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FBI Raids Trump Lawyer’s Office
The FBI has raided the office of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. From the New York Times:
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.
“Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” said Stephen Ryan, his lawyer. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”
Mr. Cohen plays a role in aspects of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He also recently said he paid $130,000 to a pornographic-film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. Ms. Clifford is known as Stormy Daniels.
This investigation has gone from “Trump colluded with Putin to steal American democracy” to “Trump diddled a porn star” in about a year. Hopefully Mueller will wrap up this investigation soon.
What do you think, Ricochetti? Is this big or blah?
Published in General
And I was just pitching Ricochet to someone over at Facebook:
“Ricochet moderates but they moderate for language not political content. The goal there is civility and constructive engagement with one another. My primary problem with Facebook is how ill-mannered it often is here.”
I disagree. But you won’t convince me and I won’t convince you so let’s drop it.
The “this” here being a legal search Persians to a lawfully obtained warrant in an ongoing investigation?
Didn’t Republicans manufacture campaign finance violations against Clinton too by this standard? The matter is being investigated. They had a warrant so they had to have demonstrated some probable cause. This though isn’t proof that anything happened, but that it looks like something might have happened that warrants investigation. The explanations of this NDA payoff are conflicting, and no account is made of the payment in campaign records. If it was done for the purposes of the campaign it would be a violation of either disclosure laws, or depending on who paid the money contribution limits. John Edward’s was investigated for this very same thing. I believe he won in court in the end, but I dont recall any Republican complaining how unfair it was to him? Granted he was out of office by then, and Trump is the sitting president, but hey that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
I don’t know. How do you mean?
Is that probable cause for a campaign violation, let alone a raid of this type rather than a subpoena? Seems like a record of a payoff coming from the campaign would be the violation, not lack of a payoff from the campaign.
If the campaign reimbursed Cohen, the payment from Cohen to Daniels would probably not be in violation of campaign finance laws.
My problem is with the very origin of this whole thing stemming from Rosenstein’s incorrect grant of authority to Mueller. Because of Comey and Mueller’s relationship, and Mueller’s fixation on protecting the FBI and DOJ, both of which had questionable involvement in this whole affair, he should have, if he had any self-respect, declined the appointment because of conflict of interest. It is clear that Mueller’s self-righteousness outweighed his self-respect.
If he wanted to provide the American people with some confidence he was not running a lynch mob he would not have hired a posse of Democratic party hacks as his staff. He clearly does not care.
And we all know that Mueller is offended that a person of the caliber of Trump became president and he feels it his duty to overturn the verdict of the American electorate. Hey, Trump offends me but Mueller is far worse in what he is trying to do.
Are you serious here? There may be a crime here and we apparently have a valid federal investigation that results in the subject search warrants. Nothing even close to this was ever initiated with regard to Clinton’s failures to secure classified material and in the weak and cursory look taken by the Comey team at these events several other possible crimes including obstruction and perjury were committed. You truly think we are having equal and balanced performance in our federal law enforcement?
Oh Give me a break. I guess for Libertarians being for limitations of state power, is only a virtue when people you like are in power. If you don’t like the person in power then, I guess by all means necessary to get rid of them is the virtue.
It is obvious the investigation regarding Trump’s involvement into Russian collusion isn’t panning out, so they are grasping at straws. Actually what we are finding is that the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration and FBI has more evidence against them regarding Russian collusion then anything to do with Trump. But do expect Muller to turn his sights on the Democrats? Have we so far seen any repercussions regarding the corruption at the FBI, the FISA court and the previous administration illegally unmasking people in order to disrupt the Trump administration before it started? No, we haven’t.
This whole thing stinks and the investigation needs to be shut down. It is obvious our institutions in DC are corrupt.
How do we know that?
“We” means “I”, of course! Just trying to be inclusive. But yes, having observed the self-rightousness of the man for 30 years I have no doubt of it.
So far one of the premiere investigative bodies in the world has turned up:
1. Internet trolls are real/ people believe stupid stuff on the internet
2. Rich men have sex with women they aren’t married to and then don’t want to talk about it ten years later
No wonder they brought back Mulder and Scully, someone had to add a little credibility to the Bureau.
You’ve observed Mueller for 30 years? OK. I don’t know enough about him to draw that conclusion.
The problem I see is that with Trump, if you are not 100% for him, you must be 100% against him. I am neither, but in the minds of his supporters on here, that means I must be 100% against him because there is no allowable middle ground.
If you want to change the way police powers, prosecutions, and searches take place, that might be an interesting conversation. We can start with the expansion of police powers due to the war on drugs and then talk about how it was further warped to fight terrorism.
But that’s not what this is about. This is about an investigation that’s finding (to no one’s suprise) massive wrong doing, probably on the part of Donald Trump. That’s why people are having tantrums about it. People on the right had similar tantrums about the Watergate investigation.
Some of us tried to warn you Trump people ahead of time that this man shouldn’t be President. You had to choose to ignore the red flags.
“This whole thing stinks and the investigation needs to be shut down. It is obvious our institutions in DC are corrupt.”
If that’s the case, Donald Trump should shut down the investigation. It is within his power to do so.
I agree. Pick a date in a six month increment from the start of this nonsense and say, ‘enough’. In fact, one might consider trial time limits for us little people as well.
You completely miss the point. The point is the exact same people in charge of the law enforcement approach have treated the two parties in exactly opposite ways! Why is that? Why is their enforcement selective? Why are you so comfortable with that being done to the President of the United States! Hell, the so-called Libertarians here should be outraged! And yet … they are celebrating and high-fiving. Because Trump. Sad.
Yes, I dealt with Mueller thirty years ago, an experience I’ve written about on Ricochet, and am familiar with his DOJ tenure in Boston where I also was at the time, including his collusion with the corrupt FBI office in that city.
And, as I mentioned above, I am offended by Trump and feel the last election was an embarrassment for both parties, but am much more troubled by the behavior of Comey, Mueller, and their cronies at the FBI and Justice. It’s a disgrace.
Is a payment from Cohen to Porny a violation of campaign finance laws? Why? Maybe it’s a business expense; maybe it’s a personal expense – is everything related to a campaign if one is a candidate for office?
If the answer is that everything is campaign related then there is really only one ultimate outcome: no speech outside of official channels, including no commercial news. The New Yorker has a puff piece on Hillary? Obviously a campaign contribution using commercial space to express personal opinions to help the campaign. NYT has a hit piece on Hillary (guffaw!) saying she’s untrustworthy because of memogate all the way back to Whitewater? Obviously a campaign contribution using commercial space to express personal opinions to help the Trump campaign. Alred Junior pays money for stories of being grabbed by the hoo-ha? Obviously a campaign contribution to the Hillary campaign. Law firm hires Fusion GPS to hire Steele to pay Russian officials for dirt on Trump? Obviously a campaign contribution (and likely collusion with the Russians to meddle in our election).
So yes, I have even more problems now with election law than I did before. On top of that, though, we now have naked partisan and unequal application of the law. That’s a much bigger problem.
I’m outraged that the law enforcement people let the Democrats get off so easily. Where you and I disagree is that the appropriate response to that scandal is to let Republicans get off so easily.
I want both political parties to have the law enforced appropriately against them. You seem to want it enforced against neither or only want it enforced against Democrats.
If he’s feeling especially magnanimous he might even pardon Mueller.
“Massive”? I don’t think that word means what you think it does.
Everything that’s come out so far has been pretty picayunish, and most of what they’ve found predates the Trump campaign.
Most of what they have found about “collusion” [remember collusion? It’s what the investigation is supposed to be focused on] is far more applicable to the Dems than to Trump. But the investigation doesn’t seem to be moving in that direction – at least there have been no indictments announced, or no-knock raids. I wonder why?
Oh? Do tell of this massive wrongdoing Mueller’s investigation is turning up.
No one has proposed that.
What Red flags? You think if Hillary Clinton won, they would have investigated her blatant corruption? The corruption of the Clinton Fountain, whose donations seems to have mysteriously dried up after the election, isn’t that interesting. I guess that institution isn’t worth investigating.
The real problem is that this kind of investigation only goes one way. The Democrats do not get investigated to this extent. Also this kind of precedent at the high levels of government is scary. I’m with Alan Dershowitz on this one.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/04/09/alan-dershowitz-rips-aclu-silence-michael-cohen-trump-lawyer-office-raid
The legal question is, why did Cohen pay her? If the payment is intended to help the campaign, it is considered an in-kind campaign contribution. This is not rocket science.
Cohen has publicly admitted to paying Ms. Daniels for an NDA that protected Trump, so it wasn’t a personal expense or a business expense. It’s hard for a rational person to conclude that the payment was not intended to help Trump but that is what the investigation is trying to determine.
The campaign can pay her for her silence, Trump can pay her for her silence because the current law says a candidate can contribute an unlimited amount to his campaign. Cohen can not avoid the limits on campaign contributions by paying directly for something that benefits the campaign.
This is not rocket science. I’m not even a lawyer and I can understand the legal concepts involved here.
I have my guesses, but we’ll find out in few months, won’t we?
Hopefully it’ll be before the midterms.
I agree that it is potentially a problem that the media can print favorable stories to clients, but that is why I agree with the Citizens United decision. Corporations are entitled to free speech.
You know as well as I do that Hillary’s law firm was reimbursed by the campaign for the Steele Dossier. That is precisely why that was not a violation of the campaign finance laws and that is the fundamental difference between that law firm and Cohen. It’s not rocket science.
”What red flags?” Are you [expletive] serious?