The Porn Star and the President - Part IV

 

The Porn Star and the President – Part IV

(A Story of Lying)

IN PART III, ALL KINDS OF LIARS TRIED TO EXPLAIN WHO PAID A PORN STAR FOR SILENCE – AND WHY. WE ALSO HAD A JUICY STORY ABOUT ANOTHER PLAYBOY BUNNY, WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN IMPREGNATED BY THE FUTURE PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP. 

THAT STORY HAS NEVER BEEN SUBSTANTIATED; BUT AGAIN WE ENJOYED A BOUNTY OF LYING. 

MELANIA TRUMP HASN’T BEEN HEARD FROM:

6/6/18: Mrs. Trump makes her first public appearance in weeks. Her devoted husband tells reporters she’s doing fine. 

The First Lady smiles but does not speak. 

Earlier, the president tweeted angrily – his forte – about how the press was treating her. Really, most of his anger had to do with what the press was saying about the First Lady’s relationship with him.

 

The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!

 

Suddenly, the president is interested in “fairness.” I suspect this is a quality rarely associated with Donald J. Trump.

 

In faraway Israel, Rudy Giuliani gives a speech. A member of the audience asks about Stormy Daniels. Rudy says when it comes to the president’s word vs. a porn queen, that the First Lady takes Donald’s word every time. There was no sex between the future president and the porn lady in 2006! 

“She believes her husband,” Rudy says of Melania. “She knows it’s not true.” 

This blogger is unconvinced. The fact that Rudy is getting divorced by his third wife (who was his mistress when he was married to his second), because at 74, he’s been gallivanting about with another mistress? I don’t think he or his boy Don should be saying anything about who we can trust in such situations.

Also, the First Lady has no doubt listened to the Access Hollywood tape – and more than once. 

That’s the one where Donald says of some other man’s wife. “I did try to fuck her.” And, “I moved on her like a bitch.”

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7/2/18: That engine you hear revving up is the bus getting ready to run over Trump. The man at the wheel is Michael Cohen, Trump’s former self-described “fixer” and “pit bull” lawyer. Cohen once claimed he’d “take a bullet” for the president. Now he says he’d rather duck. 

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Not even willing to take a shot from a Nerf gun.

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In a 45-minute interview Saturday with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, Cohen was asked if he was ready to cooperate with investigators if indicted, not that we are saying he will be. I mean, what kind of crimes could he have committed to keep Donald J. Trump out of legal jeopardy? 

As for Cohen – whose felonies could easily reach double digits – he’s not ready to go to jail yet. Recently, he hired a new lawyer, Guy Petrillo, “a highly regarded former federal prosecutor who once led the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan – the very same office currently conducting the criminal investigation of Cohen.” Once Petrillo takes charge, Cohen is expected to withdraw from a joint defense agreement with Mr. Trump. That agreement allows defendants to share information and documents with each other. 

(Note that Trump’s legal team favored a joint defense, at first.)

From that point forward, the bus is warmed up and ready to roll. In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Cohen made clear. He’s no longer willing to take a bullet for the president. He’s not even going to take a point-blank shot from a Nerf gun. “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen explained. “I put family and country first [emphasis added, here and below].” 

If that’s true, Trump is in peril. 

On several key points, Cohen made it clear he was distancing himself from the president. For example, Stephanopoulos asked, did Trump know about the $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, less than two weeks before Election Day in 2016?

Trump has sworn he did not. 

Cohen originally said he made the payment on his own. Stephanopoulos wanted to know if that was true. 

“I want to answer. One day I will answer,” Cohen replied. “But for now, I can’t comment further on advice of my counsel.” 

What about the idea that the F.B.I. raid on Cohen’s New York offices and properties was a break-in, an “attack on our country, in a true sense,” as the president angrily claimed? Was it really “an attack on what we all stand for?” 

“I don’t agree with those who demonize or vilify the F.B.I.,” Cohen responded. 

What about the Mueller investigation, Stephanopoulos asked: Was it legit? 

“I don’t like the term witch hunt,” Cohen said. Cohen condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. “As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same.” 

How about all the Trump campaign clowns who did participate in that infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016 with several Russians after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton? 

Did Trump know about the meeting before it happened? Trump has said a thousand times that he did not, and that’s not counting all the times that the people who attended said no meeting occurred. 

“I can’t comment under advice of my counsel due to the ongoing investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York,” Cohen said. 

With that, he revved the engine again. 

The bus was ready to roll.

 

UPDATE (4/15/24): Clearly, Trump dodged the bus in 2018; he could dodge all the busses again in 2024. 

This blogger has listened to the phone call he made to Georgia officials, asking them to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the state in 2020, however. I don’t think anyone, not even a trained acrobat, could dodge the bus in that case. 

As for the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016 – which Team Trump representatives insisted did not happen – we eventually learned:

 

A.    That it did.

 

B.     That no one on Team Trump would admit it took place until the free press (namely The New York Times) began reporting that it had.

 

C.    That the Times had emails to prove it.

 

D.   That it wasn’t a meeting set up to discuss adoption of Russian children by American parents, which Don Jr. tried to say it was.

 

E.     But the free press had emails.

 

F.     That Don Sr. helped draft a letter with Don Jr., saying the meeting was all about adopting kids.

 

G.    But the free press had emails.

 

H.   That Team Trump lawyers insisted Don Sr. never helped draft the letter.

 

I.       Then we learned that he did.

 

J.       That the real purpose of the meeting was to share dirt on Hillary Clinton, with the Russians offering to help the Trump campaign.

 

K.    Yeah. Emails.

 

L.     That Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer at the meeting, was later indicted on other matters – but fled to Russia ahead of arrest.

 

M.  That Paul Manafort, who was at the meeting, was indicted on an array of tax fraud charges and found guilty.

 

N.   Then he got indicted and convicted again – this time on charges of conspiracy and witness tampering.

 

O.   And, finally, we learned that Manafort got a Golden Pardon from Trump – most likely for not telling investigators everything he knew.

Veselnitskaya fled to Russia.

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7/30/18: The battle to bolster the crumbling credibility of President Trump continues to falter. In one poll a majority of Americans, 54 percent, now believe he acted illegally or unethically in dealing with the Russians during the 2016 campaign. 

Only 36 percent think he did not.

 

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“I’ve got a scoundrel on my hands.” 

Rudy Giuliani

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Sensing danger on several fronts, Horndog Rudy turns up once again on Fox News. He’s there for one reason: to trash the reputation of Michael Cohen. Rudy explains that he has been listening to dozens of tapes that Trump’s former lawyer secretly made. Suddenly, it hits him, he tells the hosts of Fox & Friends. 

“I’ve got a scoundrel on my hands.” 

Giuliani decides to mention a new report, which hasn’t yet appeared in print or on TV. Apparently, Cohen is prepared to tell investigators that that Don Jr., Jared, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, “and possibly two others,” attended a strategy session on June 6, 2016, in which they discussed plans for the meeting scheduled for June 9, with agents of the Russian government. No one has ever heard of this June 6 meeting before. Nevertheless, Rudy is at pains to say the president wasn’t there. Giuliani is clearly implying that the meeting did occur. Otherwise, there would be no need to stress that then-Candidate Trump wasn’t in attendance. 

A few hours later, realizing he’s shat the bed on TV, Rudy calls Fox News and tries to explain his explanation. This time he gets Harris Faulkner on the phone. Oh, no, he tells her, he wasn’t unclear. He has been saying all along that there was no collusion. But if there was (and there wasn’t), it won’t matter. 

Because collusion is no crime! 

How does Old Horndog know? He has been looking through the federal statutes just to be sure. 

For once, Giuliani gets his facts in a row. If “collusion” is no crime, however, “fraud” and “conspiracy” are. 

The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus gives this definition first, for the word “collude:” “come to an understanding or conspire together, esp. for a fraudulent purpose.” 

If we go to “conspiracy,” the Oxford Dictionary has this: “a secret plan to commit a crime or do harm, often for political ends; a plot.” 

One of the synonyms listed: “collusion.” 

Rudy insists no such meeting – as he says Cohen was about to allege occurred on June 6  – ever occurred. He tells Ms. Faulkner, who is clearly baffled by Rudy’s verbal dance, that he contacted the lawyers of four of the six men supposedly involved. All said the story, if it does come out, would be untrue. 

(Lawyers always claim their clients are innocent up to the moment juries decide they’re not, and often long after.) 

Old Horndog goes on to say that the Mueller probe is not entitled to ask his client, the President of the United States, any questions about “obstruction of justice.” Why not? Rudy insists that the U.S. Constitution gives any president the right to remove the head of the F.B.I. 

Again, that’s true. 

The Constitution does not give a president or any other member of the federal government the right to act in such a way as to thwart an investigation into possible criminal behavior in which they are subject. 

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8/21/18: Fresh news breaks this afternoon. Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax evasion, and violating campaign finance laws. Two of eight felonies were, according to Cohen, carried out at the behest of “a candidate for federal office.” That would be Donald J. Trump! 

The president suffers a second stinging defeat when former campaign manager Paul Manafort is convicted on eight felony counts.

 

Bad felon, good felon! 

The President of the United States decides he needs to comment on recent developments in court. He ponders the fates of felons, and tweets. First, he slams the former. “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” 

Okay, got it: bad felon! 

As for Manafort, he garners the president’s sympathy in a pair of heartfelt tweets: 

 

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

 

A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!

 

Got it: good felon! 

 

UPDATE (4/15/24): Don’t forget. Cohen was a good felon until he made it clear he was going to flip. (See: 4/9/18.) 

Also worth noting: Manafort later admits in court that the ten counts against him that could not be decided (the jury voted 11-1 to convict) he did commit. And he will later be indicted again, the next time for conspiracy and witness tampering. And he’ll get convicted. Again. He’ll still be getting dragged into court, long after Trump leaves office. And he’ll still be losing. 

On March 6, 2023, Manafort will agree to pay a $3.15 million fine to settle a lawsuit regarding foreign bank accounts he failed to declare.

 

*** 

If you would like to see how seriously Trump took the threat of Manafort talking to Robert Mueller, consider text messages sent from Sean Hannity to Manafort (and later released by a federal judge) over the course of several months, when it seemed he might break in the face of a long prison sentence. 

If you don’t think Hannity is promising a pardon – without saying so, which would be a felony – you need reading glasses. 

(See my blog entry on the topic for 6/22/19.)

Paul Manafort during one of many court appearances.

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9/20/18: ABC News reports that Michael Cohen is talking to Mueller’s investigators. The president’s former personal lawyer has had “multiple interview sessions lasting for hours.” Those interviews have been held in both Washington D.C. and New York City, where Cohen has spoken to prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

 

Topics of interest include: 

Trump’s dealings with Russia – including financial and business ties (possible crime: money laundering). 

Collusion with Russians during the 2016 campaign (legally speaking: possible conspiracy). 

Any pardon offers Cohen might have received (i.e. obstruction of justice; witness-tampering). 

The inner workings of the Trump family charity and Trump Organization, where Cohen served as executive vice president for ten years (tax fraud). 

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10/18/18: A judge has dismissed one of two lawsuits filed by Stormy Daniels against our beloved Chief Exec. In case you live under a bridge where the Three Billy Goats cross, Stormy is the porn star Trump paid off in 2016 so she wouldn’t talk about their one-night stand.

 

With “victory” in hand, Trump couldn’t resist a tweet. Would his tweet demean the office of the presidency? Trump pondered a moment, giving it the same kind of consideration he used to give before grabbing women by the pussy. Then he started to type:

 

“Federal Judge throws out Stormy Danials lawsuit versus Trump. Trump is entitled to full legal fees.” @FoxNews Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas. She will confirm the letter she signed! She knows nothing about me, a total con!

 

(I, for one, am trying to imagine Abraham Lincoln communicating in the same way. Maybe, during a debate: “Get ‘Liddle Toadstool’ off this stage! Am I the only candidate who thinks Stephen Douglas looks like a midget?”)

 

Stephen Douglas.

 

Well, Stormy is a porn star with large breasts. She’s not easily embarrassed. She fires back at once:

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present your president. In addition to his...umm... shortcomings, he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women and lack of self control on Twitter AGAIN! And perhaps a penchant for bestiality. Game on, Tiny.

 

“Tiny!” It has a certain ring. Even more insulting, in the Trumpian style, than “Lyin’ Ted” or “Crooked Hillary.”

Now Trump calls her "Horseface."

 

We also know that Michael Cohen has been talking to Robert Mueller’s crew. And talking a lot. Like 50 hours, so far. 

His old boss, the president, is worried enough to start downing Cohen at every opportunity. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Trump says Cohen’s claim – that then Candidate Trump told him to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to buy silence – is “totally false.” 

Trump says he hardly remembers the man! Cohen was nothing but “a PR person who did small legal work.” 

Compare this with Trump’s previous statements about Cohen, a “good man,” being dragged into the “witch hunt.” (See Part I: 4/9/18.)