Definitely and absolutely. In fact, CNN reported as this story was breaking that Mueller’s team is known to have questions Vekselberg about those payments to EC LLC.
And it maybe makes Mueller’s strategy a little clearer. By getting the Southern District New York FBI office involved, they can maybe charge violations of state law in NY that carry incredibly stiff penalties – without possibility of presidential pardon – that can lever Cohen into cooperating.
By the way…
Trumpsters: “Pay-to-play doesn’t matter anyway.”
As they delete their social media posts and articles about how Clinton should go to prison for it.
I mean… if he did, it’s irrelevant because he’s just a lawyer that someone hired. Worst case scenario… she hires someone else.
Avenatti is definitely a media hound and I can see him leveraging this into his own TV show or something. I could also totally see him going all Milkshake Duck and some really bad shit comes out.
I honestly don’t know whether his antics are calculated to specifically hit Trump weak points and get reactions or if he’s just like that.
Trump makes everything crazy. Unlike almost anyone else, I do think hyperbole is where you need to go to capture just how terrible and corrupt these Trump deals are.
Avenatti seems to be playing a dangerous game with this latest stuff, even setting aside the provenance of the information (I assume it’s SARs, but there may be illegality involved in Avenatti getting hold of them). It seems likely from both the very careful, yet tendentious, wording that Avenatti uses and the statements from the payors, that these were in some sense client funds - ie they may have been in Essential Consultants’ bank account but they didn’t belong to it and may well have been paid out intact for whatever purpose the payor had. When I bought my house, for instance, I paid the money into a solicitor’s account for transfer to the seller, but it was still my money (or upon completion, the seller’s). If my solicitor had used that account for hush money previously, my payment would not in any sense be “replenishing” it, as Avenatti phrases it. Avenatti strongly implies direct connection to the Stormy Daniels payment but if these were in fact client funds or similar, then it’s a completely spurious implication, to the extent that it would be a bad idea to make it in court (at least it would be in English proceedings - maybe in the US there’s less harm in pursuing claims that you don’t believe in).
None of this is to say the money was used for proper or even legal purposes, or that Cohen is off the hook for these transactions. Just that the connection to Stormy Daniels seems, on the basis of evidence presented, to be entirely in Avenatti’s mind (and he seems to be aware of this, given how he words the factual allegations versus his own context). I think there’s a reason he’s pursuing this line in public and not in court filings (so far as I’m aware).
He can’t pursue it court at this time can he? The judge granted the stay on the case pending Cohen’s other problems.
Well indeed. Normally you don’t air ace in the hole legal arguments in public before you can pursue them in court, as it just gives your opponent more time to come up with a response / hide the evidence. Which suggests this is more about spreading FUD, maybe in hopes of a settlement, than it is something that’s actually going to stand up in court (at least re Daniels).
:)
Novartis confirms that the Mueller investigation has questioned them about the payments made to Essential Consultants LLC and Michael Cohen.
So yeah, Mueller’s team definitely had this info and are definitely working it.
That’s almost like deliberately trolling level funny.
Turns out good lawyers want you to listen to them and pay them.
Bingo.
And to be fair, Trump has had some good lawyers work for him – Dowd especially – and they’ve left his service out of frustration. Emmet Flood starts work for him today, and he has an excellent reputation. Be interesting to see if he stays long term.
Honestly, I can’t see how Emmet Flood puts up with this.
He didn’t get his law degree at J.C. Penny. He’s a real lawyer.
Well he did just officially start today. Give him some time to have his spirit broken.
I think he’s gonna end up just another in the long list of folks who have thought, “I’ll go in there and Trump will listen to me, because why else would he have given this job to me if he didn’t want me to do it?”
Don’t forget that Cohen has listed has clients to the court…
Legal clients. This is, ostensibly, a consulting firm. Regardless of what it’s actually doing, there’s no a priori reason the people it’s holding funds for would be covered by privilege, which was the scope of the question in court
Another good point. If those companies were paying for what the court would reasonably assume was legal advice or guidance, that can be privileged communication. If the communication between the entities wasn’t even vaguely legal advice/consulting/guidance in nature, it probably doesn’t qualify under attorney client privilege.
And if it did qualify, then Cohen ('s representatives) have lied to the court.