Tuesday, April 10, 2018
There's an Affidavit Worth Reading
The Mango Mussolini called it nothing less than "an attack on America." Really, Donnie? I just don't see it.
What got Trump's feathers ruffled was FBI raids on the offices and residence of his "personal lawyer" Michael Cohen and the seizure of records, tax information, even emails between Cohen and Trump.
It's not every day that a court issues a search warrant involving a lawyer and his/her client. Solicitor-client privilege is pretty sacrosanct in the eyes of the law and for an abundance of good reasons that I won't get into here.
To get a search warrant of Trump's lawyer's offices and residence the supporting affidavit material would have to lay out a pretty strong case of wrongdoing by Cohen and/or Cohen and Trump. There'll be no "fishing trip" this time.
Unfortunately that also means that the affidavit(s) filed in support of the warrant(s) won't be made public anytime soon. They're likely sealed, for now anyway.
Still I'd love to have a peek at them, just for a few minutes.
When Trump tweeted that he knew nothing about the Stormy Daniels deal, he was effectively saying that attorney-client privilege didn't apply. The fact that he didn't sign the agreement increases the likelihood that he didn't know about it. Since the privilege belongs to the client, how could there possibly be privilege in an agreement the client wasn't aware of?
ReplyDeleteCap
The raid's not Stormy related, thats only $130k.
DeleteThis is much bigger than Stormy, and probably includes Cohen's job and the Deputy of Finance at the RNC.
Not so sure about that, Jay. This seems to be mostly all connected to Stormy. From the NYT:
DeleteThis is what we know, in part from Mr. Cohen’s attorney: The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, acting on a referral from Mr. Mueller, sought and obtained search warrants for Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room, seeking evidence related at least in part to his payment of $130,000 in hush money to the adult actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by her stage name, Stormy Daniels. There are reports that the warrant sought evidence of bank fraud and campaign finance violations, which is consistent with an investigation into allegations that the Daniels payment was illegally sourced or disguised. (For example, routing a payment through a shell company to hide the fact that the money came from the Trump campaign — if that is what happened — would probably violate federal money-laundering laws.)
Cap
The only people who know what this is about are Rosenstien, Meuller, the Judges and the SDAG's, and they arn't talking, unsealing warrants or indictments.
DeleteCohen's Lawyer's an idiot, and Cohen's a Legal Moron as well.
Including Cohen now, the top 3 RNC Money Men have been scandaled "out", keep in mind, the RNC got hacked by the Russians too, but they didn't leak any of that.
Cohen's also up to his eyeballs in the Medallion market in NYC, and a host of other shady grifting, not just Russian grifting.
I suspect that Cohen knows where all the bodies are buried. This can't be good news for Trump.
ReplyDeleteMy sense of Cohen, Owen, is that unless Mueller can get him on a death penalty case, he'll just dummy up and take what's coming, even several years in the pen. He seems like one of those guys who would sacrifice himself for a boss like Trump.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even sure Mueller will be able to get Manafort to sing.
ReplyDeleteWhat's with these guys and their Russian connections? Is everyone on Team Trump in league with sketchy Russians?
Cohen's WikiPedia page has a number of links to Russians. His dealings in New York cab licenses (medallions) is an eyebrow raiser.
Then there's Cohen's "all cash" sales of New York buildings to numbered companies with undisclosed principals.
"In 2014, a mysterious buyer using a limited liability company that hid the purchaser’s identity paid $10 million in cash for a small apartment building on New York’s lower east side that Cohen had purchased just three years before for $2 million. The handsome appreciation came despite the fact that the assessed value of the property, at 172 Rivington St., hardly budged in these years, hovering around the price Cohen paid for it.
"Three other properties Cohen bought and sold in roughly the same time frame followed a similar pattern. Each was purchased by a different LLC, but were tied together by the fact that a lawyer, Herbert Chaves, served as the LLCs’ manager.
'“An all cash purchase by an LLC of an overvalued property in Manhattan is usually worth a closer look by federal investigators,” said Jaimie Nawaday, a former federal prosecutor and money laundering specialist who is now a partner with the New York law firm Kelley Drye & Warren. “There are perfectly good reasons to buy and sell through LLCs, but the combination of facts is one that tends to arouse interest.”'
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article180701541.html