What the most direct line of impact in the revelations of the last 24 hours is, is that Michael Cohen may be in some deep shit. He was almost certainly running the kind of conspiratorial use of an LLC to shield dark money from reporting that goes beyond regulatory violations and instead goes into prosecution of serious crimes.
And with that said, NOTHING that we’ve seen implicates the president. So far, it appears that this was Cohen acting for the benefit of Michael Cohen.
BUT…this now gives either the investigators in the SDNY office or the investigators in Mueller’s probe the leverage of real jail time to hang over Cohen’s head in order to flip him.
It also gives us a glimpse at the tip of an iceberg for what kind of case that the SDNY and/or Mueller may make to a judge for why the materials seized in their raid of Cohen’s home and office is germane to the possibility of some serious wrongdoing.
That I agree with. I mean, we already knew he must have to get the sort of warrant they did. But now we have an idea of what sort of thing might lead to that warrant (though it may not actually be these transactions). If nothing else, those Novartis payments look like textbook reporting avoidance structuring.
I love how the oligarch’s company is painting themselves as the victim here.
“I am simple Russki businessman, havink no understanding of You Ess of Ay ways. This man is comink to me and I have no choice but to pay him or Trump is angry, da?”
That is a transparent lie, or a laughable excuse. The defence is “we are such bad business people we paid someone $100K per month for advice which we knew was useless so we stopped listening but kept paying.”
I’ve seen similarly worded agreements. Take it from Novartis’ side. $1.2 million out for no access sucks, but $1.2 million to not have the POTUS pissed at you during Obamacare negotiations is a small price to pay.
