Tag: President Felon

  • He put the frighteners on him

    That’s a good look.

    Michael D. Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Trump, has indefinitely postponed his congressional testimony, his lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday, citing Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on Mr. Cohen’s family in the days since he scheduled his appearance on Capitol Hill.

    Mr. Cohen was to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 at the invitation of Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the chairman of the committee, but backed out because of ongoing threats against his family, his lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement.

    President’s former lawyer puts hold on testimony to Congress because of president’s threats. Are we gangstered up enough yet?

    Mr. Trump denied that he was outright threatening his former lawyer, telling reporters in the White House that Mr. Cohen has “only been threatened by the truth.”

    He wasn’t outright threatening, he was implicitly threatening. World of difference. Aren’t we all proud to be Americans today.

    Mr. Cummings said that Mr. Cohen had “legitimate concerns” for his family’s safety. “Efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms,” he said in a joint statement with Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.”

    And along with that, it’s kind of frowned on. It’s seen as not altogether respectable to make efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress, especially when the person making the efforts is the president. It doesn’t look good.

    Mr. Cohen’s willingness to tell prosecutors and the public what he knows about any possible involvement by Mr. Trump in the crimes he has already admitted to has emerged as one of the biggest threats to the Trump presidency. Mr. Cohen has spent more than 70 hours with investigators for the Southern District of New York who prosecuted the campaign finance violations and for the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign.

    Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested on Twitter that Mr. Cohen’s family members be investigated. In a recent interview with Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host and one of Mr. Trump’s preferred interviewers, he called for Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law to be investigated without citing details.

    When Ms. Pirro pressed for the name of the father-in-law, Mr. Trump demurred but said, “You’ll look into it because nobody knows what’s going on over there.”

    Abuse of power much?

    That interview prompted a rare statement from House Democrats cautioning that any effort to discourage or influence witness testimony before Congress could be construed as a crime.

    “The integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the executive branch must be respected by everyone, including the president,” the Democrats said in the statement. “Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.“

    It should have been a statement from the entire Congress. We get more filthy every day.

  • Wolves are howling a hundred miles away

    He’s taking it well.

  • Ranting and venting

    That’s something to look forward to:

    Trump has ranted about why no one around him is doing anything to stop any of it and vented about the lack of support he believes he has in Congress and within his own White House, the sources tell NBC News.

    In addition to the much-anticipated report from Mueller on the Russia investigation, Democrats could ask prosecutors in the SDNY to similarly share details of their probe into Cohen that are related to the president.

    Ohhh, could they indeed.

    Trump has in recent days been made aware of this possibility from people close to him, opening up a new vulnerability for the president.

    Good. Good good good.

  • One by one, the prosecutors are removing possible Trump defenses

    Oh look, what’s this.

    Press release today from the SDNY:

    Michael Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison

    U.S. Attorney’s Office Also Announces Non-Prosecution Agreement with American Media, Inc., Related to Its Payment of $150,000 to a Woman to Influence 2016 Presidential Election

    Robert Khuzami, Attorney for the United States, Acting Under Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515, announced that MICHAEL COHEN was sentenced today to three years in prison for tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations.  COHEN pled guilty on August 21, 2018, to an eight-count information before U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, who imposed today’s sentence.  In a separate prosecution brought by the Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”), COHEN pled guilty on November 29, 2018 to one count of making false statements to the U.S. Congress and was also sentenced on that case today, receiving a two-month concurrent sentence.

    According to the allegations in Information 18 Cr. 602 (WHP), filed by the United States States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (the “Office”), as well as previous court filings and statements in public court proceedings:

    Between 2012 and 2016, COHEN concealed more than $4 million in personal income from the Internal Revenue Service, avoiding more than $1.3 million in income tax.  COHEN also made false statements to a federally insured financial institution to obtain a $500,000 home equity loan.  Finally, in 2016, COHEN made or caused two separate payments to women to ensure that they did not publicly disclose their alleged affairs with a presidential candidate in advance of the election.  In one instance, COHEN caused American Media, Inc. (“AMI”), which was identified in previous court filings as “Corporation-1,” to make a $150,000 payment to one woman; in the other, COHEN made a $130,000 payment to another woman through an LLC he incorporated for the purpose of making the payment.  COHEN was reimbursed for the latter payment in monthly installments disguised as payments for legal services performed pursuant to a retainer, when in fact no such retainer existed.  COHEN made or caused both of these payments in order to influence the 2016 election and did so in coordination with one or more members of the campaign.

    He also has to pay out a bunch of money, including the back taxes.

    And then the AMI thing:

    The Office also announced today that it has previously reached a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, in connection with AMI’s role in making the above-described $150,000 payment before the 2016 presidential election.  As a part of the agreement, AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.  AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.

    Assuming AMI’s continued compliance with the agreement, the Office has agreed not to prosecute AMI for its role in that payment.  The agreement also acknowledges, among other things, AMI’s acceptance of responsibility, its substantial and important assistance in this investigation, and its agreement to provide cooperation in the future and implement specific improvements to its internal compliance to prevent future violations of the federal campaign finance laws.  These improvements include distributing written standards regarding federal election laws to its employees and conducting annual training concerning these standards.

    I wouldn’t want to be working in the White House today.

  • Trump’s got the loomies

    Interesting. Republicans are said to be chatting about dropping Donnie Two-scoops. Impressive that it only took them three years.

    Donald Trump is facing “looming problem” as Republicans contemplate abandoning the president as more evidence of wrongdoing comes to light, Los Angeles Times White House reporter Eli Stokols explained on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Monday.

    Host Nicolle Wallace played a clip of Trump supporter and former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie wondering what additional evidence special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in Manhattan have obtained.

    Oh don’t worry about it, just let this criminal sack of shit go on destroying the country and the world for another couple of years. What could go wrong?

    “Republican lawmakers who are — have a huge role to play in this if it goes forward — are starting to tell me privately, some of them, that, you know, if there’s obvious evidence, the bottom is going to fall out,” he explained.

    “They’re not going to be able to stand by this White House and that’s a looming problem for the president,” he concluded.

    Trump may even face a greater threat from the Southern District of New York investigations.

    “It’s much harder to stop what’s happening in that office as opposed to with the special counsel’s investigation,” Stokols noted. “This train has left the station, there’s really nothing that this White House can do about it.”

    “I think that’s a source of frustration to the president. Also, it’s difficult to politicize, it’s difficult to go out and demonize that office because, as you pointed out already, that’s a Trump appointee running that office,” he added.

    Oops.

  • Nailing Trump as a felon

    Laurence Tribe thinks it’s serious for Trump.

    “nailing Trump as a felon who directed a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2016 election” – that’s not a parking ticket.

  • Nobody and nothing can save him

    Paul Waldman at the Post says Trump is cooked.

    One of the remarkable things about the discussion we’ve been having lately is that the president still seems to think that he can be saved from whatever this investigation uncovers. He just announced that William Barr will be his next attorney general, and the New York Times reported that in private, “Mr. Trump has also repeatedly asked whether the next pick would recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 election.” It’s as though he thinks this investigation is in its early stages and can be quashed by a properly loyal underling.

    But at this point it doesn’t matter. It’s far too late. Trump’s former aides have cooperated, they’ve conducted their interviews with the special counsel, they’re being sentenced, the documents have been reviewed, the connections have been traced, and the full picture is soon to be revealed.

    This scandal can’t be hidden away. Republicans in Congress can’t save Trump, his attorney general can’t save him, and no amount of desperate tweets can save him. Accountability is on its way, and it’s arriving very soon.

    But…if he tweets many times every day, in all caps? Will that save him?

  • One of the more livid denunciations

    Ken White (aka Popehat) at the Atlantic walks us through yesterday’s prosecutorial briefs.

    In the first one, the Special Counsel’s Office explains how Manafort blew his cooperation agreement by lying, and it does so with great confidence; it’s clear that they have the receipts.

    In the second, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York responds to Cohen’s lawyers’ brief last week requesting no prison time.

    The prosecutors’ rebuttal of Cohen’s sentencing brief is one of the more livid denunciations I’ve seen in more than two decades of federal criminal practice. The Southern District concedes that Cohen provided some information to it, to the Special Counsel, and to the New York Attorney General. But Cohen refused to cooperate fully; he declined to engage in a full debriefing about everything he knew or commit to ongoing meetings, and he only spilled about the things he’d already admitted in his plea. That’s not how cooperation works. In this game, you either cooperate fully or you shut up; there is no middle ground.  It’s not surprising that Cohen’s stance angered the notoriously proud Southern District prosecutors.

    The New York prosecutors blast Cohen’s “rose-colored view of the seriousness of his crimes,” accusing him of a “pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.” Prosecutors portray Cohen as stubbornly obstructing his own accountant to cheat at taxes, even refusing to pay for accounting work that raised inconvenient issues he wanted suppressed. When it comes to Cohen’s campaign finance violations, the prosecutors’ fury leaps off the page.  Cohen, they say, schemed to pay for two women’s stories (Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, we now know) in violation of campaign finance laws to influence the 2016 election, and did so “in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” – that is, the president of the United States.  As the brief puts it:

    While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.

    Legal writing can be a joy. Remember the Kitzmiller ruling? That is one hell of a good read. This one right here is another goody.

    Maddow highlighted that same passage last night, with her very best intensity and clarity. It brings it all into focus, doesn’t it. Dirty Cohen used Dirty Trump’s money to silence two women whose stories could have sunk Trump’s campaign, and what happened? Trump did indeed win the election (though not the popular vote) and so now here we are stuck with this terrible, monstrous, destructive pig-man who is dragging the US into the sewer he lives in. Cohen’s intervention may have been decisive in the sense that without it Trump would have lost.

    And it was a felony. And he did it at Trump’s direction. Trump committed a felony.

    Back to Ken White:

    If the Southern District’s fury at Cohen is notable, its explicit accusation that President Trump directed and coordinated campaign finance violations is simply stunning. The prosecutors’ openness suggests they are sure of their evidence and have mostly finished collecting it. It’s a sign of a fully-developed, late-game investigation of the president’s role, one that may soon make its way to Congress.

    And last there’s Mueller’s sentencing brief in Cohen’s lying-to-Congress case.

    Mueller discloses that Cohen has “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” by pleading guilty to lying to Congress and meeting with the Special Counsel seven times to discuss his own conduct and other “core topics under investigation.” That includes information about multiple contacts between other Trump campaign officials and the Russian government, and about Cohen’s contact with the White House in 2017 and 2018, suggesting an ongoing inquiry into obstruction of justice. Most significant, the Special Counsel indicates Cohen “described the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries, while continuing to accept responsibility for the false statements within it.”  That statement suggests that the Special Counsel believes that someone in the Trump administration knew of, and approved in advance, Cohen’s lies to Congress. That’s explosive, and potentially impeachable if Trump himself is implicated.

    Maddow leaned on a key point in that one, which is that Cohen’s lies to Congress were public, and that that means that they functioned (and perhaps were intended) as instructions for others who might have to talk to Congress on the subject. It also means Russia knew about them, which means Cohen was compromised.

    Neal Katyal’s take is also interesting.

  • Bully pulpit in every way

    The Post collects more lawyers who point out that Trump is witness tampering in plain sight.

    In another tweet Monday, Trump praised another longtime associate, Roger Stone, who also has drawn Mueller’s scrutiny, for having said he would never testify against Trump.

    “This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about ‘President Trump,’ ” Trump wrote. “Nice to know that some people still have ‘guts!’ ”

    The tweet about Stone drew immediate criticism from several lawyers, who said it amounted to witness tampering.

    Among those who chided Trump was George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and a frequent Trump critic. On Twitter, he referenced Trump’s tweet and wrote: “File under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512,” citing sections of the federal code that deal with obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

    Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) weighed in later.

    “This is serious,” Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on Twitter. “The President of the United States should not be using his platform to influence potential witnesses in a federal investigation involving his campaign.”

    It’s disgusting that he’s doing it at all, and it’s disgusting that he’s doing it on Twitter where anyone and everyone can see it. It’s so mobsterish, so law-contemptuous, so brazen, so openly criminal. It’s as if Don Corleone went on The Tonight Show to say “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  • Witness tampering du jour

    Trump is losing it again.

    Twitter is of course overflowing with jokes about this new person, Scott Free.

    Norm Eisen crisply points out that that right there is witness tampering.

    Said by the biggest liar ever to sit in that chair.

  • Witness tampering

    Trump is in fact engaged in witness tampering, on Twitter.

    It’s this one:

    I was shocked by how inappropriate that is from a president talking about a Senate hearing, but it took a lawyer friend to point out that it’s witness tampering.

    Some observers are reporting it that way.

    Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) is asking whether Donald Trump committed a federal crime by engaging in witness intimidation with a tweet about Sally Yates. If Trump was convicted of witness intimidation, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

    It seems pretty ludicrous to deny that that tweet is intimidating, and it does of course name a witness. It doesn’t get much more intimidating than a mentally unstable and vindictive head of state openly threatening you.

    Replies to that tweet note that the tampering one also appears on the official POTUS account, which he apparently can’t delete.

    The question that Rep. Lieu raised was an interesting one. Is a tweet from the President Of The United States before a witness testifies before Congress potential witness tampering?

    A judge would have to answer that question, but Trump is clearly using his social media presence to shape witness testimony. If this is a case of witness tampering, Trump’s tweets could land him in serious legal trouble.

    Is that the kind of crime that law enforcement can just ignore because Republicans control everything? Could Trump murder and devour people on camera and not be prosecuted?