The Porn Star and the President - Part IX

 

The Porn Star and the President – Part IX

(A Story of Lying) 

The porn star and the future president.

IN PART VIII, TRUMP’S FORMER LAWYER, MICHAEL COHEN BRINGS CHECKS TO CONGRESS, PROVING THAT THE PRESIDENT KNEW ALL ABOUT PAYOFFS TO STORMY DANIELS AND OTHERS.

 

3/13/19: We all know President Trump is the only chief executive ever to claim he could pardon himself. 

(That should teach you all you really need to know about the man and his ethics.)

 

Today we have fresh news regarding pardons. Emails between Michael Cohen and lawyers for Mr. Trump have surfaced. 

 

“Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” 

Before diving into this story, it helps to go back to April 9, 2018. That was the day federal law enforcement raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel suite and confiscated his electronic devices. From that moment on, it was clear authorities believed the president’s lawyer was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. Prosecutors soon charged Mr. Cohen with eight felonies – while also listing President Trump as an unindicted coconspirator, or “Individual 1.” 

Cohen had to find out. Was he going to be protected by his longtime boss and top client, now the President of the United States? 

And his longtime boss had to find out. Would his former fixer still take a bullet for him and clamp his mouth? 

What made this unlike your garden variety criminal case was the president’s ability to grant pardons for federal crimes. Cohen had to be pondering his predicament. Lawyers for Cohen had to be wondering. How could their client make it clear he’d keep quiet if a pardon were coming? How could Trump’s lawyers hint to Mr. Cohen that a pardon would be forthcoming, and how could they make it clear what they expected in return? There has been a good deal of arguing in recent weeks about whether Cohen asked for a pardon first, or whether the president and his lawyers were all but guaranteeing a pardon in return for sealed lips. 

What is not in dispute is that the president has said he would not take pardons off the table (hint: for witnesses who protected him). That means any discussion related to pardons might devolve into classic obstruction of justice.

 

Initially, the president was all in on support for Cohen. Trump made this clear while speaking to reporters from the Oval Office just hours after the Cohen raids:

 

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….And it’s a disgrace, it’s a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. 

 

On April 21, 2018, Trump signaled again where he stood regarding Mr. Cohen when he tweeted: 

 

So, what were Trump’s defense lawyers, and Cohen and his team, discussing that very day? Recently revealed emails allow us to see. 

“I just spoke to Rudy Giuliani and told him I was on your team,” Robert Costello wrote in the first email. It was one of two from Mr. Costello that popped up in Cohen’s email inbox on April 21, 2018. Costello was a longtime friend and associate of Giuliani and was serving as intermediary between the president’s old lawyer, now in serious legal jeopardy, and his new lawyer, Horndog Rudy, whose full-time job was keeping the president out of similar jeopardy. 

Rudy “asked me to tell you,” Costello wrote, “that he knows how tough this is on you and your family and he will make (sure) to tell the President. He said thank you for opening this back channel of communication and asked me to keep in touch.” 

We don’t know if Cohen responded. But CNN has seen a second, follow-up email, later that day. 

This time, Costello assured Cohen he had spoken with Giuliani and their conversation was “very very positive.” “There was never a doubt and they are in our corner,” Costello continued. “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained. He called it crucial and noted how reassured they were that they had someone like me whom Rudy has known for so many years in this role.”  

Finally, he added, “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

 

So, was this a veiled hint to Cohen – keep your yap closed and you can expect a pardon? If you have an ounce of objectivity, you know it is. Costello, however, told CNN that such an interpretation was “utter nonsense.”  

Well, CNN wanted to know, had a pardon been dangled in front of Cohen, or not? 

Costello scoffed:

 

Does dangled mean that he raised it and I mentioned it to Giuliani, and Giuliani said the President is not going to discuss pardons with anybody? If that’s dangling it, that’s dangling it for about 15 seconds. The first time I kind of danced around the issue because Michael brought it up with me and I told him, “Look, this is way too premature.... But if you want me to bring it up, I will bring it up.” And I did.

 

Premature, yes. 

On the table? No doubt. 

CNN tracked down Giuliani for this story and inquired: What about the “friends in high places” comment? 

What exactly could these friends in high places do for Mr. Cohen – and who might those friends be? 

“That was about Michael Cohen thinking that the President was mad at him [Cohen],” Giuliani told CNN. “I called (Costello) to reassure him that the President was not mad. It wasn’t long after the raid and the President felt bad for him.” 

Yes, the president felt bad for Cohen at the time – just like the president feels bad for Paul Manafort, as of today.

___ 

 

3/19/19: President Trump received a double dose of bad news today. First, he learned that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, his nemesis at the DOJ, would not be stepping down “for a little longer.” 

Second, he had fresh insights which indicated where the Mueller investigation might be headed.

 

____________________ 

“A veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct.” 

Judge William H. Pauley III

 ____________________ 

 

Once again Mueller’s team reveals that they already have far more evidence than pundits on cable news can ever guess. Only now do we learn that the first search warrant, asking for Michael Cohen’s emails (dating to January 1, 2016), was filed on July 18, 2017. Two more warrants followed, one for cloud backup files on his phone, the other for emails dating to June 2015. 

We know that Mr. Cohen is going to jail for what Judge William H. Pauley III has called “a veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct.” But these filings hint that Trump’s old lawyer wasn’t the only one sitting down to dine. We now know that F.B.I. agents received permission to collect “historical location data for two AT&T cellphones, from October 1 to November 8, 2016. This could be highly important, because there have been rumors Cohen traveled to Prague sometime before the election and met with Russian hackers to discuss how to cover up ties to the Trump campaign.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/22/23): Again, to be fair, this story about Cohen in Prague with hackers has not held up.

 

In all, the court filings total 895 pages, often duplicated in multiple applications for search warrants. But when we come to page 38, we find a section 18 ½ pages long, headed “The Illegal Campaign Contribution Scheme.” This entire section is redacted. What crimes and accomplices are listed beneath those pages, we cannot know. But in Trump World there has to be intense fear. 

The court records include a number of clues. In early 2018 we learn Cohen and his wife took a three month rental on Room 1728, an expensive suite at the Loews Regency Hotel in New York. Authorities decided to include a search of that suite in a fresh warrant. Agents made it clear they were after two cellphones they had been tracking, using a “triggerfish” device, and believed would be found at the hotel. These phones they believed would contain evidence of “bank fraud,” “wire fraud,” “illegal campaign contributions” and “conspiracy as it pertains to other Subject Offenses.” 

Most of the 895 pages relate to crimes committed by Cohen. Still, the depth and detail of information prosecutors have assembled must terrify any Trump aides or family members who may have committed crimes of their own – and that could be just about every other Trump aide and family member, save Tiffany, Barron, and Melania. We learn, for example, that “on or about October 26, 2016, Cohen opened a new bank account for Essential Consulting L.L.C., ostensibly to allow him to operate a real estate investment consulting firm. On January 31, 2017, Cohen’s account received the first of seven checks totaling $583.332.98 from a holding company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian national, based in Switzerland. 

That’s right. Throw another Russian into the mix! 

Even before they raided Cohen home, office, and hotel investigators probably had him dead to rights. They knew Cohen used “encrypted communications applications,” including, “but not limited to, WhatsApp, Signal and Dust.” On page 81 of the filings, even the name of the F.B.I. Special Agent involved is redacted. Another section is redacted after an agent claims “there is probable cause to believe that Subject Premises-3 [Cohen’s offices] will contain evidence of the Bank Fraud Offenses.” 

In a warrant application filed on February 28, 2018, a judge agreed to a grant of a “non-disclosure order” for a search of an email account owned by Mr. Cohen. The Court ruled that if the search was revealed it might lead to “destruction of or tampering with evidence or flight from prosecution, or otherwise…seriously jeopardize an ongoing investigation.” Therefore, the warrant should not be disclosed for up to 180 days, “subject to extension” if required. 

The last warrant was issued on April 7, 2018, for permission to search “A Device containing the Results of Three Email Searches.” But that line was crossed out and replaced by hand with “Three Electronic Devices.” An agent, name and title again redacted, explained that based on “conversations with witnesses” and reviews of other testimonies he or she was asking to expand the search, in particular because “there is probable cause to believe that the Subject Devices contain evidence of violations” of federal statutes related to “illegal campaign contributions.” 

Another warrant, this one to obtain information from Cohen’s cellphones, notes:

 

Cellphone service providers have technical capabilities that allow them to collect at least two kinds of information about the locations of cellphones to which they provide service (a) precision location information, also known as E-911 Phase II Data, or latitude-longitude data, and (b) cell site data, also known as ‘tower/face’ or ‘tower/sector’ information.”

 

Then, a few pages later, a seventeen page section is redacted once more. In fact, in one section we learn that “Michael Cohen, a lawyer who holds himself out as the personal attorney of President Donald J. Trump” is under investigation for “violation of the campaign finance laws.” 

Then we have this:

Page with redactions.

We can’t read between the lines because there are no lines to read. 

We can guess that the name of the President of the United States may be currently hidden from view.