campaign finance

Rudy Giuliani trots out yet another Trump story in signal to Michael Cohen to not flip

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Back in early April, in his first public statement about the “hush money” his personal lawyer Michael Cohen paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump denied having any knowledge of the matter. Trump: I don’t know anything about the $130,000 my lawyer paid Stormy Daniels:

Trump’s denial was the first time he’s made a public statement about the money given to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to keep her silent about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump.

Trump replied “no” when asked if he had had knowledge about the payment to Daniels. A reporter then asked if he knew why Cohen made the payment.

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is my attorney,” Trump said, according to the pool report. “You’ll have to ask Michael.”

Trump also denied knowing where the money to pay Daniels came from and ignored another question on whether he had ever set up a fund that Cohen could use to make such a payment.

Last week Trump called into his team of advisors on Fox & Friends on Trump TV, and in a bizarre half-hour rant, Trump says for first time that Cohen represented him in Stormy Daniels case:

[I]n an interview with Fox News on Thursday morning, Trump appeared to reveal that he had knowledge of Cohen’s payment to Daniels.

“Michael represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me,” Trump said. “And from what I’ve seen, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going into this.”

And asked how much of his legal work Cohen is responsible for, Trump said: “As a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny fraction.”

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Michael Cohen’s deep ties to the Russian mafia

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If you only get your news from network/cable television news, the media narrative in the Michael Cohen case is that the Special Counsel’s investigation came across some information in its Russia investigation about Cohen’s handling of nondisclosure agreements with Donald Trump’s sexcapades that Robert Mueller decided was outside the scope of his investigation, so it was referred to the U.S. Attorney office for the Southern District of New York.

But then there was this allegation about taxi medallions, and the television news media was all “what’s up with that?” Maybe they should, oh I don’t know, do some reporting and find out.

It turns out that the current media narrative is incorrect. Michael Cohen has deep ties to the Russian and Ukrainian mafia in New York, and the taxi medallions involve a lot of mob money which is part of Cohen’s personal fortune. The Cohen case is about Russian influence, not just Donald Trump’s sexcapades.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a hint of what the Cohen case is about. Good Grief. Cohen’s World Gets Mobbier The Closer I Look:

In today’s podcast, we look into the background of Michael Cohen. TPM first reported last year that Cohen was actually a childhood friend of Felix Sater, whose father was himself a reputed capo in the Mogilevich organized crime syndicate, said to be Russia’s largest and most dangerous. Filling out this picture of how Cohen fell into this milieu we’ve always been focused on the fact that Cohen’s uncle, Morton Levine, owned and ran a Brooklyn social club, El Caribe, which was a well-known meeting spot for members of Italian and Russian organized crime families in the 1970s and 1980s. (Levine, a medical doctor has never been charged with a crime.) But now it turns out there’s a bit more to this story.

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Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen is getting a legal education

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Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael D. Cohen is like Thomas “Tom” Hagen, the consigliere to the Corleone family in The Godfather.

A couple of weeks ago, McClatchy News reported Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries;

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The New York Times reported on March 15 that Mueller had subpoenaed unspecified records from the Trump Organization. Days before that, the Washington Post reported that Mueller’s team was looking into a Moscow hotel deal for which Cohen brought to Donald Trump a letter of intent from a Moscow developer during the 2016 presidential campaign.

They must have obtained something of evidentiary value because a week ago Monday the F.B.I. Raided the Office of Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Michael Cohen: “The F.B.I. raided the Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room [and home] of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Monday morning, seizing business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress.”

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Follow the money: FBI raids the office of Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen (Updated)

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Last week Donald Trump threw his personal attorney and consigliere (fixer) Michael Cohen under the bus for the Stormy Daniels affair. Trump says he didn’t know his attorney paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Also last week we learned that Michael Cohen was under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.

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Trump tries to silence his female accusers

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The New York Times reported that “President Trump and a company affiliated with him filed court papers on Monday seeking to force the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels to raise her disputes through private arbitration, not lawsuits.” Stormy Daniels Case Should Be Resolved Privately, Trump’s Lawyers Say.

Dumb move. This is the triggering event that Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti was waiting for to begin discovery. As Mark Sumner at Daily Kos reminds us, Trump files for arbitration with Stormy Daniels:

Last week, a judge turned down a request by Stormy Daniel’s lawyer to avoid arbitration, saying in effect that her attorney had jumped the gun.

Judge S. James Otero of the US District Court for the Central District of California denied the motion for an expedited trial and discovery process, saying Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, was “premature” in making the motion because Trump and Essential Consultants LLC, the company established by Cohen to pay Daniels the $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair between her and Trump, have not yet filed a petition to compel arbitration, which they have stated they’re going to do.

But now it’s time for Avenatti to pick up his paper and carry it back to court, because Donald Trump is seeking to compel arbitration with Stormy Daniels.

Avenatti is entitled to challenge in court whether there is a valid and enforceable agreement subject to arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act as a preliminary question.

It’s game on for discovery! Serve that notice of deposition on Donald Trump, Mr. Avenatti. There is no way he is not going to lie under oath. It’s Paula Jones versus Bill Clinton all over again, and should result in a similar impeachment charge for perjury under oath.

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