I wasn’t going to mention Michael Cohen’s tape of Trump discussing paying off a Playboy model, because, I mean, we know Trump is a dog. And it will make no difference to his base. There’s a chance the payment violated campaign finance law, of course. The most interesting part about it is that it involves the guy who owns American Media/the National Enquirer. The world would be a better place without the National Enquirer.
The real significance is that this is just the beginning. Manafort’s first trial is about to begin. There will be more trials. There will be a steady drip of revelations from now on. Charles Pierce:
My guess is that Cohen has tapes of everything. (If he’s smart, he does, anyway.) There will be a flood of them, sooner or later. I’ll let the legal ethics wonks parse out exactly how badly Cohen has blown up the canons of ethics. I suspect his law license is as far down his list of priorities now as it was when he was running clean-up errands. But he’s the first member of the inner circle to put a bargaining chip on the table. There will be other chips from other people. This is far from the last deal to go down.
Also:
If I’m the president*’s actual lawyers, I’m begging Rudy to stop helping now.
Fake news! Fake news!….The tape is from some guy named John Miller or John Barron, or something like that. I don't know where they got the idea it was Trump on the tape.
I have heard theories that Cohen leaked the info to the NY Times. Cohen knows the slime machine will be turned on him full-force if he flips. Cohen is telling Trump – it won't be my word against your word. I have your voice telling me to do what crimes I will be charged with.
PARDON ME NOW!
Manifort may not flip. His family might get killed before Paul got offed by the Russian baddies pulling Manifort's strings. If Manifort is silenced by fear, I wouldn't expect Trump will pardon Manifort out of any sense of loyalty. Manifort is toast with the evidence Mueller has, but can he make the case that Manifort was operating under the direction of the Kremlin when he was working for Trump?
After hearing this Playboy model story, tRUMP's thugs will only love Hair Furor harder, deeper, longer, more passionate…
I suspect these thugs love tRUMP more than their significant others.
When will I hear a reporter ask "How many abortions did you pay for? "
I'm wondering about Cohen's repeated references to doing the right thing for his country. I kinda get the feeling that Cohen's involvement and awareness was of a basic criminal nature, you know, money laundering, tax evasion, influence peddling, paying hush money. Things of that nature. But I think he didn't have a full awareness of the political aspects and motivations of the Russian's involvement to undermine our electoral process.
It seems to me that Cohen wants to distance himself from Trump, Manafort, Stone, Flynn, Donny Jr, or anybody who knew and understood that the Russian had a clear intention to subvert the democratic process. I might be wrong, but Cohen's words makes me think that whatever his involvement is, selling out his country was not part of his plan.
Trump never has had an allegiance to his country, so he wouldn't hesitate to sell us out. Every time he repeats his no collusion mantra you can interpret that as an affirmation that he colluded. He's a big bag of shit and I'm praying for the day of his take down.
When I went to school there was an expression that was used to convey the idea that you engaged in an unacceptable behavior and would be viewed as such. We would say, Your name is Mudd!. Future generations will be saying, Your name is Trump!
I hear that Mike Pompeo got a call from his Russian counterpart asking for the release of the Russian cutie on ice in DC nailed cold for being a Russian agent, if rumors of intercepted communications are borne out.
The Russians don't like leaving their people hanging in foreign jails. The Putin policy for spies seems to be, "If you get caught, we will get you back – if you betray us, we will hunt you down and kill you." (What a recruiting motto.)
What do you want to bet, the next call will be from Putin to Trump, demanding Trump fix this NOW!. Being 'outed' as a Russian asset does not do Trump any good, but it seems to be fine with Putin for Trump to be put on display, dancing to Putin's tune.
What does Putin have on Trump? Well, let's just say the Republicans are no better at IP security than the Democrats. What was Putin's purpose: certainly, not specifically to elect Trump, but to throw the whole election charade under the bus. Russia is a third rate nation, put there by the US – it would be in his best interest to expose the US as the second rate operation it has become since the 80s. Once you get into the 1%, the quality level goes way down: clever people who have figured out how to game the system (how hard is that, really?) and none of the morality or intelligence to figure out if destroying the system is such a good idea.
They say Cohen messed up taping Trump without his knowledge and because its illegal, but also attorney-client privilege. I also read that when what's being taped is evidence of a crime, things change a bit. But the question of whether material seized from Cohen's office could be used at all by prosecutors because again, attorney-client privilege, has already been settled in court, so the tapes I assume are fair game. And this tape is likely just a teaser; I'm sure he has more tapes with even more damaging revelations.
Trump's got a lot of people running interference for him, directly or indirectly. The Russians, the GOP, the MSM (mostly unwittingly) Fox; and he seems to be taking some comfort in that. Here's a man for whom interference has been run on his behalf his entire life. Getting away with stuff is the expected norm. For this reason I don't think he realizes the extent the walls are closing in on him. Or maybe he does.
Unlike previous special prosecutors, Mueller has run an airtight shop, which will make his report to congress that much more of a bombshell when it lands.
According to this, New York is a ‘one party consent’ state, which means that Cohen’s taping Trump probably wasn’t illegal.