Courts: Trump Must Provide Testimony

It looks like coup racketeer and one- man crime spree Malignant Loser is going to have to provide testimony in two civil lawsuits, one brought by former FBI official Pete Strzok against the Department of Justice and the other a defamation suit by the Malignant Loser against his former lawyer Michael Cohen.

First Strzok:

An appellate court won’t block former president Donald Trump from being questioned under oath in a lawsuit brought by two former FBI employees who say his administration persecuted them for political reasons.

The Justice Department sought to block Trump from being compelled to answer questions about the handling of text messages between FBI attorney Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok that exposed their opposition to his candidacy and their personal relationship. The two are suing the Justice Department, not Trump, but say the former president was inappropriately involved in how they were treated.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson allowed for the two-hour deposition earlier this year, saying that Trump’s repeated public statements about the pair justifies further probing of whether he pressured the Justice Department to retaliate against them after the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday denied an emergency petition from the Justice Department to block Berman Jackson’s ruling. Absent another appeal, Trump’s deposition will now go forward. The former president has not intervened to prevent the deposition...

The DOJ has already obstructed enough;  no CYA legalese should override the rights of the plaintiffs to a full disclosure of the politicization of the Department under the Malignant Loser.  Good for Judge Berman Jackson and the appellate court.

Now Cohen: 

Trump has filed a $500 Million federal lawsuit against Cohen in the Southern District of Florida to exact revenge against Cohen, Trump's one time lawyer and fixer, now a prominent witness against Trump, to send a message against other witnesses against Trump.

Cohen responded to the lawsuit by requesting a deposition of Trump, which was agreed to by a federal judge and then scheduled for September 6th. 

Trump, predictably, complained to the judge about being deposed in the lawsuit that he brought. This despite that fact that Trump's lawsuit against Cohen is so broad that any attorney worth their salt would request that Trump be deposed to provide details. 

The deposition will now go forward and, given his track record in filing frivolous defamation lawsuits (e.g., against E. Jean Carroll, CNN, etc.), the Malignant Loser will (spoiler alert) lose.  In providing testimony, the Malignant Loser continues to be his own worst enemy, an egocentric moron incapable of telling the truth and as likely as not to further incriminate himself.

We don't need to belabor why he continues to lose these defamation lawsuits.  After all, there's almost nothing bad or sordid that you can say about the Malignant Loser that isn't true.

(Photo:  pointing to his big brain / Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)

Right Hand, Meet Left Hand?

 

Former Trump "fixer" and personal attorney Michael Cohen says that he provided the documents showing fraud by the Trump Organization to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, documents that the State Attorney General Letitia James is seeking under a subpoena that the Malignant Loser ignored. In a Meidas Touch video, he also said that those documents were provided to the House Oversight Committee in 2019 when he first testified against his former boss:

"'All documents and communication concerning any evaluation of any asset whose value is identified or incorporated into any of the statement of financial conditions,' he explained. Those documents exist, Cohen said, because the investigators have already spoken to those who've seen the appraisals for the Trumps."

Cohen said he gave the documents to Manhattan prosecutors Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, who resigned over the failure of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to indict the Malignant Loser. According to Cohen, some of those documents were provided to Forbes Magazine by the Malignant Loser to falsely claim his wealth put him among the top 400 in the country. 

However, the revelation that the documents exist with the Manhattan District Attorney is most disturbing, after we've heard assurances that the Manhattan DA's office was coordinating closely with the investigation by Letitia James' office into Trump's business dealings. This could very well be a case where James' subpoena covers more ground that what was contained in the Cohen tranche, but it's worrisome that this issue has come up this far into the investigations by both offices, especially given DA Bragg's footdragging.

 

Michael Cohen's "Disloyal"

The Foreword to former Trump fixer Michael Cohen's book "Disloyal" has been released.  Here's a sampling:

There are reasons why there has never been an intimate portrait of Donald Trump, the man. In part, it’s because he has a million acquaintances, pals and hangers on, but no real friends. He has no one he trusts to keep his secrets. For ten years, he certainly had me, and I was always there for him, and look what happened to me. I urge you to really consider that fact: Trump has no true friends. He has lived his entire life avoiding and evading taking responsibility for his actions. He crushed or cheated all who stood in his way, but I know where the skeletons are buried because I was the one who buried them. I was the one who most encouraged him to run for president in 2011, and then again in 2015, carefully orchestrating the famous trip down the escalator in Trump Tower for him to announce his candidacy. When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.  [snip]

... As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.

There are other passages in the Foreword that hint at more sleaze to be revealed, as if more evidence of Trump's malignant narcissism, venality and amorality were needed.  Of course, none of this should be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the past 4 or more years.

But here's a takeaway from how he describes the fealty of Republicans toward this rotten p.o.s.:  the one trait they are most attracted to is his ruthlessness.  They believe his ruthless amorality is his greatest strength, because it allows him to pursue raw power on their behalf, regardless of niceties like the truth, the Constitution, the law, the general welfare, etc.  He's their means to an end -- political power regardless of popular sentiment, from the town halls to the state legislatures to the governorships to the national government. That's all they've been interested in for decades -- power simply for the sake of power, not to govern in the best interests of the people, but to use power to comfort the comfortable and to afflict those who don't look or believe or think like them.

Cohen's book, when it's released, will be yet another in a long series of narratives about the rotten p.o.s. that's occupying the White (Supremacist) House.  But it will also be another mirror held up to his malignant party and all who support him, all the time knowing what he's done to our country and what he's still capable of doing.

BONUS: It appears that the hashtag #UrineTroubleTrump is trending, along with #GoldenShowersTrump, after Cohen's tease about the Las Vegas escapade.

The Alternative Universe Media Doesn't See What It Doesn't Want To See

While it appears from our limited vantage point that much of the "mainstream" corporate media -- broadcast and print -- seems to have completely whiffed on the import of yesterday's filings (their emphasis has mostly been on Michael Cohen's potential jail time rather than that an arm of the Justice Department has corroborating evidence that Individual 1 committed felonies or on offers of Russian "political synergy" to Trump's  campaign organization), the Republican- wired media is even further into the ether of its alternative universe, often leading with the White House line on the Paul Manafort filings as a way to distract/ deflect from the breaking Cohen news.

Here's just a small sampling of "nothing to see here move along" headlines (we don't link to these cranks) as illustrations.

The Washington Examiner:

Manafort, Cohen legal filings include nothing new about Trump, White House claims

FoxNews.com:

'No collusion' by Trump with Russia shown in new Cohen and Manafort court filings

Boston Herald:

The Latest: White House says court filings show nothing new

The Washington Times:

Mueller recommends ‘substantial’ jail time for Cohen, but no Russian collusion mentioned

and

Mueller accuses Manafort of lying, but not about Russia collusion


"No collusion! No collusion!  You're the collusion!"  Well, you get the half- assed, distorted picture.  This, of course, is if they're even covering it at all. Pretty much what you'd expect, and why there's about 40 percent of the population living in Trump's artificial world.

We've already briefly covered the importance of the Southern District of New York's Cohen filing, indicating there was corroborating evidence of Trump's commission of campaign finance felonies. But to briefly put a point on the claim that the Mueller filings on Manafort and Cohen show no evidence of "collusion," you would need to be able to read the redacted portions of the Manafort filing and also ignore the clues in Mueller's Cohen filing to come to such a risible, misleading conclusion.  As the Special Counsel's office (SCO) previewed in its Cohen filing:

"...Cohen provided the SCO with useful information concerning certain discrete Russia- related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump] Company executives during the campaign."

Tick tock tick tock.

BREAKING: SDNY Says Trump (Individual 1) Committed Felony

Of the three court filings this afternoon -- the Special Counsel's Michael Cohen filing, the Special Counsel's Paul Manafort filing, and the Southern District of New York's Cohen filing -- the Southern District's filing contains the most direct, damning charge against treasonous con artist Donald "Rump" Trump to date:

As in last week’s documents, Trump is clearly listed as “Individual-1” and he’s “Individual 1” in these too.  [snip] 

We knew from his plea deal, in which he admitted to eight crimes, that Cohen had implicated Trump in campaign finance violations involving the payment to Stormy Daniels. But here the SDNY prosecutors also state Trump’s role in directing the payment as plain fact. 

“In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1,” they say. 

That’s significant, because it’s now on-record that they — not just Cohen — regard Trump as having directed Cohen in the commission of what has been found to be a felony. Legal experts say it means prosecutors have corroborating evidence to back up Cohen’s claims.  (our emphasis)

Of course, there's more involving contacts with Russians in the Special Counsel's Cohen filing that indicates Cohen's testimony is also backed by corroborating evidence, and that still needs to play out. Here's a link to both the SDNY and Special Counsel's filings on Cohen.

We'll be watching the media tonight to see how they manage to bury the lede.

BONUS:  "Rexxon" Tillerson nailed it. Rump can't read:

Totally clears the President. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018

Some choice responses followed:

You do know you’re individual-1 right??

— Mickie Shell 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇺 (@xmjkx820) December 8, 2018

What in the heck are you smoking, Individual #1?

— Phyliss Dixon (@pdelcecatodixon) December 8, 2018

Individual 1 if effed.

— Dextrosity (@thedextrosity) December 8, 2018

pic.twitter.com/oLJfezz6W8

— Dawn's Resisting Bitch Face (@DisabledResist) December 8, 2018

And, finally

Except for that little part where the US Attorney’s Office says that you directed and coordinated with Cohen to commit two felonies. Other than that, totally scot-free. https://t.co/YXmgY9KmXi

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 8, 2018

Lots more takes on Individual 1 here.

Trump-Russia Investigation "Tying Up Loose Ends"

While the media is consumed with presenting its hagiography of George H.W. Bush and his funeral, there are some potentially explosive developments in the Special Counsel's investigation coming up this week to keep an eye on:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends” in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter. 

The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. 

A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation. (snip)

The fact that Mueller is planning a public filing about Manafort suggests he may no longer feel the need to withhold information about his case in order to bring additional indictments against others. That would be consistent with messages his prosecutors have given defense lawyers in recent weeks indicating that they are in the endgame of their investigation. 

Maybe "tying up the loose ends" refers to completing the final report to be issued on the investigation; perhaps it refers to completing indictments for members of the Trump crime family and its attendants;  perhaps it also means finishing the evidentiary hand-offs to other prosecutors of ancillary crimes the Special Counsel's investigation has uncovered that are not directly in his purview.  How about all three?  Observers have noted that making the memos public in the courts keeps Trump flunky and "Acting Attorney General" Matthew Whitaker from deep- sixing damning evidence that would appear in the Special Counsel's final report.

As far as making an obstruction of justice case against Trump, the un- indicted co- conspirator has provided the Special Counsel with enough evidence (from the firing of James Comey to the dangling of pardons to various slugs) to justify a rather fat article of impeachment.

Keep an eye out today, and on Friday for the court filings and what they reveal.

We could be seeing two funerals this week.

Keep Digging, Very Stable Genius!

In these times, we're fortunate only in the sense that Donald "Rump" Trump is such a bumbling incompetent that he can't keep his incriminating foot out of his big, puckered mouth:

EXCLUSIVE: President @realDonaldTrump on if he knew about the Cohen payments. See more from his interview with @ainsleyearhardt tomorrow 6-9amET. pic.twitter.com/HPJPslOG6X

— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 22, 2018

BREAKING: In running away from Cohen's claims today, Trump bumbled right into admitting that he lied on his financial disclosures & violated 18 USC 1001. This was already the subject of a @CREWcrew criminal complaint that led to an OGE referral to DOJ--Trump just proved our case! https://t.co/8poUAIhtQf

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) August 22, 2018

Eisen elaborates here.

Lordy -- The Trump-Cohen Tape (UPDATED)

As revealed on CNN last night:

Full audio: Presidential candidate Trump is heard on tape discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how they would buy the rights to a Playboy model's story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier, according to the audio recording "https://t.co/YmC0QuDqTx pic.twitter.com/fBbq7r1Lq9

— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) July 25, 2018

Rather than parse here, the Washington Post has a good explainer of the ramifications.

Tick. Tock.

UPDATE:  Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis says Cohen "has turned a corner in his life" and that “This is about truth versus lying, and ultimately Donald Trump is going to be done in by the truth.”

Translation:  Cohen's not looking for a pardon, he's looking for a deal.

Ticktockticktock...

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full story/ op-ed.

On the eve of Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump's performance review in Helsinki, Jonathan Chait has a comprehensive dive into the Trump- Russia "relationship," its many associated players (Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, legions of Russians, etc.), and the evidence of collusion and corrupt intent in plain view.

Since the election, Trump and his advisers have continued to act like people who have a great deal to hide. In January 2017, Cohen solicited consulting payments from a firm controlled by a Russian oligarch and, when Flynn became national-security adviser, delivered to him a “peace plan” that would have consolidated the gains from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In December 2016, Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador discussed setting up a back-channel communications line through the Russian embassy. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and brother of Trump’s Education secretary, traveled to the Seychelles and met with a Putin ally in what European and Middle Eastern officials believe was another attempt to establish a back channel. Prince also appears to have lied to Congress about the meeting. 

Of course, at that point, if Trump had legal diplomatic business to discuss with Russia, the president-elect could have held a normal meeting. It is possible to construct an innocent explanation for all the lying and skulduggery, but it is not the most obvious explanation. More likely, collusion between the Russians and the Trump administration has continued beyond the campaign.

Chait "what ifs" around the evidence of Rump being a longtime Russian asset since 1987 (well, of course he is), but it's a good read nonetheless.  If all the facts and evidence are allowed to come out, this will be far and away the biggest scandal ever in American history, bar none.

While we're on the subject of the Trump- Russia scandal,  ex- Rump fixer Michael Cohen's new legal spokesperson (and Clinton family intimate) Lanny Davis put the tweet out after seeing Rudy "Ghouliani" Giuliani blathering on the Sunday talk shows:

Did @rudygiuliani really say on Sunday shows that @michaelcohen212 should cooperate with prosecutors and tell the truth? Seriously? Is that Trump and Giuliani definition of “truth”? Trump/Giuliani next to the word “truth” = oxymoron. Stay tuned.  #thetruthmatters

— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) July 9, 2018

We like the "stay tuned" part, but let's not wait too long for the singing to begin, mkay?

The Republican War on Women (and babies) goes international (our emphasis):

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. 

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. 

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations. [snip]

The confrontation was the latest example of the Trump administration siding with corporate interests on numerous public health and environmental issues. 

Luckily, the Rump regime's bullying efforts (threatening countries with trade sanctions and withholding military aid) were thwarted by a knight in shining armor:

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

So that's where we are now. Bullying smaller countries in the interests of corporate America only to slink away when your puppet master steps in to act as the hero.  The damage to this country's standing and reputation is real and it's going to be long- lasting.  Sic transit gloria, America.

Lastly, please go over to Infidel 753's link round- up, where he provides "Various interesting stuff I ran across on the net over the last week."  It's a wonderful assortment of humorous, quirky, timely, newsworthy ... oh, just go over and explore for yourself!

BREAKING: Cohen Flipping?

Via ABC News:

As attorneys for Michael Cohen rush to meet Judge Kimba Wood’s Friday deadline to complete a privilege review of over 3.7 million documents seized in the April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York properties and law office, a source representing this matter has disclosed to ABC News that the law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward. [snip]

Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said. This development, which is believed to be imminent, will likely hit the White House, family members, staffers and counsels hard. (our emphasis)

Stay tuned.

More Stormy Weather: Trump Made False Statements In Previous Financial Disclosure Form

More potential criminal exposure for crime family head Donald "Rump" Trump and his fixer/ consigliere Michael Cohen:

President Donald Trump reported having paid his personal attorney Michael Cohen more than $100,000 as a reimbursement for a payment made to a third party, documents released on Wednesday confirmed. 

A reason for the payment to Cohen was not specified in the federally required financial disclosure that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) released, The New York Times reported. 

The disclosure notes that though Cohen made the payment in 2016, Trump didn’t fully reimburse him for it until 2017.  [snip]

Trump’s financial disclosure on Wednesday, which only covers the 2017 calendar year, immediately raised concern among government watchdog groups over its timing. 

David J. Apol, the acting director of the OGE, sent a letter to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday. In the letter, he noted that Trump’s payment to Cohen “should have been reported as a liability on his public financial disclosure report” for the 2016 calendar year, which the president signed in June 2017. (our emphasis)

Some reactions:

NEW: Ethics office sending letter to Rod Rosenstein stating that Michael Cohen's payment on behalf of Trump was a debt and may be relevant to "any inquiry" Rosenstein may be pursuing. pic.twitter.com/e22Jfuozic

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) May 16, 2018

Wow, this is essentially a criminal referral to DOJ for Trump making a false statement in his previous financial disclosure. https://t.co/4yhHnqcNmf

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 16, 2018

Fascinated by OGE’s decision to make this referral public. Leaves DOJ no choice but to open at least a preliminary investigation into Trump for false statements (if he wasn’t already a subject in the Cohen inquiry, which he might be).

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) May 16, 2018

The former Director of Government Ethics agrees:

This is tantamount to a criminal referral. OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime. Dave Apol comes through in the end!! https://t.co/8LhDQZS8pF

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) May 16, 2018

Leaving the payments off of earlier disclosure forms can also be seen as "consciousness of guilt," in that Rump would know that acknowledging the payments would implicate him in the Stormy Daniels affair.  But lying on a federal financial disclosure form carries much more exposure than embarrassment for Rump and whoever prepared the form =cough= Cohen =cough=; it could carry civil or criminal penalties. Looks like something the Mueller team and/ or the Southern District of New York prosecutors will be looking at carefully.

Selected Reads On The F.B.I.'s Raid On Trump Fixer Michael Cohen's Office

More follow- up analyses of the F.B.I.'s raid yesterday on the office and various properties held by Michael Cohen, the mouthpiece (in the precise sense of the gangster- land term) of un- indicted co- conspirator Donald "Rump" Trump. (our emphasis throughout)

What Were The Agents After?

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case. 

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to a fourth person familiar with the investigation. 

Investigators took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, that person said. 

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients — including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people. 

The raids — part of an investigation referred by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to federal prosecutors in New York — point to escalating legal jeopardy for a longtime Trump confidant who is deeply intertwined in the president’s business and personal matters.

The Raid Had To Have Had The Highest Level Review And Clearance

In order to get the OK to raid Cohen's office, prosecutors would have had to get approval from high up — in this case from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — and demonstrate to a federal magistrate both probable cause and the need for a warrant instead of a subpoena (such as a concern that Cohen might destroy evidence), [former U.S. Attorney Harry] Litman explained.  

In addition, the probable cause would have to relate to a crime centered on Cohen. "You can’t use it as end run around to get to the client," Litman explained.  

There will also be a "taint team" to examine everything before it is handed over to prosecutors to make sure that those conducting the case never see any material that might be "tainted" by attorney-client privilege. 

This Could've Been Stopped At Those High Levels But Wasn't. Why?

“I think in this situation, given the fact that Main Justice probably know about these search warrants before they were executed, that Sessions had an opportunity to step in and stop this—just like the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York—and no one did.” 

“So what does that tell you that’s in this affidavit?” [CNN Legal Analyst Page] Pate continued. “What evidence is it that they have pinpointed that Michael Cohen has access to that will prove evidence of some crime? I cannot wait to see what’s in the affidavit because I think it’s going to shock us all.” 

So What Does It Tell Us When Trump's Lawyer Gets Handled Like This?

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are treating Michael Cohen like he’s a lawyer for the mob. That’s how seasoned white collar defense attorneys describe the raid on Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room conducted on April 9. [snip]

Lawyers told The Daily Beast that raiding lawyers’ offices isn’t unheard of—but is generally used for lawyers who work with alleged members of organized crime, or for lawyers who are involved themselves in elaborate criminal schemes. 

“It’s a tactic generally used against organized crime, against very serious, very serious criminals and lawyers who are operating outside of the protections of the law,” said Alan Dershowitz, a liberal attorney and frequent critic of Mueller’s tactics. 

What Does Cohen's Future Look Like?

... The little we know so far — which doesn’t even take into account Cohen’s entanglements with the ever-complicated Russia story — points to a complicated future for one of the president’s most trusted advisers. Josh Campbell, a former assistant to James Comey, may have best captured what awaits Cohen in this quote from a special agent currently with the FBI: “I’ve been an FBI special agent for 20 years and have only seen a handful of searches executed on attorneys. All of those attorneys went to prison.” 

Trump, his family members and associates are providing a target- rich environment for prosecutors. The Trumps have operated like an organized crime family for decades, expecting hired fixers to keep them out of jail through shadowy transactions, bribery, threats, etc. Since the beginning, the mantra has been "follow the money" if you want to get to the root of Trump's corruption and what his patron Putin has on him.  This is just one thread that's being unraveled.

Cohen should take a close look at what's happening to Paul Manafort. Prosecutors are going to squeeze Cohen like a lemon, too.

Breaking: Michael Cohen's Office Raided By F.B.I. (UPDATED)

Tick tock tick tock:

The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress. 

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.”

The net widens, the noose tightens.

UPDATE:  The Washington Post follows up --

BREAKING: Trump attorney Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations, according to a person familiar with the case.

BONUS:  You can see the unhinged reaction by President Spanky here.