Michael Cohen sentenced to 3 years
The fixer couldn’t fix it for himself:
Before leveling his sentence, Judge William Pauley said “Cohen pled guilt to a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct” and “lost his moral compass,” adding that “as a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better.”
That’s a little bit humorous, considering the reputation lawyers have for moral compasses.
The “smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct” that the judge references doesn’t seem all that varied to me, as smorgasbords go: tax evasion, making false statements to a financial institution, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress.
Before [the] ruling was issued, Cohen had pleaded for leniency, accusing President Trump – his former boss – of causing him to “follow a path of darkness rather than light” and “cover up his dirty deeds.” Cohen’s attorney, Guy Petrillo, argued that Cohen “came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in the country.”
Without Trump, Cohen no doubt would have stayed pure as the driven snow. And I wouldn’t exactly say that Cohen “came forward.” I seem to recall a fairly forceful series of moves by law enforcement to seize his records and then squeeze him to implicate that supposedly “most powerful person in the country” in crimes that could then be used to impeach him.
Although Cohen wasn’t forthcoming with the much-sought-after unequivocally-smoking gun, the legal case against Cohen may have yielded enough ammunition to allow for an impeachment vote in the House. Of course, now that it’s controlled by Democrats, the Cohen case really wasn’t needed, since impeachment is one of those “where there’s a will, there’s a way” processes.
As for Cohen’s helpfulness:
Cohen “didn’t come anywhere close to assisting this office in an investigation,” Roos [a prosecutor with the Southern District of New York] told the court, adding, “the charges portray a pattern of deception, of brazenness and of greed.”
That doesn’t indicate that we should have a lot of trust in Cohen’s veracity, does it? The case against Trump for the Stormy Daniels payments rests mostly, as far as I can tell, on Cohen’s word (plus some very convoluted and suspect legal theories). The court is saying Cohen’s word is meaningless and/or untrustworthy. But if they ever try to convict Trump of campaign finance violations (which they can’t do until he leaves office, and a statute of limitations kicks in if he is re-elected), they’ve already discredited their own star witness.
For now, anyway.
And lest we forget:
If the SDNY is right, how come none of the members of Congress have been charged with felonies by the United States attorney in D.C.? They use tax dollars to buy silence, which was approved by the Ethics Committee. Essentially, there’s a slush fund of tax dollars. They were active members of Congress. The deals were made while they were public officials.
That slush fund needs looking into. I have read that Adam Schiff has used it to pay off a 19 year old male.
Campaign finance laws are irregularly and unequally enforced. Dinesh D’Souza gets jail time for an illegal contribution of $25,000. Obama’s has $2million in illegal contributions and gets a fine.
Paying hush money to blackmailers is not illegal. How many prominent men have paid off women who have accused them of sexual impropriety? Many. As mentioned by Neo, the Congressional slush fund for doing just that has been known for sometime. There is, however, a difference between sexual impropriety and consensual sexual relations. When an adult woman has consented to sex and then sees an opportunity to use that encounter as blackmail against a married man, what do we call it? Speaking truth to power? Holding him accountable? Standing up for women? No, it’s greed and opportunism. Especially if the sex never actually happened. And what we have here is a case of she said, he said. No definitive proof. No semen stained dress.
I hope the progs proceed with impeachment based on the line of thinking that Trump was elected to the office fraudulently because he paid these women off with illegal campaign contributions. A good lawyer like Dershowitz would have a field day with that one.
“Before [the] ruling was issued, Cohen had pleaded for leniency, accusing President Trump – his former boss – of causing him to “follow a path of darkness rather than light” and “cover up his dirty deeds.” ”
This! The prosecutor has brought enough pressure to bear on Cohen that he has not only sung, he has composed.
This whole sorry mess does not make one confident in equal justice before the law. We are witnessing Banana Republic style justice.
Had Cohen not been involved with Trump, he would be just one more sleaze bag lawyer in NYC. The SDNY is a partisan hate center.
a Cohen should NEVER trust a Müller EVER
“the legal case against Cohen may have yielded enough ammunition to allow for an impeachment vote in the House.” neo
“I hope the progs proceed with impeachment based on the line of thinking that Trump was elected to the office fraudulently because he paid these women off with illegal campaign contributions.”
American Thinker has a fairly comprehensive article of the danger Congress’ slush fund poses for the dems and pubs. “Reveal the Congressional Hush Fund Hypocrites”
If the dems move to impeach Trump he can quietly let them know that if they bring impeachment charges against him, he will make it his life’s mission to drag out in public and in court through his AG every name and detail of that cesspit of depravity.
OR… he can do nothing to hinder their plans to impeach him and, after conviction fails in the Senate… then go after them “hammer and tongs” about their campaign slush fund violations…
Using his bully pulpit to publicly flog them, forcing lots of dems and RINOs to resign. Starting with Schiff. Wouldn’t that be a case of happy, joy, joy!
By the way, here’s a pretty well informed opinion about Cohen’s plea of guilt to violating campaign finance law. He was pressured by the prosecutors. .
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/michael-cohen-sentencing-campaign-finance-law/
“He was pressured…”
Undoubtedly. With his family used as potential collateral damage if he didn’t “cooperate”.
That’s how those Stalinist scumbags work. (See the latest on McCabe’s setting up of Flynn by assuring him that he didn’t need a lawyer at the FBI interview….)
…To the raucous enthusiasm and roaring applause of all too many “liberal” and NT hyenas whipping themselves into a righteous frenzy as they tell themselves (again and again) that Trump’s end is nigh.
…As they wait with bated breath to discover whom Mueller and his cabal of inquisitors will next destroy….not realizing (or not wanting to realize in the blinding glare—and sheer hypocrisy—of their self-congratulation) that what they are really egging on is the destruction of the country.
From all reports, Cohen looks like a scumbag, and I’m not that concerned about him.
It’s Flynn I’m outraged about.
It is increasingly clear that Flynn—a patriot and an honest man who gave many decades of honorable service to this country— was set up from the jump.
Let’s set the stage here, and put ourselves in Flynn’s shoes.
Flynn was the incoming National Security Adviser as the new Trump Administration was just starting to get off the ground, preparing to take power in the White House, and Trump’s style was—from the looks of it—very fast moving, hard charging, and chaotic.
There was a tremendous amount of work to be done, people to be identified, found, contacted, and talked to, current policies to be understood, new policies to be formulated, staff to be hired, read into various programs and put into place, etc., etc.
It was a non-stop, 24/7, very fast moving and chaotic situation, with incoming Administration figures immersed in decision making, and a swirl of information coming in from all directions—phone calls, text messages, meetings, interviews, documents to be read, etc.
As an essential and legitimate part of his job as National Security Advisor, Gen. Flynn was supposed to “get up to speed,” to make contact with all sorts of world leaders and government officials—adversaries and friends—around the world.
Comey has bragged to MSNBC that he deliberately used what he knew would be the chaos in the just organizing Trump Administration to his advantage; he knew that such a situation would make them vulnerable.
So, Comey deliberately kept things seemingly casual and low key when he sent over two FBI agents—one of them arch Trump hater Peter Strzok—to supposedly casually discuss some issues of mutual interest with Gen. Flynn.
He also noted that Flynn was very deliberately, and deceptively told that—for such a casual conversation about routine matters, he didn’t need to have a WH lawyer present—because it would just be too much of a hassle to involve WH lawyers—as other, more wary WH Administrations would have routinely done.
Then—prepared with transcripts of Flynn’s (illegally) intercepted phone calls with Soviet Ambassador Kisliyak—and during the course of a tour of the WH that Flynn was giving these two agents (this visit by the FBI agents was all supposed to be so casual and, in essence, inconsequential)—Strzok and the other FBI agent proceeded to grill Flynn about the details of those conversations.
And when Flynn did not remember certain specific details of those conversations, he became “entrapped,” and that allowed the FBI to charge him with “lying to an FBI agent.”
There are also some news reports that say that the standard 302 Reports about their interrogations of Flynn have been altered by the FBI, and were not draw up at the time of the interview, but were drawn up 7 months after the interview in question.
This stinks from top to bottom and back to front, and if he has any fidelity to the Law, the judge hearing this case should void Flynn’s guilty plea, throw the whole case out, and, instead, call for the prosecution of Comey, Strzok, and the white rotten FBI/DOJ crew behind this set up and cynical, immoral, malicious prosecution.
As I keep repeating, if they can do it to someone like Gen. Flynn, they can do it to anyone.
We need to stop this kind of entrapment, and severely punish such behavior. If we don’t, we have indeed descended into becoming a Banana Republic.
You can also imagine that members of the outgoing Obama Administration in the WH were probably doing everything in their power to sabotage, and hinder the incoming Trump Administration.
So, if they knew about this upcoming Flynn meeting with the FBI, would they have warned Flynn about the possible danger he faced?
I don’t think so.
I can’t adequately express my disgust with what the last couple of years of (non-MSM) reporting has revealed about the upper echelons of the DOJ and FBI and their actions; they are truly a corrupt and scurvy crew: a danger to the Constitution, to our Republic, and to our Freedom and individual rights.
Pay attention to the screeching of the Democrats and the MSM (but I repeat myself), though, and these are honest, dedicated, upright public servants, doing their duty, and doing their best to protect our Republic.
I am also concerned about the fact that, if this DOJ, and particularly the top level FBI crew are so “scurvy,” why hasn’t there been even a hint of a rebellion by disgusted and dismayed rank and file FBI agents who, we are always told, are actually the good guys here; coming into work each day, “doing their best to protect us,” and to honestly and faithfully abide by the law.
I’ve occasionally seen it reported that there is such a rebellion, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.
No agent dropping an untraceable dime, no envelope full of incriminating documents stuffed under some Congressional or Judicial door, no thumb drive arriving in the mail?
Wouldn’t you think that there would be some publicly visible manifestation, some hint of rank and file rebellion as these revelations have unfolded?
Then again, if there is such a rebellion, perhaps the members of the rebellion–who should know–don’t know who they can possibly trust in snake pit D.C. Who might have both the power and the courage to try to change the situation, and to root out and prosecute this corruption?
Also equally troubling has been the news that it was an FBI supplied lawyer who was advising—now just plain citizen Comey—what not to and how to answer the questions posed to him this week by members of the House Judiciary Committee, as Comey apparently answered some 250 questions by saying, “I don’t remember” 71 times, “I don’t know” 166 times, and “I don’t recall” 8 times, for a total of 245 replies.
This is the stuff of Italian Opera Buffo.
Who was the Trump Administration supplied FBI lawyer protecting? Comey and the Obama Administration, or the interests of Justice, the rule of Law and equal protection under it, our Republic, and the American people?
Seems to me that that FBI lawyer was protecting Comey and, thus, the institutional interests of the FBI, not the Republic, not Justice and the Rule of Law, not the Trump Administration, and certainly not us.
So, it appears that the corruption runs very, very deep in our government.
Geoffrey Britain — If I were Trump, I’d just sit there with a shit-eating grin on my face and wait for the Dems to try to impeach him, and then go balls to the wall. But I’m not Trump.
Snow on Pine — Listening to Kisliak’s calls was not illegal — he is a foreign government official.. What was illegal was unmaking Flynn as the other person on the call.