Very Interesting
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump blasted the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday following news that investigators had raided the office of his personal attorney, calling the search “an attack on our country.”
Earlier in the day before the president met with senior military leaders at the White House, the FBI raided the New York office and residence of Michael Cohen, seeking information about a $130,000 payment the attorney made to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, sources told NBC News.
Federal prosecutors for the Office for the Southern District of New York executed search warrants at Cohen’s law office located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and seized documents related to a referral from Mueller’s team.
Trump called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”
Sounds like Trump is in a panic!
So, a payoff to high class hooker might be the “Sarajevo trigger” that touches off nuclear Armageddon? If so, what a fitting end to our truly stupid species.
Sigh . . .
Karl, I would suggest Trump meant an attack on his creditability, honor, truthfulness, stature, and “hair” is an attack on America’s stature in the world today. He is pulling the flag’s cloak around himself. If he had served in the military, it might have worked.
It may be a witch hunt given that Michael Cohen is Trump’s witch. Trump has abused his personal lawyer to do some very unethical if not illegal things.
Run,
Agreed that Trump is trying to wrap himself in the flag, but there is more. It is also his belief that his job makes him able to do and say whatever he wants. And after his first year it looks like, other than the investigation, Reps in Congress are allowing his beliefs to be true.
His firing of Comey and his television interview where he claimed the russian investigation was part of the reason for that firing is pure and simple obstruction of justice. Yet they do nothing. It is not going to get better, it can only get worse until this absolute horror of a human being is run out of office.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/972169650535653376
Trump is surrounded by shady people. Not since Warren G. Harding have we had a president surrounded by so many criminals, spouting off complete nonsense about how he’s so alone.
https://americacomesalive.com/2011/08/15/laddie-boy-warren-hardings-dog/
There’s also the Panama hotel story (Trump org implicitly threatening Panama executive branch over actions of their judicial branch) out last night/this morning.
Yeah, honest people want this kind of lawyer representing them:
As Mr. Spade was known to say, and as we are known to quote him: the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19725384/michael-cohen-fbi-raid/
Re Kolchack and Armageddon..
I think Kolchack may have been connecting the dots between “president met with senior military leaders” and the president’s need to change the headlnes, and, of course, become a military hero.
If he wasn’t such a dick I’d feel sorry for him.
This looks like the Russian ‘bot indictment – a bunch of smoke liberals want to be fire. Anything Mueller finds against Trump is protected by attorney-client privilege.
A “witch hunt” sounds like a very good analogy. If you sink the girls head underwater and she lives, she’s a witch, and you kill her. If she drowns, she is not a witch, and so you keep looking for the witch.
I love it when non attorneys repeat statements from other attorneys that are partly right, then jump to a conclusion. Um, not all attorney-client conversations are privileged. If a client uses the help of an attorney to commit a crime, that is not privileged. Further, a client must have engaged an attorney for a specific matter to have privilege. Our boy genius(unless he lied again) took care of that.
“Why is this relevant? Because President Trump has said quite publicly that he did not know what Cohen was doing with respect to the alleged payments to Stormy Daniels—payments that appear to be at the core of the SDNY investigation. He has said he was unaware of the payments and did not know why they were made (suggesting that the press had to “ask Michael” about them). If this is true, then it seems that Trump could not have had an attorney-client relationship with Cohen regarding the Daniels payment in the first instance—one hallmark of an attorney-client relationship is agreement as to its scope and the attorney’s obligation to keep the client advised as to all significant material matters (of which settlement would surely be one). Thus, by his own testimony, it seems that the Daniels matter is outside the scope of matters in which Cohen has represented Trump—and thus there is no attorney-client privilege in the first instance.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/04/10/michael-cohen-the-attorney-client-privilege-and-the-crime-fraud-exception/
This is a witch hunt. In this case the witch is named Cohen.
BTW, our boy genius just admitted to obstruction of justice for the second time.
“The key phrase here is “No Collusion or Obstruction (other than I fight back).” When you say “other than,” you are conceding it fits into the larger category, while identifying it as an exception: I didn’t eat the cookies you left out, other than the one that already had a bite out of it. In this case, however, “fight back” is an exception large enough to encompass all Trump’s efforts to impede the investigation into Russian interference on behalf of his campaign. Everything from demanding James Comey let Michael Flynn go free to firing Comey to dangling pardons for Paul Manafort is fighting back against the investigation. He is rebranding obstruction of justice as Trump fighting back. Of course, Trump already admitted a year ago, on camera, he fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation, so it’s hardly a Tom Cruise–Jack Nicholson moment.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/trump-tweets-syria-attack-confesses-obstruction-of-justice.html
EMichael
thank you for your comments. i think they help me at least understand lawyer privilege better as well as “what trump is up to.”
but i think as a matter of careful logic, you can’t conclude from Trump’s statement about “fighting back” that he admitted to collusion or obstruction. If I am accused of a crime and I hire a lawyer to defend me, and he deposes witnesses… I am “fighting back,” but that does not make me “obstructing justice.”
nor does my pointing this out mean that i am absolving Trump. though it wouldn’t surprise me that the law these days would find my “defense” of Trump to be obstructing justice.
Cob,
You are framing “fight back” the same way trump is, while ignoring that how he is fighting back is obstructing justice.
Dangling pardons for Manafort is fighting back, but it is also obstruction of justice. Demanding Comey let Flynn og free is fighting back, but is also obstructing justice.
EMichael,
yes, those things might be obstructing justice. what i was commenting on was your logic in concluding that Trump saying he was “fighting back” was an admission of obstructing justice.
and of course i am “framing” the words the way Trump is: that’s how you get to the meaning of what he said, and therefore to what you can “logically” draw from it.
Cob,
I think you do not put enough meaning into “other than”.
EM
no accounting for personal semantics. but here is where i lose the thread. i can’t see how “other than” changes the meaning of what Trump thought he was saying. I have had enough experience with people, including myself, not saying “exactly” what they meant to say to not want to convict someone of a crime bases on my own fundamentalist idea of what words “really” mean. That’s why people of good will give each other the chance to explain in other words.
of course i wouldn’t expect a prosecutor to allow that,
Coberly, I agree. The prosecutor might not allow Trump to explain what he meant but any fair judge would.
JackD
of course i am assuming Trump would not say, “I meant that I only obstructed justice a little bit.”
and i am not assuming that a reasonable jury would not find him guilty of obstructing justice anyway.
but now i am wondering just what obstructing justice means. In Stalinist Russia and America we are about at the point where pleading “not guilty, your honor” constitutes a separate crime of obstructing justice.
Stalinist America? Surely I exaggerate. But just a little bit.
No, you exaggerate a lot.
who? meeee? now why would i do a thing like that?
what do you suppose a plea bargain amounts to?
i only ate the cookie with the bite out of it. i did not eat the whole plate.
only someone like our friend (and most people are like our friend) would equate “fits into the larger category” with “is”.
or does it take just one lick of the tar brush?
coberly:
I have said this before, Jack is an attorney.
Plea Bargaining is an admission of guilt unless specified. You are just arguing the penalty for your crime.
Offering amnesty for a crime to keep them from going to trial or telling an officer of the law to forget an alleged crime is obstruction of justice as it disallows the actual truth finding in a court of law. Trump is playing judge and jury outside of his responsibilities as President to prevent the actual finding of truth.
Run,
It’s really rather hopeless. JackD may be an attorney. He may even be a good one in both senses of the word.
I am talking about common human cognitive error, to which we are all subject. Usually to no particular harm. Often to great harm, especially in the hands of the great and powerful.
What I am having trouble grasping is that there is no hope that my trying to point this out will change anyone’s behavior or even ability to understand, or question, what they do.
I had this problem when I was trying to teach math… you simply cannot teach math. You can teach many people to jump through hoops (recognize and follow established algorhithms) but you can’t teach them to think. they have to do that on their own.
Plea bargains are what you say they are in theory. In practice they amount to coerced confessions, in violation of the whole purpose of the Fifth Amendment, and the refusal to take a plea bargain is treated as a separate crime, effectively obstruction of justice.
I do not expect you to understand this, let alone someone who is a successful officer of the court.
Coberly:
And you have never read anything I have written on the court system here at Angry Bear? I know what it means, EM knows what it mean, as does Jack. You are the only one here to try and make it something it is not and obfuscate what is being said.
Coberly, I am not denying that the plea negotiations can result in innocent people pleading to something to avoid the risk of conviction and more severe sentencing in the event of a guilty verdict. It happens. More often, it allows guilty people to get less severe sentences in the interest of not tying up the courts in more trials than the courts can handle. Call that reality whatever you like. Stalinist seems over the top to me.