There has been a lot of nonsense going on this week related to the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump administration’s possible role in co-conspiring with the Russians during the 2016 presidential election. This is mainly due to Rudy Giuliani acting like a maniac, but it’s also because people are focused on tangential issues. Donald Trump cheated on his wife repeatedly and had his lawyer/fixer work like a fevered badger to prevent news of his dalliances from damaging the campaign. That’s deplorable and may involve some campaign finance violations, but Mueller wasn’t interested and passed it off to attorneys in the Southern District of New York.
The other big, big deal this week is the rumor that there was a second (planning) meeting prior to the more famous Trump Tower meeting between the Russians and Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner. Supposedly, Rick Gates and Michael Cohen attended the first meeting and will be available to testify about it. Cohen, in particular, may testify that Trump Sr. was in on the planning. That’s very damning information, if true, but the Trump Tower meeting was small potatoes.
If you want to know what Mueller is actually looking at, go no further than the December 13, 2016 submission in Christopher’s Steele’s dossier.
The reason the special counsel’s office wants Michael Cohen to become a cooperating witness is because they want information about his trip to Prague. Three and a half months ago, McClatchy journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon reported the following:
The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.
Stone and Gordon are careful and well-respected reporters. They are certain that they have this information correct, and there’s little reason to doubt them. Naturally, they could be wrong. But I doubt it.
Here’s the meat of their report:
It’s unclear whether Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that Cohen actually met with a prominent Russian – purportedly Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the Czech capital. Kosachev, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of a body of the Russian legislature, the Federation Council, also has denied visiting Prague during 2016. Earlier this month, Kosachev was among 24 high-profile Russians hit with stiff U.S. sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s meddling.
But investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016 as the ex-spy reported, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced.
The whole ball game involves determining whether the dossier was anywhere close to accurate when it stated that the hackers were paid jointly by the Kremlin and the Trump campaign and that Cohen had traveled to Prague (accompanied by three colleagues) to discuss, among other things, how to make final payments to the hackers and to facilitate them going to ground, especially in the event that Hillary Clinton won the election.
If Mueller has evidence that Cohen did indeed make a trip to Prague despite all his denials, then he probably can close this case if Cohen agrees to cooperate. And it’s not anything about the Trump Tower meeting or Playboy Playmates that he wants to know.
Presumably, Guiliani understands this, and maybe he is just happy to keep us distracted and off the main trail. But it’s unlikely his antics will amount to a hill of beans in the end. If Cohen was in Prague, the president will be removed from office.
Like Charles Pierce keeps saying…..
`And Mueller keeps quietly doing his job’.
.
That Greg Gordon piece has always stuck in my mind. But then why isn’t Rudy trying to incentivize Cohen not to flip rather than trying to throw him under the bus?
And if the AP reporting is on target it wasn’t just Cohen who went to Prague, but a couple of other guys. The timing would be right and would be frosting on that cake if it turns out Cohen did go and Gates went with him!
He’ll serve out his term — unless something crippling develops medically.
Or:
He signs an assault weapons ban.
He signs an immigration bill with a DACA fix and a pathway to citizenship but no wall.
He has a summit with leaders from BLM.
Short of that his own party won’t do it — and nobody else can.
There are no more Howard Bakers and Tom Railsbacks and Ham Fish Jrs.
If this comes out before the 2018 election… and even if it doesn’t, Dems better embrace damning the entire Republican Party with treason.
I know it sounds icky to some, doesn’t poll well, it turns off some on the left and alienates some of those on the right. There has never been a more appropriate time for a succinct PATRIOTIC message. We don’t believe in fucking with the vote. We believe in fairness, an American ideal. We believe all Americans should vote and no will allow no countries outside of America. Some of us are to the center, some to the left, a few even to the right. We believe in the inherent decency and spirit of Americal.
Agree with all you said, especially your first line. But I keep coming back in my own mind to the fact that IF the Dems do this, in an organized discrete fashion, they’ll (we’ll) be facing off not only with the vicious Right, but the vicious, self-righteous ‘both-sides’ pose of the mainstream media as well.
Something concrete has GOT to be done about Fox News/Sinclair Broadcasting and the Alex Jones talk-radio right, something that keeps the First Amendment intact but makes it harder, or more expensive, to spew lies 24/7. I just don’t know, and can’t conceive of, what that might be. Reinstate equal-time provisions for political speech on the air (even if the ‘air’ is cable?)
Memo to self: look into how Europeans deal with this sort of thing; they don’t have the Fox News problem….YET.
Discrete is the problem. Stuff Patriotism down their throats. Wave the Flag. We have a right to. You can serve the American Flag or the Russian Flag.
The Republicans have by definition opted for the Russian flag.
Hey, don’t leave the left out of this. The only American ‘ideals’ are white power, maximum profit, and a strange, hideously distorted Christianity of a sort.
Appeals to ‘patriotism’ are appeals to precisely this.
What I have learned from a generation on the left: there shouldn’t be any nation-states, if there must be nation-states, they should be small and inoffensive, and if they must be large, and throw their weight around, they should be not-America, doesn’t matter who…
Cohen is still saying he never went to Prague and I wonder if this hinges on the technicality. We have evidence he entered the Czech Republic, but Prague is not the only city there. Referring to this in all internal communications as the “Prague meeting” when they actually met in, say, Brno, may seem childish, but it also means denials of having visited Prague are technically correct.
Yes, it would be really useful to know who the other three were. The dossier has been largely verified to date. So, this part is really interesting because Cohen originally vehemently denied the trip. He could have gone on a private jet but if, in fact, Gates was on the trip, he could have shown all the cards. We’ll find out soon.
The other three?
Probably spooks and/or informers of some kind.
We’ll likely never even learn their names.
Watch.
Cohen’s gonna take the fall.
They’ll make a big fuss about it, and then…when the heat dies down…give him time off for good behavior. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cohen etc. will have an offshore bank account.
Promises, promises…
Secret promises.
How The Swamp does business.
Bet on it.
AG
Didn’t Mueller already indict twelve Russian officers for the hacking? What do they have to do with Romanian hackers? If the hacking had already been done by August, what is this meeting about? Supposedly they already did their dirt.
Timeline Romanian hacker Marcel Lazăr Lehel …
○ Hacker ‘Guccifer’ extradited from Romania, appears in U.S. court | Reuters – Jan. 2014 |
○ Romanian National “Guccifer” Charged with Hacking into Personal Email Accounts | DOJ – June 2014 |
○ Romanian Hacker “Guccifer” Sentenced to 52 Months in Prison for Computer Hacking Crimes | DOJ – Sept. 1, 2016 |
So the breaking story of Christopher Steele was … ???
In the meantime, Dutch intelligence managed a hack into Russian center for cyber criminality and monitored their actions from Dec. 2014 on forward … including breaches of the White House server and the DNC server. CIA was fully informed!
. . . Duh.
P.S. Wait, you assured us (self-contradictorally, but never mind that for now) that you had “left Booman” (how crushed he must have been to read that! and how cruel to do the breakup publicly here in a blog comment thread!) and “found a new home”. So that was another lie, then.
P.P.S. Troll-rating explained (i.e., why not “0”) and justified.
RE: Your serial trolling with the serial lie that “dissent” is what you get troll-rated for —
In fact, trolling — ^ like that! — is what you get troll-rated for. No matter how many times you lie that it’s for “dissent”, it will not change that fact.
A very obvious case-in-point: This comment I just troll-rated would not have earned a troll-rating (at least not from me) absent that very blatant and dishonest trolling quoted above. Demonstrating again that you’re lying when you pretend your trolling gets troll-rated for “dissent”, when the fact is that it gets troll-rated because it’s trolling.
I will say his series of posts makes the longest GBCW in my experience. Perhaps someone else on the Internet Tubes has been on a longer GBCW tour, but I will say that it takes some stamina to keep telling folks “I’m leaving. In fact I already left” for what, like a month or so now? Impressive.
. . . GBCW = Good Bye Cruel World?
Ayup.
GCBW is something I used to see on the usenet groups I frequented back when that was a thing. Ah, the good old days.
about GBCW posts I learned from my usenet days was that it was only a matter of time before the poster returned (more often than not as if nothing had ever happened). Sometimes, as we have found, the GBCW posters continue to post. It is especially refreshing to be regularly reminded that anywhere else is better than here. Quite amusing, really.
GBCW – dammit! Get your acronym spelling straight Don Durito!
To reiterate JK Simmons’ great character in `Burn After Reading’
“What have we learned here?”
The obvious on one hand.
Complete validation of the Republican credo – Party before country, money above all. And that the entire Republican establishment Trump to Flynn to the NRA are foreign agents.
And the true nature of successful people – Republican luck is when evil preparation meets malevolent opportunity.
They truly never, ever give up. That’s a clear differentiator with say the Democratic County operatives in Florida during the 2000 recount who went home for Thanksgiving. Their commitment to their evil ends is remarkable.
A completely vile, immoral grifting piece of shit candidate – and everyone knows it – and they pull out every single stop. They don’t overlook one single god damned evil opportunity to ratfuck whoever they can even with just the remotest outside possibility that 70,000 voters in 3 states will carry them past a 3M popular vote loss.
2. They always know the path to victory. Sometimes there is no victory possible, and they lose. But within an hour of Scalia’s death McConnell already lays out the stakes and the strategy on his replacement. And then applies rule #1.
Again, what have we learned? If you know the game you are in, if you keep your head in that game, keep your eye on the prize even when all tradition, polling, and your epically unfit presidential candidate are putting your odds of success as close to zero as possible, play the game out. Every play all the way to the end and then see what develops.
The Republicans could have given up at any point, not turned out to support their POS candidate but they did. McConnell could have said, hey bad luck, we’ll let Garland through. The NRA could have said, where the Hell will we get $20M to fund our GOTV, media campaigns, etc. And the Trump minions could have said, we have some moral character left we won’t stoop that low.
But the turned out, McConnell held out, the NRA took the money, and the Trump team conspired with the Russians.
And they have been richly rewarded in almost every way possible.
You had me at JK Simmons.
Don’t forget the Fourth Estate was NOT on the Democrats side regarding the 2000 Florida recount, the Supreme Court, the NRA, or Trump’s campaign.
The few times they have been (see Katrina, Iraq (post-2006 only), Great Recession (Pre-Bank Bailout checks clearing only), the Muslim Ban, and Border Separation) we had the political tectonic plates shift, though temporally.
Regardless, as a rule, corporate media always drops a house on liberals anytime we dare punch back. That is why we still get endless Cletus Safaris and constant lectures about how we liberals for being “too rude” and becoming “too radial!” for Real America! (TM).
So, if Cohen & friends made the trip to Prague, for the reasons stated as well as to ‘clean up Manafort’s mess’ and tie up loose ends with the hackers then it should go without saying that Manafort knows what ‘mess’ it is that he left behind.
And if the whole Prague accusation is accurate, that’s a helluva piece of leverage for Manafort, even if Mueller’s team has evidence in hand that the trip happened. Manafort would know the planning details.
I know I say this a lot but every claim of “If X, then Trump is gone” warrants it…
Name the dozen-plus Republican senators who will vote to convict, knowing with certainty that they will be successfully primaried in their next election cycle.
Names or I’m not convinced.
“…especially in the event that Hillary Clinton won the election.”
I am definitely interested in the content of that part of the discussion.
In addition to learning the details of Trump’s hostile takeover of FoxNews and/or launch of Trump TV (just speculating), I’d be interested if the plans could be copy and pasted on to 2020 should Trump lose re-election or in 2024.