting pressure on a family
member,” he said. “This strikes at the inner sanctum: your lawyer, your CPA,
your barber, your therapist, your bartender. All the people who would know the
worst about you.”
Trump responds to news of the raid.
We already know there’s plenty of “the worst” to learn about the man in the Oval Office. Trump deals with this fresh problem the same way he deals with almost every problem he faces as Commander-in-Chief:
The president spent much of
Monday afternoon glued to the television. Aides said Trump watched cable news
coverage of surprise raids on Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room by
FBI agents, who took the lawyer’s computer, phone and personal financial
records after a referral from Mueller.
According to reporters, Trump puzzled over how to respond much of the day. Finally, he realized what really mattered.
Trump “won’t like that Cohen is
in the crosshairs, but you have to remember: He’d prefer the heat be on Cohen
than on him,” said one of the president’s advisers, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to share a candid assessment. “His goal will be to figure out how
much vulnerability he has [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].”
Trump wasn’t worried about damage to the country. He was only worried about his orange ass.
First, he went after Jeff Sessions, the man he chose for his post. Speaking to reporters, the president vented. “The Attorney General made a terrible mistake when he did this and when he recused himself, or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have used a – put a different attorney general in,” Trump said. “So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country but you’ll figure that out.”
Keep this in view. Trump believes the job of the Attorney General is to protect him from investigation. If Trump gets in legal trouble, it’s somehow “a very terrible mistake for the country.”
The president calls Michael Cohen a “good man.”
Trump continued angrily:
So I just heard that they broke
into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man and it’s a
disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long
time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given I believe over a million pages
worth of documents to the special counsel. They continue to just go forward and
here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things
with the greatest fighting force ever and I have this witch-hunt constantly
going on for over 12 months now and actually much more than that. You could say
it was right after I won the nomination it started. And it’s a disgrace, it’s a
real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense.
Not really, Mr. President. First, they didn’t “break in” to the office. They executed a warrant. Second, it’s not about the documents you turned over, it’s a warrant aimed at gathering evidence authorities have probable cause to believe your lawyer may hide or destroy. Third, it’s not “an attack on our country,” in “a true sense” or any of the other senses.
This was a raid in pursuit of evidence of possible crimes.
Still, Trump wasn’t finished ranting. “It’s an attack on what we all stand for so when I saw this and when I heard it, I heard it like you did,” he tells reporters, “I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness.”
He kept babbling:
They found no collusion
whatsoever with Russia, the reason they found it is there was no collusion at
all. No collusion. This is the most biased group of people, these people have
the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats all—or just about
all, either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for president
Obama. They’re not looking at the other side. They’re not looking at the
Hillary Clinton horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that
were committed…. They only keep looking at us so they find no collusion and
then they go from there and they say well, let’s keep going and they raid an
office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it’s a disgrace.
Let’s stop for a moment to poke around in this reeking pile of buffalo dung. This raid is not a “disgrace.” This raid is not about Democrats. Robert Mueller, who referred the matter to authorities in New York, has always been a Republican. The F.B.I., which conducted the raids, is led by Christopher Wray, a Republican. Last, but not least, Geoffrey S. Berman, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who signed off on the search warrants, is a Republican.
He’s a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Berman donated to Trump’s campaign! Trump personally interviewed him for and appointed him to his current position.
This is not hard to grasp, even if all you do is click on Infowars to get your news. The rule of law, first enshrined in the Magna Carta in 1215, back when kings believed they had the power to rule with impunity, protects us all from abuse by government officials. We need to guard against the subversion of the rule of law by this president and any other president to come.
BLOGGER’S NOTE: Compare Trump’s “good man” comment with comments made in July, once it becomes clear that Cohen is cooperating with investigators. (See: 7/30/18.)
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