F.B.I. Raids Office of Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Michael Cohen

a reply to: Phage

The investigation is not limited to, or centered on Trump.

That's funny. Seems every time it is mentioned, certain people have the impression it is.

Given that Russia attempted to influence the election, is the investigation a witch hunt?

Given that my car gets 24 mpg, how high can I bounce a basketball?

A witch hunt is an investigation that is used to indict without care for whether or not there is cause to indict, just as the Salem Witch Trials were used to convict whether or not there was anything to convict over.

If there is reason to suspect involvement with the Trump campaign, should that path of investigation be allowed to proceed?

Yes. Where have I stated otherwise?

TheRedneck

a reply to: rnaa

youre intentionally not gettin git. th ememo itself,no matter the media its written on is classified. The paper,the ink, the touch pad. the MATERIALS used are classified when used.

comey knew it ,broke it,and didnt care because th e whistleblower law is proecting him apparently.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Trump is his only client...


So that means it is very likely that every shady thing he has done was on trumps behalf. Almost certainly with trumps knowledge... and since Cohen taped a lot of interactions . We just might even have tapes that prove trump knew.

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: UKTruth

Jake Tapper from CNN already debunked the Prague narrative. Not to mention Cohen was in California at the time with witnesses who place him there.

Jake Tapper didn't debunk Cohen in Prague?
He said there was a singular anonymous source that said it was a "different" Michael Cohen in Prague.

McKlatchy's reporting appears detailed.
Uncharacteristically Cohen has refused to comment on the reporting and has stayed silent.
It is also now being reported that the Intelligence Committee was not satisfied with Cohen's answers on his timeline and travel.


Why the question of whether Michael Cohen visited Prague is massively important for Donald Trump
The Steele dossier claimed Cohen went to Prague to meet Russians. He’s said for more than a year that he didn’t.
www.vox.com...

There is absolutely no reason why Cohen would vehemently, publicly, repeatedly and loudly deny ever being in Prague if he actually was there. No reason he would deny it under oath to Congress.

This is very bad news for Trump.

Cohen kept a safe deposit box which was seized by the FBI in their raid.

Information in the possession of the FBI appears to refute Cohen’s claim that he was never in Prague, which was a claim made by the disputed “Steele dossier”.

That dossier also claims that Russian intelligence services are in the possession of a videotape showing Trump engaging in a sex act known as “water sports” with a prostitute in a hotel in Russia.

The implication being that the Russian government could use the threat of the video’s release as leverage against Trump in their favor.

The Trump administration vehemently denies that such exists, of course; even that it could exist.

Comey (reliable source?), in his soon to be released book, claims Trump appeared “obsessively” concerned with the possibility that his wife might believe that the incident supposedly depicted on the claimed video was true, “even a 1% chance”.

Comey claims he thought that concern was extremely unusual.

Cohen was Trump’s “fixer”, a position long held by Cohen and well trusted by Trump. Also, a position one might assume, well known to those who dealt with, or sought to deal with, Trump.

Is logical to assume that such a blackmail attempt as would have represented by this salacious video would first have been present to Trump’s “fixer”?

Perhaps in Prague?

Would Cohen have alerted Trump to the threat and sought guidance with regard to a response?

Was a copy of that video (perhaps un-labeled, for discretion’s sake) locked away in Cohen’s safe deposit box, assumed to be safe from exposure (far more so than if it had been kept in Cohen’s office or home)?

ETA: Might partially explain why Cohen’s attorney was keen to have access to the seized materials before the FBI taint team could review them.

I can see where, technically, the contents of that video might not be related to the crimes for which Cohen is suspect, and how his attorney might feel justified in seeking exclusion of the video from the materials seized.

On the other hand, if the FBI were to find such a video among the evidence seized, they might be prompted to forward it to Mueller’s team, as it might have connection to charges of collusion, as a possible motive.

Why would Cohen not have destroyed the video?

Every “Consigliere” knows that you keep a record of where the bodies are buried as insurance against becoming one of those bodies.

a reply to: soberbacchus

Yes he did. The Cohen that was reported in Prague was NOT the same Cohen acting as Trumps lawyer.

His passport has been checked with no travel to Prague. He has witnesses who placed him in California at the time he was supposedly in Prague.

Even now Cohen is stating he was never in Prague.

Michael Cohen
‏Verified account @MichaelCohen212

Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone @McClatchyDC. No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!

a reply to: Xcathdra

His passport has been checked with no travel to Prague.

My passport says I was in Amsterdam. It doesn't say I was in Paris. I was.

a reply to: Bhadhidar

A couple quick notes on that post.

The evidence the FBI Seized is still in holding by a special panel apart from the investigative team until the courts rule on what constitutes Legitimate Attorney Client Privilege and what doesn't.

The courts asked Cohen to produce a client list for that purpose, which opens up another can of worms.
If he claims Trump was the client and criminal activity occurred, it could implicate Trump. Evidence is still turned over despite Client-Attorney Privilege if significant criminal activity is occurring.
If he doesn't claim Trump as a client, then the evidence is admissible.

Cohen in Prague didn't come from the raid evidence. It came from another intelligence source.

The Golden Shower tape is neither here or there legally unless it was successfully used for blackmail purposes.

This is what the Dossier alleges about Cohen in Prague:

Speaking in confidence to a longstanding compatriot friend in mid-October 2016, a Kremlin insider highlighted the importance of Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP’s lawyer, Michael COHEN, in the ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership. COHEN’s role had grown following the departure of Paul MANNAFORT [sic] as TRUMP’s campaign manager in August 2016. Prior to that MANNAFORT had led for the Trump side.

According to the Kremlin insider, COHEN now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of TRUMP’s relationship with Russia being exposed. In pursuit of this aim, COHEN had met secretly with several Russian Presidential Administration (PA) Legal Department officials in an EU country in August 2016. The immediate issues had been to contain further scandals involving MANNAFORT’s commercial and political role in Russia/Ukraine and to limit the damage arising from exposure of former TRUMP foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE’s secret meetings with Russian leadership figures in Moscow the previous month. The overall objective had been “to sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connections could be fully established or proven.”

Then in a report dated the next day, October 20, Steele gave more specifics. He said Cohen’s “clandestine meeting” with Russian officials was in Prague, and mentioned a Russian NGO, Rossotrudnichestvo, as a potential host for the meeting.

The final report in the published Steele dossier, dated December 13 (after Trump was elected president), reiterated the claim of a Cohen/Prague meeting — now saying it happened in August or September 2016 — and gave many more supposed specifics.


COHEN had been accompanied to Prague by 3 colleagues and the timing of the visit was either in the last week of August or the first week of September. One of their main Russian interlocutors was Oleg SOLODUKHIN operating under Rossotrudnichestvo cover. According to [redacted], the agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally.

The report claims that Cohen discussed how to destroy evidence of this purported hacking operation in the event of a Clinton victory.

www.vox.com...

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: soberbacchus

His passport has been checked with no travel to Prague. He has witnesses who placed him in California at the time he was supposedly in Prague.

His passport would not have been stamped to travel to Czech Republic.

According to reporting, he entered through Germany.

originally posted by: Xcathdra
a reply to: soberbacchus

Yes he did. The Cohen that was reported in Prague was NOT the same Cohen acting as Trumps lawyer.

His passport has been checked with no travel to Prague. He has witnesses who placed him in California at the time he was supposedly in Prague.

Cohen has publicly acknowledged making three trips to Europe that year – to Italy in July, England in early October and a third after Trump’s November election. The investigators intend to press Cohen for more information, said the sources, who lacked authorization to speak for the record
...
congressional investigators have “a high level of interest” in Cohen’s European travel, with their doubts fueled by what they deem to be weak documentation Cohen has provided about his whereabouts around the time the Prague meeting was supposed to have occurred.

Cohen has said he was only in New York and briefly in Los Angeles during August, when the meeting may have occurred, though the sources said it also could have been held in early September.

www.mcclatchydc.com...

Citing a day he was in LA or NY sometime in August as proof he wasn't in Prague at anytime between end of August through early September seems a defense best offered for Trump supporters.

Ditto with tweeting pics of his passport cover or showing that there is not Czeck travel stamp when he knows he would not need one to travel there. His explanations smell.

He hasn't been able to account fully for his travels during August and September.

a reply to: JoshuaCox

So Trump is Superman now?

I mean, with all the wild speculation about apparently a lifetime of nefarious dealings of Cohen, if Trump was sitting safely behind the scenes directing those moves, and still had time to grow a multi-billion-dollar real estate business in the hardest place to succeed in the world, expand it to cover several foreign countries, run a wildly popular TV reality series, appear on WWE, manage the Miss Universe Pageant, accost every woman this side of Kankakee, operate a fake university, spend countless hours trying to figure out how to stiff contractors, and club baby seals for a hobby...

How many Donald Trumps are there?!?

TheRedneck

a reply to: Phage

is that a confession? Sounds illegal to me.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

It's not.
Have you traveled in the EU? I have. Once.

a reply to: Phage

I'll take your word then. Still sounds illegal.

No, never been abroad, never had a passport. I delivered to Canada a few times, and stood feet from the Mexican border.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: Phage

I'll take your word then. Still sounds illegal.

No, never been abroad, never had a passport. I delivered to Canada a few times, and stood feet from the Mexican border.

TheRedneck

In the EU, they stamp your passport at point of entry and exit, but they don't do anything when traveling between countries within the EU. It's a lot like traveling from state to state in the US.

a reply to: soberbacchus

and the sources claiming he was in Prague dont give a specific date nor time of when Cohen was supposedly in Prague. The source was the same guy who wrote the original article.

The one Jake Tapper debunked.

Not one article involves Mueller making this statement.

a reply to: Aazadan

Ah, OK. So it's like entering in Florida but staying in Minnesota?

That sounds more stoopid now than illegal...

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Yeah, turning out Cohen may not be so smart after all.

Like others with allegedly "good brains."

a reply to: Phage

Results are yet to be seen. How about we let a court decide? You know, an actual judge?

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Sounds good to me.

But the extraordinary legal action taken in New York should not be taken lightly.