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Sep 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Manhattan DA Subpoenas 8 Years Of Trump Tax Returns
by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/16/2019 - 16:45 0 SHARES
It never ends.
New York state prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed President Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, demanding eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns according to the New York Times , citing "several people with knowledge on the matter" - the gold standard in modern sources.
The subpoena was issued by the Manhattan DA's office last month following the launch of a criminal investigation into hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen - who pleaded guilty last year to eight charges; seven of which were unrelated to the Trump campaign, and one for breaking federal campaign finance laws. He is currently serving a three-year prison sentence.
At issue - Democratic Manhattan D.A. Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (whose daddy was Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State - and who took money from Harvey Weinstein while declining to prosecute him for sexual assault - and who sought a reduced sex-offender status for Jeffrey Epstein) wants to see if Trump's reimbursement of Cohen violated any laws in New York , and whether Trump's accounting firm falsely accounted for the reimbursements as a legal expense.
In New York, filing a false business record can be a crime.
But it becomes a felony only if prosecutors can prove that the false filing was made to commit or conceal another crime, such as tax violations or bank fraud. The tax returns and other documents sought from Mazars could shed light on whether any state laws were broken . Such subpoenas also routinely request related documents in connection with the returns. - New York Times
Congressional Democrats have been hunting down Trump's tax returns for years after the billionaire refused to do so, citing an ongoing IRS audit as well as the position that Trump Organization competitors would then have access to industry secrets.
Congressional Democrats have taken an aggressive approach, subpoenaing six years of Mr. Trump's tax returns from the Treasury Department, as well as personal and corporate financial records from Deutsche Bank, Capital One and Mazars USA.
The president has fought back to keep his finances under wraps, challenging the subpoenas in federal court. He has also sued to block a New York state law, passed this year, that authorized state officials to provide his state tax returns in response to certain congressional inquiries. By tying up the requests in court, Mr. Trump's team has made it diminishingly likely that Democrats in Washington will get the chance to review them before the election next year . - New York Times
And while Trump and the Treasury Department have proven thus far successful in thwarting Democratic lawmakers' inquiries, it may not be as easy to fend off a subpoena in Manhattan .
According to Mazars, they will "will respect the legal process and fully comply with its legal obligations," adding that the company was legally prohibited from commenting on its work.
If the Manhattan DA is able to obtain Trump's tax returns, the Times notes that "the documents would be covered by secrecy rules governing grand juries, meaning they would not become public unless they were used as evidence in a criminal case."
The Times does not note, however, that the records would likely be leaked within 30 minutes to the Washington Post or similar.
State prosecutors also subpoenaed the Trump Organization in early August for records of the payments to Daniels and Cohen's reimbursement - a request which has been complied with according to the report.
"It's just harassment of the president, his family and his business, using subpoenas as weapons," said Trump Org attorney, Marc L. Mukasey in a statement last month.
As part of its investigation, prosecutors from Mr. Vance's office visited Mr. Cohen in prison in Otisville, N.Y., to seek assistance with their investigation, according to people briefed on the meeting, which was first reported by CNN.
Mr. Cohen also helped arrange for American Media Inc., the publisher of The National Enquirer, to pay Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who also said she had an affair with the president. Prosecutors in the district attorney's office subpoenaed American Media in early August, as well as at least one bank. - New York Times
Will the Democrats' gambit pay off? Or will the ongoing "witch hunts" into President Trump backfire and turn him into a martyr?
Tachyon5321 , 43 minutes ago link
rgraf , 53 minutes ago linkThere is no evidence that any crimes of any type has been committed.
There is no legal grounds for a subpoena to be issued without evidence that a crime has been committed.
Cearly, the Manhattan DA is violating the civil right of a citizen for asking for 8 years of tax records with no indication of a crime. Trump should sue the DA and the jutice department should look into the DA violation of due process and legal rights of a citizen.
William Dorritt , 3 hours ago linkHas he subpoenaed Epstein's docs? Is he going to claim tax fraud is worse than child molestation? Why don't Trump supporters file a class action lawsuit and RICO against this clown?
DBAustin , 3 hours ago linkPerfect
"Democratic Manhattan D.A. Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
- (whose daddy was Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State -
- took money from Harvey Weinstein while declining to prosecute him for sexual assault -
- sought a reduced sex-offender status for Jeffrey Epstein)
wants to see if Trump's reimbursement of Cohen violated any laws in New York , and whether Trump's accounting firm falsely accounted for the reimbursements as a legal expense. "
Love to see the Bio on the Judge that approved the Subpeona
beemasters , 4 hours ago linkHow many people reading this think that the IRS never reviewed Trump's tax returns?
How many people reading this think that Obama's IRS did NOT make a special effort to go over Trump's taxes in great detail, even as Obama's FBI and DOJ spied on Trump and his campaign?
How many people reading this think that Obama's IRS would NOT have charged Trump with tax evasion even if they could have?
How many people reading this think that making Trump's tax return public is NOT an effort to twist, distort, and misinterpret complex tax returns in an attempt to make Trump look bad as bad as possible for taking legitimate, legal, but large tax deductions?
How many people reading this think that it is perfectly fine for democrat leaders, such as Pelosi, Schumer, and multimillionaire Maxine Waters NOT to have to release their tax returns while Trump has to release his?
Why did Weinstein and Epstein get such special treatment?
Both did get the same treatment- in escaping from justice. Oh, you mean not producing tax returns? No one is demanding them, for one plus they are not public servants. All government officials should submit their tax returns to ensure they are not compromised by those who have access to them.
Dec 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
charlie_don't_surf , 10 minutes ago link
youshallnotkill , 19 minutes ago linkGet ready Dems, Hell is coming to breakfast.
Bricker , 24 minutes ago linkTrump never ceases to crack me up. While his (terrible) current lawyer, declares on TV that there was collusion but it just didn't last long, Trump calls his former lawyer/fixer at "Rat".
This is just too funny, I mean this is the President of the United States calling his former personal lawyer a "Rat" which of course is a common mob term for a witness testifying against you.
monkeyshine , 1 hour ago linkHow you can tell that MSM is the front man for the CIA...nothing happens until MSM picks up the story
AHBL , 59 minutes ago linkOf course it never happened, just like Manafort didn't make 3 trips to London to meet Julian Assange. These fictions were just used as a pretext for diving into the backgrounds of Trump's political supporters and find crimes to charge them with.
The Cohen raid was particularly egregious, a likely violation of attorney-client privilege. Not suprisingly the American Bar Association is silent.
GoldenDonuts , 47 minutes ago linkSo, Manafort never laundered money and failed to report taxes? Did Flynn never fail to report his work as a foreign agent? Did he also not report income taxes?
Look at all these poor crooks, unfairly being prosecuted for cheating and stealing.
brewing_it , 33 minutes ago linkKeep drinking the koolaid.
Bricker , 57 minutes ago linkAll that could have been prosecuted by a district attorney. They looked at all of Manafort's dealings 10 years ago and passed because he was working with the Podesta Group at the time and thus protected by Hillary Clinton's influence.
The next two years will be insiders admitting fault...Sprinkling 1 at a time every few weeks.
As they back away before 2020 elections. Pucking democrats are the scum of the earth
Dec 13, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Update 5: Cohen has been sentenced to 36 months in prison for his crimes, far below the guideline of 51 - 63 months laid out by New York prosecutors. The Judge noted that the guidelines aren't binding and had the ability to issue a lesser sentence.
Cohen has also been hit with forfeiture of $500,000, restitution of $1.4 million and a fine of $50,000. He will be allowed to voluntarily surrender on March 6 .
Update 4: Judge Pauley has responded following Cohen's statement, saying "Mr. Cohen's crimes implicate a far more insidious crime to our democratic institutions especially in view of his subsequent plea to making false statements to Congress," adding that Cohen's crimes warrant "specific deterrence."
Update 3: Cohen has spoken, telling the Judge: "Recently the president tweeted a statement calling me weak and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again i felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds." Judge William Pauley, meanwhile, noted that Cohen pleaded guilty to a " veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct ," which was motivated by "personal greed and ambition."
Update 2: Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, continues to reference Cohen's desire to cooperate further with prosecutors to answer future questions - however Manhattan prosecutors don't appear to care, according to Bloomberg banking reporter Shahien Nasiripour. In a memo last week to the court, they said that Cohen's promise to cooperate further is worthless - especially since there would be nothing requiring him to do so once he's already been sentenced.
Meanwhile, Jeannie Rhee - an attorney with Robert Mueller's office, told the court that while Cohen lied to the special counsel's team during his first interview in July, he has been truthful since.
Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos, however, says that any reduction in sentence "should be modest."
Roos added that Cohen "has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of law," and that he engaged in " a pattern of deception of brazenness and greed ."
Update: Cohen's attorney, Guy Petrillo, says Cohen thought that President Trump would shut down the Mueller probe, and has argued that his client's cooperation warrants a lenient sentence.
"Mr. Cohen's cooperation promotes respect for law and the courage of the individual to stand up to power and influence," said Petrillo.
"His decision was an importantly different decision from the usual decision to cooperate," added Petrillo. "He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country. He did so not knowing what the result would be, not knowing how the politics would play out and not even knowing that the special counsel's office would survive."
"The special counsel's investigation is of the utmost national significance... Not seen since 40 plus years ago in the days of Watergate." -Guy Petrillo
Petrillo has asked the judge to "consider Cohen's "life of good works" in his decision, adding that Cohen's cooperation stands in "profound contrast" to others who havern't cooperated and who "have continued to double-deal while pretending to cooperate."
***
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal lawyer for President Trump, has shown up to a New York courthouse where he will be sentenced on Wednesday for a laundry list of crimes - some of which implicate Trump in possible wrongdoing, but most of which have nothing to do with the president. Judge William Pauley, meanwhile, noted that Cohen pleaded guilty to a " veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct ," which was motivated by "personal greed and ambition."
Update 2: Petrillo, Cohen's attorney, continues to reference Cohen's desire to cooperate further with prosecutors to answer future questions - however Manhattan prosecutors don't appear to care, according to Bloomberg banking reporter Shahien Nasiripour. In a memo last week to the court, they said that Cohen's promise to cooperate further is worthless - especially since there would be nothing requiring him to do so once he's already been sentenced.
Meanwhile, Jeannie Rhee - an attorney with Robert Mueller's office, told the court that while Cohen lied to the special counsel's team during his first interview in July, he has been truthful since.
Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos, however, says that any reduction in sentence "should be modest."
Roos added that Cohen "has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of law," and that he engaged in " a pattern of deception of brazenness and greed ."
Update: Cohen's attorney, Guy Petrillo, says Cohen thought that President Trump would shut down the Mueller probe, and has argued that his client's cooperation warrants a lenient sentence.
"Mr. Cohen's cooperation promotes respect for law and the courage of the individual to stand up to power and influence," said Petrillo.
"His decision was an importantly different decision from the usual decision to cooperate," added Petrillo. "He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country. He did so not knowing what the result would be, not knowing how the politics would play out and not even knowing that the special counsel's office would survive."
"The special counsel's investigation is of the utmost national significance... Not seen since 40 plus years ago in the days of Watergate." -Guy Petrillo
Petrillo has asked the judge to "consider Cohen's "life of good works" in his decision, adding that Cohen's cooperation stands in "profound contrast" to others who havern't cooperated and who "have continued to double-deal while pretending to cooperate."
***
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal lawyer for President Trump, has shown up to a New York courthouse where he will be sentenced on Wednesday for a laundry list of crimes - some of which implicate Trump in possible wrongdoing, but most of which have nothing to do with the president.Cohen, who went from claiming he would "take a bullet" for President Trump to stabbing his former boss in the back, faces sentencing on nine federal charges , including campaign finance violations based on a hush-money scheme to pay off two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, as well as making false statements to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Prosecutors alleged that Cohen paid off two women at the "direction" of "Individual-1," who is widely assumed to be Trump.
Prosecutors said the payments amounted to illegal campaign contribution s because they were made with the intent to prevent damaging information from surfacing during the 2016 presidential election, which Cohen pleaded guilty to in August.
Legal experts view the filing as an ominous sign for Trump , suggesting prosecutors have evidence beyond Cohen's public admissions implicating the president in the payoff scheme. While the Justice Department has said previously that a sitting president cannot be indicted, that would not stop prosecutors from bringing charges against Trump once he leaves office. - The Hill
New York prosecutors have recommended that Judge William Pauley impose "a substantial term of imprisonment" on Cohen - which may be around five years. Cohen's attorneys, meanwhile, have asked Pauley for a sentence which avoids prison time - citing his cooperation with the Mueller probe and other investigations which began prior to his guilty plea last summer. Mueller said that Cohen had "gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel's investigation," having met with Mueller's team seven times where he reportedly provided information useful to the Russia investigation. The special counsel's office has recommended that any sentence Cohen receives for lying to Congress should run concurrently with the charges brought by the Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty in August to tax evasion, lying to banks and violating campaign finance laws - charges filed by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.The campaign finance charges relate to his facilitation of two hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Both women say they had sex with Trump in the prior decade. The White House has denied Trump had sex with either woman.
Prosecutors say the payments were made "in coordination with and at the direction of" Trump, who is called "Individual-1" in a sentencing recommendation filed last week.
Cohen's crimes were intended "to influence the election from the shadows," prosecutors wrote. - CNBC
In November Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Organization's ill-fated plans to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow - a project floated by Cohen and longtime FBI asset who had been in Trump's orbit for years, Felix Sater. Cohen claims he understated Trump's knowledge of the project. He also lied to Congress when he said that the Moscow project talks ended in early 2016, when in fact he and the Trump Organization had continued to pursue it as late as June 2016.
On Wednesday, Stormy Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti - who is in attendance at Cohen's sentencing, said in a Wednesday tweet that Cohen "thought we would just go away and he/Trump would get away with it. He thought he was smart and tough. He was neither. Today will prove that in spades."
We wonder how much Avenatti will pick up of the $293,000 in legal fees Stormy Daniels was ordered to pay Trump?
Tags Law Crime Politics
- 718
- 86216
pedoland , 8 minutes ago link
jafo2me , 2 hours ago linkDid the State of New York REVOKE his license to practice law yet?
Is a felony conviction automatic revocation in NY?
It would be funny if he was still able to practice law in NY, legally as a convicted felon.
I assume criminal fraud is a felony in NY.
Trump's paying around $280,000 in " hush money " .. out of his own pocket is dwarfed into virtual insignificance by Obama's Presidential Campaign in 2008..,.
BEING FOUND "GUILTY" OF ILLEGAL USE OF 2 MILLION IN CAMPAIGN MONEY
barely reported by the media that saw THE OBAMA DOJ decide not to prosecute Obama and instead quietly dispose of this
"REAL CRIME" with a fine of 375 thousand dollars by the US FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISION.
Welcome to the two tier Justice System we all live under..
One for the Deeeep State Globalist Elite and .. the other...
Life In Prison or execution for the rest of us.
Dec 01, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Michael Cohen pleads guilty again, this time to the Mueller group As has by now been plastered all over the mass media, Michael Cohen, a former attorney for president Donald Trump, today went into federal court in Manhattan, New York City, to plead guilty as part of a deal in a second case, filed this time by the "special counsel" Robert Mueller group. Also as before, the deal was telegraphed by a "John Doe" paper filed yesterday in a U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelcohen_johndoe_notice.pdf
The charging document is once again an "information", since it was agreed to and not the result of a grand jury indictment. It alleges that Cohen made false statements to the U.S. Congress directed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about a "branded property in Moscow, Russia", obviously referring to a Trump property, and is based on Title 18, U.S. Code, section 1001(a) and (c), the proverbial false statement statute [1]--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelcohen_charging_doc_2nd_case.pdf
Since he was pleading guilty through the agreed charging paper filed today, he signed a waiver giving up his right to be charged by an indictment for a felony--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelcohen_waiver_of_indictment.pdf
Here is the plea bargain agreement, which at this time has not been filed in the court clerk's file--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelcohen_plea_agreement_2nd_case.pdf
Page 8 of the plea agreement indicates that Cohen talked to the Mueller group at least on 7 August 2018, 12 and 18 September, 8 and 17 October, and 12 and 20 November.
His lawyer filed a letter requesting that this new case be consolidated with his other criminal case in the Southern District of New York, and be transferred to Judge William Pauley III, in whose court the earlier case is pending--
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelcohen_transfer_request.pdf
Cohen is presently scheduled to be sentenced on 12 December 2018. The request to transfer the case was granted, as noted on the court clerk's docket sheet--
"11/29/2018 Notice of Case Reassignment as to Michael Cohen, to Judge William H. Pauley, III. Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr no longer assigned to the case. (ma) (Entered: 11/29/2018)".
At this time, there is no "factual basis" or "statement of the offense" filed in the clerk's file to support the guilty plea. This is unusual, as normally the factual basis is in writing and filed as part of the plea papers. Thus, as in his earlier criminal case in the same courthouse, the factual basis was probably done orally in open court at the time of the plea, and the only way to find out what it was is to get a transcript of the hearing from the court reporter.
Most unusual of all is that Cohen is prosecuted for making a false statement to Congress. During the last 10 years or so, has anyone else made a materially false or misleading or fraudulent statement, or covered up or concealed a material fact to Congress, in violation of any U.S. law? Does anything come to mind causing a person wonder whether or not that has happened, such as Fast and Furious gun running, or maybe on the subject of domestic surveillance ...?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4455233/exchange-clapper-wyden
[1] 18 U.S.C. 1001
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001
The Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories stopped being farcical a while ago -- IMO they are now in a class by themselves, perhaps a class shared with The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other massively destructive lies.The birther thing was awful, but at least it didn't get anyone killed, while this thing will lead Trump to do stupid things to disprove it and might get us all killed.
I'm trying to wrap my mind around what precisely Trump is supposed to have done -- told Putin that he'd do anything he wanted in exchange for a real estate opportunity in Moscow? I'm sure that Putin would have paid cash, no real estate required, for such a privilege.
And yet the vast majority of people I've met believe that Trump is a Russian puppet and that aggressive action is needed against Russia for the simple reason that Trump=Russia=bad.
Nov 30, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Tyler Durden Thu, 11/29/2018 - 18:50 409 SHARESPresident Trump's ex-longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen worked with an FBI informant known as "The Quarterback" to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 US election, according to BuzzFeed News .
"The Quarterback," Felix Sater - a longtime FBI and CIA undercover intelligence asset who was busted running a $40 million stock scheme, leveraged his Russia connections to pitch the deal, while Cohen discussed it with Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, according to BuzzFeed , citing two unnamed US law enforcement officials.
Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower's most luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse , to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers to purchase their own. "In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin," Sater told BuzzFeed News. "My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin." A second source confirmed the plan. - BuzzFeed
The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the center of Cohen's new plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller after he admitted to lying to congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia collusion.
According to the criminal information filed against Cohen Thursday, on Jan. 20, 2016 he spoke with a Russian government official, referred to only as Assistant 1, about the Trump Tower Moscow plan for 20 minutes. This person appears to be an assistant to Peskov, a top Kremlin official that Cohen had attempted to reach by email.
Cohen "requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction," the court document states.
Cohen had previously maintained that he never got a response from the official, but in court on Thursday he acknowledged that was a lie. - BuzzFeed
While the deal ultimately fizzled, "and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse," Cohen has said in court filings that Trump was regularly briefed on the Moscow negotiations along with his family.
Sater and Cohen "worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the Moscow deal finished," according to BuzzFeed - although it was claimed that the project was canned in January 2016, before Trump won the GOP nomination.
Sater, who has worked with the Trump organization on past deals, said that he came up with the Trump Tower Moscow idea, while Cohen - Sater recalled, said "Great idea." "I figured, he's in the news, his name is generating a lot of good press," Sater told BuzzFeed earlier in the year, adding "A lot of Russians weren't willing to pay a premium licensing fee to put Donald's name on their building. Now maybe they would be."
So he turned to his old friend, Cohen, to get it off the ground . They arranged a licensing deal, by which Trump would lend his name to the project and collect a part of the profits. Sater lined up a Russian development company to build the project and said that VTB, a Russian financial institution that faced US sanctions at the time, would finance it. VTB officials have denied taking part in any negotiations about the project. - BuzzFeed
Two FBI agents with "direct knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations" told BuzzFeed earlier this year that Cohen had been in frequent contact with foreigners about the potential real estate project - and that some of these individuals "had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling."
Meanwhile, Trump reportedly personally signed the letter of intent to move forward with the Trump Tower Moscow plan on October 28, 2015 - the third day of the Republican primary debate.
Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12. By cooperating with the DOJ, he is hoping to avoid prison.
HowdyDoody , 2 minutes ago link
Steel Hammerhands , 15 minutes ago linkDid Putin know he was going to get a $50 million penthouse apartment? I bet he would rather have a $100 shack near some good fishing water.
To Hell In A Handbasket , 16 minutes ago linkFelix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky ; Russian : Феликс Михайлович Шеферовский; March 2, 1966) is an American former mobster, real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC , a real estate conglomerate based out of New York City . Sater has been an advisor to many corporations, including The Trump Organization , Rixos Hotels and Resorts , Sembol Construction, Potok (formerly the Mirax Group ), and TxOil.
In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to his involvement in a $40 million stock fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian Mafia , and became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal prosecutors, assisting with organized crime investigations. In 2017, Sater agreed to cooperate with investigators into international money laundering schemes.
smacker , 4 minutes ago linkLeft, right and centre in contemporary USSA politics are rotten and corrupt. Bernie Sanders proved that even he is susceptible to dodgy business decisions. Trump is no more rotten and adverse to dodgy/boarderline legally tenuous deals than anybody in politics on Capitol Hill. Do I care about this? No, because there are far more important issues to be dealt with by a magnitude of 90000 times.
Both sides on this issue are imbeciles. One side is pushing guilt, when compared to what Killary and the Clinton foundation got up to, it is a complete non-story. The other side are completely absolving Orange Jesus of any guilt and making out he has morals beyond reproach.
I rarely comment on the Trump/Russia angle, because most of it is overblown, the narrative is distorted and context is deliberately misinterpreted.
css1971 , 21 minutes ago linkBecause it just happens to neatly fit into the Mueller investigation?
If Mueller was investigating China-gate, then Trump's dealings with China would be the big news and his dealings with Russia wouldn't be important.
Jungle Jim , 45 minutes ago linkPresident Trump's ex-longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen worked with an FBI informant known as "The Quarterback" to negotiate a deal for Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 US election, according to BuzzFeed News.
There is nothing about this sentence which carries any credibility at all.
Honestly, you might not have bothered writing it, or the rest of the article. No. I didn't read it, and am not going to waste any of my life doing so either.
StarGate , 35 minutes ago linkCan somebody just give me the short, simple, dumbed-down version of what any of this means? What does this amount to? Is this any kind of game-changer? Does it change anything?
Steel Hammerhands , 10 minutes ago linkMeans nothing to Trump.
No Tower in Moscow. Putin got nothing. There was no deal.
But has word "Russia" in story to keep Leftists and Democrats excited.
Josef Stalin , 1 hour ago linkSomeone wanted to build a high-rise in Moscow and pay Trump for the right to use his name on it.
Nothing else in this story has anything else to do with Donald Trump.
moon_unit , 1 hour ago link" ...an un-named source" ..... another fantastical fairytale from a failed american media company by yet another un-named source. How very convenient. President Vladimir living in an american themed cramped badly designed apartment building ? Please, I do not like to laugh much but this is starting to make me smile. Our President has a State owned mansion in the best part of our glorious capital ....like me he owns almost nothing and works all the time ....why would anybody with sanity in their brain believe that he would make this change, especially to be associated with ANYTHING american. Also no Russian businessman that I know has ever bought a property in a trump complex .... the build quality and design is rubbish. Westerners should take time to view some of our exceptional office and residential towers along the Moskva River to see where wealthy people want to invest, work and live here. Get real West !!
Keyser , 1 hour ago linkOK thought experiment, given that he "only" earns perhaps 150k, how is Putin going to pay for the upkeep of such a White Elephant? Imagine if he had to pay for maintenance of the complementary hot n cold running whores that inevitable come with such an apartment .... what if something breaks and needs replaced?
It's like giving a Ferrari to an Amish. Thanks, but no, thanks. Not his style.
I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 2 hours ago linkAt least this fabrication is a bit more plausible than the Russian hookers peeing on the bed story...
And the end of the day, it's Cohen's word against the POTUS and I know whose side I'm on...
GoldenDebt , 2 hours ago linkA set up, using the (((Russian))) mob
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Sater
Because Putin wants to live in a building with a bunch of mobsters.
And small world - wouldnt you know the Russians who try to do hotel deals are also into hacking illegal, unsecure servers?
And though this indicates nothing, true or not, about the election - here's the secret : the judeocorporate media has got the public trained to react to 'Russia' and 'Putin' purely emotionally - so much so the Maddows of the world will shriek that this proves 'collusion' - when it does no such thing.
More Deep State smoke and mirrors.
If you havent watched any Dan Bongino speeches on youtube its worth a look.
So is this refresher: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-18/russiagate-witch-hunt-stockman-names-names-deep-states-insurance-policy
Pindown , 2 hours ago linkUnknown sources
And
Buzzfeed
Equals bull sh!t .. always
Asoka_The_Great , 2 hours ago linkCrooks and criminals took over worldwide. Now even US-citizens elected one for President. It´s a shame. How long will it take until the killer squads of Blackstone financed by Blackrock prowl through the streets to kill anybody who isn´t useful in their view? They have been practicing for years in foreign countries, paid with taxpayers money.
Why did the FBI or Muller zero in on this guy Michael Cohen?
Because they got everything on him, Trump and his family and associates, long before any investigations were initiated.
NSA collected all the phone records, emails, text messages, internet usages, banking records, library loan records, etc, . . . on EVERY Americans. All they need to do is type in a name, like you type in a search phrase on Google, and everything associated with that person would come up, on the screen.
The FBI knew everything they need to know about Michael Cohen, and General Michael Flynn.
All they need to get them or entrap them is to ask them questions, which they already knew the answers, and wait for them to "lie" or misrepresent themselves.
BINGO!
They are charged with lying to the FBI.
Trump was smart that he refused to be "interview" with the Muller, the Inquisitor. His lawyers knew Muller will try to trap into "lying" to the FBI.
Nov 30, 2018 | www.thenation.com
Disappearing for the midterms , Russiagate has re-emerged front and center. This week's barrage of developments in the cases of indicted Trump campaign figures Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and George Papadopoulos have renewed long-running declarations of a presidency in peril .They coincide with a fresh round of alarm over the fate of Mueller's investigation following Trump's ouster of attorney general Jeff Sessions and the installation of Matthew Whitaker in his place. Leading Democrats now see the probe as so paramount that, despite having re-captured the House running on health-care issues, protecting the investigation has been deemed "our top priority" (Representative Jerry Nadler) and "at the top of the agenda," (Representative Adam Schiff).
There is nothing objectionable about wanting to safeguard the Mueller investigation, nor about concerns that Trump's appointment of an unqualified loyalist may jeopardize it. Mueller should complete his work, unimpeded. The question is one of priorities. After all, the fixation on Mueller has not just raised anticipation of Trump's indictment, or even impeachment -- it has also overshadowed many of the actual policies that those seeking his political demise oppose him for. At this highly charged moment, it seems prudent to re-consider whether the probe remains worthy of such attention and high hopes.
Although Mueller's final report has yet to be released, the issue that sparked the FBI investigation he inherited has already been resolved. The FBI began eyeing potential Trump-Russia ties in July 2016 after getting a tip that unpaid campaign aide George Papadopoulos may have been informed that Russia was in possession of stolen Democratic Party emails well before WikiLeaks made them public. But that trail went cold. It turns out that a London-based professor, Joseph Mifsud, told Papadopoulos that the Russian government might possess thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails.
The FBI interviewed Mifsud in Washington, DC, in February 2017, but Mueller has never alleged that Mifsud works with the Russian government. Papadopoulos was ultimately sentenced to just 14 days behind bars for lying to the FBI about the timing and nature of his contacts with Mifsud. He reported to a federal prison on Monday.
The Russia probe's other instigating figure, Carter Page, was also a low-level, unpaid campaign official. The information that led to his investigation is even more suspect. In its October 2016 application for a surveillance warrant on Page, the FBI claimed it "believes that [Russia's] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [the Trump campaign]." But its a key source for that supposition turned out to be the Steele dossier -- the salacious, Democratic Party-funded opposition research compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. And while the FBI got Papadopoulos on lying to them, Page has not been accused of any crime...
With the Russia investigation's catalysts coming up all but empty, there is little reason to expect that the remaining campaign members who face prison time will reverse that trend. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn awaits sentencing in the coming weeks on charges similar to Papadopoulos's. Just as the evidence used in Manafort's bank and tax fraud case underscored that he worked against Russian interests in Ukraine , Flynn's indictment turns up another inconvenient fact for the collusion hopeful: The foreign government that Flynn colluded with on Trump's behalf -- against the US government -- is not Russia, but Israel .
Despite much hoopla to the contrary, Muller's new indictment of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen contains more inconvenient facts. Cohen has pleaded guilty to a single count for lying to Congress about his role in a failed attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. According to the plea document, Cohen gave Congress false written answers in order to "minimize links," between the Moscow project and Trump, and to "give the false impression" that it was abandoned earlier than it actually was. Cohen told the court that he made these statements to "be loyal" to Trump and to be consistent with his "political messaging."
As I noted in The Nation in October 2017 , the attempted real-estate venture in Russia "does raise a potential conflict of interest" for Trump, who "pursued a Moscow deal as he praised Putin on the campaign trail." But nothing in Cohen's indictment incriminates Trump. Much of what it details was previously known, and rather than revealing an illicit, transatlantic collusion scheme, it reads more like a slapstick mafia buddy comedy. As Buzzfeed News reported in May , Cohen communicated extensively with Trump organization colleague Felix Sater -- identified in the Cohen plea as "Individual 2″ -- who had promised to secure Russian financing for the proposed Moscow project. But the Russians never signed on, and Cohen only grew increasingly frustrated with Sater's failure to live up to his lofty pledges. "You are putting my job in jeopardy and making me look incompetent," Cohen wrote Sater on December 31, 2015. "I gave you two months and the best you send me is some bullshit garbage invite by some no name clerk at a third-tier bank."
Cohen then took matters into his own hands. As was previously known, he did not have an email address for a Russian contact, so he wrote to a generic email address at the office of Dmitri Peskov, the press secretary for Vladimir Putin ("Russian Official 1," in the indictment). We now learn from Cohen that he managed to reach Peskov's assistant, who asked him "detailed questions and took notes." But as The New York Times noted when the Trump Moscow story first emerged: "The project never got [Russian] government permits or financing, and died weeks later." Sater tried to save the project. He discussed arranging visits to Russia by both Cohen and Trump, but Cohen ultimately backed out after allegations of Russian email hacking surfaced in June 2016. According to Buzzfeed , Sater even proposed giving Putin a $50 million penthouse as an enticement, but "the plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled, and it is not clear whether Trump knew of "Sater's idea."
Cohen now claims that he spoke to Trump about the project more than the three times that he informed Congress about. For their part, Trump's attorneys do not seem concerned, saying that his recently submitted answers to Mueller align with Cohen's account. That Cohen perjured himself to Congress raises problems for him, but it is hard to see how his lies about a project that failed and a proposed trip to Russia that never happened can hurt Trump. That could only change if, as part of his new cooperation deal with Mueller, Cohen has more to give.
As for Manafort, his case took a major turn when Mueller canceled their cooperation agreement and accused him of "crimes and lies." The crucial questions are what does Mueller allege he lied to him about and what evidence is there to substantiate that charge. Mueller is expected to provide details in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we can only speculate. The revelation that Manafort's lawyers shared information with Trump's attorneys even after the plea deal was struck in September has inevitably fueled speculation that Manafort is lying to benefit Trump, or even hide evidence of a Russia conspiracy. That is certainly possible. But theories that Manafort is then banking on a pardon from Trump do not square with the prevailing view that his agreement with Mueller -- which included admitting to crimes that could be re-charged in state court -- was " pardon proof ."
It is also possible that Manafort's alleged lies have nothing to do with a Russia conspiracy; after all, his case, and that of his deputy Rick Gates, pertained not to Russia or the 2016 campaign, but instead to financial crimes during Manafort's lobbying stint in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal suggests that is the case, reporting that Manafort's alleged lies "don't appear to be central to the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election that Mr. Mueller is investigating." Earlier this month, ABC News claimed , citing "multiple sources," that Mueller's investigators are "not getting what they want" from Manafort's cooperation deal. When it comes to collusion, perhaps there is just nothing to get.
Nov 29, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Michael Cohen To Plead Guilty To Lying About Trump Russian Real-Estate Deal
by Tyler Durden Thu, 11/29/2018 - 09:19 128 SHARES
Four months after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has copped to new charges of lying to congressional committees investigating Trump-Russia collusion, according to ABC . His latest plea is part of a new deal reached with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, which had been said to be winding down before its latest burst of activity, including an investigation into Roger Stone's alleged ties to Wikileaks. Stone ally Jerome Corsi this week said he had refused to strike a plea deal with Mueller's investigators, who had accused him of lying.
To hold up his end of the deal, Cohen sat for 70 hours of testimony with the Mueller probe, he said Monday during an appearance at a federal courthouse in Manhattan where he officially pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements.
According to the Hill, Cohen's alleged lies stem from testimony he gave in 2017, when he told the House Intelligence Committee that a planned real-estate deal to build the Trump Moscow Hotel had been abandoned in January 2016 after the Trump Organization decided that "the proposal was not feasible." While Cohen's previous plea was an agreement with federal prosecutors in New York, this marks the first time Cohen has been charged by Mueller.
As part of his plea Cohen admitted to lying in a written statement to Congress about his role in brokering a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow - the aborted project to build a Trump-branded hotel in the Russian capitol. As has been previously reported, Cohen infamously contacted a press secretary for President Putin to see if Putin could help with some red tape to help start development, though the project was eventually abandoned.
Though, according to Cohen's plea, discussions about the project continued through the first six months of the Trump administration. Cohen had discussed the Trump Moscow project with Trump as recently as August 2017, per a report in the Guardian.
The first indication that Cohen might have lied to Congress surfaced in a Yahoo News report back in May, which claimed that Cohen's pursuit of the Trump Moscow project had continued for longer than he had acknowledged in his testimony. The report alleged that Cohen was involved in deal talks as late as May 2016.
As a reporter for NBC News pointed out on twitter, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and ranking member Mark Warner foreshadowed today's plea back in August after Cohen pleaded guilty to the campaign finance violations.
Also notable: The plea comes just as President Trump is leaving for a 10-hour flight to Argentina. In recent days, Trump appeared to step up attacks on the Mueller probe, comparing it to McCarthyism and questioning why the DOJ didn't pursue charges against the Clintons.
Cohen will be sentenced on Dec. 12, as scheduled. By cooperating, Cohen is hoping to avoid prison, according to his lawyer. While this was probably lost on prosecutors, Cohen's admission smacks of the "lair's paradox."
Nov 28, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
overmedicatedundersexed , 1 hour ago link
OT but we all need a laugh...stormy daniels..
Funny stuff happens when a judge tells a plaintiff she has to pay $341,500 for the legal expenses of a lawsuit she lost. All of a sudden Stormy Daniels is saying her CPL, Michael Avenatti, was acting against her wishes:
Oct 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
A statement from Trump's legal team reads:
United States District Judge S. James Otero issued an order and ruling today dismissing Stormy Daniels' defamation lawsuit against President Trump. The ruling also states that the President is entitled to an award of his attorneys' fees against Stormy Daniels. A copy of the ruling is attached. No amount of spin or commentary by Stormy Daniels or her lawyer, Mr. Avenatti, can truthfully characterize today's ruling in any way other than total victory for President Trump and total defeat for Stormy Daniels. The amount of the award for President Trump's attorneys' fees will be determined at a later date.
Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti responded to the dismissal, tweeting: "We will appeal the dismissal of the defamation cause of action and are confident in a reversal," while stating that Daniels' other claims against Trump and Cohen "proceed unaffected."
Re Judge's limited ruling: Daniels' other claims against Trump and Cohen proceed unaffected. Trump's contrary claims are as deceptive as his claims about the inauguration attendance.
We will appeal the dismissal of the defamation cause of action and are confident in a reversal.
-- Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) October 15, 2018Last week Trump's legal team argued that it made no sense for them to keep fighting in court over a $130,000 hush payment received by Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, as she invalidated the non-disclosure agreement she signed with Trump's longtime fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen.
The lawsuit is moot because Trump has consented that the agreement, as she has claimed, was never formed because he didn't sign it and he has agreed not to try to enforce it, Trump said in his court filing. The company created by Cohen to facilitate the non-disclosure agreement, which initially said Clifford faced more than $20 million in damages for talking, said in September that it wouldn't sue to enforce the deal. - Yahoo
Michael Avenatti's terrible October
This month has not treated Stormy's attorney well. Michael Avenatti went from Democrat darling during his representation of Daniels, to scapegoat over Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court after he introduced an 11th hour claim by a woman who said Kavanaugh orchestrated gang-rape parties in the early 1980s - an allegation thought by many to have derailed otherwise legitimate claims against the Judge.
Less than two weeks later Avenatti came under fire after he launched a now-deleted fundraising page for Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke.
In the fine print, O'Rourke supporters discovered that half the proceeds went to Avenatti's Fight PAC , which he formed a little over seven weeks ago .
Avenatti called the criticism "complete nonsense," noting that Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris "do the same thing." Perhaps sensing he'd made a huge mistake, Avenatti deleted the page - telling the Daily Beast in a text message: "It wasn't worth the nonsense that resulted from people that don't understand how common this is."
The question now is; after three strikes, is Avenatti out?
Read the full order here .
NiggaPleeze , 6 minutes ago link
Davidduke2000 , 47 minutes ago linkThe Creepy **** Lawyer gets to pay that.
Given his free $50 million in publicity, and the amount of GoFundMe he's gonna get or has gotten, I'd say "losing" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, lol.
bowie28 , 59 minutes ago linkgoing after a sitting president was a stupid idea, now the entire money she raised will go to trump's lawyers.
khakuda , 1 hour ago linkAvenatti is the best thing that has happened to Trump.
It's almost like he is intentionally doing stupid and outrageous things to make the dems look even more unhinged than they are.
I wouldn't be surprised if we find he has been secretly working for Trump all along. Trump did run a reality show after all so that would be a great plot twist ;)
The best thing about Avenatti and the Clintons is that they won't stop until they bring the entire Democratic Party down. It reminds me of Anthony Weiner and Elliot Spitzer, scumbags who keep coming back and discredit the entire party because of their own glorious egos.
Aug 25, 2018 | bbc.co.uk
The Trump Organization's finance boss, Allen Weisselberg, has reportedly been granted legal immunity in the probe into Michael Cohen.
He was summoned to testify earlier this year in the investigation into Cohen, Donald Trump's longtime former lawyer, US media report.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to handling hush money for Mr Trump in violation of campaign finance laws.
Mr Weisselberg, Chief Financial Officer, is the latest to get immunity.
On Thursday, it emerged that David Pecker, head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid, was also given immunity.
Mr Weisselberg is reportedly mentioned on a tape secretly recorded by Cohen in 2016 in which a hush money payment to an alleged lover of Mr Trump is discussed.
- 'I don't care if Trump paid off a porn star'
- Russia-Trump- Who's who in the drama to end all dramas?
It is not yet clear what Mr Weisselberg has agreed to in return for getting legal immunity.
The Trump Organization has not commented on the reports, which first emerged in the Wall Street Journal.
Where does this fit in?This is the latest twist in a saga continuing to dog the Trump administration.
In a serious blow, Cohen, Mr Trump's personal lawyer for more than a decade, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations.
He said he had paid hush money to two women who alleged they had affairs with Mr Trump, at the direction of "the candidate" - a clear reference to Mr Trump.
Cohen said the payment was made for the "principal purpose of influencing [the 2016] election".
His plea deal with prosecutors could see his prison sentence reduced from 65 years to five years and three months.
Mr Weisselberg was one of those called to give evidence before a federal grand jury for the Cohen investigation earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Separately, the Manhattan district attorney has launched a preliminary investigation into whether the Trump Organization falsified business records relating to payments made to Cohen, a source confirmed to CBS news.
The dominoes continue to fallBy Anthony Zurcher, Senior North America Reporter
Donald Trump's former personal lawyer has told a federal judge that the president knew about his illegal payments to women claiming illicit affairs with the then-candidate. The publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, formerly a close ally of Mr Trump's, has reportedly received immunity to discuss his role in the payments.
Now multiple US media outlets are reporting that Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization and the only non-relative trusted by the president to run his business empire during his presidency, is co-operating with federal investigators.
While much of the political world has been focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the situation in New York for the president is increasingly threatening.
Mr Weisselberg reportedly oversaw the reimbursements Mr Cohen received from the Trump Organization for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels. Depending on how the financial transfer was accounted for, it could run afoul of a number of campaign finance and accounting laws.
What's more, Mr Weisselberg has been at the beating heart of the Trump Organization since the 1970s. He handles the president's private trust, is the treasurer of the family's charitable foundation - currently under investigation by the state of New York - and has, at times, reviewed the Trump presidential campaign's accounting books.
He's the man who knows things - and now he's talking.
What's the origin of all this?It is the latest fallout from the wider inquiry launched by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017 into suspected collusion between the Trump election campaign and Russia.
As part of that probe, Cohen's offices were raided and investigators looked into his finances. What they found was passed on to New York judicial authorities.
Cohen's lawyer has said his client is "more than happy" to help the collusion inquiry.
Mr Trump has repeatedly denied collusion with Russia, and Russia denies involvement in the 2016 election. Related Topics
file:///F:/Private_html/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Fifth_column/Color_revolutions/Purple_revolution_against_trump/MSM_as_an_attack_dog/MistressgateAug 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
If there's one thing that is exposed in the sorry not-so-fairy tale of former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, it's that Washington is a city run by fixers. Who often make substantial amounts of money. Many though by no means all, start out as lawyers and figure out that let's say 'the edges of what's legal' can be quite profitable.
And it helps to know when one steps across that edge, so having attended law school is a bonus. Not so much to stop when stepping across the edge, but to raise one's fees. There's a lot of dough waiting at the edge of the law. None of this should surprise any thinking person. Manafort and Cohen are people who think in millions, with an easy few hundred grand thrown in here and there.
But sometimes the fixers happen to come under scrutiny of the law, like when they get entangled in a Special Counsel investigation. Both Manafort and Cohen now rue the day they became involved with Trump, or rather, the day he was elected president and solicited much more severe scrutiny.
Would either ever have been accused of what they face today had Trump lost to Hillary? It's not too likely. They just gambled and lost. But there are many more just like them who will never be charged with anything. Still, a new fixer name has popped up the last few days who may, down the line, not be so lucky.
And that's not even because Lanny Davis is a registered foreign agent for Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US government. After all, both Manafort and Cohen have their contacts in that part of the world. Manafort made tens of millions advising then-president Yanukovich in the Ukraine before the US coup dethroned the latter. Cohen's wife is Ukrainian-American.
Lanny Davis is a lawyer, special counsel even, for the Clintons. Has been for years. Which makes it kind of curious that Michael Cohen would pick him to become his legal representation. But that's not all Davis is involved in. Like any true fixer, he has his hands in more cookie jars than fit in the average kitchen. Glenn Greenwald wrote this in August 2009 about the health care debate:
Trending Articles Majority Of Young Americans Live In A Household ReceivingAfter Tom Daschle was selected to be Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief health care adviser, Matt Taibbi wrote: "In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle." One could easily have added: "And then there's Lanny Davis." Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a "political analyst" and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: "I agree with whoever pays me."
It's genuinely difficult to recall any instance where he publicly defended someone who hadn't, at some point, hired and shuffled money to him. Yesterday, he published a new piece simultaneously in The Hill and Politico – solemnly warning that extremists on the Far Left and Far Right are jointly destroying democracy with their conduct in the health care debate and urging "the vast center-left and center-right of this country to speak up and call them out equally" – that vividly illustrates the limitless whoring behavior which shapes Washington generally and specifically drives virtually every word out of Lanny Davis' mouth.
Davis' history is as long and consistent as it is sleazy. He was recently hired by Honduran oligarchs opposed to that country's democratically elected left-wing President and promptly became the chief advocate of the military coup which forcibly removed the President from office. He became an emphatic defender of the Israeli war on Gaza after he was named by the right-wing The Israel Project to be its "Senior Advisor and Spokesperson." He has been the chief public defender for Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and the Clintons, all of whom have engaged his paid services.
And as NYU History Professor Greg Grandin just documented: "Recently, Davis has been hired by corporations to derail the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize, all the while touting himself as a "pro-labor liberal." Davis was also the chief U.S. lobbyist of the military dictatorship in Pakistan in the late 90s and played an important role in strengthening relations between then President Bill Clinton and de facto president General Perez Musharraf."
New analysis from CNS News finds that the majority of Americans under 18 live in households that take "means-tested
There's much more in that article, but you get the drift. And now Davis, the Clinton fixer, is Michael Cohen's lawyer. The fixer defending a fixer. So who pays the bill? Well, ostensibly no-one, because Davis started a Go Fund Me campaign where people can donate so Cohen "can tell people the truth about Trump". The goal is $500,000. Which goes to .. Lanny Davis.
On TV yesterday he apparently promoted a wrong URL , which was promptly picked up by someone else who had it redirect to the Trump campaign. Even fixers screw up, right? Still, there's already well over $100,000 donated for Cohen Davis. But why $500,000? One of the accusations against Cohen concerns lying to a bank for a $20 million loan. He bought an apartment not long ago for $6.7 million. He owned multiple apartments in Trump buildings.
Did he lose everything when Robert Mueller et al raided his office, home and hotel room on April 9 2018? Were all his assets frozen? Possibly. What we do know is that he 'expected' the Trump campaign to pay for his legal fees. Which they declined. Or rather, as Fortune reported in June : "The Trump campaign has given some money to Cohen to help cover legal expenses for the Russia investigation. To date, though, it has not offered financial assistance in the investigation of his business practices."
It seems safe to assume that's the point where Cohen turned, or was turned, to Lanny Davis. From a full decade of being Trump's fixer to being fixed by the Clintons' fixer. That's a big move. It raises a number of questions :
First, why did Trump not pay Cohen's legal fees? This is 2 months after the raid on the man's office, home, hotel room, in which huge amounts of files and disks etc. were seized.
Second question: if Lanny Davis only now sets up a Go Fund Me campaign, who's been paying him over the past 2 months? Did Cohen sell assets, or is someone else involved?
Anyway, so Davis goes on TV with big words about how Cohen will tell all about Trump -provided people donate half a million- and adding "I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the oval office. And [Cohen] has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump."
Oh, and that "the turning point for his client's attitude toward Trump was the Helsinki summit in July 2018 which caused him to doubt Trump's loyalty to the U.S." That, to my little brain, doesn't sound like something that would come from Cohen. That sounds more like a political point the likes of which Cohen has never made. That's plain old Russiagate.
But anyway. So Lanny Davis, fixer of fixers and presidents, goes on a talk-show tour last night and what do you think happens? He walks back just about everything he's said the previous day. Aaron Maté made a list in this Twitter thread:
Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy1/ In a few minutes of airtime today, Michael Cohen attorney Lanny Davis has rejected a key Steele dossier claim, and, more significantly I think, the basis for all of the ceaseless, frenzied speculation that Cohen has something to offer Mueller on Trump-Russia collusion:
7:03 PM - Aug 22, 2018 Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Replying to @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy2/ First, contradicting a 7/27 CNN report ( https://www. cnn.com/2018/07/26/pol itics/michael-cohen-donald-trump-june-2016-meeting-knowledge/index.html ), Davis tells @ andersoncooper that Cohen has *no knowledge* that Trump was aware of Trump Tower meeting in advance:
7:04 PM - Aug 22, 2018 Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Replying to @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy3/ Right after, Davis walks back his already heavily qualified innuendo to @ Maddow -- which generated endless chatter -- about Cohen being useful to Mueller's probe on collusion & knowing of hacking. Now Davis claims he was "tentative", that Cohen "may or may not be useful", etc:
7:11 PM - Aug 22, 2018 Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Replying to @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy4/ Earlier in the day, Davis also asserted that Cohen was "never, ever" in Prague -- undermining a key claim in the Steele dossier that he went there in August/September 2016 as part of the collusion scheme: https:// twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/st atus/1032427395993624576
Chuck Ross @ChuckRossDCIn case Lanny Davis's interview on Bloomberg was unclear, here he is with @ chucktodd disputing the dossier: "Never, never in Prague. Did I make that clear?" http:// dailycaller.com/2018/08/22/lan ny-davis-michael-cohen-prague/ @ dailycaller
7:14 PM - Aug 22, 2018 Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Replying to @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy5/ That Prague undermines a key Steele allegation, one that got amplified in April when McClatchy -- without any corroboration since -- reported that Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague: https://www. mcclatchydc.com/news/politics- government/white-house/article208870264.html
7:15 PM - Aug 22, 2018 Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossierThe FBI has evidence putting Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in Prague in August or early September 2016; if true, that would confirm at least part of the infamous dossier prepared by an ex-British spy.
mcclatchydc.com Aaron Maté ✔ @aaronjmate Replying to @aaronjmateTwitter Ads info and privacy6/ So in short: Lanny Davis has not just denied what was explosively alleged about Cohen-Trump by Steele, CNN, and McClatchy, but has also walked back the explosive speculation about Cohen-Trump that Lanny Davis himself generated.
7:17 PM - Aug 22, 2018Is Michael Cohen sure he wants this guy as his lawyer? Is he watching this stuff?
If Cohen and Manafort have broken laws, they should be punished for it. The same goes for all other Trump campers, including the Donald. But it would be good if people realize that Cohen and Manafort are not some kind of stand-alone examples, that they are instead the norm in Washington. And Moscow, and Brussels, London, everywhere there's a concentration of power. In all these places, and probably more so in DC, there are these folks specializing in the edge of the law.
What do you think will happen when someone of the stature of Bob Mueller spends 18 months investigating the Clintons and their fixers? Perhaps the events of the past few days won't bring such a 2nd Special Counsel any closer, but by the same token they might do just that. Offense is the best defense.
I don't know, we don't know, what monsters Trump has swept under his luxurious carpets. But we do know that those are not the only monsters in Washington. Meanwhile, the Steele dossier that was used to start the entire Mueller remains just about entirely unverified. The Russian collusion meme he was tasked with investigating has so far come up empty.
That he would find something if he tried hard enough was obvious from the start. That is both dangerous in that the mandate of a Special Counsel should be limited lest it becomes endless and veers off the reasons it was initiated, as well as in the risk that it can easily turn into a party-political tool to hurt one's opponent while one's own dirt remains unscrutinized.
In the end, I can draw only one conclusion: there are so many sharks and squids swimming in the swamp that either it should be expanded or the existing one should be cleaned up and depopulated. So bring it: investigate the FBI, the Clintons, and fixers like Lanny Davis and Michael Avenatti, the same way the Trump camp has been.
Because if you don't do that, you can only possibly end up in an even bigger mess. You can't drain half a swamp.
Aug 24, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
NORTHERN STAR August 22, 2018 at 2:44 pm
Frankfurter NS here:NORTHERN STAR August 22, 2018 at 2:56 pm"Perhaps the greatest political damage came not from the felony charges, all of them related to various forms of financial chicanery, including five counts each for Cohen and Manafort of income tax evasion, but from Cohen's public statement in the courtroom of Judge Kimba Wood. In confessing his guilt to the eight counts, Cohen declared that in two instances, violating federal laws by using personal funds to suppress politically inconvenient statements by Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels, he was acting "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."
My point is that Cohen's admissions implicating Trump in carrying out either himself or in concert with others willful ongoing acts violative of Federal Campaign Finance laws are CLEARLY sufficient-if substantiated-to oust him from office.
Don't think so??
If the following transgressions were sufficient to 'nail' their intended targets -which is what happened - then Trump's acts in attempting to hush up Stormy (supra) COULD achieve the same result. Whether or not some faction of TPTB has the WILL to impeach him is another matter.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone
"Mueller's strategy of focusing on Cohen and Manafort's white-collar crimes is perfectly reasonable, even in a probe directed at Russian interference in the 2016 election. "It's not unusual for prosecutors to use charges -- Al Capone is the primary example -- to bring down a criminal conspiracy in any way they can," Waxman pointed out."MARK CHAPMAN August 22, 2018 at 4:36 pmYup!!!
" Cohen's guilty plea effectively makes Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be indicted -- but building a legitimate criminal case against Trump would make it harder for Republicans to stand united in opposition to impeaching the president .
When President Richard Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator by a grand jury, he opted to resign instead of face impeachment proceedings. Trump seems unlikely to step down, however. Any further efforts on his part to block the investigation into his campaign would put the Justice Department in uncharted territory"
Cohen would be a prosecutor's "dream cooperator: one who had special insider access to the leader of a powerful, closed, corrupt organization," former prosecutors Mimi Rocah and Elie Honig wrote last month. "We used to prosecute mafia cases. We both know that in the mob -- and perhaps in this White House -- the right cooperator can bring down the entire hierarchy."
From links I've already posted , getting a USC Title 18 conviction of Trump is not necessarily that required to charge him with "High Crimes and Misdemeanors". Although there is some dispute in legal circles as to what exactly constitutes a sufficent basis of facts upon which impeachment can be based.
But it will establish an unsavory precedent – that any sitting president can be taken out merely by selecting one of his/her aides and then threatening them with crushing penalties for some silly transgression or other or they can turn state's evidence. Anyone who ever dreamed of ascending to the nation's highest office would have to know that, by facilitating this process, they were handing the lawmakers the means to remove any future president.KIRILL August 22, 2018 at 5:23 pmBut, as I said, I don't care. Hillary can't win it now, Pence is a dink, The Donald would dig in his heels and fight all the way out, probably causing great damage, but if he went, so what? He's a dreadful president. And the USA would be in political chaos.
Trump should have fired Sessions for recusing himself from this Congress instituted witch-hunt. The job of Sessions is to be over-seer of the Special Counsel investigation. Mueller cannot have special rights, he must follow the rules. Shaking down people around Trump for tax evasion or assorted other unrelated crimes is not following the rules. It is pure Inquisition tactics.MARK CHAPMAN August 22, 2018 at 4:28 pmI would not be so quick to write Trump off as dreadful. He basically sabotaged the two hyped up cruise missile attacks on Syria. Even though his hands are tied and his mouth is gagged by US corporate-run "freedom", he managed to make both those attacks totally ineffective. If he was a loyal servant of the US elites, he would have kept sending more and more missiles and actually ordered NATzO or "coalition" jets to bomb Syrian targets seriously. The sporadic Israeli and coalition attacks have been basically irrelevant.
He is rocking the boat as much as he can. This creates are sorts of noise. This noise is not a metric of his efforts and success.
We'll see. If the Democrats are successful at having him impeached, they will probably create a special holiday recognizing Stormy Daniels, or give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom or something. I frankly don't care – he beat Hillary, and that's something she can never erase or cover up.MARK CHAPMAN August 22, 2018 at 4:17 pmI imagine they sweated him with the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison; all the newspaper accounts of his testimony spoke of his shaky voice, and it's typically pretty hard to scare a lawyer. They likely told him that he could just disappear into the prison system and that there would be nothing at all he could do about it.KIRILL August 22, 2018 at 4:58 pmAny testimony under such coercion is utterly worthless. It is basically a show trial signed "confession".PATIENT OBSERVER August 22, 2018 at 6:57 pmHe was probably reminded that lawyers do not do well in prison.
Aug 24, 2018 | www.unz.com
"If anyone is looking for a good lawyer," said President Donald Trump ruefully, "I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." Michael Cohen is no Roy Cohn.
Tuesday, Trump's ex-lawyer, staring at five years in prison, pled guilty to a campaign violation that may not even be a crime. Cohen had fronted the cash, $130,000, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for keeping quiet about a decade-old tryst with Trump. He had also brokered a deal whereby the National Enquirer bought the rights to a story about a Trump affair with a Playboy model, to kill it.
Cohen claims he and Trump thus conspired to violate federal law. But paying girlfriends to keep past indiscretions private is neither a crime nor a campaign violation. And Trump could legally contribute as much as he wished to his own campaign for president.
Would a Democratic House, assuming we get one, really impeach a president for paying hush money to old girlfriends?
Hence the high-fives among never-Trumpers are premature.
But if Cohen's guilty plea and Tuesday's conviction of campaign manager Paul Manafort do not imperil Trump today, what they portend is ominous. For Cohen handled Trump's dealings for more than a decade and has pledged full cooperation with prosecutors from both the Southern District of New York and the Robert Mueller investigation.
Nothing that comes of this collaboration will be helpful to Trump.
Also, Manafort, now a convicted felon facing life in prison, has the most compelling of motives to "flip" and reveal anything that could be useful to Mueller and harmful to Trump. Then there is the Mueller probe itself.
Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had resigned. Twenty-six months after the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails, Mueller has yet to deliver hard evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Putin's Russia, though this was his mandate.
However, having, for a year now, been marching White House aides and campaign associates of Trump before a grand jury, Mueller has to be holding more cards than he is showing. And even if they do not directly implicate the president, more indictments may be coming down.
Mueller may not have the power to haul the president before a grand jury or indict him. After all, it is Parliament that deposes and beheads the king, not the sheriff of Nottingham. But Mueller will file a report with the Department of Justice that will be sent to the House.
And as this Congress has only weeks left before the 2018 elections, it will be the new House that meets in January, which may well be Democratic, that will receive Mueller's report.
Still, as of now, it is hard to see how two-thirds of a new Senate would convict this president of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Thus we are in for a hellish year.
Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.
No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival. And as he has shown, these powers are considerable: the power to rally his emotional following, to challenge courts, to fire Justice officials and FBI executives, to pull security clearances, to pardon the convicted.
Democrats who have grown giddy about taking the House should consider what a campaign to bring down a president, who is supported by a huge swath of the nation and has fighting allies in the press, would be like.
Why do it? Especially if they knew in advance the Senate would not convict.
That America has no desire for a political struggle to the death over impeachment is evident. Recognition of this reality is why the Democratic Party is assuring America that impeachment is not what they have in mind.
Today, it is Republicans leaders who are under pressure to break with Trump, denounce him, and call for new investigations into alleged collusion with the Russians. But if Democrats capture the House, then they will be the ones under intolerable pressure from their own media auxiliaries to pursue impeachment.
Taking the House would put newly elected Democrats under fire from the right for forming a lynch mob, and from the mainstream media for not doing their duty and moving immediately to impeach Trump.
Democrats have been laboring for two years to win back the House. But if they discover that the first duty demanded of them
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. "
Copyright 2018 Creators.com.
Sally Snyder , says: August 24, 2018 at 11:47 am GMT
Sir Launcelot Canning , says: August 24, 2018 at 12:00 pm GMTHere's what the United States would look like under a Pence presidency:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/09/impeaching-trump-and-america-under.html
President Pence would do little to undo the political polarization that America has experienced over the past two decades since his voting record suggests that he leans rather heavily to the right side of the political spectrum.
Johnny Smoggins , says: August 24, 2018 at 12:14 pm GMTMaybe this is payback for the other impeachment attempt 20 years ago. Perhaps some dems have been waiting two decades for vengeance. Whatever Clinton's faults, the GOP should not have opened that can of worms back then.
Stick , says: August 24, 2018 at 1:28 pm GMTOne of two things will likely happen in November.
Either the Republicans come out ahead in which case the left will say it was because of "Russian" interference and the election results are thus illegitimate. Or the Democrats will and they will not only be under pressure to impeach Trump but also to punish the deplorables who voted for him.
Either way things are going to be ugly.
Anonymous , [363] Disclaimer says: August 24, 2018 at 2:11 pm GMTWell, this would constitute a real civil war. All because Obama and Hillary failed at rigging an election and failed at launching a coup. Good Times. Keep your powder dry.
@StickMa Laoshi , says: August 24, 2018 at 6:04 pm GMTWell, this would constitute a real civil war. All because Obama and Hillary failed at rigging an election and failed at launching a coup. Good Times. Keep your powder dry.
Meh. Who are you going to shoot at? Your neighbors? The local messican ghetto? Cops in general?
IMO, just like always throughout history, the key is to nab "elected representatives" from local, state and federal positions, and hang them. You don't have to hang very many -- they're smarter than they look; they're merely corrupt slimebags. Kill a few, and the rest scatter, awaiting future opportunity.
Longfisher , says: August 24, 2018 at 6:18 pm GMTMr. Buchanan somehow manages to make it through the entire article without reminding us that, in fact, the GOP did impeach a president over a blowjob–what goes around, comes around. And while I doubt that Pat is among his fans, Bill Clinton at the time was a good deal more popular than Trump is now.
Which brings us to something basic: Democrats and liberals in general have jumped the shark for everyone to see, they're stark raving mad. Granted, the GOP is not exactly Trump's party, but in an environment where Republicans face no substantial opposition, Trump could potentially do something for his voters and there would be no possibility of a blue wave.
Instead, he's embarked on a massively ambitious nation-building project in northeast Syria and is otherwise scouring the globe for new wars to start, while mostly catering to his rich friends at home. And Israel, Israel, Israel all the time.
What has he done that's actually useful? Ditching TTIP? OK let's grant him that one. Meeting Kim? Mayyybe, but at the same time he chose to appoint Bolton and Pompeo who are predictably sabotaging the Singapore understanding. Meanwhile, American finances are going off the cliff at an ever-accelerating pace.
All of which is the perfect mirror image of an equally true statement: if Obama hadn't been such a lousy president (which his supporters are in denial about), a known charlatan like Trump would've never had a shot at the office.
For an outsider, the sentimental attachment of this supposedly forward-looking country to its two officially allowed parties which haven't served their stated purpose for decades already is a curious thing to behold.
Corvinus , says: August 24, 2018 at 10:37 pm GMTAlthough I lean conservative, I despair for my country. If Trump's election "unauthorized by the real powers that be" proves to be the match that sets alight the country then we're all in for a form of Hell that few of us have seen.
I sense that it's coming. So, I despair.
@Stick"Well, this would constitute a real civil war."
Note that someone whose supposed level of intimacy with violence is someone who would not know the first thing to do if war actually broke out. Exactly why you, the armchair warrior, who waits with bated breath to jackboot your "enemies", will be staying at home rather than being on the front lines, just like yourself, dear.
Now, onto Patrick's post.
"Michael Cohen is no Roy Cohn."
Patrick is partially right. They are both Jewish, and they both engaged in illegal activity, but one was a closet homosexual.
"But paying girlfriends to keep past indiscretions private is neither a crime nor a campaign violation "
Obviously if that was the case, Cohen would not have pled guilty. And clearly Patrick has not been keeping up with the Mueller investigation on this particular development.
"Cohen claims he and Trump thus conspired to violate federal law."
No, Cohen is offering to corroborate the evidence collected by prosecutors as to what constitutes illegal activities.
"No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival."
Well, we know for a fact that if Shitlery or Obama was in the SAME SITUATION, Patrick would NOT be advocating this course of action. Rather, he would call for either of them to step aside.
"Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had resigned. Twenty-six months after the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails, Mueller has yet to deliver hard evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Putin's Russia, though this was his mandate."
The Mueller investigation is a sore spot for Buchanan, who had to endure an eerily similar experience with Nixon. So it is other than surprising that Buchanan is defending Trump. Patrick ought to know better here, as Mueller is carefully gathering evidence from one of the most complex cases in our nation's political history.
Justice in this instance has no time table. Mueller is under no obligation to show his cards, that is not how prosecutions work.
Aug 02, 2018 | www.youtube.com
Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate clients after Mr. Trump went to the White House, according to people familiar with the probe .
Investigators are also examining potential campaign-finance violations and bank fraud surrounding, among other deals, Mr. Cohen's October 2016 payment to Stephanie Clifford , the former adult-film star called Stormy Daniels, to keep her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the probe. Mr. Trump denies any encounter took place. - WSJ
Jul 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:26 52 SHARES
The attorney for President Trump's former longtime personal attorney has given CNN a copy of a secretly recorded conversation between Trump and Cohen, in which they discuss purchasing the rights to a Playboy model's claim that she and Trump had an affair.
McDougal, claims to have had a nearly yearlong affair with Trump in 2006, right before Melania Trump gave birth to their son Barron. McDougal sold her story to the National Enquirer for $150,000 as the 2016 presidential campaign was in its final months, however the tabloid sat on the story which kept it from becoming public in a practice known as "catch and kill."
Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer.
"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker.
Trump interrupts Cohen asking, "What financing?" according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, "We'll have to pay." Trump is heard saying "pay with cash" but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, "no, no" but it is not clear what is said next. - CNN
The Enquirer's chairman, David J. Pecker, is a personal friend of Trump's, and McDougal has accused Cohen of taking part in the deal.
By burying Ms. McDougal's story during the campaign in a practice known in the tabloid industry as "catch and kill," A.M.I. protected Mr. Trump from negative publicity that could have harmed his election chances, spending money to do so.
The authorities believe that the company was not always operating in what campaign finance law calls a "legitimate press function," according to the people briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. That may explain why prosecutors did not follow typical Justice Department protocol to avoid subpoenaing news organizations when possible, and to give journalists advance warning when demanding documents or other information. - New York Times
While Trump never paid for the rights, Lanny Davis says that the recording, made in 2016, shows Trump knew about the payment.
On Saturday, President Trump broke his silence over the recording, tweeting: "Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer's office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!" Trump tweeted.
The release of the tape has sparked a widespread debate about the sanctity of attorney-client privilege, and its use in "one-party" consent states.
Meanwhile, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed with the New York Times last week that Trump and Cohen had discussed payments - and that " there was no indication on the tape that Mr. Trump knew before the conversation about the payment from the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., to Ms. McDougal ."
" Nothing in that conversation suggests that he had any knowledge of it in advance ," said Giuliani, adding that Trump had previously told Cohen that if he were to make a payment related to the woman, to write a check instead of sending cash so that the transaction could be properly documented. "In the big scheme of things, it's powerful exculpatory evidence," Giuliani added.
Cohen made a similar payment of $130,000 to porn star and stripper Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Cohen said at the time "In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford."
Clifford - whose husband just filed for divorce , is suing Trump over a nondisclosure agreement so that she can "tell her story" (in the form of a book, we imagine), while she is also suing both Trump and Cohen for libel after Trump called her statements "fraud" over Twitter, while claiming that Clifford fabricated a story that she was threatened by a man after she went to journalists with the story of her affair.
Shortly before the 2016 election, former Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that McDougal's allegations were "totally untrue."
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TeamDepends Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:27 Permalink
vortmax -> TeamDepends Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:27 PermalinkPowder, aka Vanderbilt Jr., aka Anderson Cooper, approves this message.
Stan522 -> vortmax Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:29 PermalinkStill don't care tbh. He hasn't even shot anyone on Fifth Avenue yet. MAGA
johngaltfla -> Stan522 Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:30 PermalinkThey really HATE Trump, don't they.....
NoDebt -> johngaltfla Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:32 PermalinkFurther proof that Mueller's office leaks like a sieve. Now shut this shitshow circus down the day after election in November.
NoDebt -> NoDebt Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:34 Permalink"The Enquirer's chairman, David J. Pecker..."
Oh, come on. You're making that shit up. There's no fucking way that's his real name.
NoDebt -> NoDebt Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:38 PermalinkAnd, by the way, thank God we finally have a President who nails hot chicks. Clinton went after some real woofers. It was embarrassing.
Son of Loki -> NoDebt Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:40 PermalinkUh oh. This article just became the top-kick post on the site. Here we go. Off to the races again.
IridiumRebel -> Son of Loki Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:41 PermalinkHonestly, no one cares except the libtards and democrats if there is a difference. The men and women I know love Trump because, among other things, he is not limp-wristed like Bush and Obama were.
Americans care about jobs, immigrants and terrorists.
Son of Loki -> IridiumRebel Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:43 PermalinkUh oh! They have Trump on tape negotiating a contract for nothing illegal!
ebworthen -> IridiumRebel Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:08 PermalinkCNN ignores Uncle Joe Biden being "creepy" being women "uncomfortable" and the way he acts around kiddies:
monkeyshine -> IridiumRebel Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:11 PermalinkF.B.I. Witch Hunt > Attorney-Client Privilege Shattered > C.N.N. Propaganda mill
If that isn't a banana republic progression of events I don't know what is.
What's next, Trump's Pastor's church raided during Sunday service?
Little Barron taken in by Mueller for questioning?
LetThemEatRand -> monkeyshine Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:15 Permalink"pay with cash" probably is just a response to the word "financing". Just my guess of course, but from the dialogue it flows logically, as in Trump saying to himself "why finance it, just pay her cash". Doesn't necessarily mean pay with currency just means don't borrow the money. Besides, it doesn't matter much in this context since the lawyer said no, and there is no crime here unless he said "pay her with campaign contributions".
Clinton paid Paula Jones, what, $850,000? And he didn't even get the rights to the story.
Trump's negotiating genius on display lol.Sanity Bear -> IridiumRebel Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:18 Permalink"'pay with cash' probably is just a response to the word 'financing'."
I would say 99% probability that's what he meant. Lawyer: "we need to talk about financing" Trump: "pay with cash." He didn't mean a suitcase full of bills. He meant "just write a check." Anyone in business knows the terminology. Plus it's not even clear WTF they are talking about.
I have no love for Trump, in fact I think he's an asshole. But this is all so much ado about nothing.
Free This -> Sanity Bear Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:25 PermalinkI have to admit I'm confused as to why he should pay anything at all. Why not let the smoking hot model tell the world you scored with her? What's the downside here?
nmewn -> Son of Loki Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:48 PermalinkJust to get rid of it, people like to sue to settle, who knows though?
nmewn -> chunga Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:58 PermalinkSo this is the tape that Trump said he doesn't give a crap about the release of, outside of the larger question of EVERYONE'S RIGHT of lawyer-client privilege?
Well just damn, it must be a smoker that will finally lead to his impeachment ;-)
chunga -> nmewn Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:08 PermalinkWell yeah...but these days ya just roll with what they present, like..."past and former government officials who are in a position to know have confirmed that"...which invariably leads to, abuse of authority, presenting falsified/manufactured evidence to a court, withholding exculpatory evidence to a court, stolen classified documents after being fired, obstruction of justice, perjury...ya know, the normal regular things progs do to put their heads in the noose ;-)
nmewn -> chunga Tue, 07/24/2018 - 21:58 PermalinkIt was FBI that raided Cohen's office so I'll presume that's where this tape came from.
I'm not going to start sticking up for the maverick's lapses in fidelity, but holy crap, the FBI/DOJ have been blatantly weaponized against him and in charge of those outfits are....Sessions and Wray?
What the fuck?
chunga -> nmewn Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:08 PermalinkWell yeah...but these days ya just roll with what they present, like..."past and former government officials who are in a position to know have confirmed that"...which invariably leads to, abuse of authority, presenting falsified/manufactured evidence to a court, withholding exculpatory evidence to a court, stolen classified documents after being fired, obstruction of justice, perjury...ya know, the normal regular things progs do to put their heads in the noose ;-)
Never One Roach -> nmewn Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:38 PermalinkIt was FBI that raided Cohen's office so I'll presume that's where this tape came from.
I'm not going to start sticking up for the maverick's lapses in fidelity, but holy crap, the FBI/DOJ have been blatantly weaponized against him and in charge of those outfits are....Sessions and Wray?
What the fuck?
GeezerGeek -> MrAToZ Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:05 PermalinkTime to release all 589 pages of FISA docs
seek -> Stan522 Tue, 07/24/2018 - 22:03 PermalinkAt least DJT has shown generosity toward his, um, friends. What did JFK do to Marilyn? What did Teddy do to Mary Jo? LBJ had at least one mistress. What did Bill Clinton call the gal in the blue dress, wasn't it "that woman"? What did Obama call his wife, Michael if I recall correctly.
Poor Jimmy Carter. All he ever had was a killer rabbit. He may have been totally incompetent, but at least he was a decent guy while in office. Afterward, unfortunately, not so much.
Hate is an understatement.
Seriously, here we have :
- Broadcast of a recording that falls under attorney-client priviledge, which is specifically exempted from use by anyone, period
- recorded with single-party consent
- from records siezed by a surprise raid by the FBI of the standing president's attorney
- as part of an investigation predicated on evidence completely fabricated by the other party
- discovered by a special group tasked specifically keep privledged information from being passed on, by court order
- the investigation is still ongoing so presumably all evidence is sensitive
- leaked by special counsel
Any one of these is a federal felony. The people behind this are willing to break a lot of laws to make it happen. All to release a recording that on the face of it is regarding a legal activity (a forebearance contract.)
These people are desperate.
May 11, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
Donald Trump's sex life is nobody's business but his own. And maybe Melania's, if her Pre-Nuptial Agreement (PNA) stipulates that she can sue his fat ass for divorce and receive a huge percentage of his rumored wealth if he cheats on her, too often.Like the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) Trump's fixer, Michael Cohen, signed with porn star Stormy Daniels (who had a quickie with Trump in 2006), prenups and private goon squads are standard fare for people of wealth.
But is Trump wealthy? And if so, where did he get his cash?
Some people say he laundered about $400 million in drug money for the Israeli Mafia's Russian franchise back in the early 1990's, in exchange for everything he ever wanted. I don't know if that's a fact. That's what I hear. People say it. Maybe somebody like Robert Mueller should investigate?
Fox News says the president isn't mobbed up, that everyone in New York City has to work with the Mafia if they want a hotel constructed on time. And that could be true.
But what is Truth? It's impossible to tell anymore.
The Truth could be that either the Deep State or the Israeli Mafia is forcing Trump to do many terrible things he doesn't really want to do. Like deep-sixing the Iran deal. Somebody's fingerprints are all over that baby's behind. Maybe Michael Cohen knows? Somebody should ask him.
Trump is obviously a victim of either the Deep State or the Israeli Mafia and its American franchise. You choose. But consider this: On the same day Trump scrapped the Iran deal, someone said that Russian billionaire Victor Vekselberg (who just happens to be Putin's BFF) wired $500,000 into a bank account that hatchet man Cohen (who doubles as Trump's real estate broker) set up for the purpose of issuing the $130,000 hush payment to Stormy Daniels.
I don't know if that's true. Sean Hannity says it isn't true. Rudy Giuliani says it might be true, and that it doesn't matter even if it is True, because people of wealth often set up shell companies to hide their business dealings from the Public Eye, which is their right as people of wealth.
According to Giuliani, setting up shell companies is a trick people of wealth learned from either the Israeli Mafia or the CIA. Though it could be the other way around.
Another one of Trump's prerogatives as a person of wealth is the right to charge people money to play with him. Trump's business consultant, Michael Cohen (who may work for the Israeli Mafia, I don't know), funnels such "pay to play" money into the same bank accounts he, Cohen, uses to pay off the women Trump has casual and unsatisfactory (for them ) sex with.
BTW, I forgot to mention it, but Vekselberg's cousin, American citizen Andrew Intrater, donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration fund.
Rhetorical question: What could somebody do with $250,000? Answer: pay off two prostitutes!
Somebody in the Deep State (which, according to Hannity, is the code name for the Justice Department) knows about this, but let's it happen, because Trump is, after all, a person of wealth with certain rights to privacy.
... ... ...
Stormy, who whipped Trump's fat ass with a copy of Trump Magazine back in 2006, is an eyewitness to The Thing. When asked by Penthouse to compare his penis size to "his fingers," Daniels said, "I don't want to shame anybody."
... ... ...
May 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
XXX -> IntercoursetheEU Fri, 05/04/2018 - 11:43 Permalink
Attention Hookers : Special Counsel urgently needs your stories. We pay top dollar. Big tits, role-play, and lying required. Television experience preferred. No drug screening. No background check. Transportation included.Call 1-800-George-Soros or contact the Law Offices of Wray, Mueller, and Rosenstein, LLC.
Apr 30, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Stormy Daniels' legal team - led by lawyer Michael Avenatti - must be getting bored since a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered a 90-day delay of her lawsuit against President Trump and his former personal attorney Mike Cohen (who has promised to plead the fifth during the proceedings). Because Stormy has filed another defamation lawsuit, this time exclusively against President Trump, as Reuters reports.
The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in New York on Monday, seeks damages from Trump for a tweet he sent earlier this month where he criticized a composite sketch that, Daniels said, depicted a man who had threatened her in 2011. He reportedly demanded that she stay quiet about her sexual encounter with Trump. That would've been around the time she gave an interview about her affair with Trump to In Touch magazine which wasn't published until recently.Her previous lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, sought to have her released from an NDA she signed shortly before the 2016 vote where she also accepted a $130,000 "hush money" payment from Cohen.
"A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!," Trump said.
According to the filing, cited by the Associate Press and Reuters, the tweet was "false and defamatory" arguing that Trump knew what he was saying out Daniels' claim was false and also disparaging.
The lawsuit also claims Daniels has been exposed to death threats and other threats of "physical violence."
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages.
"We intend on teaching Mr. Trump that you cannot simply make things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences," Avenatti said.
As the Associated Press points out, Daniels, aided by Avenatti, has sought to keep her case in the public eye. She revealed the sketch that Trump mocked during an appearance on the View earlier this month. Trump is facing another defamation lawsuit in New York, this one filed by Summer Zervos, a former "The Apprentice" contestant who says Trump made unwanted sexual contact with her in 2007. She sued him after Trump dismissed her claims. 0
Slippery Slope -> JimmyJones Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:23 Permalink
bobbbny -> Bitchface-KILLAH Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:24 PermalinkWhen does her 15 minutes end?
beepbop -> bobbbny Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:25 PermalinkJust like herpes she won't go away.
TheWholeYearInn -> beepbop Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:29 PermalinkThe LAWSUITS will keep on coming
until Trump agrees to Satanyahoo's ULTIMATUM
of destroying SYRIA and IRAN.
Ghost of Porky -> TheWholeYearInn Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:33 Permalink" Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut. "
~Komarovsky
Shitonya Serfs -> Ghost of Porky Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:34 PermalinkStormy's parents are Trump supporters and Stormy hates them.
This is all a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Bitchface-KILLAH -> Stan522 Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:27 Permalink"you cannot simply make things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences"
#MeToo
tmosley Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:22 PermalinkMonica Lewinsky... good family, intern... major credibility problems according to MSM.
Stormy Daniels... washed up porno actress... MSM "sure we'll roll with that"
ZH FNG Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:26 PermalinkShe literally sketched her old boyfriend.
That will happen when you are describing what someone who doesn't exist looks like. You picture someone you know and make them look like that.
jmack Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:26 PermalinkOn an earlier Stormy story, someone posted these words of wisdom about intimacy:
A gentleman never talks,
And a whore never shuts up.
sister tika Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:31 Permalink"We intend on teaching Mr. Trump that you cannot simply make things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences," Avenatti said.
oh the irony.
Mzhen Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:31 PermalinkThis cow makes me nauseous. She's a pathetic, has-been punch whose only motivation is (more) money.
Fox-Scully Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:28 PermalinkCommunication purportedly from Stormy to a friend, where she again denied the sex ever happened.
Stevious Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:34 Permalink"We intend on teaching THE PRESS that you cannot simply make things up about someone and disseminate them without serious consequences," Avenatti said.
Now it is correct.
JoeTurner Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:39 PermalinkTo prove damages under defamation first someone must believe the defamatory content and second, more importantly, damage must have been done.
Damage what, to the reputation of a stripper?
wally_12 Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:40 PermalinkWho's paying this filthy whore ? Where are the "journalists" to follow the money ?
NYC80 Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:47 PermalinkSold out performance at the strip club in Detroit. Trying to squeeze out as much as possible before her boobs and butt sag lower.
Hikikomori Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:49 PermalinkIt has to be really, really hard to defame a porn star.
SmittyinLA Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:55 PermalinkInteresting that the Great White Hope of the Democrats in 2018 is a blackmailing prostitute. On the other hand, probably better than Hillary....
Al Huxley Mon, 04/30/2018 - 14:56 PermalinkDamages? What damages? Her income has no doubt spiked.
No case, no damages, nobody givesashit.
That's why they're called gold digging whores.
Apr 13, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
So what of these charges against Cohen and could they really hurt the president?
Federal election laws define a campaign contribution as "anything of value given to influence a Federal election." It is common knowledge that Mr. Cohen acknowledged that he paid porn star "Stormy Daniels" $130,000 two weeks before the 2016 election in exchange for her staying silent about her 2006 affair with Trump. No one pays for silence unless there is something to hide. The payment was made 10 years after the alleged dalliance.
The obvious purpose was to influence the outcome of the election by concealing damaging information about Mr. Trump's character. That made Mr. Cohen's payment an undisclosed campaign "contribution" to Mr. Trump vastly exceeding the individual statutory limit of $2,700.
Similarly, Democrat John Edwards was prosecuted (later acquitted) for soliciting and spending nearly $1 million in his 2008 presidential campaign to conceal his affair with Rielle Hunter, so this is not a crime normally brushed under the rug. The public record also establishes probable cause to believe Cohen was behind the payment of $150,000 to Playboy Bunny Karen McDougall to kill her story about a protracted extramarital relationship with Mr. Trump that could have torpedoed his presidential ambitions. The question remains, of course, how much this will implicate and hurt Trump, who has denied the affair with Daniels and any other "wrongdoing." Cohen said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed by Trump or the campaign.
John Edwards was acquited on one charge and a mistrial on five others w/o retrial. So there was no conviction there, these actions are not business as usual, and the DOJ lesson from that case should have been to cease such abusive prosecutorial misconduct, not to repeat it. These examples show why campaign finance restrictions are an unconstitutional burden on freedom of association. Trump is a rich man, so could afford to pay the hush money if he believed it necessary without it being a crime. As it appears, Cohen believed it important to pay w/o asking Trump, thinking he's helping a friend. Now what of Edwards? Maybe Edwards couldn't afford to pay hush money, so he needed and solicited help from friends. By making it a crime for friends to help him, the law favors rich candidates like Trump that can afford to do things others can't without breaking the law.curri , says: April 13, 2018 at 2:05 pmThere is zero chance of a jury conviction here, so DOJ shouldn't have pursued it given the incendiary effect of conducting raids on someone's attorney. Furthermore, there's zero chance of Muller getting jury convictions on the pile of horse manure prosecutions he's pursuing. The only convictions Muller is getting is from people buckling under the fiduciary extortion inherent in his tactics and copping a plea even though a jury would never convict them.
So who do we believe, Dershowitz or Fein?Similarly, Democrat John Edwards was prosecuted for soliciting and spending nearly $1 million in his 2008 presidential campaign to conceal his affair with Rielle Hunter, so this is not a crime normally brushed under the rug.
Maybe you should have picked an example where the defendant wasn't acquitted. It's easy to see how an expansive definition of the term "campaign contribution" could be dangerous.
Apr 11, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Piotr Berman | Apr 11, 2018 10:28:34 AM | 76
Re: the fate of Trump.
History repeats itself. An investigation motivated by some alleged abuse deploys drift nets, finds nothing so it changes the focus to the sexual history of the target. Hush money for consensual sex is legal as far as I know -- I do not know the law, but it became known and studiously ignored by the special prosecutor. So he tries to discover any possible past deal that is somehow illegal, and recorded as illegal? A bit of a fat chance.
Apr 10, 2018 | www.washingtonpost.com
Federal prosecutors investigating President Trump's personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, are seeking records related to two women who received payments in 2016 after alleging affairs with Trump years ago -- adult-film star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The interest in both Daniels and McDougal indicates that federal investigators are trying to determine whether there was a broader pattern or strategy among Trump associates to buy the silence of women whose accounts could harm the president's electoral chances and whether any crimes were committed in doing so, the person said.
... ... ...
The high stakes of the case were underscored by the involvement of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who personally approved the move to seek a search warrant for Cohen's records, which included raids Monday on his home and office, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.
Rosenstein's role has infuriated Trump, who was left "stunned" and "livid" by the aggressive move by prosecutors Monday, according to an outside adviser in frequent touch with the White House.
Cohen, Trump's longtime attorney, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Apr 01, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
There is no doubt about it: Stormy Daniels is a formidable woman. Karen McDougal is no slouch either, though she is hard to admire after that riff, in her Anderson Cooper interview, about how religious and Republican she is; she even said that she used to love the Donald. Stormy Daniels is better than that.
How wonderfully appropriate it would be if she were to become the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.
Even in a world as topsy-turvy as ours has become, there has to be a final straw.
To be sure, evidence of Trump's vileness, incompetence, and mental instability is accumulating at breakneck speed, and there are polls now that show support for him holding fast or even slightly rising. Trump's hardcore "base" seems more determined than ever to stand by their man.
But even people as benighted as they are bound to realize eventually that they have been had. Many of them already do, but don't care; they hate Clinton Democrats that much. This is understandable, but foolish; so foolish, in fact, that they can hardly keep it up indefinitely.
To think otherwise is to despair for the human race.
What, if anything, can bring them to their senses in time for the 2018 election?
Stormy Daniels says she only wants to tell her story, not bring Trump down. But her political instincts seem decent, and she is one shrewd lady. Therefore, I would not be the least surprised if that is not quite true. It hardly matters, though, what her intentions are; I'd put my money on her.
A recession might also do the trick. A recession is long overdue, and Trump's tax cut for the rich and his tariffs are sure to make its consequences worse when it happens.
To turn significant portions of Trump's base against him, a major military conflagration might also do -- not the kind Barack Obama favored, fought far away and out of public view, but a real war, televised on CNN, and waged against an enemy state like North Korea or Iran. It would have to go quickly and disastrously wrong, though, in ways that even willfully blind, terminally obtuse Trump supporters could not fail to see.
Or the gods could smile upon us, causing Trump's exercise regimen (sitting in golf carts) and his fat-ridden, cholesterol rich diet to catch up with him, as it would with most other sedentary septuagenarians. The only downside would be that a heart attack or stroke might elicit sympathy for the poor bastard. No sane person could or should hope for a calamitous economic downturn or for yet another devastating, pointless, and manifestly unjust war, especially one that could become a war to end all wars (along with everything else), on the off-chance that some good might come of it. And if the best we can do is hope that cheeseburgers with fries will save us, we are grasping at straws.
These are compelling reasons to hope that the accusations made by Daniels and McDougal and Summer Zervos – and other consensual and non-consensual Trump victims and "playmates" – gain traction. If the several defamation lawsuits now in the works can get the president deposed, this is not out of the question.
The problem for Trump is not that his accusers' revelations will cause his base to defect; no matter how salacious their stories and no matter how believable they may be. Trump's moral turpitude is taken for granted in their circles; and they do not care about the myriad ways his words and deeds offend the dignity of the office he holds or embarrass the country he purports to put "first." If any of that mattered to them, they would have jumped ship long ago.
Except perhaps for unreconstructed racists and certifiable sociopaths, white evangelicals are Trump's strongest supporters. What a despicable bunch of hypocrites they are! As long as Trump delivers on their agendas, his salacious escapades don't faze them at all. Godly folk have evidently changed a good deal since the Cotton Mather days.
What has not changed is their seemingly limitless ability to believe nonsense.
And in case light somehow does manage to shine through, Trump has shown them how to restore the darkness they crave. When cognitive dissonance threatens, all they need do is scream "fake news."
The problem for Trump is that what his accusers are saying puts him in legal and political jeopardy. They are claiming, in effect, that he has committed a variety of unlawful and impeachable offenses – from obstruction of justice to violations of campaign finance laws.
In this case as in so many others, it is the cover-up, not the underlying "crime," that could lead to his undoing – especially if the stories Daniels and the others are telling shed light upon or otherwise connect with or meld into Robert Mueller's investigation of (alleged) Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election.
Trump could and probably will survive their charges. His base is such a preternaturally obdurate lot that there may ultimately be no last straw for them. We may have no choice, in the end, but to despair for a sizeable chunk of the human race.
Stormy Daniels would not be any less admirable on that account. She took Trump on and came out on top. For all the world (minus the willfully blind) to see, she, the porn star, is a strong woman who has her life together, while he, the president, is a discombobulated sleaze ball who is leading himself and his country to ruin.
***
It was different with Monica Lewinsky, another presidential paramour who, almost two decades ago, also held the world's attention.
There was nothing sleazy or venal about Lewinsky's involvement with Bill Clinton; and, for all I know, unless chastity counts, she is as good and virtuous a person as can be. But personal qualities are not what made her affair with our forty-second president as historically significant as it turned out to be.
It would be fair to say that of all the women who have ever had intimate knowledge of that old horn dog's private parts, there is no one who did more good for her country. If only for that, if there were a heaven, there would be special place in it just for her.
The Clinton-Lewinsky dalliance led to a series of events that prevented Clinton from doing even more harm to our feeble welfare state institutions than he would otherwise have done.
Who knows how much progress he would have turned back had he and Monica never done the deed or at least not been found out. Building on groundwork laid down by Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, he and his wife had already terminated Aid to Families With Dependent Children, one of the main government programs aimed at relieving poverty. This was to be just the first step in "ending welfare as we know it."
With their "donors" pushing for more austerity, those two neoliberal pioneers were itching to begin privatizing other, more widely supported social programs, including even Social Security, the so-called "third rail" of American politics.
The "Lewinsky matter" put the kybosh on that idea, leaving the American people forever in Monica's debt.
Back in the Kennedy days, Mel Brook's two-thousand year old man got it right when he said: presidents "gotta do it," to which he added – " because if they don't do it to their wives and girlfriends, they do it to the nation."
Stormy Daniels made much the same point ten years ago, while flirting with the idea of running against Louisiana Senator David Vitter. Vitter's political career had been almost ruined when his name turned up in the phone records of the infamous "DC Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Daniels told voters that, unlike Vitter, she would "screw (them) honestly."
What then are we to make of the fact that Trump screws both the nation and his wife (maybe) and his girlfriends (or whatever they are)?
Blame it on arrested development, on the fact that despite his more than seventy-one years, Trump still has the mind of a teenage boy, one with money and power enough to live out his fantasies.
The contrast with Bill Clinton is stark. Clinton is a philanderer with eclectic tastes, a charming rascal with a broad and mischievous mind. Honkytonk women from Arkansas appeal to him as much as zaftig MOTs from the 90210 area code.
Trump, on the other hand, goes for super-models, Playboy centerfolds, and aspiring beauty queens -- standard teenage fantasy fare.
He seems to have had little trouble living his dreams – not thanks to his magnetic face, form and figure, and certainly not to his refinement, wit or charm, but to his inherited and otherwise ill-gotten wealth.
It is money and the power that follows from it that draws women to his net.
Henry Kissinger understood; recall his musings on the aphrodisiacal properties of power. Even in his prime, that still unindicted war criminal (and later-day Hillary Clinton advisor) was even more repellent than Trump. But that never kept him from having to fight the ladies off.
This fact of life puts a heavy responsibility on the women with whom presidents hook up.
Consider Melania. She made a Faustian bargain when she agreed to become Trump's trophy bride; in return for riches and a soft life in a gilded tower, she sold her soul. She might have thought better of it had she taken the burdens she would incur as First Lady into account, but why would she? The prospect was too improbable.
She has, it seems, a very practical, old world view of marriage, and is therefore tolerant of her husband's womanizing. At the same time, as a mother and daughter, she is, like most immigrants, a strong proponent of old world "family values."
Too much of a proponent perhaps; insofar as her idea was to "chain migrate" her parents out of Slovenia and onto Easy Street, or to raise a kid who would never want for anything, there were less onerous ways of going about it. After all, there are plenty of rich Americans lusting after supermodels out there, and it is a good bet that many of them are less repellent than Trump.
She was irresponsible as well. She ought to have realized that the man she married had already spawned two idiot sons, along with other fruit from the poisonous tree, and that four bad apples in one generation are enough.
And so now she finds herself a single mother – not in theory, of course, but very definitely in practice. Unlike most women in that position, she is not wanting for resources. But it must be a hard slog, even so. To her credit, Melania seems to be handling the burden well. More power to her!
She also deserves credit for her body language when the Donald is around; the contempt she shows for him is wonderful to behold. Best of all is her sense of the absurd. The way she plagiarized from Michelle Obama had obvious comic validity, and making childhood bullying her First Lady cause – all First Ladies have causes -- was a stroke of genius.
On balance, therefore, it is hard not to feel sorry for her. Of all the women in Trump's ambit, she deserves humiliation the least.
The rumor mill has it that with all the publicity about Daniels and the others , she has finally had enough. This may be the case; the old world ethos requires discretion and a concern with appearances. That is not the Donald's way, however, and now she is paying the price.
What a magnificent humiliation it would be if she and Trump were to split up on that account. This could happen soon. I would expect, though, that through a combination of carrots and sticks, Trump and his fixers will find a way to minimize the political effects. More likely still, they will channel Joe Kennedy and Jackie O, and figure out a way to head the problem off.
Then there is poor forgotten Tiffany. Her Wikipedia entry lists her as both a law student and a "socialite." I hope her studious side wins out and that, despite the genes from her father's side, she is at least somewhat decent and smart.
I'd be more confident of that if she would do what Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti, did: use her mother's, not her father's, name. Unless she is a sleaze ball too, a Trump in the Eric and Don Junior mold, that would be a fine way to make a political point.
It would also pay back over the years. With the Trump administration on its current trajectory, who, in a few years' time, would take a Tiffany Trump seriously? A Tiffany Maples would stand a better chance.
Her half-sister, the peerless Ivanka, the Great Blonde Hope, is, of course, her father's sweetie. Let's not go there, however. Her marriage to Jared Kushner is already enough to process.
What a pair those two make; and what a glorious day it will be when the law finally catches up with Jared, as it did with his Trump-like father, Charles. Perhaps he will take Ivanka down a notch or two with him. Despite an almost complete lack of qualifications, Trump made his son-in-law his minister of almost everything; a pretty good gig for a feckless, airhead rich kid. Among other things, Trump enabled him to become Benjamin Netanyahu's ace in the hole. Netanyahu is a Kushner family friend. Netanyahu has more than his share of legal troubles too. Let them all go down together!
Ivanka and Jared are well matched – they share a "business model." It has them exploiting their daddies' connections and money.
Jared peddles real estate; his efforts have gotten his family into serious debt, while putting him in solid with Russian and Eastern European oligarchs, Gulf state emirs, and Mohammad bin Salman – people in comparison with whom his father-in-law seems almost virtuous.
Ivanka sells trinkets and schmatas to people who think the Trump name is cool. There actually are such people; at two hundred grand a pop, Mar-a-Lago is full of them. Ivanka's demographic is made up mostly of their younger set.
Two other presidential women bare mention: Hope Hicks and Nikki Haley. Surely, they both have tales to tell, but it looks, for now, as if their stories would be of little or no prurient interest. Neither of them appear to have been propositioned or groped.
Even though Hicks is said to be like a daughter to the Donald – we know what that could mean! – it is a safe bet that there was nothing of a romantic nature going on between them. For one thing, Hicks seems too close to Ivanka; for another, she is known to have dallied with two Trump subordinates, Corey Lewandowski and Rob Porter. The don is hardly the type to let his underlings have at his women.
Haley had to quash a spate of rumors that flared up thanks to some suggestive remarks Michael Wolff made while hawking Fire and Fury . The rumor caught on because people who hadn't yet fully realized what a piece of work Trump is, imagined that something had to be awry inasmuch as her main qualification for representing the United States at the United Nations was an undergraduate degree in accounting. Abject servility to the Israel lobby also helped.
But the Trump administration is full of ambitious miscreants whose views on Israel and Palestine are as abject and servile as hers, and compared to many others in Trump's cabinet she is, if anything, over qualified. Think of neurosurgeon Ben Carson heading the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is qualified because, as a child, he lived in public housing.
With the exception of Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, Summer Zervos and whoever else comes forward with a juicy and credible tale to tell, the women currently in the president's ambit, though good for gossip and interesting in the ways that characters on reality TV shows can be, are of little or no political consequence.
This could change if any of them decides to "go rogue," to use an expression from the Sarah Palin days. But, while neither Melania nor Tiffany can yet be judged hopeless, it would be foolish to expect much of anything good to come from either of them.
Stormy, Karen, Summer, and whoever else steps forward are a better bet. They are the only ones with any chance of doing as much for their country and the world as Monica Lewinsky did a generation ago.
Among the president's women, they are a breed apart. This is plainly the case with Stormy Daniels; it is already clear that she deserves what all Trump's money can never buy – honor and esteem. To the extent that the others turn out to be similarly courageous, they will too.
Mar 28, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
As the porn star's allegations show, discourse in Washington is shifting to something more tawdry and celebrity-oriented
... The idea of a porn star appearing on network television to share details of a sexual encounter with the US commander in chief would have been intellectually confounding at any other moment in time. Instead, the interview, which took place only few days after a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal , talked about her affair with Trump, seemed a part of the everyday political landscape in 2018.
... Trump may seem like an aberration but instead he may be an inflection point. It's possible that after over two centuries of presidential campaigns with governors, senators and the occasional general, American politics is shifting to something more tawdry and more celebrity-oriented. The often spoken and rarely met ideal in the United States is that political debates should be about issues. But, after a political campaign where candidates debated penis size on a debate stage, it may be the legacy of Trump that politics has permanently descended to locker-room talk.
Mar 27, 2018 | www.wsws.org
The "60 Minutes" broadcast on Sunday night, devoted to rehashing allegations of sexual impropriety and bullying against Donald Trump, marked a new level of degradation for the US political system. For nearly half an hour, an audience of 23 million people tuned in to a discussion of a brief sexual encounter between Trump and adult film star Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) in 2006.
Trump was then a near-bankrupt real estate and casino mogul, best known for reinventing himself as a television personality. By her account, the proffer of a possible guest appearance on Celebrity Apprentice was the only attraction the 60-year-old Trump had for Daniels, then 27. Trump made promises, but as usual did not deliver.
Earlier in the week, the same interviewer, Anderson Cooper, appearing on CNN instead of CBS, held an hour-long discussion with Karen McDougal, a former Playboy magazine centerfold, who described a year-long relationship with Trump, also in 2006, the year after his marriage to Melania Knauss.
White House officials flatly denied both accounts, but Trump himself has been conspicuously and unusually silent, even on Twitter. His lawyers filed papers with a Los Angeles court, in advance of the "60 Minutes" broadcast, claiming that Daniels was in violation of a confidentiality agreement and could be liable for damages of up to $20 million.
Last Tuesday, a New York state judge turned down a motion by lawyers acting for Trump and refused to dismiss the lawsuit for defamation brought against him by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on another Trump "reality" show, The Apprentice . One of nearly a dozen women who made public charges of sexual harassment against Trump during the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Zervos alone has sued Trump over his repeated public claims that the women were all liars.
There is little doubt that the accounts by Zervos, McDougal and Daniels are substantially true. Trump has already demonstrated this by attempting to suppress their stories, either through legal action or by purchasing their silence, directly or indirectly. A Trump ally, David Pecker, owner of the National Enquirer tabloid, bought the rights to McDougal's account of her relationship with Trump in 2016 for $150,000, in order not to publish it. Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, admitted last month that he had paid $130,000 to Daniels in October 2016, only weeks before the election, to guarantee her silence.
The bullying tactics of Cohen and other Trump allies add credibility to the claim by Daniels, during her "60 Minutes" interview, that a thug, presumably sent by Cohen, had threatened her with violence in 2011, when she first sought to sell her story about Trump to the media. Daniels offered no evidence to back her claim, but her attorney Michael Avenatti dropped broad hints that Daniels would be able to corroborate much of her account.
Cohen may himself face some legal jeopardy due to his public declaration that he paid Daniels out of his own funds. Given the proximity of the payment to the election, this could well be construed as a cash contribution to the Trump campaign far beyond the $3,500 legal limit for an individual.
The Zervos suit, however, may present the most immediate legal threat, since the next step, after New York Supreme Court Justice Jennifer G. Schecter rejected Trump's claim that he has presidential immunity, is to take discovery. In other words, Trump and his closest aides could be required to give sworn depositions about his actions in relation to Zervos and many of the other women.
Justice Schecter cited the precedent of the Paula Jones case against President Bill Clinton, in which the US Supreme Court held that a US president had no immunity from lawsuits over his private actions. While cloaked in democratic rhetoric at the time ("No one is above the law"), that decision actually gave a green light to an anti-democratic conspiracy by ultra-right forces who used the Jones lawsuit to trap Clinton into lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Unlike the 1998-1999 conflict over impeachment, there is no issue of democratic rights involved in the sexual allegations against Trump. Some of the same legal tactics (using sworn depositions to set a perjury trap), are being employed as weapons in an increasingly bitter conflict within the US ruling elite, in which both factions are equally reactionary.
Trump is a representative of the underworld of real estate, casino gambling and reality television, elevated to the presidency because he had the good fortune to run against a deeply unpopular and reactionary shill for Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies, Hillary Clinton. Under conditions of mounting discontent among working people with the Democratic Party, after eight years of the Obama administration, Trump was able to eke out a narrow victory in the Electoral College.
The Democratic "opposition" to Trump is focused not on his vicious attacks on immigrants, his promotion of racist and neo-fascist elements, his deregulation of business and passage of the biggest tax cut for the wealthy in decades, or his increasingly violent and unhinged foreign policy pronouncements. The Democrats have sought to attack Trump from the right, particularly on the question of US-Russian relations, making use of the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections, headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Trump has sought to mollify his critics within the US national security establishment with measures such as a more aggressive US intervention in Syria, the elevation of Gina Haspel, the CIA's chief torturer, to head the agency, and, most recently, the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats as part a NATO-wide campaign aimed at whipping up a war fever against Moscow.
As Trump has made concessions on foreign policy, his opponents have shifted their ground, attacking his behavior towards women. They have sought to link these exposures with the broader #MeToo campaign, which is aimed at creating a witch-hunt atmosphere in Hollywood, the US political system, and more generally throughout American society, in which gender issues are brought forward to conceal and suppress more fundamental class questions.
In both the Russia investigation and now the allegations of sexual misconduct, the Democrats have sought to hide their real political agenda, which is just as reactionary and dangerous as that of Trump and the Republicans. While Trump is pushing towards war with North Korea or Iran, and behind them China, the Democrats and their allies in the national security apparatus seek to maintain the focus on Russia that was developed during the second term of the Obama administration, particularly in Syria, Ukraine and Eastern Europe as a whole, posing the danger of a war between the world's two main nuclear powers.
Beyond the immediate foreign policy issues, the whipping up of sexual scandals is invariably a hallmark of reactionary politics. Such methods appeal to social backwardness, Puritanical prejudices or prurient interest. They contribute nothing to the political education of working people and youth, who must come to understand the fundamental class forces underlying all political phenomena. The political basis for a struggle against Trump is not in designating him as a sexual predator, but in understanding his class role as a front man for the American financial oligarchy, which treats the entire working class, including the female half, as objects of exploitation.
Jan 29, 2018 | nypost.com
First lady Melania Trump was reportedly "furious" after the news broke about President Trump's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sources close to the couple told the New York Times that Melania was "blindsided" by the reports of her husband's supposed cover-up -- which included $130,000 in hush money, paid out to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.
She has been trying to stay out of the public eye ever since, the sources said.
Trump's alleged tryst with Daniels, if true, would have taken place just months after Melania gave birth to their son, Barron, in March 2006.
It was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 18. In Touch magazine published a follow-up piece a day later, featuring an interview with the porn vixen from 2011, in which she confessed to the hookup.
Since then, Melania has canceled an overseas trip with the president, made an unplanned visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and even enjoyed some R&R at Mar-a-Lago.
The first lady was reportedly in Florida on Friday while Trump was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. The impromptu stop in the Sunshine State wound up costing taxpayers about $64,000, according to the Times.
see alsoTeam Trump paid porn star $130K to keep quiet about extramarital affair A lawyer for Donald Trump arranged to fork over $130,000... Melania has said very little in the days following the WSJ article.
Her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, blasted the affair allegations, saying, "The laundry list of salacious & flat-out false reporting about Mrs. Trump by tabloid publications & TV shows has seeped into 'main stream media' reporting She is focused on her family & role as FLOTUS -- not the unrealistic scenarios being peddled daily by the fake news."
The first lady is expected to reappear alongside her husband Tuesday during his State of the Union address.
"That is the plan," Grisham said.
Feb 07, 2018 | www.inquisitr.com
Thanks to Barron Trump his parents are not heading for divorce just yet.
When the news broke that U.S. President Donald Trump had an affair with adult star Stormy Daniels, many people assumed that his wife, first lady Melania Trump was going to divorce him. The FLOTUS has been noticed for allegedly refusing to hold her husband's hand in public. Others also spotted her rolling her eyes while the POTUS was greeting a few cheerleaders during the Super Bowl party on February 4. However, the Slovenia native is far from divorcing her husband of 13 years while he is still in the presidential seat for a good reason.
An insider close to Melania Trump recently told Hollywood Life that she is not thinking about making a move to divorce her husband while he is in office because of their son Barron .
According to the source, the 47-year-old former model wants to focus only on the young boy and his well-being. She doesn't want to get distracted with the alleged affair between the POTUS and Stormy Daniels. She apparently wants her family intact for the sake of her 11-year-old son.
... ... ...
Because of her recent actions that didn't go unnoticed, many people believe that Melania Trump is only trying to save her marriage for her son and not just because of being the first lady of the United States. The alleged extramarital affair of her husband and Daniels in 2006 may have caused their marriage to hit a snag. The adult star, though, has been inconsistent with her statements, which is one reason that some Republicans are not convinced that the president had an affair with the 38-year-old Louisiana native.An alleged statement from Daniels surfaced on January 30 with her signature, saying that she denies the affair. Howbeit, during her interview during Jimmy Kimmel Live , the adult film star said that she is not aware of the denial statement that surfaced earlier that day.
Mar 19, 2018 | www.washingtonpost.com
Michelle Obama had it all wrong. " When they go low, we go high " is no way to deal with Donald Trump.
A porn star, a playmate and a contestant who washed out on his reality TV show have become exemplars for doing battle with a president for whom practically nothing is out of bounds. They are showing that the most effective way to deal with him is on his own terms.
The three -- Stormy Daniels , Karen McDougal and Summer Zervos -- are suing for the right to tell their stories about him. The headaches and unforeseeable turns that these legal fights present would be well understood by a man who, according to a USA Today tally, has filed at least 3,500 lawsuits of his own, for grievances real and imagined. When Trump goes low, go low - The Washington Post
Adult entertainer Daniels has outmaneuvered the president and his inept lawyer Michael Cohen at nearly every turn. They apparently believed they had bought her silence about the year-long extramarital affair she claims to have had with the future president a decade ago.
But it turns out they had only rented it. When Trump goes low, go low - The Washington Post
When Daniels signed a nondisclosure agreement in the weeks before the 2016 election, hardly anyone thought Trump had much chance of winning, especially after the furor over comments he had made about women on the now-famous "Access Hollywood" tape . So $130,000 to stay quiet must have looked too good for Daniels to pass up. (Cohen said the money came from his personal home equity line of credit.)
With her alleged paramour in the Oval Office, however, there is surely much more to be gained from her account, so she is trying to slip free from the agreement on the technicality that Trump never signed it.
Backing out of a deal if there's a better one to be had? Trump did it for decades. "I've made a fortune by using debt, and if things don't work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that's a smart thing, not a stupid thing," he boasted to CBS during his presidential campaign. As president, he has reversed himself so many times that his befuddled allies on Capitol Hill are never sure where or if he will land on most issues.
Now, instead of Daniels, it is Trump who is remaining silent -- conspicuously so. No tweets, no vicious nicknames, no threats. She, meanwhile, is going on "60 Minutes," where viewership is likely to be some of its highest ever. Count that as another blow to a president who measures the import of every event by its television ratings.
Daniels seems to be having a great time. She has become a ninja master in Trump's own medium, smiting trolls on Twitter with a verve that my colleague Monica Hesse compared to "a very smart cat batting off a series of very dumb mice, who come at her under the delusion that the relationship is reversed." When one man tweeted that she was a "scank," she responded by correcting his spelling.
McDougal, who was Playboy's 1998 Playmate of the Year, claims to have had an affair with Trump around the same time as Daniels. But in her case, the arrangement that she is trying to escape is the one she made with the National Enquirer's parent company, whose chief executive, David Pecker, is close to Trump. In her lawsuit, McDougal claims American Media was working secretly with Cohen to keep her quiet; the company says it contacted Trump's lawyer only to vet her story.
A takedown by a former playmate would be a sour endnote indeed, given how assiduously Trump styled himself as Playboy's ideal of libidinous masculinity. In 1990, the magazine's cover featured the married real-estate developer posing with another playmate, Brandi Brandt. She wore only his tuxedo jacket.
When Trump goes low, go low - The Washington PostHe hung a framed copy of that Playboy in his Trump Tower office. "I was one of the few men in the history of Playboy to be on the cover," Trump once boasted to a Post reporter.
Zervos, a former contestant from "The Apprentice," presents a different kind of threat, and potentially the most serious one. She is one of more than a dozen women who have accused the president of unwanted sexual advances, in her case that he kissed her and groped her breasts when she met with him to discuss a job. During his presidential campaign, Trump called them all liars, and threatened to sue.
But Trump never did, empty threats being another of his favorite tactics. It was Zervos who went to court, charging defamation.
On Tuesday, the same day McDougal filed her lawsuit, a New York judge ruled that Zervos's case can go forward. It was lost on no one that the precedent cited was the one in the sexual harassment lawsuit that ultimately led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton .
The Zervos lawsuit opens the possibility that Trump's other accusers, and maybe even more women, will return to tell their stories under oath. And that the president himself will have to as well.
When Zervos was on the fifth season of "The Apprentice," Trump fired her because she interrupted him. It turns out she may get in a last word after all.
xxx
Scratch #2 is the playmate lawsuit. Scratch #3 is Summer Zervos.
xxx
What's up with powerful men who can't keep it in their pants? Then they lie... What cowards!xxx
The blame must be shared evenly... if the men cant keep it in their pants, why are women allowing it to happen? Are they being forced against their will? If so, call the police!xxx
Wow! What a savage piece! And very well written.xxx
Yawwwwnn..Why even bother with this. It just makes everyone look bad. Daniels is a low-life. The media lowers its standards by reporting it. Nobody believes Trump didn't have sex with Daniels but nobody cares. It's actually expected of someone like Trump to have an affair now and then.
You might find it unfortunate that a guy named Cohen was involved. I suggest its also unfortunate that a guy named Cohen got stuck reporting this.
xxx
Trump is a dirtbag, but the last time I checked, having an affair was not criminal offense. I don't care who he slept with, but I do care who he is screwing - which in this case is 99% of the American people. The other 1% are doing well thanks to him.xxx
(Edited) What has stormy Daniels done for America????? Just some porn movies for money for herself and now she is blackmailing the US president. And these readers actually enjoy it????? Trump must be protected. He is our President.xxx
Now any hooker can come and sue any guy she has slept with for money.......is this what men want???? I dont think so.xxx
People can't arbitrarily sue people for no reason. His lawyer paid her $130,000. She obviously has something on him. And most sane men want her to win so Trump can be impeached and sent out to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement... in Antarctica.xxx
Cant believe men are siding with adult porn actor......... a hooker.... Daniels.........who is out to make money by hook or crook. Men in America are doomed.xxx 4 days ago
If the U.S. is such that this horrifically warped man and his monstrously greedy and incompetent cabinet are taken down by a stupid sex scandal rather than being judiciously removed by responsible people for being criminals, then the U.S. is in even more serious trouble than even rational thinkers would want to believe.
XXX 3 days ago
"How Trump avoided paying taxes on nearly $1 billion"
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/news/trump-tax-strategy-theory/index.html"[Trump] deducted somebody else's losses," said John L. Buckley, who served as the chief of staff for Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation in 1993 and 1994. Since the [stiffed] bondholders were likely declaring losses for tax purposes, Trump shouldn't be able to as well. "He is double dipping big time," Buckley told the Times.
Surely, the IRS can't be too happy about multiple taxpayers taking the same ~$1 billion-loss deduction? I therefore look forward to Mueller's audit of Trump's tax returns.
And now the Dumpster finds his yacht "Trumpy!" is caught in "Stormy Weather" off the Seychelles -- LOL
But, never fear Dumpsters, we all know that the usual rules don't and never have applied to the "bouffanted buffoon" -- or so he thinks! -- LOL
Doubtless, the results of Mueller's investigations into Trump's various activities will make this crass, arrogant charlatan (and his family/associates) sorely regret he ever threw his "bouffanted hairpiece" into the political ring. Hopefully, he will ultimately be indicted and convicted for egregious financial/taxation crimes and the courts will penalize him to the extent that all of his and his family's ill-gotten assets will be expropriated, and he'll get to wear one of those ill-fitting orange jump suits too
Still, the thought of the Rev. Pence becoming POTUS fills me with equal dread.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.washingtonexaminer.com
A man who claimed without evidence that he had sex with former President Barack Obama says the media is showing a "sickening" double standard with coverage of an alleged affair between President Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels.Larry Sinclair's allegations involving Obama, cocaine, and a limo -- set in 1999, when Obama was a state senator -- failed to gain broad coverage for a variety of reasons, including lack of corroboration and Sinclair's record of crimes involving deceit.
But Sinclair says the media is giving too much attention and too little skepticism to claims of a 2006 affair between Daniels and Trump.
"Stormy Daniels is being pimped and pimping the media now and it's lining her pockets," Sinclair told the Washington Examine r. "I believe she had sex with him. Do I believe she's trying to twist and add to it to benefit her interests? You're damn right I do."
An interview with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is set to air Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes." The performer staging a national strip club tour has given other recent interviews, including to "Inside Edition" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
Sinclair said he views Daniels' coyness about details -- as she sues to invalidate a $130,000 nondisclosure agreement -- as well as her attempt to sidestep the deal, as reasons to doubt her truthfulness. He said he watched with suspicion as she declined to say if a signature was hers.
"I do believe that there are enough contradictions by Ms. Daniels to justify questioning her motive and truthfulness," Sinclair said, citing "her statements or nonstatements in subsequent interviews implying that her signature was not her signature [and] her back-and-forth on whether Trump paid her."
"I find this whole double standard sickening, and no I am not a bigger supporter of Trump, but I am a supporter of fair and unbiased media coverage," he said. "I find the whole NDA and accepting money and then later coming back and using a completely legal incident for political and personal gain questionable."
Michael Avenatti, an attorney for Daniels, declined to address Sinclair's suggestion that the media be more skeptical of her claims.
"Is this a joke? Am I being punked?" Avenatti wrote in an email.
Sinclair -- who runs a neighborhood revitalization nonprofit in Cocoa, Fla., where he's considering a run for mayor -- said he believes the media also gives too much credence to affair claims by ex-Playboy bunny Karen McDougal and women alleging misconduct by Trump.
There are many distinctions between the allegations made by Sinclair and those made by Clifford and McDougal. For example, Sinclair lacks a photo of himself with Obama, who was married to future first lady Michelle Obama at the time of the alleged two-day relationship.
Trump has denied cheating on first lady Melania Trump, but he did pose for photos with Daniels and McDougal.
Daniels passed a polygraph in 2011, her team said this week. Sinclair allegedly failed a polygraph in 2008, but he says the tests don't mean much.
Daniels told her story to some journalists, including from Slate and In Touch magazine, before signing the October 2016 NDA, though neither published her account. She and McDougal do have a degree of corroboration from friends who attest to contemporaneous conversations or, in the case of McDougal, provided the media with a letter she allegedly wrote documenting the claims.
Sinclair's allegations, by contrast, lack documentary evidence or corroboration from third parties. And whereas Trump has a decadeslong history of romantic relationships with women, Sinclair's gender does not match Obama's reported preference.
"It seems to me that there is a world of difference between the two stories and that there is no double standard," said Joel Kaplan, associate dean for professional graduate studies at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
"Sinclair is making a singular allegation without any support," Kaplan said. "Ms. Daniels' allegation is backed up by the fact that there was a settlement and a nondisclosure agreement, which certainly lends credibility to her allegations. If Mr. Sinclair was just one of 14 men making these allegations against President Obama that would be one thing and probably worthy of a story. In President Trump's case, there are multiple women who came forward. So, no I see no double standard."
The high point of Sinclair's press exposure came when he rented a room at the National Press Club in June 2008, prompting an unsuccessful campaign to block the event by journalists fearful that the venue would lend credibility to his claims.
A dueling press conference was planned by Whitehouse.com, then a pornographic website whose owner Dan Parisi had paid Sinclair $20,000 to take the polygraph that Sinclair allegedly failed. Parisi later sued Sinclair unsuccessfully for libel for saying the results were doctored.
"It wasn't until after the fact I was told the Whitehouse.com press conference didn't take place," Sinclair said, recalling that police arrested him at the press club and sent him to Delaware to face theft charges. He also had an open warrant for his arrest in Colorado for allegedly signing someone else's tax return check.
Sinclair said the Delaware and Colorado cases were misunderstandings, but admits he was convicted in Arizona for forgery in 1981, then in Florida for using a friend's credit card before getting a 16-year sentence in Colorado in the late '80s in a similar case. He was released in 1999, the same year he allegedly met Obama through a limo driver in Chicago.
In one similarity between Sinclair's allegations and those made by Daniels and McDougal, significant amounts of money changed hands, resulting in legal action and claims of wrongful gagging of the accuser.
Sinclair negotiated a deal in which he ultimately was paid $20,000 by Parisi to consent to a polygraph. A copy of the check is an exhibit in the libel case Parisi brought against Sinclair. At one point, another $10,000 was supposed to be split between two charities.
Daniels is suing to get out of nondisclosure agreement prepared by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who like the president says Daniels is lying about an affair, and McDougal is suing to get out of an NDA in which she was paid $150,000 for the rights to her story by the company that publishes the Trump-friendly National Enquirer, which didn't print the claims.
Sinclair said his Whitehouse.com deal required that he give exclusive rights for polygraphing to the company for a period of four weeks during the 2008 campaign, a claim that appears to be consistent with an email cited in court documents, and he suggests Parisi may not have acted independently in the libel lawsuit, which was dismissed by a federal judge in 2012.
Sinclair said he lost money on his 2009 book Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder? in which he associates a Chicago-area killing with his affair claims.
"To journalists I would say take your time, compare statements and call out contradictions in statements and previous interviews," Sinclair said. "When it comes to polygraphs be very sure you vet the examiners conducting them and always ask for the computer scoring results as well as the examiners findings."
Parisi did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Obama's office.
Mar 20, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
A former Playboy model who says she had an affair with President Trump is suing the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media, so that she can be released from a legal agreement barring her from discussing the relationship.Karen McDougal filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, according to the New York Times , after she claims the Enquirer paid her $150,000 for the story of her nine-month-long affair between 2006 and 2007, but did not publish it when she gave the account in August 2016, several months before the 2016 U.S. election.
McDougal says that Trump's personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen, was secretly involved in her negotiations with A.M.I., and that both the media company and her lawyer at the time misled her about the arrangement. After speaking with The New Yorker last month after it obtained notes she kept on her alleged affair, McDougal said she was warned by A.M.I. that " any further disclosures would breach Karen's contract," and "cause considerable monetary damages ."
Cohen reportedly paid another Trump accuser, adult film actress Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels), $130,000 in exchange for signing an NDA barring her from discussing her experiences with Trump.
Trump joined a legal effort last week suing Clifford for $20 million over what they claim is a breach of her NDA. Meanwhile, both women's claims against Trump are being construed by federal watchdog group Common Cause as illegal campaign contributions - arguing that they could constitute in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign.
Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal tell strikingly similar stories about their experiences with Mr. Trump, which included alleged trysts at the same Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006, dates at the same Beverly Hills hotel and promises of apartments as gifts.
Their stories first surfaced in the The Wall Street Journal four days before the election , but got little traction in the swirl of news that followed Mr. Trump's victory. The women even shared the same Los Angeles lawyer, Keith Davidson, who has long worked for clients who sell their stories to the tabloids . - NYT
"The lawsuit filed today aims to restore her right to her own voice," McDougal's attorney, Peter K Stris told the Times . "We intend to invalidate the so-called contract that American Media Inc. imposed on Karen so she can move forward with the private life she deserves ."
As the Wall Street Journal reported in November, 2016;
The tabloid-newspaper publisher reached an agreement in early August with Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year. American Media Inc., which owns the Enquirer, hasn't published anything about what she has told friends was a consensual romantic relationship she had with Mr. Trump in 2006. At the time, Mr. Trump was married to his current wife, Melania.
Quashing stories that way is known in the tabloid world as "catch and kill." - WSJ
In a written statement, American Media Inc. claims it wasn't buying McDougal's story for $150,000 - rather, they were buying two years' worth of her fitness columns, magazine covers and exclusive life rights to any relationship she has had with a then-married man. "AMI has not paid people to kill damaging stories about Mr. Trump," reads the statement.
American Media Inc. CEO David J. Pecker is a long-standing friend of President Trump.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.washingtonpost.com
It was just a little thing, a scratch, that he failed to treat and gangrene set in and it was killing him. They were on safari, in Africa, and their truck had broken down and the rescue plane was never going to make it in time. This is the way Harry died in Ernest Hemingway's " The Snows of Kilimanjaro ." I reread it the other day because of President Trump. I think of him as Harry. Stormy Daniels is the scratch.
The saga of the adult-film star and the juvenile president has become a rollicking affair. Each step of the way, Daniels has out-Trumped Trump. She is as shameless as he, a publicity hound who adheres to the secular American religion that, to be famous, even for nothing much, is to be rich. By and large, that's not true, but then there is Kim Kardashian to prove otherwise.
Daniels alleges she and Trump had an affair beginning in 2006. The president's lawyer and his press secretary allege that the allegations are not true. The lawyer, Michael Cohen, does admit to paying Daniels $130,000 , apparently to keep her silent about an affair that, according to Cohen, did not happen. To do this, Cohen set up a private Delaware company and concocted false names for everyone involved -- the allegation-maker and the allegation-denier. Only the name Delaware is legit.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.cnn.com
Washington (CNN)
Stormy Daniels was "truthful about having unprotected vaginal intercourse with Donald Trump in July 2006," according to a polygraph test report from 2011.
The report states that the "probability of deception was measured to be less than 1%." It was given to CNN by Michael Avenatti, Daniels' attorney, and contains three pertinent questions: "Around July 2006, did you have vaginal intercourse with Donald Trump?," "Around July 2006, did you have unprotected sex with Donald Trump?" and "Did Trump say you would get on 'The Apprentice'?"
Another Trump attorney involved in Stormy Daniels case Daniels replied yes to all three questions. The first two were analyzed to be truthful and the third question was "inconclusive," according to the polygraph examiner, Ronald Slay. Polygraphs are generally inadmissible in court.
The polygraph was performed at the request of Bauer Publishing, which owns Life & Style and InTouch magazines, according to the reporter who interviewed Daniels in 2011. Reporter Jordi Lippe-McGraw initially interviewed Daniels for Life & Style magazine. The interview was not published at the time, but Bauer Publishing released it in InTouch magazine earlier this year.Woman named in Stormy Daniels' document accused Trump of unwanted advances
Avenatti confirmed to CNN that he purchased the video and file of the polygraph test for $25,000. "We did so to ensure that it would be maintained and kept safely during the litigation and not be altered or destroyed," Avenatti said in a statement. "We did so after learning that various parties, including mainstream media organization, were attempting to acquire the video and the file and either destroy it or use it for nefarious means." RELATED: The shaky science of lie detectors Daniels tweeted about the encounter Tuesday afternoon following the release of the polygraph, defending herself and saying she's "not going anywhere."
"Technically I didn't sleep with the POTUS 12 years ago. There was no sleeping (hehe) and he was just a goofy reality TV star. But I digress...People DO care that he lied about it, had me bullied, broke laws to cover it up, etc.
And PS...I am NOT going anywhere. xoxoxo," she wrote.
Lippe-McGraw told CNN on Tuesday that Daniels passed the test in a broader sense. "Based off of the interview, we had her take the polygraph test to confirm the details of what she was telling us. There wasn't much in the way of physical evidence, per se," Lippe-McGraw said, adding that the big-picture question they wanted to confirm was that the affair happened, and that Daniels passed.Technically I didn't sleep with the POTUS 12 years ago. There was no sleeping (hehe) and he was just a goofy reality TV star. But I digress...People DO care that he lied about it, had me bullied, broke laws to cover it up, etc.
And PS...I am NOT going anywhere. xoxoxo https://t.co/Js9sEnanIk
-- Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) March 20, 2018Lippe-McGraw said that Daniels told her she had unprotected sex with Trump, because Daniels is allergic to latex and didn't have condoms at the time. Earlier Tuesday, Avenatti tweeted out a photograph of Daniels being administered the test.
The Wall Street Journal first released the details of the polygraph questions and answers. Also on Tuesday, Daniels' friend Alana Evans told CNN's Brooke Baldwin that she and Daniels have received threats over the allegations from people who had previously been in the adult industry. "I have not been made aware that Cohen had physically threatened her. I know in the last few weeks, and the last couple of months, that Stormy and myself have received threats from people in the outside world completely trying to defend Trump and Cohen and calling us liars and threatening us with physical harm, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's stemming from there as well," Evans said. Evans said this included threatening emails, threats to their families and their safety, and threats to release private information.
CNN's Sara Sidner contributed to this report.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.nytimes.com
She is the actress in pornographic films who is suing a sitting president , with whom she said she had a consensual affair, in order to be released from a nondisclosure agreement she reached with his lawyer just before the 2016 election. Over the past two months, she has guided the story of her alleged relationship with President Trump -- and the $130,000 she was paid to keep silent -- into a full-fledged scandal. If Ms. Clifford's court case proceeds, Mr. Trump may have to testify in depositions, and her suit could provide evidence of campaign spending violations. She is scheduled to appear on "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
And if her name has seemed ubiquitous -- repeated on cable television and in the White House briefing room, and plastered on signs outside nightclubs, where her appearance fees have multiplied -- there is this to consider: Unlike most perceived presidential adversaries, about whom Mr. Trump is rarely shy, Ms. Clifford has not been the subject of a single tweet.
To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. It is she, some in Washington now joke, and not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who could topple Mr. Trump.
... ... ...
The false-start campaign coincided with a turbulent moment in her personal life, exposing her to scrutiny in the mainstream press. In July 2009, Ms. Clifford was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence after hitting her husband, a performer in the industry, and throwing a potted plant during a fight about laundry and unpaid bills, according to police records. The husband, Michael Mosny, was not injured, and the charge was later dropped. Ms. Clifford had previously been married to another pornographic actor.
She has since married another colleague in the business, Brendon Miller, the father of her now 7-year-old daughter. He is also a drummer and has composed music for her films.
... ... ...
Ms. Clifford has not shown up at competitions since news broke in January that she accepted a financial settlement in October 2016 -- weeks before the election -- agreeing to keep quiet about her alleged intimate relationship with Mr. Trump. She has said the affair, which representatives of Mr. Trump have denied, began in 2006 and extended into 2007, the year she married Mr. Mosny.
Earlier this month, she escalated public attention by filing suit, calling the 2016 contract meaningless given that Mr. Trump had never signed it and revealing that the president's personal lawyer had taken further secret legal action to keep her silent this year.
Jul 29, 2009 | talkingpointsmemo.com
Stormy Daniels, an adult entertainer who's considering running for Senate from Louisiana, was arrested Saturday on a domestic violence charge in Tampa, Fla.Daniels was charged with battery after she allegedly hit her husband, Michael Mosny, over the head with her hands. According to the police report , she was angry about a bill Mosny hadn't paid and about the way his father had done the laundry. She broke a flower pot and a few glass candle holders, threw their wedding album on the floor and allegedly hit her husband while struggling to get the car keys from him. She denied hitting him intentionally.
https://cdn.districtm.io/ids/index.html
Neither Mosny nor Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, were injured. Daniels was held overnight and released on $1,000 bond.The porn star formed an exploratory committee in May, the first step in a possible Senate run against Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), whose social conservative reputation was tarnished by the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Muppet Sun, 03/25/2018 - 15:40 Permalink
The masses don't care about Stormy Daniels. Of course, Trump used his "art of the deal" to score with likely a hundred of bimbos. Who cares? It preceded him being Prez.
Is like the Facebook article about privacy... most people know the truth and don't need the media view. We know Trump cheated. We know FB is corrupt. By far, Trump is better than the corrupt criminal Clinton's.
Mar 25, 2018 | dailymail.co.uk
Me lania Trump has spent a number of nights at a posh D.C. hotel away from President Trump following allegations of a fling with porn star Stormy Daniels, White House sources told DailyMail.com.
Mar 25, 2018 | www.nydailynews.com
detailing an alleged 2006 romance with Donald Trump , then flew home to celebrate her 47th birthday with friends in Arizona, sources told the Daily News.On Thursday, the former Playboy Playmate sat down with Anderson Cooper at 6 Columbus Hotel and poured her heart out in a detailed account of what she says was a 10-month fling with the President.
His reps have denied the affair.
McDougal said in the interview that she and Trump had been in love -- and that she now deeply regrets helping him cheat on his wife.
When cameras stopped rolling, she was asked how she felt about the confessional.
"Well, aside from the fact I have a headache and a cold -- I'm my own worst critic -- I think I came across as credible," she said, according to a source. "But I'm not an attorney."
When assured by her handlers that she'd done a great job, a source who was present said McDougal argued she could have been more succinct in explaining why she decided to come forward more than a decade later.
"A friend of mine leaked the story and now that it's out I want to tell my side," she explained.
McDougal also wasn't expecting a marathon grilling.
"I thought this was going to be 20 minutes, I didn't know it would be over an hour," she admitted.
McDougal and her team watched a playback of the interview, which featured an old photo of her that was taken prior to her breast implant removal in January. The model told People magazine in February that the implants were causing her illness.
"That's me on the end," she pointed. "That's when I had breasts."
McDougal cried when watching the part of the interview where Cooper asked what she'd say to Melania, sources told The News. "I'm sorry," she told Cooper. "I wouldn't want it done to me." Tears turned to laughter when a member of the production asked McDougal if she was aware that Hillary Clinton taped an interview in the same hotel suite.
"I didn't know that, but I can tell you I didn't have the questions in advance," she joked.
One member of the production crew asked McDougal if she'd met porn star Stormy Daniels, who also claims she had an affair with the President and is hoping to be released from a confidentiality agreement that could see her punished for speaking up. She said that she has not, nor does she plan to.
Mar 19, 2018 | hollywoodlife.com
Melania , 47, is terrified that more women could emerge with tales of her husband's infidelity. "Melania is unprepared for more women to come forward with allegations of affairs with Donald. Melania wants to leave, but she is paralyzed with fear. She is bracing the worst and is unsure how to move forward," a Washington D.C. insider tells HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY. Barron , now 11.
"Melania feels stuck with a sinking presidency and she wants to get out before Trump's house of cards comes crashing down around her. She fears what embarrassing revelations Stormy might reveal in her 60 Minutes interview and Melania's greater worries is what impact the revelations may have on the presidency," our source reveals.
...
Trump himself crudely joked about Melania being the next person to leave the White House during a speech at the Gridiron Club Dinner on March 3. Unfortunately, divorcing a sitting president would be unheard of and history making. Melania's pretty much stuck with him as long as he's in the White House, and she still fears he could be cheating on her to this day! "Melania has wanted to divorce Donald, over fidelity issues, since before they landed in the White House. She has long suspected that he has used, and continues to use, Mar-a-Lago as a rendezvous spot for his secret affairs. The Florida location is completely under Donald's control, he is always there, and it is much easier for him to enjoy private meetings at the resort rather than try to meet his mistresses at the White House or around DC or NYC. Melania has pleaded with Donald to stay away from his many trips to Mar-a-Lago , disguised as golfing holidays, but he refuses to give in to her requests," our insider adds.
Mar 24, 2018 | www.dailywire.com
On Thursday, CNN's Anderson Cooper had an exclusive interview with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims that she had a 10-month relationship with Donald Trump a decade before he became President.
CNN, which is always anxious to paint Trump in the worst possible light, most likely did not get quite the response they were looking for from McDougal. While affairs cannot and should not be ever cast in a positive light, it is worth noting that McDougal spoke highly about the way Trump treated her and her friends noticed the same thing.
Speaking of Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape, McDougal said, "I had not seen that in him at all... [that's] not the man that I knew." McDougal said that her friends would tell her how they were impressed with how respectful he was toward her when they were out in public.
WATCH:
Former Playboy model McDougal on Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape: "Not the man that I knew" https://t.co/xjzeDwyHyi https://t.co/Pf6izrZDjg
-- Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 23, 2018On the issue of whether or not she is coming out to hurt Trump, McDougal said, "I voted for Donald. Why would I want to damage him? That's my party, Republican Party. That's my president. I did not want to damage him or hurt him in any way, shape, or form but I also didn't want to put out the story because I didn't want my reputation to be damaged."
McDougal suggested that the reason she came forward is, according to her lawsuit , because she claims she was paid off to keep quiet and was given a "false promise to jumpstart her career as a health and fitness model."
WATCH:
"I voted for Donald. Why would I want to damage him?" Former Playboy model Karen McDougal says her intention in telling her story isn't to damage President Trump https://t.co/fpLyorn15C pic.twitter.com/V6tLUOVDkw
-- CNN (@CNN) March 23, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 | theduran.com
Media sets double standards for itself as it tries to condemn the First Lady for standing up against bullying, all the while bullying her and her husband through infidelity allegations
... ... ...
In seemingly unrelated stories through the rest of the week attack pieces were printed by various women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with the President during the time of his marriage to Melania. The headlines are anything from accusatory to salacious. Here are some examples:
- Donald Trump saves face amid sexual misconduct allegations
- Karen McDougal to Melania: I'm sorry for sleeping with Donald Trump
- Melania travels solo again amid new Trump affair allegations
The attack is the basest sort of hit possible, as these pieces highlight the accusation and "apology" offered by former Playmate model Karen McDougal. In the pieces this lady offers an apology to Melania for the affair with her husband, with the core of the story essentially as shown here (this is from the USA Today version):
"What can you say except I'm sorry?" [McDougal] told CNN's Anderson Cooper , apologizing for the alleged affair to Melania Trump. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't want it done to me."
McDougal admitted that she knew Donald Trump was married during the alleged affair, saying she was reluctant to bring it up because "she felt guilty."
She also said that Donald Trump offered to pay her after they had been intimate for the first time in 2006 and that it made her cry.
"After we had been intimate, he tried to pay me, and I actually didn't know how to take that," McDougal said. "I've never been offered money like that. I looked at him and said, 'I'm not that type of girl."
"And he said, 'Oh,' and he said, 'You're really special,'" McDougal said, adding: "It hurt me that he saw me in that light."
According to McDougal, the relationship lasted for about 10 months. She says she broke it off in April 2007 because she felt guilty. She recalled traveling to meet Trump at his properties in New York, New Jersey and California and said she had sex with him "many dozens of times."
McDougal had feelings for Trump, but the affair was "just tearing me apart," she said. "There was a real relationship there. There were real feelings," she added. "He would call me baby or he would call me beautiful Karen."
Okay, so here we have a great way to humiliate a devout Slovenian Roman Catholic, who is actually quite a traditional woman, even while she was a red-hot model, by making "apologies" that are not apologies at all, but quite simply efforts to publicly humiliate and shame of Melania, not to mention attacking the very essence of her marriage to her husband itself.
Oh, wait. Isn't that also media bullying?
It would seem so. And on Tuesday, Mrs. Trump wasn't having it. She fought back with her own gifts, those being her characteristic elegance, but with her amazing personal strength. But, praise aside, this is what the First Lady had to say:
I am well aware that people are skeptical of me discussing this topic. I have been criticized for my commitment to tackling this issue, and I know that will continue. But it will not stop me from doing what I know is right. I am here with one goal: helping children and our next generation."
Jan 26, 2018 | www.washingtonexaminer.com
"It is absolutely not true," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said about comments author Michael Wolff made regarding extramarital affair allegations and President Trump's grooming Haley for a future in national politics. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley insists she is not romantically or sexually involved with President Trump, and called the speculation "highly offensive" and "disgusting."
"It is absolutely not true," Haley said in a Friday podcast about comments author Michael Wolff made regarding extramarital affair allegations and Trump's grooming Haley for a future in national politics.
"I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there," she told Politico Thursday about a flight from Washington to Long Island, N.Y. in late July. "He says that I've been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I've never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him."
Wolff, who wrote the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, recently told HBO's host Bill Maher he was "absolutely sure" Trump is having an affair and hinted to a part of the book where readers would know he was referencing the woman. A line many pointed to in the book said, "The president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future."
"It goes to a bigger issue that we need to always be conscious of: At every point in my life, I've noticed that if you speak your mind and you're strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows," Haley said.
"Others see that as either too ambitious or stepping out of line. And the truth is, we need to continue to do our job and if that means they consider it stepping out of line, fine. And if that means they're gonna throw stones, people see lies for what it is. Do I like it? No. Is it right? No. Is it gonna slow me down? Not at all," she added.
"Every time this has happened, it only makes me fight harder," she said. "And I do it for the sake of other women that are behind me because they should never think that they have to put their head down and cower out of fear that somebody's gonna do something to you."
Jan 22, 2018 | dailymail.co.uk
Hope Hicks is his real daughter and Ivanka is his real WIFE: How Trump can't say no to his family and is totally reliant on his communications director
- White House staff allegedly refers to the president's daughter Ivanka as his 'real wife,' as Communications Director Hope Hicks has been calls his 'real daughter'
- That's because Melania Trump keeps a low profile, while Hicks and Ivanka Trump continue to play outsized roles in the West Wing, a new book reported
- As President Trump has seen a string of resignations through his first year in office, Hicks has become his 'most powerful White House advisor'
- The forthcoming book, 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House' also suggests that the president can't say no to his kids
- That's how Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were able to become top White House aides, against the advice of political veterans
With Melania Trump often keeping a low profile, White House staffers refer to first daughter Ivanka Trump as her father's 'real wife' and Communications Director Hope Hicks as the president's 'real daughter,' a new book alleged.
Author Michael Wolff, who wrote the forthcoming 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House' revealed these designations in the context of who is now closest to Trump, with many high-level aides leaving within the president's first year.
That distinction goes to Hicks, the president's 29-year-old former campaign press secretary who Wolff said is now Trump's 'most powerful White House advisor.'
'Hicks' primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him,' Wolff wrote in a story about the writing of his book, published Thursday by the Hollywood Reporter.
'It was Hicks who, attentive to his lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season,' the author continued. 'Instead, the interview went to Fox News' Sean Hannity who, White House insiders happily explained, was willing to supply the questions beforehand.'
In a preview of the book published Thursday in the Hollywood Reporter, Wolff also explained how Trump couldn't say no to his kids, casting this characteristic as 'foolishness.'
'It's a littleee, littleee complicated,' the president reportedly told his first Chief of Staff Reince Priebus when explaining why he wanted to give Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner official White House jobs.
They're now serving as senior advisers in the West Wing. However, Wolff did not describe their tenure as a happy one. 'By July, Jared and Ivanka, who had, in less than six months, traversed from socialite couple to royal family to the most powerful people in the world, were now engaged in a desperate dance to save themselves, which mostly involved blaming Trump himself,' Wolff wrote Thursday in the Hollywood Reporter.
'It was all his idea to fire Comey!' the couple nicknamed 'Javanka' reportedly said, referring to Trump's ouster of the former FBI director that prompted the appointment of a special counsel.
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who Trump blames for the bulk of the book, as he was one of Wolff's most prominent sources, reportedly told people that 'The daughter ... will bring down the father.'
Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at The New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things. Follow @ashleyrparker
EmmaJanesMommy , Jacksonville, United States, 2 weeks ago
Me thinks Mr. Wolff has got bats in the belfry.
Sen Dog, Everywhere, United Kingdom, 2 weeks ago
''I have included that which I believe to be true'' - a quote from Wolff himself. Also, The Author's Note to Wolff's book states the quotes in it are all "recreations". Nice try liberals .
Jan 22, 2018 | www.inquisitr.com
Hope Hicks is featured prominently in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, as proven by book excerpts that have made it to the public, as reported by the Inquisitr . The tome speaks of the 29-year-old Hicks' unlikely rise to become one of President Donald Trump's closest confidantes, even relating Hope's preferred manner of dressing to one that aligns with Trump's favorite look."Ten days before Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president, a group of young Trump staffers -- the men in regulation Trump suits and ties, the women in the Trump-favored look of high boots, short skirts, and shoulder-length hair -- were watching President Barack Obama give his farewell speech as it streamed on a laptop in the transition offices."
Wolff notes that Hope was a 26-year-old when she was hired onto the Trump campaign as the first official hire. Hailing from Greenwich, Connecticut, Hicks worked as a model prior to getting into the PR business and working for Ivanka Trump's fashion line. After Ivanka captured Hope for her dad's political campaign in 2015, Hicks took the political ride of a lifetime to become the gatekeeper to President Trump.
Michael writes about Hope's family, who worried about Hicks "having been taken captive" into the Trump world, with friends and loved ones joking that Hope would need therapy once her time in the White House was done. Wolff describes Hicks as a young woman who was inexperienced but "famous among campaign reporters for her hard-to-maneuver-in short skirts."
The overall tenor of Hope's portrayal in the best-seller paints her as a "yes woman" who is way too overeager to seek Trump's approval. Fearful of making errors, Hicks was protected by Trump from blame -- an act that baffled others, claimed the author. Hope rose in the ranks to become Trump's most trusted aide, albeit one who was assigned the difficult task of getting Trump positive press in the form of a winning New York Times article.
Hope always backed Trump's point-of-view, according to Fire and Fury , with Hicks often landing firmly on Trump's side when the president complained of the media being out to get him with negativity. Hicks even developed an instinct for the types of articles that would make Trump happy, with Hope presenting those clips to the president, even as others brought Trump bad news.
Wolff even likened Hope to the classic robotic wives seen in The Stepford Wives , calling Hicks "a kind of Stepford factotum, as absolutely dedicated to and tolerant of Mr. Trump as anyone who had ever worked for him." According to the Dallas Observer , even crossing the line and allegedly calling Hicks a " piece of tail " hasn't apparently dampened Hope's enthusiasm in working for Trump, in Wolff's estimation, with Hicks failing to get the coveted and positive New York Times coverage.
"That, in the president's estimation, had yet failed to happen, 'but Hope tries and tries,' the president said. On more than one occasion, after a day -- one of the countless days -- of particularly bad notices, the president greeted her, affectionately, with 'You must be the world's worst PR person.'"
Hicks was also the person who greeted Trump each morning, "quaking" to tell him what the latest Morning Joe episode said about the president in the wake of Trump refusing to watch the show. Either way, Trump's closeness with Hope was something that not only baffled White House insiders but caused concern and alarm.
Michael wrote that "the relationship of the president and Hope Hicks, long tolerated as a quaint bond between the older man and a trustworthy young woman, began to be seen as anomalous and alarming." Existing as a go-between in the middle of President Trump and the media, Hope's complete devotion to Trump and her accommodating nature to him was being blamed as part of the reason for Trump's "unmediated behavior."
"His impulses and thoughts -- unedited, unreviewed, unchallenged -- not only passed through him, but, via Hicks, traveled out into the world without any other White House arbitration. 'The problem isn't Twitter, it's Hope,' observed one communication staffer."
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Taibbi TLDR Guide to Michael Wolff's 'Fire and Fury' - Rolling Stone -- summary of the book by much more talented (and sympatric to Wolff, probably even more Trump-hating) author, which spare you from wasting $14 to buy this junk. At least you feel how pathetic as an author Wolff is.
Can Donald Trump really drain 'the swamp' or is he out of his depth?
Roger Ailes dead at 77: why he was responsible for Donald Trump's rise
...Most of all the villains were the Murdochs: Rupert Murdoch, who had hired Ailes in 1996, and his sons, James and Lachlan, who had assumed executive authority two years ago. Ailes had given the Murdoch family 20 years and built them a $30 billion company, and, in the opinion of family, friends and his confidants at Fox, had been sacrificed by them when it suited their purposes.
On the day Ailes died, Rupert Murdoch had been advised that a condolence call to Ailes' wife would not be well received.
...The fall caused a blood clot in his brain, and then, during efforts to remove it, another was found. Put into a medically induced coma, Ailes was attended to by his wife and by his friend Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, as pivotal a figure in modern conservative politics as Ailes himself, and whose show Ailes had produced in the 1990s before he founded Fox News. "Rush at Roger's bedside," reflected a friend at the funeral, summing up the brotherhood of the conservative movement and its two media titans.
The Correspondents' Dinner has always been a last-laugh affair, and in this case Trump might well get his by staying away rather than grinning and bearing it in, say, a bathrobe sketch or, perhaps, a reverse Alec Baldwin impression or - imagine it - Trump making fun of his own hair
...Other than the discordant military rituals - presenting colors - at the beginning, and then its junior-Chamber-of-Commerce-type awards interlude, it's a strictly paparazzi event. Vanity Fair, which extended its Hollywood reach with its Oscar party, did the same in politics with a VIP-only White House Correspondents' party. And one of the crucial byplays this year was VF editor Graydon Carter's cancellation of its party, an overt statement about Carter's antipathy for Trump and his not-of-our-class administration. Trump, long wounded by Carter's contempt going back to Spy magazine during the 1980s, had to respond in kind.
...The White House Correspondents' Dinner by any reasonable measure has become a very bad political symbol. It's an exclusive and exclusionary event that celebrates power and influence for power and influence's sake. It's public narcissism, wherein all the celebrities become ecstatic at the sight of one another.
It is curiously the "dishonest media" that might benefit most from the Trump effect - both from the president's indifference or even hostility to tech and from the backlash against Trump himself. The anti-media president could well end up as the best thing that has happened to media companies in a long time.
Murdoch himself, who long has dreamed of taking on the tech platforms - regarding them as unfairly benefiting from a functional theft of media content - is said to see this as an opportunistic moment for limiting tech privilege and for the content industry to organize against it.
... Likewise, in a media industry with no love lost for the new president, many people happily note that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings perhaps has been the executive most upfront and unfiltered about his fear and loathing of Donald Trump.
Hastings, says a major media CEO, is "one tweet away from a 30 percent share drop, one net neutrality ruling away from oblivion."
Trump, ever buoyed by the media, is a can't-look-away, moneymaking media sensation - the ultimate star. Of course, Kennedy represented a new high-glamour, whereas Trump is rather reverse-glamour - reality-show stuff befitting his ascension to national stardom via NBC's The Apprentice.
The media establishment, all except Murdoch and Ailes, officially supported Hillary Clinton and the progressive, globalist politics of the Democrats. As much as Trump tried to suggest a special relationship during the campaign with various media moguls, most tried to distance themselves from his candidacy and its vitriol. (Moonves' cheerful assessment that while Trump may not be good for America, he was "good for CBS" continued to cause the executive minor grief throughout the campaign.) While the media, in its better self, might see its values as represented by the multicultural and feminist politics of late-night comedy shows, it has, as an industry, never encountered a zeitgeist and power shift that it has not enthusiastically embraced.
...Like the Kennedy and Reagan White Houses, Trump's promises to be character-driven rather than policy-driven. Governing will be a form of theater, its effectiveness measured by audience response.
Not only did the media get almost everything about this presidential election wrong, but it became the central issue, or the stand-in for all those issues, that the great new American Trump Party voted against.
The transmutation of political identities has arguably devolved into two parties: the Trump one, the angry retro people, and the Media Party, representing the smug modern people, each anathema to and uncomprehending of the other. Certainly, there was no moment in the campaign where the Media Party did not see itself as a virtuous and, most often, determinative factor in the race. Given this, the chants of "CNN sucks" at Trump rallies should not have been entirely surprising.
...Every anchor and commentator on network and cable news last night underwent a visible transformation from self-satisfied and jolly certainty to wandering in the wilderness. In a situation that only had two possible outcomes, nobody was even able to pretend they had contemplated both. Say this for Brian Williams' old-fashioned anchor visage, it at least kept him from looking like an astonished fool live on MSNBC. Hang me on the same hook: I woke up this morning to a string of emails from various of the illiterate boobs who had over the past year felt compelled to tell me why they hated Hillary Clinton and about the intensity of their desire to elect Donald Trump. To each, I had said "fat chance." Now all said, rightly, "I told you so."
It all washed away. Beyonce. The tax returns. The theoretical blue wall. Trump as sexual predator. Putin. His shambolic debate performances. Hispanics. Indeed, every aspect of the media narrative, dust. This narrative not only did not diminish him, it fortified him. The criticism of Trump defined the people who were criticizing him, reliably giving the counter-puncher something to punch. It was a juicy target. The Media Party not only fashioned the takedown narrative and demanded a special sort of allegiance to it - Twitter serving as the orthodoxy echo chamber - but, suspending most ordinary conflict rules, according to the Center for Public Integrity, gave lots of cash to Hillary. The media turned itself into the opposition and, accordingly, was voted down.
It was a failure to understand the power of the currents running for Trump - a failure of intelligence, experience and objectivity, on particularly excruciating display last night in Buzzfeed's live video feed with its cast of moronic, what-me-worry millennials having their first go at election night and now eager to take over the media.
...The irony is too painful: Trump the media candidate turns on the media. The flat-footed media became for the nimble Trump his punching bag and foil (while all the time the media assumed Trump was the flat-footed one). It gave him his singular, galvanizing and personalized issue - it's the media, stupid.
Frank Tringale • a year agoThis is a bullshit propaganda article to discredit the Snowden movie. because our ruling class knows the movie will do well. Our ruling class works on demonizing Snowden with articles like this so they can manipulate us to the way they want us to think
Robert • a year ago
Michael Wolff and editors of THR: what evidence, specifically, does Epstein have pertaining to Snowden in that he provided any intelligence data to Russia? What specific data was it that Snowden allegedly gave to the Russians? More importantly, why did you not cite that evidence in this article (considering you state you read an advance copy of Epstein's book)?THR, this article reeks of political swift-boating on the subject of Snowden and Oliver Stone's movie about him. Mr. Wolff, you need to follow-up this questionable reportage with SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE of the allegations made herein, post haste. Otherwise, this looks like an Op-Ed hit-piece, rendering it completely illegitimate as journalism, be it the entertainment variety or otherwise. Thank you.
John • a year ago
Epstein's book is probably part of a CIA-sponsored disinformation strategy to create a new media narrative about Edward Snowden, because they are afraid that more will follow his path. It's simply nonsense to write that Snowden "traded his vast cache of secrets (…) for safe passage into Russia and a secure redoubt there" without providing any evidence whatsoever.On the other hand, we have lots of evidence that he ended up in Russia by pure coincidence. He wanted to go to Ecuador or other safe countries, remember?
But the US in their wisdom cancelled his passport and they couldn't leave the Moscow airport anymore. These are at least the facts, that were reported in the media. There are lots of witnesses.
Why should I NOT believe this, but a wild allegation by Epstein, that this was all part of some secret plan by the Kremlin ?
Epstein is either paranoid or he wants to sell his book to other paranoid freaks, who get turned on by conspiracy stuff. Whatever. But it's bad journalism to just write "he traded" this and that without providing even a small bit of evidence…It's childish.
This transformation from political irregular and zealous polemicist to towering moral figure was curious, if not amazing, to many people (perhaps all of us) whose careers had intersected with his. How did the character actor become a leading man? How did the fool become a sage? And what about the bad stuff? Not just his full-throttled embrace of the Bush war but, before that, his casual and convenient betrayal of his friend, Hillary Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, back in the Monica Lewinsky days. Or his take on Bill Clinton, as virulent as that of the most kooky right-wingers. Or his weirdly tolerant relationship with some of the era's most infamous Holocaust deniers. These are the kind of epochal contretemps that, in the chattering class, usually make for deep enmity rather than enduring love.
...He wrote short admiring books about George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine as well as pamphlet-like books attacking Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton, but no true biography. Most of his books are cobbled-together collections, or pieces of columns. There is no narrative long enough to have truly displayed his gifts, or justified his reputation, as storyteller or polemicist. He proudly told people his God book was written in four months.
Hitchens, an avid practitioner of the literary quote as flourish and end of discussion, might have added here the AJ Liebling injunction: "I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anyone who can write better."
In a sense, Hitchens' most self-defining book, or his key personal positioning statement (though all his books are strong on personal positioning) is neither his God book nor his memoir, but his short Letters To A Young Contrarian.
...The book's message is... well, nothing more than that young people should challenge the conventional wisdom and question authority
...He was an exaggerated figure of Britishness. It rather became a chief aspect of his appeal. He was a British-themed writer. It was the Downton Abbey effect. (Curiously, there are really few Brits like this any more.) He suggested, too, that real writers were British. Indeed, while he professed a constant formal love for America, he couldn't help his condescension and contempt - which was probably appealing, too.
Notably, many of those in Hitchens' set moved to America - Britain being too small for them and their ambitions. Anna Wintour, who Hitchens almost married, became the editor of Vogue. Gully Wells and her husband at the BBC got a house in the West Village and Hitchens lived in their basement. Later, he moved into the basement at Andrew Cockburn and his wife Leslie's place (Cockburn ultimately fell out with Hitchens). Salman Rushdie moved to America too. And finally, Amis followed.
This pack of media Brits formed a movable power clique, always promoting each other. (There is a point here, too, about America as a fading literary superpower and their opportunities in this vacuum.)Of note, somehow Hitchens, for a long time the runt of this Brit-lit pack, the courtier and designated promoter, emerged as its most famous member.
He was a bully. This may have been because he was so often drunk.
...His issue, and his-near violent reaction, was about the relativism of American liberalism - its crafty compromises, its moral triangulation, its Clintonianism. The purity (and verbal violence) of the American right was much more to his temperament. Clinton, the master relativist, caused Hitchens to froth wildly - and to madly insist he was a rapist who should be in jail.
...Hitchens accused Clinton of informing on American anti-war students during his time in Britain.
...This was the apparent background to Hitchens' decision to testify against his friend Sidney Blumenthal, who told a grand jury that he had not besmirched Monica Lewinsky to the media. Hitchens said, no, that wasn't true - Blumenthal told him that Lewinsky was a slut. And suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, as well as possibly his freedom, hung in the balance for Blumenthal because of a gossipy lunch.
Hitchens' rationale was straightforward: he had to do it to help get Clinton.
Then Iraq: Hitchens took up his defence of the war when it still looked like it would be a certain American romp. He was very vocal about his view of the war's righteousness for another year or so, becoming a sort of mascot of the neoconservatives, and then gradually quieted down as everything went wrong.
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