How many laws can Michael Cohen break? (all of them)

Politics and religion
41

This belongs here (since it’s not related to Stormy or to Russia, and is in fact a brand new frontier of Cohen lawbreaking!)

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/400725-cohen-being-investigation-for-tax-fraud-report

President Trump’s former longtime attorney Michael Cohen is reportedly being investigated for tax fraud.

The Wall Street Journal, citing multiple people familiar with the investigation, reported Tuesday that federal prosecutors in New York are evaluating whether Cohen’s income from his taxi-medallion business was misreported in federal tax returns.

Prosecutors are also examining if any bank employees improperly allowed Cohen to receive loans without providing sufficient documentation.

42

I wonder how this relates to Trump parenthetically referring to Cohen’s taxi medallions in a tweet the other day. Not that his medallions weren’t already known about and fishy, but perhaps someone got their marching orders from the big guy.

43

If there was one thing in the world you would just assume involves shady criminal activity, it would be NYC taxi medallions. And NYC concrete.

44

Garbage pick up is big too.

45

Garbage pickup kick-backs has sunk a bunch of Detroit-area politicians in the past couple of years.

46

I remember when I got my DUI back in the 70’s, the first time I went to court I was denied a public defender. I then talked to a lawyer friend of my father who told me what to do and upon going in front of the judge again he gave me a public defender. But I do remember having to show financial reasons why I couldn’t afford private representation.

47

Another day, another fine mess for Cohen:

It’s not Cohen I feel sorry for, it’s all the people who want his ass in court at the same time. He’s probably taking court appointments six months in advance.

48


49

The usual suspects: “This proves nothing! It’s just Cohen’s word against Trump’s! He said she said!”

… Except it’s not, because guess who else is cooperating with prosecutors? National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, who backs up Cohen.

50

Pussy grabber fucked by Pecker?

51
52

Uh, what if we don’t want him? Can I veto him?

53

Emperor @ArmandoPenblade? Can we have a ruling on this?

54

Is this like a murderer finding God just before they hang him, thus ensuring he gets into heaven?

55

How long before the GOP / Fox News start pointing to Cohen as evidence that Democrats are corrupt? One week? Two?

56

Probably today.

57

“He was always a secret Democrat and conspired with the Deep State…”

58

Arise!

As a reminder that Cohen is bad news for Trump on multiple fronts, not just Russia, here’s what eagle-eyed people spotted in Mueller’s plea doc for Cohen:

Cohen is cooperating with the New York State AG in their investigation of the Trump Foundation … and in a mysterious other inquiry to be named later:

Also recall that Trump cannot pardon NY state crimes …

59

The second Cohen sentencing memo directly implicates Trump in one, possibly two crimes - which turn out to be Stormy Daniels related, not Russia related. Kurt Eichenwald explains:

P1 is the one where Individual 1 is specifically implicated - that being Trump. That constitutes a campaign finance violation. However, this is a low level violation, and one that is open to interpretation depending on the specifics of what Cohen says.

Trump could fight this one and, in the end, he might defeat it by simply saying “Cohen told me this was out of his home equity, I considered it a favor, and did not have anything to do with my campaign.” Not so believable? Sure. But without specific designation of Trump’s knowledge and intent regarding that payment, he could easily argue technical violation based on poor information -or disagree that there was a violation at all by saying this was not about the campaign, but for, say, keeping Melania from finding out he had banged a porn star.

So don’t break out the champagne quite yet: Trump may skate on P1. But, that’s not all:

…which leads us to P2 - the MAJOR crime, with the payments coming out of the Trump Organization… The sentencing memo does not say that Trump was involved in P2. It doesn’t say he wasn’t…

…so, what do we know about P2? It was paid after submission of an invoice - a frigging INVOICE - from Cohen to Trump Org saying it was for campaign expenditures. It billed not only the $130,000 for the Stormy payoff, but also another $50,000 in IT work for the campaign…

…the IT payment is the drop dead element. Given the supposed IT work was done for trump CAMPAIGN, paid for by the Trump ORGANIZATION, it shows that his company was issuing checks to cover campaign expenditures. This establishes the intent to commit the crime - that is, to use the Trump Organization as a slush fund for cash to the campaign. Think of it as being like the slush fund of Nixon in Watergate… Here, the Trump Organization is the sole contributor to the slush fund. Now, making this all the worse is that the money flowed through multiple sources to disguise its ultimate source - from a HELOC to a bogus corporation to the recipient of the payment, reimbursed by a corporation to the owner of a HELOC, all in violation of campaign finance rules. That is money laundering - manipulating directions of cash used in a crime for the purpose of concealing its provenance.

…We do not know yet if Trump was involved in this. We also don’t know that he wasn’t. What we know is this happened - and that Trump was involved on the front end - P1. We will know, once the testimony of the [Trump Organization] CFO [who is cooperating with authorities] comes out, whether Trump was involved in P2, the back end.

60

But NY loves Trump, doesn’t it? Or is that just the NY branch of the FBI?