Posted on 12/14/2018 3:37:18 PM PST by Kaslin
RUSH: Donald Trump was the third person in the room in August 2015 when his lawyer Michael Cohen and Pecker discussed ways Pecker could help counter negative stories about Trumps relationships with women Trumps relationships with women? Its impeachable, Mr. Limbaugh! Its criminal. Were on the verge It is?
According to documents supplied by the SDNY, Trump and Cohen had a meeting one year before, not 2015. It was August of 2014 they met to discuss this arrangement. Again, the memorandum from the Southern District of New York says, In August 2014, Chairman [Pecker] had met with Cohen and [Trump] and had offered to help deal with negative stories about [Trump]s relationships with women by identifying such stories so that they could be purchased and killed.
So this arrangement was made long before Trump became a candidate and probably even before he thought of running for the White House. So wheres the campaign finance violation? There isnt one, and there isnt a crime. And, by the way, this practice Ive told this story once just to show you how on common this is. When this program was first starting, we started with 56 radio stations in small markets. They were great radio stations, but it wasnt enough to make this a success.
You need to be Ill give you a little inside baseball stat. If you can get a radio program on the air in the top-ten markets, then you can tell advertisers that you reach 80% of the nations population. If you can get your program on the top 20 markets, you can say to advertisers that you are reaching not that theyre all listening to you, but you are reaching 95% of the population. So we needed top-ten markets. We werent on the air in New York, but our commercials were airing there.
That was an arrangement that we had to make. The New York stations said, Were not gonna carry some bumpkin national show! This is New York. People in New York dont care whats happening anywhere else. Okay, fine. You wait. Up next was Los Angeles, and the guy the ran the station we were trying to get on in Los Angeles agreed to buy the show and bury it! Its called shelving. He agreed to buy it and pay us for it but never air it, keeping it out of the market entirely.
Now, this is not the same reason that the National Enquirer was trying to bury stories about McDougal, but the point is these things are not uncommon. The guy in LA didnt want to carry the show but he want to take a chance it was gonna succeed on some other station; so he was offering to pay it and shelve it. Now, thankful my syndication partner Ed McLaughlin said no. By then, we needed some money. We were just starting out. There was no funding or any of that. It was purely an entrepreneurial exercise.
We resisted the temptation and found a different station in Los Angeles. The rest is history. But these kind of things, these kinds of and none of that was criminal. Not a thing of this was criminal, trying to bury it. (chuckles) I thought it had criminal intent, in a way. But it was not, according to law, criminal. Other stations tried to say, Yeah, well take it, but were gonna run it between midnight and 5 on Saturday night. No, were not gonna let you have.
All these big market stations were afraid of it but didnt want it, initially. They wanted to bury it or shelve it. And we just stuck with it. Pecker was a friend of Trumps and this is a deal that they entered into. But it was 2014, not 2015. Trump was not even a candidate at that time. But look at look at the juxtaposition of things here. Where did this all start? It all started with Russian collusion, and I just saw a Fox News poll.
This is the poll that has Trumps approval number at 46%. This poll has, again, 46 or 47% of the American people believe the Russians tampered with votes! Forty-six or 47% believe that the Russians did indeed collude! They believe it in a Fox News poll when it didnt happen! (chuckles) The people who are pushing the conspiracy have not even the alleged. They have created the impression. Thats how collusion has come to be defined, the way its been discussed by the media and all of the paid-for guests on the media.
The collusion has come to mean Russians somehow find a way to screw with our votes and screw with the outcome of elections. Even Rosenstein has made a point of saying nobody thats been indicted has had anything to do with votes. Not a single vote has been tampered with. Not a single election outcome has been affected. The media studiously ignores it, and the same kind of thing is happening here. There isnt any crime. We started out with Trump colluding with Russia.
And now were being told that there are dire criminal activities that have been unearthed are Donald Trump paying off women with whom he reportedly has had affairs. Such a dastardly scheme! Such a dastardly scheme! I mean, the idea that these things are gonna send Donald Trump to jail is absurd, unless the entire legal system ends up being rigged and all kinds of violations there take place. But under the current code, under current law, there is no way that what Trump has done here is criminal or in violation of campaign finance violations, and thats not from me.
Thats from Bradley Smith, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Another thing that came to mind, two things. Every witness that the great Robert Mueller has drug out of the sewer is a known liar. Every witness that Mueller has has been demonstrated to be a liar to one degree or another, and many of these witnesses have claimed that Mueller is even asking them to lie now and say what Mueller wants them to say instead of what happened.
Second point, just to remind you, when it comes to federal election law, remember who wrote these laws. People that run for office. They write federal election law, but it is largely well, Ill give you an example. If, in the case of a questionable campaign expense, if it can be shown that the expense in any way, any way whatsoever is personal, then it is automatically exempted as a campaign or election expense. Thats in the law. The people that run for office wrote the law, and they gave themselves a lot of outs.
Well, in 2014, if Donald Trumps having a meeting with the rat and with Pecker from the National Enquirer at which time Pecker is offering to buy stories about these babes and then not run them, 2014, it could easily be claimed that Trump entered into this deal or okayed it in order to keep his family from finding out, i.e., personal!
It doesnt take much evidence. If there is even the slightest even opportunity that the payment could be said to be for personal reasons, then it is automatically exempt as a campaign expense and therefore exempt from campaign finance law. Proving intent is, unlike Comeys claim about Hillary, proving intent in campaign finance law violations is mandatory. And its a really hard thing to prove because of this out that theyve built into the system.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, it seems like only yesterday that Cohen Look at people were talking about here. It seems like only yesterday Cohens lawyers said that he was gonna wait until Muellers investigation was completed and report was issued before he would speak publicly, which was a laugh. Cohen cant wait to tell the world what a victim he is and what a reprobate Trump is, and its all because hes made a decision that his future financial opportunities are far greater as a friend of the media and a friend of Hollywood and a friend of movie and TV producers than as a Donald Trump loyalist.
No question that thats his decision and they probably put the fear of God into him at the special counsels office, and he has committed tax fraud and other serious crimes that have nothing to do with Trump that hes still hoping to get reduced time on. But why is Mueller and the SDNY ? Why are they allowing Cohen to go all over TV now and talk to Stephanopoulos? Isnt Cohen interfering in their investigation by blabbing to the press like this? Isnt this what weve always heard?
Why are they allowing him to do it? The DOJ, for example, they say they cant release any documents to Congress because it might interfere with the Mueller and Trump witch hunts! They cant reveal Congress still wants some documents on this whole thing that happened with Flynn that have not been released, and theyre saying, We cant release them. It would interfere with the investigation! Well, what is Cohen doing? Thats why I dont think I dont think hes a free agent on this.
Trump knew payments were wrong, Cohen says l FULL INTERVIEW PT 1/2
I think theyre sending him out here to do this. I think Cohen has Its been suggested to him that he might want to start doing some interviews, and Im sure theyre giving him guidelines on things to say, areas to avoid, things like that. So Cohen has this plan to become the new John Dean, win a place in the minds and hearts of the media and historians as the man who brought down Donald Trump. Theres no question this is how Cohen now sees himself, and somebodys gotten to him and has told him, This is your future. This is what you can make happen.
This guy is an ancillary player all of his life. Hes one of these hangers-on guys whos thinking if he can get close enough to the real people making things happen that some of its gonna rub off on him. Hes one of these guys that would love to be asked for his autograph because he knows famous people, even though he isnt himself.
So now hes got this chance, and he doesnt even have to log on to Twitter or Facebook to do it. He can become the man who brought down Donald Trump. The real goal is in doing that, it will make him rich, book deals, movie deals, speaking fees, and never-ending cable news appearances just like John Dean did. In his exclusive interview with Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos, Cohen merely repeated his lawyers scripted statement from his sentencing hearing, which is why I think the lawyers are behind this.
Mueller does not have anything, folks, that will convict Trump on Russia anything, and these campaign payments are not enough to convict in a court of law. But if there is enough pressure in writing the narrative every day in the media, they can create the impression in the minds of Americans that real impropriety has occurred here, the kind of impropriety we do not want in a president of the United States.
Its still all about getting Trumps numbers down into the thirties. Even though he told Stephanopoulos that he accepted all responsibility for his actions, hes actually blaming Trump for everything! Trump made him do it. Trump asked him to do it. Trump wanted him to do it. And all he wanted to do was impress Trump. Trump is the big alpha male. I wanted to be big in Donald Trumps mind. So whatever Trump asked me to do, sure, I was gonna do it.
Now hes trying to lay it all off on Donald Trump while being feted and treated as a great, courageous next John Dean type of figure. Repeating the scripted lines from his statement, Cohen said he will not be the villain in Trumps story. Not gonna happen. Hes not gonna be the villain. That he had been the victim because of his blind loyalty to Trump. Hed covered up Trumps dirty deeds.
You think those words were screened and approved by the special counsel and the other lawyers involved here? Strangely similar to John Deans claim that he was the victim of blind ambition, Richard Nixons blind ambition, here is Michael Cohen saying hes the victim of Trumps dirty deeds. What we have in Donald Trump is a conservative who does not announce himself as such, a Republican and he got elected and therefore hes gotta go. And for all the other reasons that weve discussed that hes gotta go.
Even despite all this, I dont care what you think, I dont care what you think youve heard, what you think you know by virtue of what youve read or seen on TV, it is not clear what Donald Trumps dirty deeds were. Is it a dirty deed to pay off an extortionist? Is it a dirty deed to pay off somebody who has violated a nondisclosure agreement they signed with you, which are common aspects of personal contracts and business contracts every day in this country.
Cohen on Trump as president: 'He's a very different individual' l FULL INTERVIEW PT 2/2
Theres nothing sinister about an NDA. So you have somebody, two people that are wanting to openly violate theirs and extort you in the process. And somehow its a dirty deed and its somehow filthy and in violation of campaign ethics? What about all the Clinton fundraising scandals involving Charlie Trie and the Chinese restaurants in Little Rock and the money orders and the Clinton Foundation and all of this pay-to-play schemes that are not being investigated? You want to talk about dirty deeds.
Oh, I forgot. Donald Trump at one point wanted to build a hotel in Moscow. Trump Tower Moscow. And Cohen was in the middle of it. Thats right. In fact, Cohen had such respect for Trump, that even when the deal went south, Cohen stuck with it sort of as a surprise to Trump to try to make it happen nevertheless. Trumps only been trying to do Trump Tower Moscow since 2004. But all of a sudden now it becomes a dirty deed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Heres an Ari Fleischer sound bite, and I meant to play this in the discussion last hour about when the meeting with Trump and the National Enquirer guy, David Pecker, happened. What a name for a guy that runs the National Enquirer! David Pecker. National Enquirer guy. Has there been a better name for a guy that does what he does? At any rate, I made the point that that meeting between Pecker and Trump and Cohen was 2014!
This is the meeting where the National Enquirer offered to buy Karen McDougals story that she and Trump had had a romp at the Playboy Mansion or whatever and bury it by not running it, and theyre trying to say, Thats an illegal campaign donation! But it happened in 2014. Trump wasnt a candidate. How can it be? So Ari Fleischer was commenting on this today on the Fox News Channel with Bill Hemmer, and he said this about it
FLEISCHER: I wish George Stephanopoulos had asked Michael Cohen, Are you aware of any payments like this hush-money payments that Donald Trump made prior to becoming a candidate in June of 2015? Because that could establish that there is a personal reason, a family related reason, and I wouldnt put it past (chuckles) President Trump, frankly, to have entered into such agreements prior to becoming a candidate. There are personal reasons, and that is often the reason that these celebrities enter into these agreements. Again (chuckling), its unseemly, its not right. The point here is it means its up to the people to decide what should be done with Donald Trump, elect him or reelect him, not for prosecutors.
RUSH: Bingo! Bingo! They would not be trying to run anybody else out of office on this stuff. Theyve looked the other way in 268 cases, times members of Congress have paid off women that made allegations against them. Bill Clinton? The media did everything they could to stave off that. But the Clinton impeachment was about lying under oath. It wasnt about sex, contrary to what everybody thinks. But hes exactly right here.
Voters decide this, and they already did! Access Hollywood. There isnt a person that voted for Trump that doesnt know who he is, who he was. He may be one of the most well-known people to ever run for the presidency. Reality TV host! Thats why some of this stuff so irritates all of them. Theyve tried to construct a system where people like Trump dont stand a chance. I dont need to repeat that drill, why they hate him and so forth. Everybody understands that now.
This is actually a good point. The federal election law is very clear. If you have anything that could be seen as a legitimate personal reason for making an expenditure like this, then it will not be called a campaign expense or donation or donation in kind or anything of the sort. If there is a personal reason. The personal reason? I dont want any family to find out about this. Thats why Im taking the help of the guy Pecker from the National Enquirer.
I dont want my family to find out! This 2014. There wasnt even a campaign to defraud, and its not a defrauding. But the most important thing here is Fleischer saying the voters decide this stuff, not Robert Mueller, and not the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York! This is the criminalization of political policy disguised as the pursuit of crime, collusion with Russia or what have you.
chairman Pecker?
Pecker?
His first names are William Richard
IIRC, Hillary cast him as a playboy and a dozen women stepped forward....but I don't believe they included Stormy.
W. Dick Pecker? Must have had a very Hard time growing up
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