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Michael Cohen Investigation


DanTheHorn

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5 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

While this Cohen stuff is fun and all, I really really hope that they don't lose focus on Russia.  Yeah, these are all bad guys, but if they get them for non-Russia related stuff, it's just fuel for the right that Mueller overstepped his bounds.  I want treason, not porn star payoffs.

It seems like there is an intentional distraction from Russia.  Mueller probably went right after Cohen and the allegations in the Dossier from the get go.  However, in the process of the Russia/Cohen investigation, Mueller found a shitload of other unrelated crimes. Once Mueller had everything he needed out of Cohen for Russia, he hand all the unrelated crime information to Rosestein to hand to the SDNY and said, “Go get him.”

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Here’s what I don’t get AT ALL. 

The Dossier is back in the news but all anyone can talk about is the piss part.

Seems like the MICHEAL COHEN part of the Dossier, which describes basically TREASON in pretty good detail, should be front and center in the media.

But nope, NO ONE is talking about that.

Seems odd AF.

we aren't exactly balanced as species go, you know.

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57 minutes ago, deech said:

It blows my mind that this is all going to get blown open because Cohen has audio recordings.

And that the dumbfuck KEPT THEM....even as he knew that a major criminal investigation into his pal was ongoing.  For months.

"Hey, man - the cops announced that they're doing a major area-wide sweep for drugs, and they actually named our pal Donnie when the said they were going to be looking into folks that they suspect to be drug dealers!  They know we hang out together all the time, man!"

Cohen, reclining on a bale of weed - "Bummer, man."

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43 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

And that the dumbfuck KEPT THEM....even as he knew that a major criminal investigation into his pal was ongoing.  For months.

"Hey, man - the cops announced that they're doing a major area-wide sweep for drugs, and they actually named our pal Donnie when the said they were going to be looking into folks that they suspect to be drug dealers!  They know we hang out together all the time, man!"

Cohen, reclining on a bale of weed - "Bummer, man."

Well, he knew he needed blackmail material to make sure his clientele paid their bills. 

Edited by ShaggyBevo RIP
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Her old attorney was in cahoots with Cohen and the National Enquirer. Her new one is awesome. He baited them into Trump saying he knew nothing of the payoff removing it from attorney-client privilege. It's likely one of the keys that opened this box. 

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17 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

that pee tape is real

If Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague (a place he swears he's never been) it would likely put Cohen, Nikulin, and coordination of Russian election hacks together.

Nikulin is the Russian hacker recently extradited from the Czech Republic and arraigned at the Fed Court in San Francisco. 

Now there's some indication Nikulin possibly is looking to  strike a plea deal.:

Quote

The legal team for Yevgeniy Nikulin, the Russian hacker accused of stealing data from LinkedIn and other American tech firms, will explore a plea deal with the U.S.

government, according to Nikulin’s lawyer, Arkady Bukh.

“The likelihood of a trial is not very high,” Bukh said. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Nikulin’s trial would occur, “has over a 99 percent conviction rate. We are not throwing clients under the bus,” Bukh said.

Nikulin was extradited to the United States in March after a lengthy legal battle in the Czech Republic where he was first arrested in 2016. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in his first hearing in the San Francisco-based court.

 

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3 hours ago, triplehorn said:

If Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague (a place he swears he's never been) it would likely put Cohen, Nikulin, and coordination of Russian election hacks together.

Nikulin is the Russian hacker recently extradited from the Czech Republic and arraigned at the Fed Court in San Francisco. 

Now there's some indication Nikulin possibly is looking to  strike a plea deal.:

 

The extradited Russian hacker could easily be the lynchpin in the whole thing.  Especially if Nikulin met with Cohen personally in Prague. 

It’s not that far fetched.  Cohen was there to make payments to people like Nikulin and cover tracks. 

It’s a situation where you wouldn’t want to use a lot of cutouts because you’re moving money.  

According to the Dossier, Cohen went to Prague with three other people.  Chances are Steele and Mueller have known who those three are for a while.  

If I had to speculate, I’d say Felix Sater, Rick Gates, and someone lower level that we probably haven’t heard of yet.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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And if evidence of Cohen, Nikulin, et al in Prague is in Mueller's hands, it likely came from shared foreign intelligence.  

And if Nikulin strikes a plea deal, good night.  Nikulin is in very hot water for crimes unrelated to the election hack, so copping to coordinating cash and operations w a Trump liaison would be his get out of prison pass.

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4 hours ago, Mojo Hand said:

I'm looking forward to the email where Cohen planted the story about Cruz's dad killing JFK. 

Ted Cruz would retaliate by only giving a disinterested handjob to Trump instead of his patented swirling deepthroat.

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I remember him Tweeting out his stampless passport as if that was proof that he hadn't been to Prague. I don't think they've stamped passports there (unless you ask them to) since the early 1990s. And it was on record that he had flown to Rome at the time, so it wasn't like he was not in the general vicinity at the time.

Lord knows what he was up to in Rome. Probably having a sitdown with some capos from the n'Drangheta 

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2 hours ago, SquishMitten said:

Slightly off topic, but seeing a lot of new photos of Cohen made me realize he also wears terribly fitting suits. What the hell is it with these guys’ fashion sense? At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before they’re going to be wearing tan.

Don't you mean orange?

 

45C9B77700000578-0-Orange_is_the_new_ora

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Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Used the Same Delaware Company for Payment Deals to Two Women

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, used the same Delaware limited-liability company in two secret deals relating to alleged sexual encounters involving his clients, according to people familiar with the matter.

Venture capitalist Elliott Broidy paid an initial installment of $62,500 to the company, Essential Consultants LLC, as part of Mr. Cohen’s $250,000 total fee for negotiating a nondisclosure agreementrelated to Mr. Broidy’s affair with a former Playboy model who alleged he had impregnated her, a person familiar with the matter said.

Federal prosecutors are examining money flowing in and out of Essential Consultants as part of a broad investigation into Mr. Cohen’s activities to silence women with allegations against Mr. Trump or those in his orbit, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the $1.6 million agreement between Mr. Broidy—the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman with ties to Mr. Trump—and the model on Friday. Mr. Broidy later resigned his RNC post.

Mr. Cohen also used Essential Consultants to pay $130,000 to former adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, so she wouldn’t discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump; the payment was made 12 days before the presidential election.

Mr. Broidy paid the remaining fee installments totaling $187,500 directly to Mr. Cohen after the Journal revealed in January that the Clifford payment was made through Essential Consultants, the person said.

Mr. Cohen and his lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

The monthslong criminal investigation stemmed partly from “suspicious activity reports” filed by banks, including one that included details of Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter said.

FBI agents searched the office, home and hotel room of Mr. Cohen last Monday, seeking records of such payments, among other things. The searches were executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a grand-jury investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which received a referral for the probe by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, according to court documents.

On Friday, the government said in a legal filing: “Given that the crimes being investigated involve acts of concealment by Cohen, the USAO-SDNY sought and obtained a search warrant—rather than using a subpoena—so that it would not have ... to rely on Cohen to accurately make such a production.”

 

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is examining whether Mr. Cohen committed bank fraud by, among other things, taking out a home-equity credit line to pay for the Clifford agreement, a person familiar with the matter said.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Separately, Mr. Cohen succeeded around 2013 in killing a story Us Weekly was preparing about an alleged affair between Donald Trump Jr., who had been a judge a year earlier on the television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” and one of the contestants, Aubrey O’Day, a member of the singing duo Dumblonde, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Cohen transferred the payment to an attorney for Ms. Clifford from an Essential Consultants account at First Republic Bank , according to people familiar with the matter. He has said the funds came from his home-equity line at the same bank.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Cohen fraudulently used a bank loan for something other than the purpose he described on his loan application, the person said.

The Journal previously reported that First Republic Bank, which Mr. Cohen used to wire the payment to Ms. Clifford’s lawyer in October 2016, conducted its own investigation into the transaction after receiving a subpoena from federal authorities, according to another person familiar with the matter.

First Republic sent its findings to the Treasury Department in a so-called SAR, or suspicious-activity report, the person said. Such reports are required to be sent to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when banks observe transactions that have no apparent lawful purpose or deviate inexplicably from a customer’s normal bank activity.

First Republic Bank declined to comment.

Part of the investigation into Mr. Cohen involves payments made by American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, and its officials including Chairman and Chief Executive David Pecker, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Cohen communicated with Mr. Pecker and AMI’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, during the course of negotiations for AMI to pay another Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to sell her story of an alleged 2006 affair with Mr. Trump to the National Enquirer, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Journal first revealed in November 2016 that AMI paid $150,000 to Ms. McDougal for her exclusive story of the alleged affair, which it then didn’t publish, a tactic known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”

Ms. McDougal filed suit last month seeking to extricate herself from that contract.

A spokesman for AMI said neither Mr. Cohen nor Mr. Trump influenced the company’s editorial decisions. “It is standard practice...to make inquiries of people who might be subjects of a story through their spokesperson,” the spokesman said.

According to the people involved in the US Weekly matter, the magazine then owned by Wenner Media had what staffers believed to be a solid source on the alleged affair and called the Trump Organization for comment. They received a call back from Mr. Cohen, who threatened legal action and became so irate that they muted the call while he spoke, one of these people said.

 

“We were all on speakerphone and huddled around the phone,” this person said. “He was just one of these New York characters where he was just like swearing at us and totally over-the-top threatening.”

The magazine’s staff didn’t believe it was a big story that would be worth a legal fight and had a good working relationship with the elder Mr. Trump on stories related to the TV show “The Apprentice,” so they dropped the story.

The story of the alleged affair was reported in entertainment media last month when Donald Trump Jr.’s wife filed for divorce; Mr. Cohen’s involvement in the Us Weekly story hasn’t previously been reported.

 

 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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What are the odds Cohen's other "clients" are Russians?

Michael Cohen names Trump, GOP fundraiser Broidy as legal clients after FBI raid

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/16/michael-cohen-client-list-526288

 

Quote

Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, disclosed Monday that he's had 10 clients in his solo practice since 2017, including the president and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy, but the attorney declined to name eight other clients in response to a judge's order.

Cohen's attorneys said he had three legal clients in the past year, including Trump, former Republican National Committee finance co-chair Broidy, and a third person who "indicated that they did not authorize their name to be publicly filed in connection with this matter and directed Mr. Cohen to appeal any order to disclose their name."

For the seven other clients, who Cohen's attorneys also did not name, "the work appears to be providing strategic advice and business consulting," his lawyers wrote in a filing made public Monday.

Cohen is scheduled to appear later Monday at a hearing to determine whether a judge will allow federal prosecutors to sift through materials the FBI seized from Cohen's home and office in raids last week.

Cohen has come under scrutiny since he acknowledged paying $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election in exchange for her agreement to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. The FBI raids represented the clearest sign yet of legal trouble for Trump's inner circle and prompted outbursts from the president on social media.

Cohen's attorneys want an independent reviewer to look over the documents seized in the raids to determine whether any of the material is protected by attorney-client privilege.

His attorneys argued last week that there were "thousands if not millions" of privileged documents among the materials seized in the FBI raids. U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood of the Southern District of New York ordered Cohen's attorneys to provide the list of Cohen's clients in order to back up that assertion.

Trump's attorneys also called the seizure of files from Cohen's home, office and hotel room "disquieting to lawyers, clients, citizens and commentators alike." They want access to the confiscated records as well.

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan say they can address concerns about attorney-client privilege by using a so-called taint team that would seek out privileged information and prevent it from reaching those investigating Cohen.

Cohen's attorneys said he did not want to disclose the eight unnamed clients, saying it could be "embarrassing" for those involved.

"Following the raid of Mr. Cohen’s office and residences, there has been a deluge of press," the letter to the judge on Monday said. "Much of this press coverage has been very negative towards Mr. Cohen and his law practice, and articles purport to describe non-public identities of such clients and the matters on which he has worked."

In addition to the 10 clients at his solo practice, the letter said Cohen referred five clients to a law firm with which he had a "strategic relationship" starting in March 2017. The law firm was not named, but Cohen teamed up last spring with Squire Patton Boggs. The firm said last week it had split with Cohen but that it had been in touch with federal investigators about a warrant related to him.

 

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1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

What are the odds Cohen's other "clients" are Russians?

Michael Cohen names Trump, GOP fundraiser Broidy as legal clients after FBI raid

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/16/michael-cohen-client-list-526288

 

 

Could be other high profile GOP that had Cohen fix some of their sexual indiscretions. 

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1 minute ago, Pods said:

Could be other high profile GOP that had Cohen fix some of their sexual indiscretions. 

IMO Trump is Cohen’s only real client.

I’m incredibly suspicious of the Broidy story too.  Like he was the fall guy for Trump. That story got pushed out really fast after Cohen got raided, like preemptive damage control.

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12 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

IMO Trump is Cohen’s only real client.

I’m incredibly suspicious of the Broidy story too.  Like he was the fall guy for Trump. That story got pushed out really fast after Cohen got raided, like preemptive damage control.

I think that is also a very strong possibility and had also considered it. Especially considering that Cohen used the same Delaware LLC. 

Edited by Pods
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7 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

IMO Trump is Cohen’s only real client.

I’m incredibly suspicious of the Broidy story too.  Like he was the fall guy for Trump. That story got pushed out really fast after Cohen got raided, like preemptive damage control.

I didn't see anything that actually stated how many clients were actually on retainer either vs ones he did a one off NDA for.

Agreed on the Broidy story, and they way Keith Davidson acted during his interview was really interesting. He either knew he was in deep shit or had already spilled everything to investigators and couldn't keep a straight face. 

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