Posted on 08/22/2018 8:11:47 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
President Trump and his allies waged war against Michael Cohen Wednesday, one day after the president’s former lawyer and fixer implicated Trump in a felony during the 2016 campaign.
Cohen’s charge that he paid off two women who said they had sexual relationships with Trump — and, crucially, that he had done so at the then-candidate’s behest and with the intention of affecting the election — is reverberating across the political world.
But Trump’s team is seeking to blunt the impact by taking aim at Cohen’s credibility, downplaying the seriousness of the offenses being alleged — and insisting that the White House has not given in to panic.
Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney and the former mayor of New York City, told The Hill “anybody that believes Cohen, probably you could sell them the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Giuliani also stressed a detail of the case that has perplexed Trump fans and critics alike. Despite Cohen’s evident willingness to incriminate Trump, no formal cooperation agreement has emerged between him and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over his case.
“Obviously the Southern District did not enter into a cooperation agreement because they think he’s a liar,” Giuliani insisted.
Meanwhile, a White House official told The Hill that Trump’s mood remained buoyant despite the blast of negative news and the sudden deepening of his legal challenges.
“Yesterday was a little wilder than most, but there is no quiet day here,” the official said on Wednesday. “For reporters to write, ‘Oh my god, everybody is panicking’ — it’s just not true.”
The official asserted that Trump had also been pleased to get out his side of the story on Wednesday by taping an interview with Ainsley Earhardt of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.”
That interview had been scheduled before the Cohen news, or the almost simultaneous conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on fraud charges, had broken.
“There was some discussion — not with the president — about possibly canceling it, and we decided against that,” the White House official said. “We didn’t want to look like we are hunkered down.”
Even if that is the case, however, there was no mistaking Trump’s annoyance at the latest setbacks.
In a series of Wednesday morning tweets, Trump first sardonically stated, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”
He went on to express considerable sympathy for Manafort, describing him as “a brave man” and praising him for refusing to “break” by offering testimony against the president.
There has been speculation that Manafort could yet decide to cooperate with prosecutors, given that he faces another trial on additional charges in the District of Columbia next month — and that the maximum sentence for the offenses of which he has already been convicted is 80 years of imprisonment. Anything close to that would be a de facto life sentence for Manafort, who is 69.
Trump’s praise also gave rise to suggestions that he could be contemplating a pardon for Manafort. Such a move would spark an instant firestorm and even some Republican lawmakers cautioned against it.
“I think it would be seen as a bridge too far,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters at the Capitol Wednesday.
At the White House media briefing — her 100th as press secretary — Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was “not aware of any conversations regarding that at all.”
The question of just how bad the situation is for Trump is hotly contested.
The Manafort verdict pertains to charges long before the Republican operative had worked with Trump. The Cohen case, some in Trump’s circle argue, does not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense. They cite the acquittal of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) on broadly comparable charges in 2012.
But Harry Litman, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said that the situation for Trump was “pretty bad” after Cohen’s bombshell statements.
“Assuming the evidence would corroborate it, the president has direct liability and co-conspirator liability,” Litman said. “It’s a criminal action taken in an excruciatingly close election to try to swing things to Trump. The Watergate burglary was about that — trying to get an advantage. It is a serious crime indeed.”
The question of whether the allegations could result in Trump’s impeachment is central to the entire controversy.
For now that seems only a distant possibility, given Republican majorities in the House as well as the Senate, and Trump’s strong approval ratings among GOP voters.
There is broad agreement across the political spectrum that even the explosive allegations made by Cohen will not necessarily erode Trump’s support among his base.
“I doubt there is a single person who two days ago liked Trump and today thinks he should be impeached,” said one Republican close to the White House. “I don’t think there is a single person in the country whose opinion on Trump actually shifted, and so I think it’s highly unlikely that this will have any effect on the midterms.”
Other voices within Trump’s orbit sought a silver lining.
One school of thought among the president’s allies — among them, former chief strategist Stephen Bannon — is that the best tactic to spur turnout among Republicans in the midterms is to cast the election as a referendum on whether the president should be impeached.
Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump friend, said Cohen’s u-turn could at least sharpen the sense of how high the stakes are in November.
“It’s the first time that the president has been implicated by anyone, so obviously it is a bad day,” Caputo said. But at the same time, “it puts the idea of impeachment squarely on the agenda…The message [in the midterms] is vote for a Democrat to impeach the president and vote for a Republican to stop impeachment.”
There are plenty of grassroots Democrats who would be happy to fight on just those terms, but Democratic leaders in Congress have so far balked at making impeachment a central part of the campaign.
Meanwhile, the question of just what Cohen knows looms over everything.
His lawyer, Lanny Davis, has suggested that he may be willing to testify that Trump had advance knowledge of election hacking during the 2016 campaign — something that former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman also alleged during an MSNBC interview last week.
Legal experts are divided on the credibility of that claim, however.
Caroline Polisi, a criminal defense attorney with Pierce Bainbridge, suggested that the courting of publicity by Davis could be a “Hail Mary” tactic to try to secure a cooperation deal on flimsy evidence.
Referring to Southern District prosecutors, Polisi added, “I don’t think they are interested in his cooperation, frankly.”
But Litman, the former U.S attorney, argued that it was hard for the president’s team, including Giuliani, to try to impugn Cohen’s integrity while Trump shows little willingness to offer sworn testimony himself.
Cohen, Litman noted, is apparently “willing to say this under penalty of perjury. And you have the president, who is avoiding saying anything under oath — and has been turning cartwheels to avoid it for a year.”
Giuliani, for his part, returned to a version of Trump’s now-famous “no collusion” refrain.
Referring to Tuesday’s dramatic events, he said, “Did you hear anything about collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice? This is not about Michael Cohen distorting people over taxis or Paul Manafort’s 2005 tax case. This is about collusion with Russia.
“I didn’t hear a goddamn single thing about collusion.”
I think the reality here is that impeachment charges cannot be created, and even if they were....the House won’t shift to the Democrats...nor will the Senate.
So the obvious angle is some court battle just short of impeachment. In this case, if you just had a second and third special prosecutor....working on the Uranium sales, and the DoJ/FBI issues...I think the Mueller strategy would quickly collapse.
“after the president’s former lawyer and fixer implicated Trump in a felony during the 2016 campaign.”
No he didn’t.
How is Cohen’s charge “explosive”? Everyone already knew this story and about the payments.
No way can this be called a campaign contribution.
Litman has zero credibility on this based simply on the facts. There was no "bombshell" from Cohen at all. Cohen's admission was no different than what Trump's legal team had already admitted in writing to Mueller's team months ago: that Donald Trump approved the payments to the women who were apparently blackmailing him.
The only thing Cohen did yesterday was claim that what he did was actually a crime. That doesn't have any implications for Trump other than media hysteria.
Imagine a scenario where Trump authorized Cohen to withdraw $100,000 from a bank on Trump's behalf, and Cohen complied with the request. If Cohen stands up in court two years later and claims that withdrawing money that Trump had every right to withdraw somehow constituted a "bank robbery," that sure as hell doesn't make Trump a co-conspirator in anything.
“No way can this be called a campaign contribution.”
Even if it was there is no law against contributing to your won campaign.
It could only possibly be construed to be a “campaign contribution” if the payments were made by COHEN, not Trump.
Incredible lack of support for Mr. Trump from elected Republicans.
The conviction and the plea are just the start of the real campaign to get Trump out of office.
TWB
I think we are all underestimating what is happening here. They are making this out to be the crime of the century because they do intend to use it to impeach Trump. By they, I do not just mean mueller and the msm/dnc. This is much bigger then that, it includes the republicans and all government agencies. There is no one left to trust. You cannot undo what the globalists have built over the last 60 years in a single election. We have to start winning every election for the next decade at least.
Even if Trump paid some bimbos to keep their mouths shut, the seriousness of that action is one-millionth the seriousness of what HRC and DNC did with mail servers, destroying evidence, selling out the U.S. for personal gain, using them Clinton Foundation for illegal fund raising, corruption at FBI/DOJ, paying for fabricated "evidence," railroading Flynn, setting up Papadoupolos, setting up scores of lawyers in a Special Counsel to run a slow coup to deny the people their choice of POTUS, attempts to destroy POTUS. I wish I could vote for Trump a million times to set things straight and offset the horrendous corruption.
And you will win those elections only of you capture the public schools and oust all leftists from public education. You have to make the schools true centers of education again, educating young citizens on real civics, not communist/socialist propaganda mills churning out new cadres.
It is such weak tea, but these Trump haters are absolutely deranged and desperate for hope. The House is unlikely to shift, and if it does it is still unlikely to impeach, and if it does you will never find 67 Senators to vote to remove Trump. At least, not on anything that we know of to date.
This is about the election, and to distract Trump and derail policy. It isn’t and hasn’t been working. There could be some angle here for court of law unrelated to criminal charges. Trump cannot be charged, period. But, Mueller wanted Cohen to plea to the campaign violation because 1) One way to break attorney-client privilege is when the lawyer and client commit the same crime together and 2) if Mueller can break the privilege then Cohen can testify in court. But it won’t be criminal court, it will be civil court - just keep dragging this thing out as payback for Starr/Clinton.
But Trump isn’t going to be blowing up any aspirin factories to take it off the front pages. Once Mueller is out of ammo - and I suspect this is the best he will ever get - then I think Trump and Sessions will go on the offense. I understand there are many people who are skeptical of Sessions and I agree there is reason to doubt this, but the only reason I can think of for Trump to just sit on his hands and take fire without fighting back is because he knows he is innocent, he knows nothing will come of all this ballyhoo, and that when the other side has nothing left to shoot at him he can go full-frontal assault against all of them.
And I do mean all of them. Mueller raided Cohen, that opens the door for Sessions to raid Perkins Coie. PC broke the same exact law Cohen pleaded to. They also hired foreign spies to provide information/dirt on Trump. Dozens of people in the DOJ, FBI, CIA conspired to influence the election using Clinton campaign cash. They colluded with foreigners and conspired together - all of them are guilty of many crimes including this silly campaign violation as they all rendered services on behalf of Clinton without reporting a donation.
And of course scores and scores of people are guilty of scores and scores of other crimes related to the 2016 election. I would be surprised and disappointed if they don’t all go down for it.
Shakespeare said it best
Much ado about nothing
Oh one thing I forgot to add is that even if some civil suits are brought and they attempt to put Cohen on the stand and break the atty-client privilege, Trump’s current lawyers will certainly fight to quash/prevent any testimony and will likely prevail for many reasons, including the fact that he hasn’t been convicted of the same crime so the privilege remains intact.
Exactly when did a campaign violation become a felony. And what exact date did any contact with a Russian by a Trump associate become a cause for grand jury testimony.
What we really need is a Justice Department. It is solely due to the failure of Jeff Sessions to get involved or rein in those to whom he handed his authority that we are in this current situation. It will continue until there is a change of Attorney General.
But the Senate will have Mitt Romney who is dying to show he is superior to Trump and I have no doubt will lead impeachment proceedings. Then there’s Ben Sasse. The question becomes are there 66 members of the Senate who want Trump out?
“But Harry Litman, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said that the situation for Trump was “pretty bad” after Cohen’s bombshell statements.”
What Litman said was ridiculous. He implies that otherwise legal actions might become illegal if they were intended to “swing” a “close election”. So they’re not illegal if they are trying to “swing” a non-close election?
Then he says “that’s what the Watergate burglary was about”.
See that word, “burglary” — it’s a common law crime. Meaning the kind of crime that anyone above the age of six clearly recognizes as a crime. The burglars could have broken into a candy store and it would have been a crime, and anyone knows that. The notion that the burglary was only a crime because related to a “close election” is ridiculous. Moreover, there was NO question that an obvious crime had occurred. No one had to explain why burglary was a crime, and the burglars were actually convicted, BEFORE the whole Watergate mess got going. And if some idiot - and believe me, such idiots exist, say “Well, Mueller’s got convictions, too, so it’s just like the Watergate burglars being convicted”, No. Wrong. Mueller got guilty pleas, which are NOT convictions, and the one conviction he got (Manafort) was for something having absolutely nothing to do with Trump, and nothing to do with any fantasy crime the Trump haters imagine Trump committed, first the Logan Act, and now the cockamamie make-believe crime of “trying to influence an election”. That can be anything. Driving someone to the polls, saving them bus fare, influences an election. All of the supposed crimes these Trump haters salivate over, in hopes of pinning them on Trump, are the most absurd stretching of the most nebulously worded criminal statutes.
Finally, only an ignoramus would say the Watergate burglary was interference in a “close” election. It was one of the biggest blowouts in history.
I was with you, right until that point.
There is no Trump and Sessions. Not since the day Sessions turned his back on the President and the people, by recusing himself from all matters related to the 2016 election and the ongoing coup attempt.
That worm Sessions is directly responsible for the chain of events that have led to this current state of affairs.
He's a cowardly pawn of the Deep State, and is the worst mistake of Trump's presidency.
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