The Trumpster Fire Chronicles: Michael Cohen

[Executive]

Like I said, if he is charged with a crime, he may go against his lawyers' advice and end up lying under oath like Clinton did, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for him to resign, whatever happens.

To me, it's all entertainment.  I hope he is impeached (reason yet to be decided by the Dems) because I want to see a first: a president getting re-elected after being impeached.  Clinton didn't have that opportunity but Trump does.  It will be historical.

Unless there's massive election fraud and manipulation on a grander scale than anything we've previously seen, Trump doesn't have a chance to get re-elected if it gets that far.  I say that because Trump's popularity is at the lowest it's ever been, and I don't mean by the polls.... his policies, behavior, and his self-serving activities has exposed who he really is. The man is an international embarrassment as much as he is to Americans. That why even the Republicans want to primary him in 2020 !   The Democratic wins in the U.S. House last month was a Blue Wave indeed, the largest they've gotten since the Watergate era.   That continued a trend throughout 2017 and early this year as they won dozens of special elections as well.  Point being that in a presidential election year, we may just see record numbers because there are more of us than there are of them.  The GOP's voter suppression tactics have their limits....

As for the lawyers, in just these first 2 years of his presidency Trump has gone through several as he has White House staff in general.  That doesn't necessarily mean that he's listening to the current group, including his TV attorney Rudy Guliani.  If it gets to a point where they insist he don't resign, to be the contrarian I believe that's exactly what he will do!

[politux]

The hits just keep on coming...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-colum...-different

With “President Pence” and “President Pelosi” trending on Twitter on Friday morning and some Democrats talking openly about starting impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, the White House dispatched Hogan Gidley, the deputy press secretary, to respond to a story from BuzzFeed News claiming that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project. Rather than issuing a straightforward denial that his boss had tried to suborn perjury from his former personal lawyer and fixer, Gidley attacked Cohen, saying, “I am not going to give any credence or credibility to Michael Cohen, who is a convicted felon and an admitted liar.” Gidley also attacked BuzzFeed. “This is absolutely ludicrous that we are giving any kind of credence or credibility to a news outlet like BuzzFeed,” he said. “There is nothing in that piece that can be corroborated.”
In the past few years, BuzzFeed News has built up a formidable team of investigative journalists, it has won a number of awards, and what Gidley said was mostly hot air. But the survival of the Trump Presidency may depend on the accuracy of his final assertion. On Friday evening, the office of the special counsel Robert Mueller took the rare step of issuing a public statement to dispute the BuzzFeed News report. The statement, issued by a spokesman, Peter Carr, said: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.”
No further details were provided. In response, BuzzFeed also issued a statement, which said: “we are continuing to report and determine what the special counsel is disputing. We remain confident in the accuracy of our report.”
Until the matter is resolved, it is important not to succumb to wishful thinking. As of yet, other publications haven’t independently confirmed the story. Moreover, since the Justice Department seems very unlikely to approve an indictment of Trump while he is still in office, his fate will almost certainly be determined in the political arena, where fifty-three Republican senators, many of them cowed by the President’s Twitter feed, stand between the Democrats and a conviction in an impeachment trial.
Trump already faces all sorts of allegations, of course, from conspiring with the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign to trying to obstruct the Russia investigation and unlawfully enriching himself as President. So far, though, the one allegation that has made it as far as being detailed in formal documents filed by federal prosecutors is the allegation that, before the election, he, “Individual-1,” directed Cohen to make payoffs to women and that those payments broke campaign-finance laws. As serious as this charge is, few people in Washington think that it presents an existential threat to Trump by itself. The events in question took place before Trump became President. And campaign-finance law is a murky area, which few members of the public know much about. For Democrats in Congress, basing articles of impeachment on it would be a risky move.
The new allegation is different. It relates to events—Cohen’s testimony to the House and Senate Intelligence committees—that took place after Trump had already been in office for a number of months. Asking someone to give false testimony under oath is an act everybody understands. As William Barr, the President’s choice for Attorney General, acknowledged during his nomination hearing, earlier this week, it is clearly a crime. And, in the not-too-distant past, it has also helped provide the basis for articles of impeachment against two Presidents.

[waregim]

Payoffs are routinely done. They are called 'settlements'.
In actuality it was blackmail, and the only ones that should have been arrested are the bimbos.
There is no evidence any money came from the actual campaign funds. Chump has enough of his own money to pay off the lawyers who act as go-betweens.

The collusion gibberish is all a 'nothing-burger'. The problem is that chump has been forced to push us closer to war with Russia. Not a good idea.

It would be great to see the chump impeached and replaced with someone better. He is senile, and a fool.

The problem is that there is no one better in the entire bunch. They are all, like Bolton, batshit nuts.

I believe that this was done *somewhat* on purpose. The Deep State wanted a kakistocracy so that when the financial markets finally crashed with the ultimate demise of the petrodollar via the mechanizations of the FED, IMF and the Committee on Foreign Relations (Deep State) - that it would bring about a global korporate version of the EU in a cashless world with either the BIS or a Brussels type central bank running it.

One ring to rule over all.

With the proles believing that nothing could possibly be worse than the orange looneytoon and his idiotic wall.

They are wrong.

[dueda]

In short, it's a wealth whores' wicked world! Pro 2nd, always! Prepare for the zombie wars!

[Executive]

There is no "Deep State" unless you mean that to be the billionaire class are running our government. However, that's clear in terms of the industralist Koch brothers and the NRA. It's not so clear with the Mercer family, Pete Peterson, Sheldon Adelson, and others who contributed to the campaigns of Trump and actual Republicans.

But if you meant The White House, and that some people on this president's staff not yet fired are leaking information because what he and his various corrupt cabinet heads are doing to dismantle the U.S. government are as dangerous as Chump's freewheeling, self-serving attitude... If that's the "Deep State" , I say more power to them!

[dueda]

...I say more power to them!

Sounds terrible!

[Executive]

...I say more power to them!

Sounds terrible!

It is what it is.... Without leaks + James Comey's blatant firing by Trump in May 2017, the Mueller investigation would have never started.

[dueda]

And the end will be even more terrible. Shame...

[Executive]

And the end will be even more terrible. Shame...

If the end means Trump continues to bitch and complain, before going the Nixon route by resigning that would be WONDERFUL. 

[waregim]

The Deep State is an amorphous combination of military, our siloviki, corporate, and financial interests who should not be confused with industrial fools like the Kochs (teaparty???) and a financial k00k like Mercer who are neocon evil twins of the berserker neoliberals, Berserker as in Saberhagen. Useful idiots at best.

Kissinger (is he stiil alive?) and Brzinski (is he still dead?) are good examples.
Though Ziggy may have seen the light before the grim reaper came calling to drag him to hell with his horde of mujaheen.

chump has no clue whatever as to who Halford John Mackinder is.
But everyone on the Commitee on Foreign Relations does.