[h=2]Defiant Flynn Tells Mueller to Hit the Highway; Special Counsel Fuming that “Hostile” Witness Won’t Rat on Trump[/h]
[FONT="]Mueller indicted Flynn on a single charge of lying to the FBI in Dec. 2016 and Flynn plead out, promising to work with Mueller per his plea agreement.[/FONT]
[FONT="]But Flynn won’t crack, sources said, and rat out Trump.[/FONT]
[FONT="]And Mueller is steaming, according to federal insiders familiar with the friction-packed relationship between the two parties.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“Flynn remains loyal to Trump,” one case insider said. “Mueller overplayed his hand because Flynn has not cooperated and will not cooperate. He still supports Trump. Nothing Mueller has tried, including threats, has changed that.”[/FONT]
If there's nothing to flip, you can't flip
If Mueller can't find anything with all the illegal wire taps, phones he's taken possession of, people and documents, e-mails and text messages and bank records he's subpoenaed, he's not going to find anything
if Mueller wasn't such of a piece of shit, he would have already acknowledged there's no Russian Collusion
If Mueller can't find anything with all the illegal wire taps, phones he's taken possession of, people and documents, e-mails and text messages and bank records he's subpoenaed, he's not going to find anything
if Mueller wasn't such of a piece of shit, he would have already acknowledged there's no Russian Collusion
ointer:
As their been anyone new that going to bring him down? I think Tom Arnold may have been the last
Stormy Daniels
Michael Cohen
Michael Flynn
Amerosa (?)
Comey
Jared Kushner
and many many more
simple things occupy simple minds
Stormy Daniels
Michael Cohen
Michael Flynn
Amerosa (?)
Comey
Jared Kushner
and many many more
simple things occupy simple minds
Cohen is pleading guilty and facing jail time.
Note:
[FONT="]"a deal that does not include cooperation with federal authorities"[/FONT]
Note:
[FONT="]"a deal that does not include cooperation with federal authorities"[/FONT]
Him suggesting he paid off Stormy Daniels for Trump will give libtard nation all the fuel they want. We've known for months Daniels was paid off AND Trump reimbursed Cohen, but since Cohen pleaded guilty and Manafort was found guilty on charges NOT related to Trump in any way shape or form, the fucking idiots will still argue Trump should be impeached
That's how they roll
That's how they roll
Yeah I am not a fan of Trump, but the left needs to stop obsessing over this shit.
Manafort and Cohen are your typical sleeze-ball asshats who are very guilty, but the left is wasting its time trying to connect all this crap to Trump winning the election. Cohen's wrongdoing here didn't make voters in Wisconsin, PA, Michigan, and my home state of Ohio vote for Trump. End of story.
I hope the Democrats restore some form of dignity and start focusing on shit that actually matters.
Manafort and Cohen are your typical sleeze-ball asshats who are very guilty, but the left is wasting its time trying to connect all this crap to Trump winning the election. Cohen's wrongdoing here didn't make voters in Wisconsin, PA, Michigan, and my home state of Ohio vote for Trump. End of story.
I hope the Democrats restore some form of dignity and start focusing on shit that actually matters.
The funny thing is that Mueller only had Cohen make a statement about this that doesn't represent a crime Mueller can use against Trump. Why? because Mueller knows using the verbal representation from a man who admitted breaking the law with respect to taxi medallions, bank fraud, tax fraud and probably even violated attorney / client privilege to prosecute Trump will fall apart in the court of law. So he's not going to bother with any of that.
He made Cohen make a somewhat vague statement to give democratic politicians and their colluding media talking points to battle Trump in the court of public opinion.
Once again proving Mueller is actively engaged in the resist resist resist movement, the whole charade is about their Trump Insurance.
Neither Mueller nor Cohen would even have been investigated if they weren't close to Trump or if Trump didn't win. The democrats would not have needed to pursue their Trump Insurance which they bought and paid for.
He made Cohen make a somewhat vague statement to give democratic politicians and their colluding media talking points to battle Trump in the court of public opinion.
Once again proving Mueller is actively engaged in the resist resist resist movement, the whole charade is about their Trump Insurance.
Neither Mueller nor Cohen would even have been investigated if they weren't close to Trump or if Trump didn't win. The democrats would not have needed to pursue their Trump Insurance which they bought and paid for.
WAS THE COHEN PLEA DEAL POLITICAL?
Michael Cohen is a crook and deserves to go to prison.But the plea deal that will send him there is an oddity, and may reveal a prosecutorial motivation that has nothing to do with Michael Cohen.
Yesterday, he pled guilty to: tax evasion, for hiding some $4.1 million in income; bank fraud, for failing to disclose on a loan application that he had $14 million in debt; illegal campaign contribution, for paying off two women to “influence the outcome” of a federal election; and filing a false business document, for recouping the payoffs to the women by billing an employer for “legal services” which he had not performed.
For that, he is reportedly getting three to five years in federal prison.
That’s the first interesting part.
Any one of those elements would typically net more than five years in prison. Bank fraud alone, averages a five-year term. Tax evasion sentences average 15 months per count, but those average counts involve dramatically less than $4.1 million in concealed income.
By comparison, Paul Manafort also became a convicted felon yesterday, for tax evasion of a similar amount, and faces a potential maximum of 80 years in jail.
Yet here’s Michael Cohen, pleading in open court to a broader range of more serious crimes, and he got three to five.
Interesting.
Here’s another interesting thing.
For the election law charges to apply, Cohen would have had to have had the intent to influence an election when he paid off the women. The two of them, engaging in what would otherwise be called blackmail or extortion, demanded money for their silence. Each claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Donald Trump, Cohen’s legal client.
Cohen paid them money. That’s not necessarily illegal.
If Cohen said he paid the money to protect Trump’s reputation, that’s not illegal. If Cohen said he paid the money to spare the feelings of Trump’s family, that’s not illegal. If Cohen said he paid the money to protect the value of the Trump brand, that’s not illegal.
It’s only illegal if it’s to influence an election – and only then under certain circumstances.
How possibly could a prosecutor prove what Cohen’s intention was? That’s one of the heavy lifts for any prosecution – intent.
In this case, the defendant, a lawyer, freely revealed intent – freely gave up the information that tacked two more federal felonies onto his resume.
Why would he do that?
What would have induced him to expose himself to that additional criminal liability?
Maybe that unusually short prison sentence.
By claiming the payoffs were for political benefit, the payoffs become in-kind political contributions. As such, they are subject to contributions caps – which Michael Cohen exceeded, as an individual and as a corporation.
He subsequently recouped the money by filing the false invoice with a Trump company.
But all eyes, and all newscasts, are on the election law violations, which ominously claim that Cohen’s actions were directed by and in concert with a candidate everyone knows was Donald Trump.
That’s had people hopping up and down. And by “people,” I mean Democrats in office and in the press who are hoping against hope to turn this into a political weapon against Donald Trump and the Republicans during the looming midterm election.
So let’s talk about it.
Did we learn anything new about this situation and was the situation criminal?
The answers are no and no.
We already knew Trump authorized the payoffs, we’ve heard audio of the conversation in which he did so, and his current lawyer – Rudy Giuliani – has said he authorized the payoffs and compensated Cohen for them.
We knew all of that.
Now, criminality.
It’s important to note what Michael Cohen didn’t plead guilty to – conspiracy. Oddly, that is Trump’s vindication in this matter.
Conspiracy is when two or more people make a plan to do something criminal. There must be two or more conspirators, and there must be criminality.
We know that Michael Cohen is not a conspirator. And so the person with whom he consulted is not a conspirator either. It also means that the plan they made – to pay off seeming blackmail – was not criminal.
It is not against the law to pay off these women, or to direct your lawyer to pay them off.
Where the criminality comes into play is when the lawyer then decides to pay them off to achieve a political end AND to pay them off in a fashion that violates the donations cap.
If Michael Cohen had decided he wanted to influence the election, but instead of paying the extortion in lump sums, had solicited various Trump friends to give the women an amount under the federal political-donation cap which rose in the aggregate to what they demanded, no law would have been broken.
What Trump did is not illegal.
What Cohen did is.
Which is why he is going to prison.
But he is going to prison for an unusually short time, and he made an unnecessary criminal admission that brought the president under political embarrassment, and the whole thing came down just before Labor Day before the midterm elections.
And that smells political.
It smells like a gaming of the prosecution by individuals within the Department of Justice in order to land a political blow against a sitting president of the United States.
That ought to give you pause.
That short prison term bought something from Michael Cohen – it bought Trump’s political foes a weapon, timed perfectly to advance the interests of the Democratic Party.
And that’s the biggest take away from the prosecution of Michael Cohen.
[SIZE=-1]- by Bob Lonsberry © 2018[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]
Michael Cohen is a crook and deserves to go to prison.But the plea deal that will send him there is an oddity, and may reveal a prosecutorial motivation that has nothing to do with Michael Cohen.
Yesterday, he pled guilty to: tax evasion, for hiding some $4.1 million in income; bank fraud, for failing to disclose on a loan application that he had $14 million in debt; illegal campaign contribution, for paying off two women to “influence the outcome” of a federal election; and filing a false business document, for recouping the payoffs to the women by billing an employer for “legal services” which he had not performed.
For that, he is reportedly getting three to five years in federal prison.
That’s the first interesting part.
Any one of those elements would typically net more than five years in prison. Bank fraud alone, averages a five-year term. Tax evasion sentences average 15 months per count, but those average counts involve dramatically less than $4.1 million in concealed income.
By comparison, Paul Manafort also became a convicted felon yesterday, for tax evasion of a similar amount, and faces a potential maximum of 80 years in jail.
Yet here’s Michael Cohen, pleading in open court to a broader range of more serious crimes, and he got three to five.
Interesting.
Here’s another interesting thing.
For the election law charges to apply, Cohen would have had to have had the intent to influence an election when he paid off the women. The two of them, engaging in what would otherwise be called blackmail or extortion, demanded money for their silence. Each claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Donald Trump, Cohen’s legal client.
Cohen paid them money. That’s not necessarily illegal.
If Cohen said he paid the money to protect Trump’s reputation, that’s not illegal. If Cohen said he paid the money to spare the feelings of Trump’s family, that’s not illegal. If Cohen said he paid the money to protect the value of the Trump brand, that’s not illegal.
It’s only illegal if it’s to influence an election – and only then under certain circumstances.
How possibly could a prosecutor prove what Cohen’s intention was? That’s one of the heavy lifts for any prosecution – intent.
In this case, the defendant, a lawyer, freely revealed intent – freely gave up the information that tacked two more federal felonies onto his resume.
Why would he do that?
What would have induced him to expose himself to that additional criminal liability?
Maybe that unusually short prison sentence.
By claiming the payoffs were for political benefit, the payoffs become in-kind political contributions. As such, they are subject to contributions caps – which Michael Cohen exceeded, as an individual and as a corporation.
He subsequently recouped the money by filing the false invoice with a Trump company.
But all eyes, and all newscasts, are on the election law violations, which ominously claim that Cohen’s actions were directed by and in concert with a candidate everyone knows was Donald Trump.
That’s had people hopping up and down. And by “people,” I mean Democrats in office and in the press who are hoping against hope to turn this into a political weapon against Donald Trump and the Republicans during the looming midterm election.
So let’s talk about it.
Did we learn anything new about this situation and was the situation criminal?
The answers are no and no.
We already knew Trump authorized the payoffs, we’ve heard audio of the conversation in which he did so, and his current lawyer – Rudy Giuliani – has said he authorized the payoffs and compensated Cohen for them.
We knew all of that.
Now, criminality.
It’s important to note what Michael Cohen didn’t plead guilty to – conspiracy. Oddly, that is Trump’s vindication in this matter.
Conspiracy is when two or more people make a plan to do something criminal. There must be two or more conspirators, and there must be criminality.
We know that Michael Cohen is not a conspirator. And so the person with whom he consulted is not a conspirator either. It also means that the plan they made – to pay off seeming blackmail – was not criminal.
It is not against the law to pay off these women, or to direct your lawyer to pay them off.
Where the criminality comes into play is when the lawyer then decides to pay them off to achieve a political end AND to pay them off in a fashion that violates the donations cap.
If Michael Cohen had decided he wanted to influence the election, but instead of paying the extortion in lump sums, had solicited various Trump friends to give the women an amount under the federal political-donation cap which rose in the aggregate to what they demanded, no law would have been broken.
What Trump did is not illegal.
What Cohen did is.
Which is why he is going to prison.
But he is going to prison for an unusually short time, and he made an unnecessary criminal admission that brought the president under political embarrassment, and the whole thing came down just before Labor Day before the midterm elections.
And that smells political.
It smells like a gaming of the prosecution by individuals within the Department of Justice in order to land a political blow against a sitting president of the United States.
That ought to give you pause.
That short prison term bought something from Michael Cohen – it bought Trump’s political foes a weapon, timed perfectly to advance the interests of the Democratic Party.
And that’s the biggest take away from the prosecution of Michael Cohen.
[SIZE=-1]- by Bob Lonsberry © 2018[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]
