In circumstances like this it is importsnt ot go back & read the great American philosophers & moralists. So I quote the late Groucho Marx.
"Who are you going to believe, ME or your own eyes."
4
“It’s a crime of interpretation,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Are you going to charge the president with a crime of interpretation?”
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
There is no evidence of collusion.
Oh, yeah, and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
1
In the words of legendary Texas attorney, Richard "Racehorse" Haynes:
Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you.
Well now this is my defense:
My dog doesn't bite.
And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night.
And third, I don't believe you really got bit.
And fourth, I don't have a dog.
4
The base does not care at all about the affairs or how they were funded. As the White House stated, there was no new news here. This is all a ridiculous waste of time. We are spending so much money on this. Money that should be going to help the poor or raise wages or toward middle class tax brakes or fixing health care. Even the people that hate Trump are sick of this. We are trying to prosecute people for lying about having sex. Over and Over. Most Presidents had affairs. The President had sex. Its not news. Who is going to tell the truth about an affair? Those women were not trying to ask for money until he was running for president. Stormy Danniels said that Trump tried to pay her after they had sex. She refused the money then, why take it later on after trying to ruin his campaign? She took the money. She broke the agreement. How was Trump supposed to sign the agreement that was in a fake name in his real signature? What sense does that make? Man has sex and lies about it. That is not news....
Sounds a lot like "I am not a crook"
4
"Improvises" would be considered the euphemism of the century (so far in the 21st) for an habitual, apparently psychopathological liar ("pseudologia fantastica").
2
Trump is absolutely correct that it was Cohen's job to know the law. His other obligation was to inform his client of the law. Cohen today claimed that Trump knew what they were doing was illegal. Intent to break the law OR ignorance of it is why people are convicted of crimes.
2
Gotta love Rudy's "Everyone else does it...." defense. My sixth-grader also has mastered that one.
5
I will never understand the "Rule" that prevents a sitting president from legal accountability for criminal acts. To say he is too busy is a joke and a dangerous opportunity for a tainted administration to cause real harm to the government and the people of the United States. This is akin to allowing the inmates to run the penitentiary. For nearly 2 years the work of the people has been largely ignored as the focus has been on a 24/7 news cycle of the (in my opinion) most blatantly corrupt and ineffective administration in modern history. There really has to be a better way or I fear our democracy is in grave peril.
8
A fish out of water always flops around before the end.
2
The intent all a long was to keep the hush payments out of the public eye. To help Trump win the presidency.
That was the crime, hiding payments from campaign officials, omitting the payments from campaign finance forms, and keeping the electoral public in the dark.
If that had not been the intent, Trump merely would have had to write two personal checks, one to Stormy Daniels and one to the National Inquirer.
If Trump has been honest, he would done just that, but instead he opted to go with the scheme concocted by his lawyer. And Trump knew very well that it was wrong, and possibly illegal.
Otherwise he would not have had to lie about it later, on Air Force One.
Trump was not caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar, but his fingerprints sure are all over the lid!
3
The rules of professional conduct by attorneys require both attorneys and their clients to refrain from using that representation to commit crimes. The confidentiality privilege dissolves when life or limb or fraud is involved. For instance:
Rule 1.6 Confidentiality of Information. Comment [7]: Paragraph (b)(2) is a limited exception to the rule of confidentiality that permits the lawyer to reveal information to the extent necessary to enable affected persons or appropriate authorities to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud, as defined in Rule 1.0(d), that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial or property interests of another and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer’s services. Such a serious abuse of the client-lawyer relationship by the client forfeits the protection of this Rule. The client can, of course, prevent such disclosure by refraining from the wrongful conduct. Although paragraph (b)(2) does not require the lawyer to reveal the client’s misconduct, the lawyer may not counsel or assist the client in conduct the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent.
Even knowing that Mr. Cohen is not the most ethical of attorneys - President Trump can not utilize that relationship to shield himself from criminal liability. Our system of laws does not allow the combination of an attorney and client to commit crimes such that the lawyer has to bear the responsibility for joint criminal actions.
3
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with whether Trump broek a law or bent it. However, there was a time in this country where a client could depend on his attorney maintaining confidentiality and if that attorney broken that agreement he would be severely punished. No one ever dreamed that an attorney would tape his conversations with his client, no matter the reason. More importantly, this country and its legal system readily shunned the idea of the breaking of attorney-client privilege under any circumstances other than to prevent a client from committing a heinous act. Our legal system is severely broken!!
Trump's desperation highlights his strength-brazen, blustery storytelling. "Move along" These aren't the droids you are looking for".
1
Trump seems to have forgotten the old rule:
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
You can fool all of the people some of them time.
But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Mueller & Co. are closing in.
6
Yeah! That's the ticket.
1
We have one thing to be thankful for: Trump continues to blab away, incriminating himself more and more with each statement. No one really focuses on this, but he gives more ammunition to Mueller by the hour. I am so sure his every (related) statement is being chronicled as part of the investigation.
6
@Baba, yes, President Trump is simply incapable of shutting up. What if #1 President Trump was wise, and #2 if he launched into a mode in which he determined to do whatever it took to survive? Then he would swear a vow to himself to not say anything publicly about this mess ever again, and he would toss his phone in the river.
But he's incapable of doing that, just as an alcoholic is incapable of not continuing to drink. In many cases alcoholics continue to drink despite being aware of the damage they are doing, but that takes us back to #1—I'm not sure President Trump is even wise enough to realize how much his incessant tweeting and things like his attacks on Mr. Cohen are hurting him.
Case in point—I just finished watching the ABC interview with Mr. Cohen, and he said part of the reason he was coming 101% clean was because of the way that Trump attacked not only him but HIS FAMILY. What a total lack of class! But we knew that...
3
I find it hard to comprehend how a sitting president can’t be tried for crimes committed during his presidency if he became the president illegally.
8
There are two issues:
1. Generally, sitting Prezzes are held immune while in office, so you don’t have every state cop or whatever waltzing in the door with cuffs every time some state or local prosecutor decides to grind government to a halt. Generally sort of applies to Cingresscritters too, as you don’t want the Prez or whoever able to have his oppo arrested.
2. Even if Trump broke campaign finance law, that’s not the only reason he won. The two issues are separate—especially since anybody with a lick of sense knew perfectly well that the guy was a crook and a liar well before the election. Sorry and it’s fashionable to pin this on “the media,” but by the time Trump descended that escalator in 2015, there was plenty of info available.
It is clear that Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen, who was his employee, to break the law. Mr. Trump has been ordering such acts for most of his life and has always gotten away with it. Therefore, he thinks that, because he did not actually commit the act, he does not share the blame. This is the kind of fantasy that lives in the mind of an incredibly spoiled "rich kid"; it is not the law. If someone tells an employee to break the law, that person is also a criminal. Mr. Trump needs to have his day in court.
2
There is no other conclusion possible than the obvious: Trump lied to protect his campaign. The question is when will there be serious, personal consequences for him? Can he spin his ridiculous defenses and remain untouched by serious consequences?
2
We Americans are just waiting with bated breath to hear the news that our 45th president will be convicted of campaign finance violations and far worse. Or "crimes of interpretation" as Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani (he of the claim that "truth isn't truth!") is bellowing. Years of dirty deeds have grown into poison trees in Trump's garden of evil. The Michael Cohen prosecution is leading the "Witch Hunt!" (DJT) of justice and the rule of law to the gingerbread cottage of Mar-a-Lago. Michael Cohen -- who was Donald Trump's personal lawyer for 12 years during his campaign and his presidency until April this year -- knows where all the bodies are buried and is not out to "embarrass" Trump, his boss, but to help remove this human stain from our American presidency. Mr. Cohen won't be finished paying the price for his association and loyalty to Donald Trump, even after he spends the coming 3 years in a prison.The big fish that has been rotting from the head down since 2015 is our 45th president. We are hoping he'll be an indicted co-conspirator soon.
1
How much more can we take? When will the nausea end? This is a guy who believes "I can shoot someone on 5th Ave and they'd still vote for me!" Though he's not accused of outright murder, I think it's safe to say that he has blood on his hands (see separating children from their parents, putting children in cages, supporting any number of international tyrants, not to mention what he's not doing on climate change, to name just a few).
Unfortunately, the nausea may not end until November 2020, and even then it may not end. Rex Tillerson's recent interview in which he says "I had to tell the President that what he wanted to do would be breaking the law" points to the fact that either this "stable genius" doesn't know the law, or if he did, doesn't care.
The fact that he still sits in the Oval Office and spews ignorance and lies is shameful and disgusting.
5
Methinks these payments warrant a thorough examination of Donald J Trump’s income tax return for the last couple of years, no? It would be ironic if he gets prison time like Capone, particularly given the fact that his administration is gutting the IRS.
5
It all boils down to Trump. If he had not had the adulterous affairs, there would be no need for hush money.
22
@Linda Spot-on. It would seem that Trump's egregious behavior from which all of this case stems yet again gets overlooked. His ability to get away with awful things by hiding them in plain site is one for the scholars of behavioral pathology and history to write.
4
Mr. Trump's word game regarding never directing Cohen to "break the law" is cute. It translates essentially as Trump saying he told Cohen "I don't care how you do it, just get it done!" Did Mr. Trump specifically tell Michael Cohen *not* to break any laws? Breaking the law as necessary has clearly been Trump's MO for decades. Now that it is finally catching up to him he wants to play dumb, but ignorance of the law isn't a defense, even for presidents.
39
...Especially for presidents....and men with a hundred lawyers to consult.
10
@Vanessa Hall As you may also know, the attempt by Trump to deflect, seemingly performed endlessly, is called rationalization. It reminds me of smart-aleck teenagers, caught by their parents, trying to get out of punishment for misbehavior. Would any wise (and caring) parent let them get away with it? Moreover, it reflects that combination of his lawyers' advice (aggravating the stereotype of "shyster") and his juvenile level of development.
2
The Justice Department's constant refrain that a "sitting" president cannot be indicted for a criminal offense stems from the time period when the American revolution took place. It resulted in a division of powers that replicated the structure of a powerful King with some inherent (divine) rights, along with the house of commons and the house of lords. These became the President, House, and Senate. Much of the power and inherent rights of an American president resemble those of a king--including relative freedom from prosecution. As parliamentary democracies evolved through the 18th and19th centuries, the power of the king as an executive wained and they are now merely symbolic, which is still an important role because it means the state is not embodied in its leadership--which has fascist tendencies. But they can be prosecuted if need be. And so can Prime Ministers In a contemporary parliamentary democracy. In such a system Trump as a politician would already be gone, and he certainly would face criminal charges. As a King (unlikely as that seems) he would these days be frozen in ritual activities that preclude a lot of his objectionable behaviour and furthermore he would have little power. He would probably face even more ridicule as an objectionable symbol of the state, as well as the distinct possibility of prosecution. This is a very American predicament which will be difficult to rectify.
There is no way Trump didn't know the law. Cohen obeyed his commands.
1
People like Trump don’t use lawyers to follow the law, they use them to skirt, manipulate and when all else fails break the law and then get away with it. Everything about Trumps businesses screams white collar crime of one sort or another. But like the major clowns that gave us the Great Recession he had every expectation that he would continue to get away with them. After all in our system of justice if you steal millions of dollars through financial predation you get a seat in Wall Street but steal it with a gun and mask at the local bank and get a seat in jail. Trump doesn’t own the system he just worked it, his mistake was assuming that he could be president and still get a pass while annoying all the wrong people. If you think this old liberal is being a bit cynical then ask yourself how many players were held accountable for the financial chicanery that continues to plague us till today. So yeah Trump is a very bad man but what about all his enablers? He’s a mirror to them and a trial to the rest of us. Soon enough he’ll be gone but system will still be there. Sad indeed.
6
Now the defense is it's a "crime of interpretation."
Remember the original defense, which Trump told to all Americans, was that he didn't know about the payments at all! Then it was that he wasn't personally involved. Just two of the thousands of lies he's told since taking office.
Of all the terrible things Trump has perpetrated on this country, from the open racism to the destruction of our alliances and our environment, I think the continual lying is the most corrosive to our democracy.
3
Mr trump is not a lawyer. Why does he think we should believe him when he says things like Cohen pleaded guilty to two charges which were probably not even criminal? What does he know? He is in the executive branch not the judiciary.
So here is the President of the United States, sworn to uphold the Constitution, denigrating his former attorney for cooperating with law enforcement.
How long, oh, how long must we endure this?
3
“It’s a crime of interpretation,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Are you going to charge the president with a crime of interpretation?”
Whatever works.
p.
4
Ignorance of law doesn’t absolve you, Mr. President. That’s like breaking and entering a residence or business and rubbing them, or killing someone and saying I didn’t know it was against the law. I won’t get away with it and neither should you.
1
Let's get real. He lied about any knowledge of anything. I didn't pay any money ask Cohen. Then Cohen lied. Then, oh there is a tape showing how they all knew, how they set up shell companies hide the pay off, because, well it so legal. Then I knew about after, but oh the tape shows I knew before it happened, I used false name on hush agreement and sued Daniel's because it was all fake deal because it not me, but it is, but it is all legal even if I knew. Is there any doubt he is guilty. But, Trumpets this is the tip of iceberg. Russian conspiracy, money laundering, tax fraud is coming next. So long Donnie.
1
Funny how Trump kept Cohen in business for 12 years without an inkling of the countless illegalities perpetrated in his name.
1
So Giuliani’s defence of Trump amounts to, “He trusted his lawyer to know how to make hush money payments legally, by the book”.
2
Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States.
2
Trump talks as though he wrote the campaign finance laws. Like so many other things, he is ignorant and now blames his attorneys. Trump likely has no clue what the laws are and merely barked orders to his attorneys and they kowtowed to his delight.
Will his orange hair clash with an orange jumpsuit?
1
"Yes Mr. President, I'm so angry at what happened that I'm going to go to jail for three years just to embarrass you."
Don't you just hate whenever you do that to someone?
4
@Jim Cricket spoken as the true narcissist he is. No matter the issue even negative, it is always about Trump.
1
It seems that the Trump defense strategy is to lie repeatedly until the inconsistencies of the lies is clear to almost everyone, at which point the second line of defense is to whine “poor me” and blame somebody else.
No wonder the symbol of Trump that resonates the best is the Baby Trump blimp.
2
If anyone else had pushed the envelope an inch the way Pinnochio has, he would be chanting, "Lock them up."
All of the allegations against Trump & Co. will turn out to be true. They will end up being even worse than suspected.
You know it.
I know it.
Mueller knows it.
And Trump knows it.
The only question is whether Republicans have even a scrap of integrity or self-respect to remove this criminal and traitor from office. I’ll say it now - history is going to eviscerate the supporters, enablers, and cowards.
12
Republicans have lost their way in their craven grab for power. Look what their doing in Michigan and Wisconsin. They actually don’t seem to mind that Putin is running our country. They no longer believe in democracy or the United States of America. I’m going to start waving MY American flag in their faces- we must now be the patriots not them.
4
That Fox infomercial or interview with the president was laughable at best. He lied, misled, and even contradicted himself throughout the interview. He was literally grasping for straws on which lie will stick with his base. He even tried the low level employee defense like Cohen's only job was to make coffee and pick up fast food from Burger King for Trump. If you believe this lie among the many he told, then you will believe anything he tells you.
1
@damon walton. I thought it was Micky D's and KFC. At any rate, keep the fast food coming...
Trump is selling off pieces of America to foreigners & to our enemies, right in front of our eyes. Our so called government is too afraid of Trump to do anything. Thank God for the courageous press and journalists who are the only ones really looking out for us, the people.
3
"Sad!” Trump's cryptic, blaming, lying comments on Cohen, Mueller... anyone and any institution representing democracy, free speech, fair play, integrity and honesty are repeatedly and predictably castigated and dismissed by his ignorant omnipotent vindictive commentary. Yes, it is indeed, to use his terse declarative pronouncement, sad... sad that he is president, sad that the GOP lacks integrity and fortitude to stand up to him, sad what he has done to country, sad what he has done to the world, and simply sad he has two more years to swing his wrecking ball.
3
The sun rises; Trump offers a new explanation.
Have we ever seen anything like this?
Thanks again Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pa.
Thanks again indifferent non-voters, phony "independents," and third party fools.
You built this!
5
I thought lawyers act on the wishes of their clients - funny how Crooked Don suddenly insists it's all the lawyer's fault.
Gotta hand it to Putin. It’s a beautiful play. First you loan the mark lots of dough when no one else will. Then when he’s into you for millions, you get him elected President. He follows your orders until he gets caught. Then you let the girl take the rap, implicating the patsy’s inner circle. The patsy goes to jail. So does everybody dumb and greedy enough to follow him. Although you never get back your initial investment, it’s worth it. Viable candidate destroyed, fake candidate destroyed. Democracy (almost) destroyed.
You could walk in and take over the whole shebang, like they left the front door unlocked. Like I said. A beautiful play.
4
Ignorance of the law is no defence. Look it up.
Just about the only thing more pathetic than Trump's and Giuliani's remarks today to Fox News quoted in this article, is the actual Fox News home page. Fox editors are evidently so appalled by the disingenuous whining of their Best Buddies Don and Rudy, that they can't even find any place to report these remarks on their own news site. Doubly pathetic, I'd say.
Why is it that, presumably, in a court of law, hush money payments to porn stars are more important then sexually assaulting two dozen women over a course of about 20 years?
Why is no attention paid to THAT?
5
Let’s get just one thing straight... mr. Cohen doesn’t need to make a deal with federal prosecutors or anyone else tp embarrass trump... trump is fully capable of doing that himself.. with every waking day.. with every.. single.. utterance.. always!
2
Michael Cohen lied?
Mr. President, you denied knowing of the payments. Then you said there were payments. Then you said it was a private business transaction. Now you say its not criminal, merely civil, and at that, there was no actual violation. The only problem is, Mr. Cohen was charged with a crime with respect to those payments and he pled guilty to it.
Who has lied, Mr. President?
Tweet all you want. Have Rudy put some legal spinneroodoo on it. Have Rudy accuse Congress of the same criminal acts you say are mere civil non-violations. Only your crazy base is buying it. Your evangelical base who want the 10 Commandments posted in our courtrooms might buy it. But face it. Your goose is getting plucked right now and more nonsense from you and Rudy is not going to turn off the oven. Bon appetit!
3
Trump lies for many reasons.
He lies to cover up his mistakes because of his extreme narcissism. He lies for stupid reasons, demonstrated recently when Schumer and Pelosi outsmarted Trump into admitting a government shut-down would be on him. Trump reacted by saying "yes" even though that was politically naive.
Another aspect of Trump lying is it's his poker tell. It reveals the nature of his "hand" (hidden agenda). In poker, if a player bluffs by making a huge bet and shows his/her tell, the opposite is true. That player doesn't have a winning hand.
Trump's tell is when he throws out a lie suddenly and without reason/justification. Whenever Trump lies in this manner, the opposite is ALWAYS true.
Trump claims Cohen is the lone actor in making hush payments, so the opposite is true. Trump planned and approved payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen MacDougal.
Trump's dilemma with this lie is there are two separate sources explaining the same story. Cohen and the National Enquirer's parent company AMI.
Mueller's investigation is becoming harder for Trump, the GOP-led Congress and the MAGA followers to brush off.
My grandmother had an expression that fits circumstances where a simpleton eventually imprisons itself - "Give a kitten enough string, and it ties itself up."
Trump is about to fall down, wrapped up and trapped by his own lies.
Trump voters: You did this. You own this.
Just another reminder.
1
Congress has used a 17 Million Dollar Taxpayer funded Slush fund to payoff women who accused them of Sexual Misconduct
for years. Suddenly a Non Disclosure agreement using your own money to silence Bimbo's is a crime? Give me a break.
I cant wait to see Congress try to Impeach Trump on this. It will be great Theatre! Not going to happen.
Keep throwing things against the wall folks, maybe something will stick.
@Abc, you therefore believe that two wrongs make one right. If I get caught caught speeding twice, then it should be expunged from my record.
@MNimmigrant
Speeding is a minor crime. Paying for an NDA is not.
I welcome Congress to do this. It will be fun to watch but something tells me they wont touch it with a 10 foot pole. Its just the Leftist Media that pushes the narrative ad infinitum.
But there are e-mails, Donald, trackable e-mails.
You were 100% in the loop, unless you’re going to try lying by throwing “the person who, unbeknownst to me, read, answered, than hid those personal e-mails from me”, a victim to be named later.
Problem is, there’s no one left.
They’ve all pleaded guilty or lost at trial, THEN pleaded guilty.
My opening bid 1/no Trump.
Go Nancy!!
It really is too bad that America picks corrupt, lying, irresponsible, narcissistic, bad boys to be the USA President.
Donald Trump (Republican)
Bill Clinton (Democrat) (signed the repeal of the Glass Steagal act and raped womoen).
Whatever happened to the Dwight Eisenhower's and Jimmy Carter's of the world? Small town values, loyal marriages, honest people, and, good judgement.
Yes, Jimmy Carter. Remember. He was the last President where a real balanced budget was maintained, and, where the USA was kept out of ridiculous amounts of military spending.
We need a Jimmy Carter or a Dwight Eisenhower. But, maybe they would not win? Maybe Americans are so addicted to stupidity and bad boys as entertainment that they want Presidential entertainment instead of ....
Presidential capability.
@Michael, you do know that Eisenhower had a mistress, right? Look it up, of course, don't trust me.
1
You know, it is possible that John Gotti never explicitly directed one of his mobsters shoot someone. He probably instructed them to "take care of the situation."
Isn't this the same defense Donald is using?
2
Pretty typical. The mob boss, er, president, blames his consigliere, er, lawyer, for any misdeeds. That only goes so far. Ultimately, the don, er, the Donald, will be held to account for his own acts. Unless, of course, he whacks, er, removes Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
2
Working with Ukranian organised crime and then moving to the Trump organization, would e a logical move, and would probably not be much different.
The buck stops there.
1
Looks like the US has come full circle, from President Washington who could not tell a lie to President Trump who cannot tell the truth.
2
What a surprise - Trump blames Cohen. Who is to blame for his cheating on his wives and for his lying? Can't believe it could ever be Donald Trump's fault?
This is hilarious - quote "Later, during an interview with Fox News, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Cohen had cut a deal to save his family and in exchange had agreed to “embarrass” the president."
Ha ha ha - you cannot be embarrassed if you're Trump . . . the man has no shame and is utterly without integrity. I just can't wait for this imbecile to finally implode.
Trump blames Cohen. Of course. Has Trump ever accepted the blame for anything?
1
It’s clear now that Trump was illegitimately elected, and we haven’t even seen the big stuff yet. The NY team has Weiselberg (sp?), and every week the Russia situation looks worse and worse.
So, legitimate question: If that’s all proven in court, do Gorsuch and Kavanaugh get removed too? And what about all his other judgeship appointments? Anyone have any idea what happens after Trump is gone? Nothing even close to this crazy has ever happened before in the US.
What a mess.
3
So, Trump is a crook? Who knew?
Maybe a better question is “Who didn’t know?”
2
Not to say that Cohen isn’t one, but Trump’s a sleaze. It is beyond reason to speak about what Trump has to say about anything in a serious vein. The wages of disgrace. And yet he’s our president. What does that tell about us? Say what you want, we’ve let this happen: a liar as head of state in a democracy ... that what it is.
What amazes me is that Trump still thinks that most of us believe the lies he brazenly tells and tweets, like if we all are part of his obtuse base...
2
@Think bout it, he is not lying to anyone but his base, he does not care what the rest of us believe.
1
"Fixer" is a mafia term for someone who covers up crimes. When you hire a self described fixer to be your personal attorney, then have conversations with them about laundering hush money, you knew the fixer wa covering up crimes. Laundering money is a felony.
The shock of this person, Mr Trump, never ceases to amaze me.
He is without an internal compass and continues to pretent the American citizens are just going to go along with his lies and criminal behavior.
The republicans in congress have no shame or sense or responsibility to allow this dirty grifter to continue.
Trump and his family must be removed from our government.
Donald Trump, you never fail to astonish. You claim Michael Cohen seeks to embarrass you?
What about the guy who looks out of the mirror at you? That guy has done far more to embarrass you than anyone else could ever hope to! Your personal life is an embarrassment in itself, but it is your demagoguery that will be your undoing.
My father told me about guys like you when I was a kid. "Demagogues always lie," he said, "And they always fail. Always. The reason why is you can't make a lie into the truth. Reality beats fiction every time."
Reality is coming, Donald. You can't stop it. It's a pity your father never taught you about reality when he taught you about lies.
Still doesn’t top the lie he floated about not being the person on the Access Hollywood tape. #ShamelessLiar
1
Before all this came to light, Cohen was Trump's pal, his confidant, his fixer.
And oh yeah, he just happened to be a lawyer.
Now Cohen is just a lawyer, bad one at that who didn't follow the rule of law or follow any notion of ethical conduct.
And Trump " don't know nothin' bout birthen babies"!
Right!
Anticipating the President to eventually offer “attorney-client privilege” concerning his communications with Cohen to his scattergun defense, Rudy should advise him that the privilege does not extend to communications which occur before perpetration of a fraud or commission of a crime and which relate thereto. This is referred to as the “crime-fraud exception” to the privilege. As you say in NY, “Fuggedaboutit.”
1
How many tales is he going to tell?
1. He did not know about it.
2. He knew about it afterwards.
3. It was a private transaction.
4. Cohen was reimbursed (imagine a tightwad like Trump reimbursing $130000 for nothing!)
5. It was Cohen's fault.
.
.
.
There are enough twists and turns in this saga for Trey Gowdy to start a Benghazi type investigation - helped by Nunes!
Don’t forget his earlier defense that everybody of wealth employs a fixer...
Trump’s said he hired Cohen because “ he did him a favor long time ago”.
I suspect it is “favors”, most of it of illegal type.
1
Trump knew about these payments and neither ordered them stopped and - more importantly - did not report the activity to authorities. The major crime here is not the payments, it is the obstruction of justice to cover it up, conspiring with David Pecker of the National Inquirer, hiding the payments as legal fess to Cohen and having his associates lie about it under oath.
Actually the tip of the iceberg of Trump's crimes. He's going to the penitentiary - federal unless he weasels a presidential pardon or state penitentiary which a presidential pardon can't touch.
It is worth noting, in response to his supporters standard "Obama did it too" defense. The only campaign finance violation involving the Obama campaign occurred in 2008 when the FEC fined the campaign for failing to report $1.8 million of donations. Although the Obama campaign did indeed report them, it was after the required 48 hour reporting period. Unlike Trump, the Obama campaign did not lie or shift blame for the violation but immediately admitted it and just as immediately paid the fine ergo completely avoiding any obstruction of justice charge.
Again it is Trump's obstruction of justice here that is the major crime, not the campaign finance violation.
With his color, he'll look good in an orange jumpsuit.
Lock him up.
1
Has there ever been a more transparently ego-driven person to occupy the Oval Office than Donald J. Trump?
He is king of the blame-game when it comes to putting failures on other people's feet and will take credit for. . . well anything. We have a man-child in charge of the nuclear codes.
Is it any wonder that a majority of the country is experiencing a national anxiety attack?
Here's a scenario that I believe will play out. The Southern District of NY is now investigating the Trump Company, and they have over 30 years of shady dealings from which to choose.
Trump will see the handwriting on the wall and resign from office if he can secure a deal and not be prosecuted.
Then he can carry out his original plan when he first announced running for president: securing a lucrative TV Reality deal with Fox.
1
The 2020 primaries and election should make fascinating political theatre. Trump won't be running for President to get rich and prop up his delicate ego this time. He'll be running to stay out of prison. Break out the popcorn.
3
When he became president I had hoped Trump would at least surround himself with good people. As the truth comes out more and more, he has surrounded himself in so many instances with the dishonest, the greedy, and the unconscionable ambitious who stop at little, including the law, to try and win Trump's favors and seize their own advancement of a sort. It turns my stomach.
And to say Michael Cohen turned on Trump just to embarrass him? That just made me laugh out loud.
1
With the parsing of interpretation that mr. Giuliani brings to this conversation in support of his corrupt client, I’m left with a question... does he fly here every day from Venus or mars?
1
I no longer believe anything the President utters or tweets.
3
Really? Did anyone think that a New York city developer didn't break laws throughout his career and wouldn't continue that type of behavior when given the possible power of the Presidency? As in the Apprentice "You're Fired" Mr. President.
3
The rage so many have against Donald Trump is not who he is, but what he is. He is our worst instincts, greeds and lusts, and we resent his success. He will pass when we all see our personal demons and truths and forgive one another. It will happen for us. As Winston Churchill once wrote about Americans...they always do the right thing, after trying everything else.
3
It is not anger solely because of his manifold personal flaws. Trump has systematically tried to tear down the EPA, the FDA, Schools, Healthcare, all social services, the judiciary, protections for legal immigrants ... the list goes on and on. He is a destructive force with no creative and few positive policies.
2
Right! Pay over a $1million, 3 years in prison just to embarrass Trump. A trial would have been far more embarrassing with all the testimony coming out in public. And Cohen would have been found guilty and probably gotten a stiffer sentence which is why he agreed to the plea deal.
2
The bottom line here is that Trump had control of the money and he told Cohen to make payments to hide facts.
There was no way Cohen was getting his hands on the money without Trump giving the okay.
Trump thinks he's above the law, so he never does anything wrong.
Time for the new TV show "Reality Check".
2
"Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president" Anyone out there think DJT needs any help embarrassing the presidency?
6
How did it come to be that the "most powerful leader on earth" is just out there flying solo, ad libbing his defense on twitter and TV?
Oh right, it's Donald Trump. No lawyer with any self respect is willing to work for him. Giuliani proves the point.
Any other defendant with his wealth would be surrounded by a crack team of A list defense attorneys of which Washington and New York have no shortage.
Instead, we have the President of the United States isolated in the empty echo chamber that is his mind.
18
He has lawyers giving him good advice but he refuses to listen to them. Everyone around him apparently tries to keep him from tweeting and talking. His lawyers openly said he couldn’t talk to Meuller because he would almost certainly keep on blithely telling lies despite oaths and the nature of the audience. I personally think Trump half believes the things he says. He wants his version of the truth to be true so badly he suspends his own disbelief. That is part of what makes him a gifted con man. When people meet him in person he confounds their grasp on reality.
1
I was watching FOX News the other day, I found a stream and thoght I should educate myself and let it run in the background. I mean, I have seen clips of Hannity & Co before, but that is different.
Within an hour my head was about to explode. Hannity kept telling me things like "Is it not terrible that they (Mueller team) is destroying the life of a true patriot (Flynn)" and "this can happen to anyone" and so on. FOX is not trying to entertain people, they are telling people what to think. And they do it well. I bet millions of dollars have been spent on perfecting their brainwash technique. If you don't believe, watch Hannity for an hour.
With Fox behind him, Trump can say and do anything and his supporter will believe him. That is not the worst part - the worst part is that they will continue to believe what FOX has taught them long after he is gone. This is what the USA has to deal with. It is not the same country as it was two years ago. It will be extremely difficult to unwash the brains that FOX has shrinked.
16
Every single tweet from Trump about the Russia investigation could be considered obstruction of justice; every unhinged attack on dedicated public servants or even his own formerly trusted lawyers could also be considered obstruction. That's what, hundreds or thousands of counts of obstruction alone?
5
A simple legal maxim leaves Trump in a difficult place. All people are presumed to know the law. It is not a defense that you were unaware that what you did violated a statute. So, even if Trump thought that what he did was legal because his lawyer said so his conduct is not a defense to prosecution. However, upon a conviction or plea that argument would, if believed, be taken into account in sentencing. For some reason this whole concept has been ignored by both the Times and the Presidents legal team.
3
It should be clear to any reasonable, unbiased person that Trump knew about the payments. His defense, and it is a strong one, is that the Cohen tape, made without the President's knowledge, does not show Cohen informing the President that the payment could constitute an illegal campaign violation. The AMI agreement involves the campaign but not the President personally. While ignorance of the law is not a defense it mitigates the manner in which it typically is handled; namely with a fine. In short this is no big deal and much to the chagrin of Trump haters will not bring down the presidency i. e. the Senate would never convict. Trump supporters, one third of the nation, would regard this as a coup voiding an election. This has never happened in these United States and we must remain a constitutional republic which we have been since 1789.
@alan brown: Apart from the fact that ignorance of the law is no excuse, the fact that Trump has repeatedly lied about the payments and shifted his story time and time again strongly suggests his knowledge of wrongdoing. Moreover, his entire career and life have been built around sleazy business practices, as indicated by his numerous bankruptcies, fraud suits, the refusal of American banks to lend to him, and a plethora of connections to criminal elements. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
8
@alan brown While you say that typically campaign finance violations typically are resolved through fines. They can also be felonies and have been charged as such.
1
If Trump’s polls continue to sink, impeachment will be viewed as “removing a dangerous and corrupt incompetent before further damage is done” rather than “a coup voiding an election”. Impeachment and/or the 25th amendment are in our constitution for good reason, and using those tools is proof that the constitution works as intended.
“If they want to pursue an investigation for impeachment on this and if they do want to vote on an article of impeachment, somewhere between 30 to 40 of them better get a lawyer,” Mr. Giuliani said."
Now Trump's defense is "Everyone's doing it".
Right.
Myself, I'm hoping that Mueller waits until January 15th or so.
After the new Congress is seated.
We are most likely to find out if Vice Presidents can be indicted too. Ryan and McConnell are a party to Trump's malfeasance.
Best to wait for a Democratic Speaker of the House.
7
The fact remains that there is nothing in the Constitution that addresses the arrest or indictment of a sitting President. A Department of Justice guideline is not an enforceable law. If conditions warrant, Trump could be arrested in the Oval Office today, tomorrow or next week. That's a perp walk I'd love to see.
11
Cohen claims he paid off the women at Trump’s direction to influence the election. Giuliani explained Trump knew about the payments, and repaid Cohen in installment payments. The leaked phone conversation between Trump and Cohen also point to Trump’s knowledge of the pay-offs, before they occurred, “cash”; with Cohen responding “no, check”. And the payments only benefitted one person.
4
I didn’t know about that law. Does that qualify me for the Oval Officer? Heck, there are lots of laws I know nothing about? Remember that fact if you see my name on the 2020 ballot.
10
Laughable if it were reality TV.
3
To paraphrase Nixon, it's OK to do it if you're president. Anyone laughing yet?
1
“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,”
Notice how telling that is. He is not denying that he told him to make the payments.
12
Yes, but to play Devil’s Advocate, where’s the crime in that? Shouldn’t Mr. Cohen have found a legal way to do what he was asked to do, or have told Mr. Trump what he wanted was illegal and couldn’t be done?
2
"Giuliani...elaborated on the points that Mr. Trump had made in his tweets, arguing that there was no evidence that Mr. Trump knew about the payments."
Huh? The tape of the phone conversation has been played a million times on TV and the internet. Cohen: "150"... Trump: "Cash?"...Cohen: "No,no, no."
Has there ever been a more transparent lie told by anyone associated with this White House? With any White House? By any person who has ever lived?
9
And we all know from innumerable TV shows and podcasts that a lawyer advises the client (e.g. to plead to a misdemeanor). Then the client can say yes or no. The client can say "you are my lawyer. This is what I want you to do."
It's going to be a national day of celebration when Donald John Trump hears the sound of a jail cell door closing behind him.
20
Listen, get Trump out of there. I am not afraid of Pence, who will stumble along trying to make conservative decisions, and then he won't be elected in 2020. He is not a s crazy as Trump, who is ruining our country. Stop supporting starvation in Yemen, stop polluting, stop Philandering, stop, stop, stop, stop!
17
Trust me on this one. We were glad DT picked Pence for VP and he got out of Indiana. You don't want Pence as POTUS.
I think the technique is to squirt out enough ink to obscure the facts, allowing an escape. After all, they say a squid is among the cleverest invertebrates, so I suppose Trump falls into the same category.
8
My lawyer committed those crimes as a legal theory will certainly make any lawyer think twice about working for Trump.
4
The World's Greatest Con Artist never expected the con to go on this long. He's making more and more ridiculous accusations -at what point does his base realize they are marks?
13
I truly, literally expect him to assert at some point that the voice on the recordings is Rich Little.
7
"Mr. Trump had “a right to expect that he is going to handle it honestly,” Mr. Giuliani said. “He has a right to rely on the fact that he thought the lawyer was doing it correctly.”"
Someone should ask Giuliani whether Trump has the same expectation of him. And, if – sorry, when – Trump throws Giuliani toward the bus, whether Giuliani will meekly crawl the rest of the way into its path. As is his lawyerly duty.
5
Of course we all know about our so-called "president" and his background in show business ("The Apprentice"), but this current act is more Monty Python-esque than Reality TV. To paraphrase that famous Monty Python skit featuring a pathological liar, here's Trump's re-enactment:
"I never directed payments to that woman. Nope, not me. No, no, no, no, no, no...
Yes. Yes, payments were made to that woman. By my lawyer, not me. He's a great lawyer; always follows the law. Above the law, actually. So far above it you can barely see him. He made the payments. All of them. Lots of payments--the BEST payments! All legal. Yes, legal. Very legal. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,...
No. Maybe not legal. But my lawyer made them, and the FBI made him make them. They forced him, not me. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,...
No."
Stay tuned for next week's episode...
4
I must say that “improvises,” is a truly generous way to say, “yanks it out of.”
4
I really hope trump and his criminal family are allocated to hard time prisons for decades to come. And I hope his Republican associates get to share the same prison.
8
More "alternate facts" from the spin doctor himself. He simply replaces one lie with another. With the ever changing lies that continue to spew from the Donald, it is obvious he has something to hide!
5
Trump says, "He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law.”
If I remember correctly, Rex Tillerson said, more or less, that on occasions Trump requested action that Tillerson had to remind him were illegal.
So, Cohen may have been less scrupulous than Tillerson, but does that leave Trump off the hook?
4
Excuse me for being a tad dense. However, if I am meeting with people regarding taking a course of action which might be of problematic legality my first and last questions of the other participants would be...."will there be any legal concerns if we do this?" I guess that is why I am not President of the U.S.A.
3
It should not be forgotten Michael Cohen wasn’t just ‘Trump’s personal lawyer’, he was also Deputy Chairman of the Republican National Committee, along with Elliot Broidy.
15
Great point, and I suspect we haven’t heard the last of L’Affaire Broidy. Now excuse me while I put on more popcorn.
5
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
― Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), French economist
16
This takes 'It wasn't me' to a new dimension. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse in any legal system worthy of the name. If someone breaks the law as a result of bad legal advice it doesn't make him innocent, it gives him the right to sue the lawyer who gave the advice, doesn't clear his legal responsibility.
2
Bart Simpson used to babble "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me. Our can't prove a thing, man! " But he never tried "It was all down to my lawyer."
3
Of course that is his defense and it is entirely appropriate. Mr. Cohen is the miscreant and the person who has been indicted and pled guilty. The president has not been found to be guilty and therefore only the person who is guilty should be treated as guilty. What is it you don’t understand about proving guilt?
I understand motivation. Ask yourself who stood to gain here? Not Cohen. He did Trump’s dirty work, under orders from the boss who now disavows all knowledge. Yeah, right. Pull the other leg Donny.
1
What is it that you don’t understand about the plea agreement where your boy trump is noted as the orchestrator and pay master?
2
If you or I commit even a fraction of the crimes Trump has been committing, we would be locked up already. There’s truly no justice in this world for the common people like us.
8
Has anyone ever pled guilty to a charge involving prison time simply to embarrass someone else? I mean, outside of a 50s sitcom.
7
He may be President 45 in theory, and Individual 1 in the Cohen case, but he's somewhere around 327,900,000 by all other measures.
1
There are so many actors in and around the corruption associated with Trump that the Justice Department should open a RICO (Gang activity) case file.
But wait, the Justice Department may be involved too.
1
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Trump’s guilty.
6
I just want the man impeached, it is my constant prayer, a wish growing more and more remote with each passing day -- with each promising report that suggests we'll soon witness Trump's undoing but which invariably comes to nothing.
So okay, if not impeachment, I would settle for gross humiliation. Not to simply stack up the evidence against Trump, but to see him naked in all his criminality.
We seem so close. I'm just so tired of waiting.
7
Impeachment will do nothing to Trump, unfortunately. There won’t be enough votes in the Senate to remove him, even though it may succeed in the House. Impeachment by itself, without removal from office, is basically a slap on the wrist, one that Trump and his supporters might actually welcome as it will make him a martyr, while he continues on his path of destruction and corruption. As James Comey said the other day, voting him out is the only way this country will begin to heal.
2
@Brian
Gross humiliation would be wonderful and it's about there.
But it's not enough. Justice is what is warranted and Trump needs to be brought to justice just like any other law breaker.
1
Besides having no legal merit, Trump's string of denials then excuses then blaming others is a case study in cowardice and desperation.
Heat and pressure can forge extraordinary mettle in persons with character - to wit, Bob Mueller, courageously leading men under fire in Viet Nam. Likewise, heat and pressure will most often expose the rotten core of blustering flim-flam artists.
9
Trump is not denying that he directed Cohen’s activities. Rather, he’s saying that (1) Cohen’s activities in arranging the payments were not crimes; and (2) he, Trump, did not direct Cohen to do anything illegal.
So he’s basically conceding one of the key points, that he directed Cohen’s actions. His only defense is that he had no intent to break the law because he acted through his lawyer. Why doesn’t the Times pick up on this?
Trump's main defense seems to be, "there was no crime because I didn't do anything...but if I did, it wasn't a crime. trust me, because I say so."
Mountains of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding? Trump is going down...and he's going down hard.
3
I think the President may learn that less said is more?
But he cannot help himself. He reminds me of the guy who says "i never borrowed this, and it was broken when i borrowed it".
5
I laughed out loud at the title. Thanks for the smile.
1
It is the intent of the payments, not the intent of the methodology of the payment, that matters.
Trump's defense is: I intended my fixer to pay off Stormy Daniels legally, and as a lawyer, he should have chosen the methodology that is not illegal.
But that is not the intent that matters, the intent that matters is why did Trump want to pay off Stormy Daniels to begin with, irrespective of how Cohen was going to pay her.
If Trump's intent was to to affect the election, then it was illegal not to have reported the payment.
His only defense is "my sole intent was to protect my wife and child, Barron, from the bad publicity, and in no way did I care about the effect on the election", which would have been legal.
The prosecutor will have to marshall all the facts to show Trump's intent, and a New York jury will have to evaluate Trump's credibility on that point.
Good luck with a New York jury.
5
Consciousness of guilt. He lied and said there were no payments, then that he didn't know about them, and now, once his voice is heard on tape discussing the payments, that they're perfectly legal. Why lie if they were legal?
22
I could start with “if I were a gambling man” but I am not a liar like Donald Trump. So, I am a gambling man, and the odds are very high that Trump is going down and going down hard. My money is there.
23
MEH. Same old Trump. The man who got elected but couldn't become presidential.
24
I question your use of the word “man,” in this context.
Let's not forget that the people that ardently support trump are in the minority, except in the senate.
34
Trump is the president, and he is supposed to know how to be a president. it isn't presidential to live your life on Twitter and tweet out every thought and lie that occurs.
Mr. Cohen redeemed himself by telling the truth. So have others. Better late than never, and they are paying the price for being friends or associates of Trump's.
Trump's expectation that loyalists will keep silent and go to jail on his behalf is not only unrealistic, it is a mobster ethos.
17
@smb Only after facing the possibility of a very long prison sentence.
1
Individual-1 is a simple child. Why is this not grounds for removal from office?
23
Trump thinks our system of laws is terrible. There are no words adequate to respond to this.
29
Well I tried to. Submitted for review.
We need words forward, words we used to take for granted, we need these words fully back into the narrative of Bi- Partisan, Honesty, great legal system, great police, FBI and even CIA etc.
sure problems... but RESPECT
ETC ETC ETC
I’m just waiting for him to recommend the Russian system as the paragon we should emulate.
I have a score card and lots of popcorn but I have to admit, I'm having a trouble keeping score here.
12
The defense, such as it is, is "whatever", that is what
trumpicans in the senate will swallow since
it's up to them to make grumbling noises that
can be heard over the buzzing chaos that
permanently surrounds the WH. So far, they seem perfectly
fine with "whatever" such as it is.
"Whatever" boils down to whatever can be tweeted
and gotten away with, which is pretty much anything
at all since the base really can't be made to care in
the slightest..if they're still holding strong, then
this is hardly enough to get them to start tottering. If you can
even get evangelicals to not care at all, you know
you can keep the wool pulled over the base's eyes
for about as long as necessary.
The main point is that the nature of the crime
is something that was done before the election and
can be manipulated to make it seem (via cooperating
media) that it's one dude's word
against another (tno tapes-- yet). How much
the corroboration from the enquirer guy counts is probably
infinitesimal in nature...again, one guy's word against
the fearless hero.
So if the base isn't going to care very much, why
should the trumpican enablers in the senate care any more?
Hatch's reaction pretty much spelled out how widespread
is the slime, though it might be interesting if romney's
was noticeably different. There are no versions of corker
or flake among the trumpicans, so we shouldn't hold
our breath waiting for any noticeable grumbling until
there is more in the nature of a legal proceeding.
3
Isn’t there an audio recording of them talking about it? Trump will NEVER stop lying; it’s always worked in the past and it’s all he knows.
13
Does a campaign violation mean disqualification from future elections? I have a Burgundy that is begging for a reason to be opened.
17
Yup. This clears up this whole sordid saga pretty nicely. Thanks Prez.
9
President Trump's "goal post adjustment" just gets increasingly bizarre by the day. His ever shifting fables about the hush payments have now become so self-contradictory as to take up permanent residence in the realm of the absurd. Perhaps we should build a wall against them
Yet his acolytes still follow him blindly. Truly there is no misdeed so deep that his core support would evaporate. Trump's supporters might or might not be deplorable, but the president himself is the Duke of Deplorability.
8
I funnel all my payments to former girlfriends through shell corporations. Everyone knows that all Americans do that. Just ask anyone on the street and they’ll tell they’ve done the same thing. It’s just a simple business transaction. I do it all the time - not just when I’m running for public office
22
I think the decisions the president i should making is pretty good
That is a pretty bold assertion from Rudy that members of Congress have clear conscience if/when the vote on impeaching Trump for campaign violations. I don't recall a similar standard when Clinton was investgated. Do Denny Hastert and Newt Gingrich ring any bells?
10
Here we are debating something that there are public tapes of... again...
Trump knew and more importantly, signed off...
8
Wait til Cohen testifies in Congress with more audio tapes—the number of seized documents and tapes from his residence, hotel rooms, and office must be giving Trump nightmares.
There’s the Russian spy too with NRA donations & GOP contributions from Kremlin money all with signed receipts.
And the publisher of The National Enquirer with a safe-full of salacious goods going from, in Trump’s own words “long way back.”
Then, as icing on this cake, there’s the CFO of the Trump (Dis)Organization with all of his tax returns.
Who else has a Möet in the chiller?
10
Of course Trump takes credit for everything and blame for nothing. He's the least heroic figure of our times, and with the Republicans as enablers, that's saying quite a lot. It's going to be fascinating to watch this cowardly, overgrown 6-year old as he, his children and his business are all, finally, under fire for their criminal acts. My experience has been that when consequences are delayed they're bigger and worse, and Trump has a lifetime of lies, scams, schemes, fraud and outright crimes to answer for.
10
As the old saying goes, "ignorance before the law is no excuse." Not surprisingly, the bloviator-in-chief is ignorant, and guilty.
7
Hard to imagine there is any room left under the bus…
14
Always get a second opinion.
1
Guilty, guilty, guilty.
If Trump were a poor minority person, Trump would be in jail now, irrespective of his "I didn't know the law..." excuse.
Trump has spent years crafting a 'Reality TV' image as a business genius, and hands-on superstar manager of complex business situations. And now we're expected to believe that he didn't know exactly what the 'payoff the women for silence' situation was, and that he wasn't in the loop on the whole situation? Sorry, that fantasy, like so many Trump statements, beggars the intelligence of any normal sane person. More evidence for the 25th Amendment, or just the deranged delusions of a very guilty, very corrupt, and very scared person who knows he has been caught?
Guilty, guilty, guilty!
7
Of course he blamed him. I hope nobody is surprised by this. Are they?
1
Individual-1 says it's not my fault, never my fault, always someone else's fault. I'm innocent...doesn't matter I am always innocent. Hey, look over there, it's a puppy...
10
He's improvising all right, NOBODY is defending him. Where is Giuliani? I don't see Kellyann on TV. Where are his "hit-back" team? Ah, this gonna be a lonely Christmas.
6
The Grest Pretender. How much longer ?
2
When you run for President, you should be consulting with "the best people," remember Donald? Instead, you dealt with your hatchet man who you knew or should have known was not familiar with federal campaign finance laws. Pretty simple stuff. When you take on big tasks, such as running for President, you need to hire experts. You didn't, Mr. Trump, and that is on you.
8
But of course, Trump blames anyone in his twisted world who will take the fall for his atrocities...We cannot expect anything more. The man has no soul, no ethics, no humanity, no values...Nothing.
7
Mr Trump kindly explained for the American people, via his preferred mode (tweet 11:47 PM - Dec 13, 2018), why lawyers are paid.
My question to Mr Trump: Why are you paid?
6
Donald “I alone can fix it!” Trump sold the world on his uncanny financial acumen, innate ability to negotiate, and immense wealth that placed him high above mere mortals. Now, not so shockingly, he is revealed to be a two-bit criminal who in incapable of accepting any blame for stealing the 2016 election and defrauding the American people. He takes credit for anything positive, yet deflects anything negative, casting blame on underlings and people he “hardly knew” (like Manafort and Cohen) for every transgression, large or small. “Had a bad day on the golf course; it was Eisenhower’s negative influence.” What a tragic, transparent ignoramus. When he ends up in Leavenworth he’ll have a lot of time to reflect on his misdeeds. It can’t come soon enough.
5
No. 45 never told Cohen "break the law." However he directed Cohen to engage in activities that he, 45 knew or had reason to know were in violation of the law. That standard is sufficient to indict. Whether 45 can be indicted is another matter and he remains an unindicted co-consipirator. Moreover, ignorance of the law in not an excuse. As usual, 45 throws Cohen and a la Duncan Hunter, throws Cohen's significant others under the bus. What more will we given for the 12 days of Xmas? "You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not lie to the FBI..."
5
Trump is despicable. He demands loyalty but gives none. How can he tolerate his own cowardice and inadequacy?
44
He is like a corporation that demands loyalty from employees, but one way.
.
2
What portion of Cohen’s 3 year sentence is specific to the supposed campaign violation?
I think Trump is right, those two charges were tagged on just for political purposes.
4
Tagged on?? Cohen is serving three years for implementing Trump’s directives. The crime here is that the prosecutor might buy into the theory that he cant indict the sitting President . So now the President is above the law. Our founders are spinning in their graves.
4
@KJ
No. He is serving 3 years for crimes unrelated to Trump. Taxi medallions scam, tax evasion, etc.
When Trump gave money to Cohen to give it to the women, he should have known the election laws. To say I don’t know the law or Cohen should have told me are not excuses. If that is the case, everyone can use it to save themselves from violations. For that reason, in 1910, Supreme Court reinforced that ‘ignorance of the law’ is not an excuse. Even a Supreme Court can’t save Trump. Now, the best thing to do is remove him from the office by impeachment or wait until he leaves the office in 2021.
22
If anyone believed this, I have some oceanfront property in Idaho I’d like to sell them. Cash only.
16
@Sean Eddy I've seen it. Such beautiful palm trees! He's my partner.
2
Whenever I want to make a legal payment, I always funnel it through a shell company. Not.
37
What I don't understand about American politics and your justice system, is the notion that Trump is immune from prosecution whilst he is still your President? Who dreamt that one up and why? Surely, if Trump is believed by prosecutors to have breached the law, then he should have charges laid against him? Furthermore, why can't he be dragged into court whilst he still President to answer the allegations, and if found guilty, to pay for those crimes? Why couldn't your Vice President could take over if Trump were to be found guilty? High office shouldn't prevent a corrupt politician from being removed, or having their crimes punished to the full extent of the law, and two more years of corrupt governance from Trump seems illogical to me, especially if prosecutors could lay charges against him that would stick?
58
@Vincent
A sitting president actually can, and in this case should, be indicted.
However, the Republican bullies who have gamed our political system for disproportionate power in our government have pushed this notion that a sitting president can't be indicted. They base this argument on a Dept of Justice "policy", which has nothing to do with our Constitution. This lie is Republican corruption run amok. Unfortunately, Americans don't kniw how to think critically, so, alas.... here we are.
11
It’s just an opinion, and likely an incorrect one at that. A sitting president CAN be charged with a crime if it was related to efforts to get elected, it’s just that nothing like that’s ever happened before.
Trump will leave the White House in handcuffs, unless he finds a way to sneak out of the country beforehand, which seems nearly impossible for a president to do. But not over campaign finance stuff. There’s just way too much Russia smoke at this point for there to be no fire. The only question now is how many others are involved.
6
Not that I disagree with you, but the argument for this practice is, that a Presidency could be hobbled by a litany of law suits without merit, that would divert attention from the act of governing or could be brought for purely political reasons. (It’s not a law btw - only a directive)
However one slices it, however, our 18th Century constitution is hopelessly outdated - same as with what you got over there in Westminster, btw.
4
It is not illegal to enter into a non-disclosure agreement. It is a stretch to consider such payments as a campaign finance violation. Ask the prosecutor of John Edwards who was acquitted in similar circumstances. The case with Cohen and Trump is weaker still.
Cohen was charged mainly and essentially for other violations - income tax evasion and the taxi medallion money laundering, which had absolutely nothing to do with Trump and nothing to do with the the Russian investigation, the purpose of the investigation to begin with. Cohen was hoping to get reduced sentencing for his crimes that had nothing to do with Trump, if he composed against Trump. He did not play his cards right.
1
You have no idea what Cohen has told the Mueller team, but it’s only logical that they’d keep the big stuff under wraps for now.
And Edwards was able to claim he did it to protect his wife, who was battling cancer. Kind of hard to imagine Trump convincing anyone that Melania’s feelings, and not the election, is what drove him to make the payments.
6
Please stop trying to compare the Edwards case with Trump’s as they are not at all the same. Reap up on what happened with Edwards. You can start here: https://abovethelaw.com/2018/12/stop-comparing-donald-trumps-campaign-finance-fraud-with-john-edwardss-case/
I'm under the impression that when you hire a licensed professional to work under your power of attorney, be it a lawyer, account, customs broker, etc -- the legal burden is ultimately on YOUR shoulders. If you get bad advice you can sue the practitioner for incompetence, but that's a different court case.
I don't think I'm the only person who is "under this impression". If it's not common knowledge, it's certainly a common belief. It was a "regular fact" among everyone I ever knew who lasted for more than three years in business. (I lasted for 35 years, along with many associates and competitors.)
11
This might have been a good argument if Trump, when asked about this illegal activity, admitted it had taken place and that there was nothing illegal about it. Then, maybe, we could say he had a lousy lawyer. Trump’s immediate and vehement denials evidence the fact that he knew exactly what was going on and the legalities of such action. Nice try.
18
Maybe 'I'm a very stable genius who's responsibility was temporarily diminished' will be the new excuse.
1
As the previous Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, found out, informing Trump that something he wants done is not legal is no deterrent toTrump’s demands that it be done anyhow. If Trump slapped around Michael Cohen as has been well publicized, there is no chance that he could have stood up to Trump and opposed carrying out orders just because they were illegal. And no doubt Cohen knew he would be left holding the bag when the whole backlog of Trump’s legal irregularities started unraveling. Cohen had few options but to turn evidence on Trump, and try to minimize the damage he knew he would sustain. This trajectory will only increase as more and more participants in Trump’s dealings come under legal scrutiny, and choose not to take a fall for him. In the political sphere, the burden of carrying water for Trump is finally beginning to reveal itself as unsustainable, and his hard core base begins to diminish.
12
If one put Trump and his antics in the Old West. This is either “High Noon” or “Shootout at the OK Corral”. Mueller is the Gary Cooper character or Wyatt Earp. He has begun the walk down Main Street armed with facts and indictments to arrest the bad guys. All westerns have the same ending. The lawman gets the bad guys. It wouldn’t be America if there was another climax. So it is really Robert Mueller who is making “America Great Again” by enforcing the laws despite the odds.
17
Last time I checked, Cohen was not an election law expert. Any sane, competent candidate, especially one with supposedly unlimited funds, would hire the best legal minds to provide counsel on something obviously as sketchy as silencing these women. He didn’t want someone to say no, he wanted a patsy.
23
Well Donald's campaign lawyer, Don McGahn was an FEC commissioner and an expert on campaign finance laws. It would have been very easy to get an expert opinion but apparently no one sought qualified advice. Gee, I wonder why.
Enquiring minds want to know to know and I bet prosecutors are going to find out.
13
Has NY considered implementing Japanese-style arrests for under-reporting income?
Maybe Cuomo & state legislature could suggest that just to watch Trump squirm.
Japan's police interrogate white collar crooks for weeks in jail until they confess - Nissan's Ghosn
2
throwing his fixer, the guy who would take a bullet for him, under the bus. nice. even mafia lawyers are treated better than that (unless they end up in the Hudson -- or is polonium the method of choice these days?)
furthermore, DJT digging himself a grave with such potentially demonstrably false statements - IF the report that he was at the payment meeting is true, he's got some "'splaining" to do. IF he is at the meeting that actually sealed the deal, as the principal (client) he authorized his agent (attorney) to consummate it with guilty knowledge (scienter).
7
Cohen is guilty of doing what Trump told him to do, the fact that Cohen broke the law in doing so means that his boss is just as guilty as him.
12
Usually men pay for their paramours before they run. Donald Trump is so cheap he waited until they came out looking for him.
7
Well Mr. President, perhaps you shouldn't have relied on some guy who ran a taxi company and went to a bargain basement law school for campaign advice.
5
When I try to think of a short tag line to define President Trump, my president and yours, three phrases immediately pop to mind: "the buck stops there," "stand-up guy" and "man-up."
3
The donald never does anything wrong. It's always the fault of somebody else.
8
the ignorance if the law defense.
doesn't work for poor people, but it did for rich people
5
"The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes." (No racial slur intended, just a folk tale that seems appropriate to Mr. Trump's ever evolving denials. I wonder if he has a brier patch to ask to be thrown in.)
This story seems odd. I remember the left wing media calling the John Edwards trial a waste of time. Remember the $1 million paid to his mistress. Now you have the same situation and the opinion is different. Interesting.
4
Derek Muller, it's not at all the same. Trump made these payments a month or so before an election to women he'd had affairs with 11 years earlier. Edwards had just recently had a child with a woman while married to a woman he'd been married to for over 25 years and their marriage was regarded nationally as a great relationship. The jury bought the idea it had to do with saving his marriage not his political career which was on the downswing. By contrast, no one thought Trump would care what his 3rd wife thought.
2
The buck stops doesn't stop here.
2
Had this man Trump ever, ever in his life let out something other than lies? He should be locked out of his Twitter account.
3
Yeah, right. It was all Cohen's fault.
You can bet that if things had turned out well, Trump would be claiming all the credit. But it blew up in his face - so Cohen gets all the blame.
A good leader, I was told way back, shares the credit and takes the blame. That still holds, 100 percent.
And Trump, it goes without saying, is NOT a good leader.
234
@Dave It seems appropriate in this case to demand that "the buck stops here".
A classic example of what Don the dishonest thinks of everyone.
He thinks we are all stupid enough to believe his lies.
Is there anyone here that does believe anything he says? Nothing is ever his responsibility, it is always the fault of someone else, or he had noting to do with it, is this even possible?
Again I ask, there are people who say they like him, that he is their kind of president, can we assume there is something wrong with the, some mental aberration, or are they just normal uncultured dim-witted denizens taking up good space and using the air?
7
Trump knew what he was doing and why - to benefit his campaign. He lied about the payoffs from day one. It doesn't matter whether he knew it was a campaign finance violation.
20
Just because Don didn't say the exact words, "break the law," doesn't mean he isn't culpable for criminal conspiracy. Like the rest of us, he's responsible for his own actions, and there is little doubt he knew that making hush money payments during the midst of the campaign was illegal. Jail to the chief.
25
The man -- Trump -- has been skirting the law for so long, he has become inured to his own misdeeds. They no longer look or feel like lawbreaking.. To Trump they feel like deal making.
Trump's businesses - never mind his lifestyle and that of his family -- have for decades been sustained by tax avoidance, law suits and, if some of the stories are to be believed, outright stealing from vendors, partners, family and friends (including the communities in which many of his businesses are located).
It will come, therefore, as no surprise, when he flirts with -- and maybe does -- resign from office rather than stand-by and watch his tax returns be dissected by a newly empowered Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. Should those returns fall into the wrong hands, the legend and lifestyle of one Donald J. Trump will disappear.
28
Why didn’t DJT just write the checks from his own account if these were private transactions? It seems to me he was trying to hide the payments ...
31
@Susan Brint - I hope a reporter asks that question.
5
@Susan Brint Maybe his check would bounce and he did not want to incur the insufficient fund fee.
1
@ DR. I hope a prosecuting attorney asks that question
Any business or institution has the responsibility of finding qualified lawyers to give them advice President Trumputin cannot use the excuse that his lawyer was incompetent and gave him bad advice. As a supposed billionaire (and supposed con man), the prez has dealt with countless law firms (at least on the other side of the table) that were professional and competent. Caveat emptor with Mr. Cohen. Trump is smart enough to know exactly what he was getting in Fixer Cohen.
8
I am no fan of Donald Trump, but it is disappointing that this and many other articles from reputable sources fail to point out that there is significant legal uncertainty surrounding whether the actions taken by Mr. Cohen (even assuming they were done at Mr. Trump's direction) are actually violations of campaign laws. And if the actions were in fact violations, there is also significant legal uncertainty about whether under existing precedents the remedy is a civil monetary fine as opposed to criminal charges.
The somewhat repugnant facts seem reasonably clear but nobody knows for sure whether these actions violated the law.
Yes, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations. But he no doubt did so because the other charges against him were much worse. This plea served his purpose (cooperation deal) and also the goal of the prosecutors (no need to prove legally uncertain campaign finance charges in a court of law, especially considering the "beyond a reasonable doubt" criminal law burden of proof).
Someday the merits of these legal questions may work their way through the judicial system to provide us an answer. Or maybe not.
1
If these were simply private transactions and not illegal why didn’t Trump write a personal check to the porn star and playboy model he had affairs with? Instead they created a shell corporation and had a magazine pay to quash stories. No matter if you think this was a campaign finance violation or not, you have to agree suppressing the stories during the campaign was done to prevent the bad press and accompanying potential loss of votes.
5
A US District Court judge would not allow any defendant to plead guilty to anything for which there was no legal basis.
Also, I imagine Mr. Cohen retained some competent defense attorneys. Any attorney that would allow their client to attempt to plead guilty to a crime they didn’t commit would be risking their license to practice.
I’m pretty confident that did not happen here....non withstanding the sideline commentators that probably don’t know all the facts of this case.
5
What makes the least sense is the president saying his own counsel should have known ( the) law, and steered his client safely. If he (Mr. Cohen) DIDN'T then this must mean that the president did things he shouldn't have, and now blames Mr. Cohen for his (Cohen's) failures at law. Hasn't the president de facto admitted his guilt to something??
3
A true leader accepts responsibility and rightfully takes credit for all actions taken in their name, bad and good.
A question to the 63 million. Was Mr. Trump worth it? Did he advance your agenda or destroy it. My guess is that history will find the latter to be the case. And few will shed a tear.
7
I lost count, how many people has Trump thrown under the bus?
For those of you who have never heard of this phrase, it means "to BETRAY a friend or ally for SELFISH reasons".
12
Let's look at Trump's statements from beginning to end on this issue.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
2
Clients, of course, may delegate authority but they do not thereby slough off responsibility. If the lawyer -- acting on a client's behalf -- makes hash of his client's affair, the client's recourse is against the lawyer, not his own absolution from personal liability. If the client is not discerning in hiring counsel and especially if he is inaccessible to sound counsel, he gets what little he deserves. In this case, Mr. President, you embarrassed yourself, and you ashame us all.
2
"Mr. Trump said that his former lawyer had pleaded guilty to the charges in order to embarrass him and to get a reduced prison term."
Then again, it may be all the evidence Mueller has and Cohen could see the writing on the wall. Just like everyone else. But full points for being a typical narcissist and thinking it's all about you.
3
This is not new. Trump gets caught in a lie and blames everyone else and refuses to take responsibility.
9
Surely no one expected Trump to take even a grain of the blame on himself. When has he ever taken blame or responsibility for anything?
7
Trump knew exactly what he was doing He’s spent his whole life believing the law doesn’t apply to him. Oh and while we’re at it let’s see what an honest man you've suddenly become and show us your tax returns.
7
Nonsense. We're not talking about altruists here; Cohen and the National Enquirer wouldn't reasonably have done something like this unless Trump asked them to. As everyone knows, Trump lies about almost everything. Of course he did it, and a lot more. It's in complete sync with who he is.
5
So, let me get this straight. If this was uncovered before the elections, Trump would have been arrested along with Cohen?
11
Mr. Trump has been denying any existence of these payments for months. Now we’re supposed to believe him when he says it’s Michael Cohen’s fault, not his. Sure.
7
Cohen's actions are reprehensible, but Trump can't hold a candle to the good conscience and remorse expressed by Cohen yesterday and in the past months. The POTUS' personality disorders are instability are complicated and powerful. It's important that we find a way to govern without letting them do too much damage, and that we never allow someone so insecure and incompetent in this office again.
1
We are witnessing the president behaving desperately as the walls close in on him. He's stacking lies upon lies. But that's not surprising. What's surprising is the DOJ policy indicating a sitting president cannot be indicted. This is implausible. Once Mueller proves that Trump conspired with Russia to get elected, his presidency becomes illegitimate. If that's not cause for indictment, what is? Even if it takes hurdling some obstacles to change the DOJ policy, it must be done. We cannot continue having an illegitimate president remain in office.
7
Reminds one of the classic "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
2
Trump's denials and rejections of any allegations concerning his illegal conduct and activities are long since past being credible. He expects us to believe that all of his former convicted/indicted associates are dishonest and criminals while he is an honest man. Does he seem like an honest man to you?
45
He doesn’t expect us to believe it. He expects his base to believe it. And likely they will, as many of his followers don’t read or watch any in-depth news and only pay attention to his sound bites.
9
(Corrected)
"Respondeat Superior": "The Boss shall answer."
If the President is going to plead ignorance so that his lawyer can take the rap, that cop-out speaks volumes about Trump's qualifications to be president. In our legal system, if you *should have known* something, it is considered as if you *did* know it, precisely to prevent all malefactors (including a malefactor through an agent) from resorting to this "I didn't know" cop-out (the one, by the way, that used to prove so popular in Germany for a time, before folks realized its hazards).
Maybe Trump missed this history lesson (like so many others he missed) -- not just about Germany, but the President who oversaw the conclusion of that war: The plaque on his desk read "The Buck Stops Here," not "The Buck Stops With My Lawyer."
Mr. Trump is getting quite a lesson in this principle. Not only, by the way, can we determine where a buck stops: We can determine a buck's path, where it flowed, and whose hands it flowed through, and for whose benefit.
22
Donald lies and denies everything constantly. Many in his orbit have already been convicted. Trump is guilty; the question is; what do we do about it? Ray Sipe
26
Trump is always right. He is perfect and those around him are imperfect and make mistakes.Make no mistake about this. Cohen told the truth. And Trump needs no help in being an embarrrassment. Trump on his own embarrasses the office of President and the USA internationally. Trump is the embarrassment in chief.
25
Despite all Obama had to endure from the GOP during his presidency, there was never a hint of scandal over his 8 years in office.
130
@Alan Hymanson Obama ran the cleanest administration since, at least, Carter. "Scandals" like Hillary's emails and Benghazi were ginned up GOP politically driven fictions that resulted in endless GOP investigations and zero indictments. Being Republican is the definition of "hypocrisy". Oh, and lying, cheating, stealing, self dealing, graft, corruption, treason, racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, science denial, climate change denial, and "christian" triumphalism, supremacy and bigotry. Feel free to add to the list.
3
"Respondeat Superior": "The Boss shall answer."
If the President is going to plead ignorance so that is lawyer can take the rap, that cop-out speaks volumes about Trump's qualifications to be president. In our legal system, if you *should have known* something, it is considered as if you *did* know it, precisely to prevent all malefactors (including a malefactor through and agent) from resorting to this "I didn't know" cop-out (the one, by the way, that used to prove so popular in Germany for a time, before folks realized its hazards).
Maybe Trump missed this history lesson (like so many others he missed) -- not just about Germany, but the President who oversaw the conclusion of that war: The plaque on his desk read "The Buck Stops Here," not "The Buck Stops With My Lawyer."
Mr. Trump is getting quite a lesson in this principle. Not only, by the way, can we determine where a buck stops: We can determine a buck's path, where it flowed, and whose hands it flowed through, and for whose benefit.
2
If Mr. Trump thinks he has troubles now, wait until Allen Weisselberg’s testimony is revealed.
27
For someone who brags on his tremendous superior intelligence and knowledge about everything under the sun, Mr. Trumps’ use of “ignorance” as his defense seems especially lame here. That implies that he is deeply ignorant of the law. Oh no! This might be because up until now, he has never recognized that there is a rule of law. Besides nobody told him these payments to mistresses were illegal, so how could he possibly have conspired with his lawyer to break a law he knew nothing about? This from the man who knows everything. Brilliant.
24
If I had an affair with this person, or maybe if I just even knew him in passing, the shoe would be on the other foot - I would pay him handsomely to not talk about it...
7
This sounds a little like John Gotti admitting he told Sammy the Bull to kill all of his enemies but denying he told him to break the law in doing so.
24
The tape that I heard belies this assertion.
Furthermore, the notion that someone will go to prison to embarrass Trump is preposterous. It also omits the predicate. Why would Cohen want to embarrass Trump in the first place?
10
Trump suggests that the prosecutors added the campaign charge to link and embarrass Trump. Victimhood exemplified.
The innuendo (prez as complicit or a conspiirator) is a bunch of nonsense. Cohen's misdeeds are strictly a consequence of his own choices, not the prez's. Can we please grill the prez on domestic and foreign policy grounds rather than character ones. Same destructive obsession of oppositon with Bill Clinton.
Personally I believe in a full-court press.
There is no innuendo, Trump has been implicated in a criminal conspiracy, confirmed by two witnesses, and Trump himself on tape. Any false equivalency relationship with Clinton sounds desperate.
4
What’s the point? Trump doesn’t know anything about either.
Thanks to the Wall Street Journal we now know that Donald Trump was in the room with Michael Cohen and David Pecker in August 2015 to develop the "catch and kill" conspiracy to prevent any articles appearing that would harm Trump's political campaign. This was a successful plot to keep woman like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal from publishing articles detailing their sexual affairs with Trump that involved money laundering, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. It was all done by Trump and for Trump and at his urging and approval. Winter is coming and we haven't even heard directly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller yet.
15
Yeah, right. You mean after he lied about not knowing anything about the payments in the first place and was caught on tape proving otherwise? The man is an inveterate liar unfit for the office he holds. I pray to God he loses in 2020 and can be tried and convicted in court at that point.
21
Perhaps, mr president, it might be a nice touch to send a thank you card, and possibly a fruit basket, to your Justice Department for uncovering the fact that the man you paid for 12 years to be your personal lawyer doesn't know the law.
14
So your defense is that Trump’s gullible and dumb as a rock? Amazing.
Not to worry; they’ll have plenty of time to revist their glory days, and time hangs heavy in the slammer.
6
Trump's denial is not new. This lead me to think of an analogy. Let's say Trump hires a hit man to do his bidding. The hit man came back and said, " Boss, the man is dead " . Trump said, " Gosh, I hire you to shoot him. But you kill him.".
8
Blame the other person. Trump is not a narcissist. He is a sociopath. This is classic sociopathic behavior.
22
Why is what Trump says relevant anymore. He is a psychopathic liar. Media outlets need to stop wasting words on him. Please!
14
Oops looks like there was a conspiracy back in 2015......guess who the "OTHER MEMBER" of the campaign is?
In the non prosecution agreement with Pecker of AMI/National Enquirer
In or about 2015, David Pecker, the chairman and chief executive officer officer of AMI, met with Michael Cohen, an attorney for the presidential candidate, and at least one other member of the campaign. At the meeting, Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publications avoided. Pecker agreed to keep Cohen apprised of any such negative stories.
https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rv61eTzASpSc/v0
4
@GHD -- speculation is that it was Kellyanne Conway. I think that is unlikely, because I don't think Trump would want a woman at such a meeting, but she was the interim campaign manager.
Cohen recorded you, doofus!
13
And we're going to believe anything that Donald Trump says?
Come on, Donald, do us all a favor. QUIT. You are damaged goods, not to mention a prolific loser and a monumental liar.
Get out of our White House and get out of our country. You and your traitorous family are not welcome.
Move to Russia with your hero, Vladimir.
16
It seems pertinent to add that, per pages 24-25 of the Dec 7 SDNY filing on Cohen, Cohen secretly recorded himself discussing those payments with the president. I'd imagine the president's conduct during that meeting, when he was unaware he was being recorded, will be far more telling than his protestations on the friendliest propaganda outlet in town. Prosecutors still know much, much more than we in the public, the media or indeed even the White House.
It's been truly remarkable watching the First Family's web of deception, criminality and conspiracy with foreign powers against the American people being carefully unravelled by the men and women sworn to uphold our constitution. The president has been checkmated already, I suspect, even if his narcissistic vanity won't allow him to accept the fact. No wonder he won't come celebrate Christmas with the press! His presidency is verging on untenable, and for once in his gilded life, he might actually have to face consequences for his despicable actions.
It's about damned time!
16
The most honest statement of Trump’s view of the law was said on that bus:
“When you are a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
A few weeks later enough voters in enough states made this moral void president. His view of the electorate is the same as of the women he was bragging about assaulting. Collectivity, we let him do this. Never does it even enter his mind that there is anything he is not allowed to do. Is he wrong? Standing up with a vote against trump is the only response to this. Congress and Mueller won’t save us.
23
Ok. So. Is President Trump now saying that the role of any lawyer is to find a way to subvert the law for him?
Seriously?
14
Sociopaths expect everyone to do exactly as they say, without question, and don't care about the consequences for anyone apart from themselves.
4
@Truth Is True
Wasn't refusing to subvert the law for him Jeff Sessions crime?
7
Trump has the core behavior of a hardened criminal. Never cop to anything, no matter what the evidence shows or even if they have you on tape.
A non-criminal would have admitted lying when he said flatly he knew of no hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, only to months later say that in fact he did.
Similarly, rather than confirm that his taped bragging of chronically sexually assaulted women was accurate, his first reaction was:
“Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “I apologize if anyone was offended.”
11
Donald Trump thinks that if lying to himself is good enough for him, it's good enough for his supporters.
11
@Richard Mclaughlin -- he's right too. He's just so gripped by narcissism he fails to understand it's not good enough for his enemies.
1
Trump conducts himself as if he has one day left to live and he is hell-bent on creating as much chaos as he can within the last minutes of his life.
With that in mind he behaves as if he is bound and determined to violate every rule of decency, to break every law and civil norm, and to offend as many living creatures as possible. He also wants to leave a legacy of being mean-spirited, offensive, petty, and pustule-like.
In this regard, he has fouled the air, the water, the earth and every person foolish or unlucky enough to engage with him in one way or another.
He is like a truckload of horse manure that has overturned at the top of a hill, rushing downhill toward everyone in its path.
What a nasty, vile person he is.
53
Trump's support will never wither come hell or high water. His miscreant base will not waiver, his wealthy base doesn't care (as long as he continues to increase their wealth). The Evangelicals have sold themselves to the devil Trump, and are unable to give their children any sound moral justifications for their hypocrisy. Then there are the Republican politicians who have placed Party over Country. We know all about them.
This leaves ~60% of Americans scared about the instability, incompetence, and cravenness of this Leader of the Free World.
Godspeed to Mr Mueller, the SDNY and all those who still believe in the rule of law.
It would only be poetic justice for this disgrace to end up in an orange jumpsuit. After a lifetime of doing poorly to others, he has flown too close to the sun. His wings are coming unglued and it's a long way down.
14
We are not the free world and our president is not its leader.
Although Michael cohen had a penchant for criminality, hooking up with trump vaulted cohen into a totally enhanced stew of corruption. cohen saw trump as a stepping stone to wealth, recognition, and power, and he stepped into a swamp, bigger than the one he could have ever created on his own. trump saw cohen as the useful idiot that he came to be. Yes, a lawyer is supposed to know what is illegal, and some don't. Hey, look where cohen went to law school. Since trump USED cohen for so many years, shouldn't trump have REALIZED that his "fixer" didn't know certain aspects of the law????? trump did not care! All the times that cohen "didn't know the law" were just fine and dandy when cohen was doing whatever trump told him to do, and threatening whomever trump told him to threaten. Now all of a sudden, trump is berating cohen about "liability' because cohen didn't know the law? Maybe cohen did know the law, but we are talking about a situation where trump DIRECTED cohen to pay off these two women, and after years of doing illegal things for trump, was cohen suddenly going to say: "Oh, but that is against the law, in this situation. We could be violating campaign finance law!" What do you think trump would have done? Wiped the floor with him! Called him every name under the sun! And cohen was like trump's little lapdog...do you think he ever said no to trump before? Then cohen would have feared trump would have dropped him and found another sleaze-ball "fixer."
4
So what does Trump believe?
He knows the women? He doesn't know the women?
He slept with the women? He didn't sleep with the women?
Mr. Cohen is smart? Mr. Cohen is stupid?
He did nothing wrong? He did something wrong?
Mr. Cohen did him a favor? Mr. Cohen didn't do him a favor?
Man, this is tiring.
12
@Martin
Very, but apparently he is going to torment us all by forcing every misdeed to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt...good in that it is the only thing that will make his base accept his corruption, bad in our collectively wasting amazing sum of tax dollars and national prestige.
His presidency has set the nation back decades already, very frustrating.
2
In some respects, the President is right about Cohen. He is a lawyer and is presumed to know the law. If he doesn't know it, he has a professional obligation to research it. If he is asked to break the law, he has an ethical obligation to decline to take the requested action. But at the end of the day, he laid down with a dog and woke up with flees.
229
@Andrew
As the nominee of the Republican Party for president, Donald Trump had the obligation to get expert advice on whether these payoffs ran afoul of campaign finance law. He should have known that his personal attorney may not have been equipped to offer that advice. In October 2016, Trump had many other legal outlets available to him, including within the RNC.
Let’s consider why he didn’t avail himself of that advice and instead relied on his fixer.
437
Cohen knew it, as did Trump. How do I know that?
Because simply writing checks wouldn’t have gotten out into the open fast enough to have been a prob. Instead, they created a network of shell companies and lied through their teeth. That’s called, “guilty knowledge.”
And what’s with the notion that Cohen has to be an angel to be trustable on this? He only has to know that Mueller and SDNY have him by the shorts, and be scared enough to want to avoid really serious jail time.
120
The two of them, they were regularly breaking the law, for Trump. That's what Cohen's job was.
77
Corruption in government is not unheard of or even uncommon. But we’re finding and going to find that the level of corruption practiced by this President and his associates before and after his “election” is both unprecedented and breathtakingly pervasive. I am beginning to think that even his election may turn out to have been fraudulent and even treasonous.
10
§ 903. Criminal conspiracy.
(a) Definition of conspiracy.--A person is guilty of conspiracy with another person or persons to commit a crime if with the intent of promoting or facilitating its commission he (or she):
(1) agrees with such other person or persons that they or one or more of them will engage in conduct which constitutes such crime or an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime; or
(2) agrees to aid such other person or persons in the planning or commission of such crime or of an attempt or solicitation to commit such crime.
[...]
(e) Overt act.--No person may be convicted of conspiracy to commit a crime unless an overt act in pursuance of such conspiracy is alleged and proved to have been done by him or by a person with whom he conspired. [Due to Cohen being guilty]
We've gone from:
It didn't happen - to
He didn't know about it - to
He might have known, but it wasn't a crime - to
He was in the room.
He told him to make the payments. Case closed.
30
This latest excuse almost certainly arises because Whitaker leaked all of the evidence against Cohen and the “I didn’t know it was illegal” defense can apparently not be unequivocally disproven. My hopes are much higher for th Russian connections which have been redacted thus far.
Given that John Edwards was acquitted of even more egregious charges it's hard to see how Trump could be charged for campaign finance violations. In Trump's case he used his own money to buy the silence of women with whom he had had affairs. In Edwards' case wealthy donors provided funds to pay off his mistress. After the Edwards verdict, Chris Matthews of MSNBC opened his television program by saying, “Let me start with this John Edwards trial, this waste of time, money, and public attention.” Charging Trump would be an equal waste of time, money, and public attention.
1
What's telling is that no one is talking about the affairs themselves as anything important or indicative of a lack of character. We've come so far, haven't we?
7
This is nothing like the Edwards case. Here, we have a conspiracy to commit election finance fraud with Trump being recorded ordering the payment of a bribe.
And, the other person in the conspiracy has pleaded guilty to the felony offense. Michael Cohen was charged sand so will Donald Trump be charged.
1
Well, the time has come for Mr. Mueller and his team to break out, dust off and appling the RICO act (Rackateer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act) to the Trump Crime Family which provides for sentencing of 20 years inprisonment plus $250,000 in fines for persons and $500,000 for organizations or twice the proceeds from the crime which include bribery, mail and wire fraud. Imagine all the profits from violations of the Emoluments clause alone that could be realized! Why, you could practically build a wall between the US and Mexico for all that or put the funds to agood use likefeeding the poor, taking care of our veterans, public health and infrastructure improvements. It would be like Christmas in well December!
23
@Mike
I brought up RICO about 4 to 6months ago. I'm no attorney, but I think DJT's recent business model is classic RICO case minus the violence and murder.
If Trump told Cohen to shoot that guy in the middle of 5th Ave. instead of doing it himself would it still not be a crime?
11
So shouldn't Mr. Trump sue his incompetent lawyer for malpractice and recover all the fees he paid him for "subpar" legal work?
5
@abigail49: I would be hysterical if he did that! (But I wouldn't put it past him.) Doesn't he realize that he was directing his lawyer/fixer to do something that turned out to be ILLEGAL? That means that he and his lawyer/fixer were engaged in a criminal enterprise TOGETHER. And exactly what is he going to sue FOR? cohen is not going to have a pot left to...er...make fondue in! Also, trump wasn't unhappy with Cohen's "subpar legal work" when the two of them got away with whatever ELSE they were doing over the years.
“I didn’t tell him to break the law. I just told him to do things, which turned out to be unlawful.” Obfuscate much?
18
Except that after ten years of flacking for Trump, Michael Cohen cannot possibly have been able to believe that this President was any more capable of embarassment than your average crocodile.
4
The obfuscation and lies will not work for Trump. Fox News, pro-Trump judge, Andrew Napolitano told Shepard Smith about the evidence that the Southern District of New York has. And the way the judge laid it out, it all sounds damning. Michael Cohen intended to make these payments at the express knowledge and consent of Donald Trump.
9
I do not believe that Mr Cohen's paying off the two women because of Mr Trump's dalliances rise to the level of an election funding crime. Yes, Trump wanted to pay off two women to stay quiet. So what? It happens all of the time. The allegation that these payments were unfair to election regulations is a stretch. Any person would want to whitewash his or her behavior to support his or her election prospects. Happens all of the time. So what?
As even noted by the New York Times, the threshold of this being an election crime is very murky:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/us/politics/trump-cohen-payment-legal-issues.html?module=inline
It one wants to nail Mr Trump, it should be collusion with a foreign country or violating emoluments regulations. But not this.
1
@Victor Mark - Really? It happens all the time? Please provide some examples.
9
@Victor Mark
Don't worry. The charges of money laundering and tax evasion will be coming along soon enough.
11
The two of them conspired to break campaign finance laws. That's not murky at all. Your favorite millionaire is guilty. And Cohen has already pleaded guilty to what you say you do not believe is a crime.
Don't give up your day job .
4
The scary thing about all of this isn't just that Trump surrounds himself with bozos and criminals. It's that he doesn't seem capable of understanding why it matters in the first place. He's clearly out of his depth but lacks the self-awareness or self-confidence to recognize the danger. When the Senate has to vote on impeachment, as they surely will in 2019, I hope they have the courage to put the good of the nation first.
11
Some how a segment of middle America fell for the line of a New York flim flam man. It is now time for that segment of the country to call their senators and tell them they made a mistake and that this miscreant should be impeached and convicted for his criminality. It is time for him to go and by the looks of that meeting among Nancy, Chuck, Trump and Madame Tussaud wax figure of Mike Pence take Mike Pence with him.
11
No surprise here. Trump never takes responsibility for anything he does that makes him look bad. Waiting for him to hold himself accountable would take longer than waiting for Godot. Now watch him blame Chuck and Nancy for a government shutdown even though we have him on tape saying he would proudly own it. The man is in his own little bubble and I count the days until it bursts.
14
First, he never paid anyone. Then he did but its really not a big deal. Now he knows its a big deal but his personal lawyer should have advised him better, and oh by the way he is only pleading guilty and going to jail to embarrass him! I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Of course, American Media is only paying the money to embarrass him. Narcissism 101.
11
Hey 45, Individual #1, please give us all a break! Cohen was NOT acting on his own. YOU hired him. YOU, the world's "smartest" business man. YOU, who racks up more time in court than the average lawyer. YOU, embroiled in multiple lawsuits... YOU should know!
It was an impossible job, making a crook look innocent. He did try, though.
19
This President is an embarrassment to our country. Those awful, petty tweets are historical records. What will history say about us?
Sad.... (truly)
13
Trump really thinks we are stupid! He wants us to believe that Cohen signed up for three years in jail just to embarrass Trump. Are we watching a pathological liar come unglued? This is frequently the case when the lies become more and more convoluted and start to make no sense at all.
13
The buck stops....um.... certainly not here! No way! Over there somewhere? Not with me, never with me! I’m just the president. I don’t know anything. Get that buck off my desk. Give it to Kellyann, or Pence. No buck, no buck, you’re the buck. What does the chicken say? Buck...buck...buck...buckaw!
16
@John Ranta You rival Alec Baldwin in impersonating Trump. Very funny.
5
Stop !
Is the NYT's insinuating that our beloved president would go as far as "blame" another soul?
3
This is the brilliant genius who knows everything, controls everyone, strikes the greatest deals in the history of the world .... but he didn't know that *paying off* two women so his affairs would not go public was illegal? Mr. President, *no one* believes you didn't know exactly what you were doing with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pecker when you squashed those stories. And this just has to be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your criminality.
11
When it comes to the Russia investigation, I question whether it is responsible for media to report on Trump's Twitter ramblings. Every remotely serious person knows that Trump lies at will, particularly when it comes to his transparent attempts to shift blame. Given his complete disregard for the truth, reporting his tweets is only expanding the reach of his self-serving lies. I understand that this is a conundrum for media organizations because he is the president, but at least in instances like these I think it would be better to ignore Trump.
4
Cohen did it for his own interests? mmm It is an unending saga of individuals networked for political sabotage.
1
Whether Cohen "knew the law" or or whether Trump explicitly "directed" Cohen to break the law is irrelevant. This was a conspiracy between Trump and his fixer-lawyer to carry out hush-money payoffs in felony violation of U.S. election law.
2
Trump: He's in charge of everything, the great and powerful mastermind making all decisions, knowing all--until something goes wrong and he blames someone else.
7
he New York Times says “prosecutors said Mr. Trump directed Mr. Cohen to make illegal hush payments to women who said they had had affairs with Mr. Trump to keep the women from embarrassing Mr. Trump during his campaign for president.” Making hush money payments to influence elections is not illegal, but the Federal Election Commission has ruled campaign money cannot be used to make hush money payments because candidates would have cause to pay hush money even if they were not candidates.
This is why Trump paid Coen to arrange the hush money payment out of his corporate pocket rather than out of Trump campaign funds. Trump has the invoice and wire transfer records to prove the money come from the Trump organization, not the Trump campaign.
Trump can also prove that he paid Cohen in 2011 to stop “In Touch Weekly” from publishing the Stormy Daniels story by threatening the periodical with a lawsuit. Trump can show he was paying money to squelch Stormy Daniels years before he became a candidate. This is why the FEC has taken no action against Trump even though it has known about the hush money payment for more than two years.
My goodness, you certainly seem to have an awful lot of insider information.
Bless your heart, in the full Southern sense.
5
@Robert
It is not "insider information,: The FEC website is at https://www.fec.gov
1
You just skipped over the part where Cohen and Trump created a felony by not reporting their payments as required by law....you know, the coverup part that makes it a felony.
2
The President reacted angrily to the short prison term handed Cohen. Maybe they were saving a few years for you, Mr Trump.
7
Send Trump to prison for twenty years. It'll be the first time he's ever completed a sentence.
66
@Tony
Superb pun! Thank you
3
mr don the chief of thumbs is relying on all of us not remembering the day to day noise of his noise. he has refused to own a single thing yet. it is always somebody else's fault. i hear they are getting a new case of mold placed in the old Jefferson Davis suite. donny it does not matter how bigly you and your gut think your ego is it will fit inside that cell.
3
Cohen pleads guilty and goes to prison for 3 years, giving up his freedom and family, simply to embarrass Trump. That makes total sense.....?
Trump’s twisted narcissism is always at work creating new delusional stories.
7
@Rachel
You clearly don't understand what is going on. He is going to jail for bank fraud and tax evasion. He received less time by copping to the campaign finance violation.
@jaco: You misunderstood Rachel's comment! She was being wry. Actually, probably not that wry at all. Her last sentence is the key to the entire "thing." Rachel understands WHY cohen is going to jail. But tRUMP claims that the only reason michael cohen pled guilty to anything WAS TO EMBARRASS TRUMP! Therefore, in order to just embarrass trump, michael cohen is going to now spend three years in prison?????!!!!! Who, in their right mind, would plead guilty to serious crimes (and go to prison!) just so they can embarrass someone else????? Only a twisted narcissist (trump) could come up with that! Do you get it now, Jaco?????
2
Cohen pleased guilty to the crime of breaking the Campaign Finance laws. Donald should do the same. He's equally guilty.
The fish rots from the head. Sad.
1
Trump doesn't know Stormy Daniels > Trump may have met her, but, knows nothing about her > Trump says there were no payments made to her > Trump says there may have been payments made, but he doesn't know anything about them > Cohen says he made payments, but without Trump knowing about them, and that he was never reimbursed > Cohen says he was reimbursed, but, Trump knew nothing about it > Cohen denies violating any campaign finance laws > Cohen is caught > Cohen admits violating campaign finance laws at the direction of Trump > Trump says he never instructed Cohen to make any payment > Cohen releases tape of Trump clearly instructing Cohen to make payments to Storm Daniels in order to silence her > Trump says his ignorance of the law allowed Cohen to misguide him into actions that, while perhaps distasteful, are "completely legal" > Trump assures everyone that his unmatched legal expertise informs him that committing multiple campaign finance felonies isn't really illegal, because, if you don't know something is illegal, or if your lawyer does it for you, then it's not really a crime.
I can just see Donald Trump in court, telling a judge that he is acting as his own attorney, because "No one understands the law better than I do!", and, in his next breath, pleading "Ignorance of the law!" as his defense.
Let's just say the weather in Chicago is infinitely more predictable than Donald Trump, and that I've never seen more "Chicago Windage" from one person in my entire life.
10
Parts of Trump are completely predictable
It is appearing more and more like the special prosecutor and the FBI have abused their power.
1
@jaco
?
5
@jaco - It is appearing more and more like Trump supporters are as deluded and dishonest than he is.
10
Trump (and the Republican supporters) adopts the Frank Burns approach to personal responsibility - "It's God's will or somebody else's fault...!"
7
Good time for Trump to own up...
"Just kidding folks, I just ran for prez. to enhance my profile.. Resigning now."
6
nothing will happen to Trump ..
nothing
that's how broken the system is
1
Just one more of his ever shrinking defence lines against justice being done. We're waiting for mighty Mike to take over.
2
Donnie will throw anyone under the bus to protect himself. He demands loyalty but offers none!
Will he throw Ivanka under the bus?? Stay tuned in folks, and buckle your seatbelt!
7
It‘s like with my kids. It may be their fault if the break the neighbor‘s window, but I am responsible.
Manboy in the White House....
8
I can't think why Trump would think Cohen could embarrass him by admitting to covering up his dalliances. Trump bragged about his blatant lechery in the Hollywood Access video.
8
trump’s finger never stops pointing toward others. Would someone please get this guy a mirror.
7
LOL --yeah, prior to the election giving payoffs to women who had sex with Trump was beneficial to Cohen. NOT. Only one party was the beneficiary of the payoffs and that was Trump -- Mr. I'm in Charge, Mr. Stable Genius, Mr. Highly Intelligent.
He ordered the payoffs and Cohen did what he was told.
9
So he’s okay with paying hush money to a porn star for sex while his wife was pregnant and thinks the problem is with Cohen’s mismanagement of the affair? I don’t know whether to be appalled at Trump’s morals, his ethics or his ignorance.
14
@Greg Gearn
All of the above.
6
Spending years in jail, losing one’s livelihood, all to “embarrass” Trump.
Nope.
Trump is an embarrassment all by his lonesome, and probably a criminal conspirator to boot.
Are there any ethical or moral people left among Elected Republicans in the US government or has the last left DC long ago?
The Republicans apparently drained their swamp until only the sludge remained.
8
Remember the Audio files! The Nixon tapes of our era.
Just Like Putin never admit anything, always lie.
5
I cannot believe the President of the USA could try to defend himself with something as silly as "I just told him to kill a couple of people who owed me money; he is a lawyer and should have known that what I asked him to do was illegal"
5
Dishonest Donald is up to his old tricks, once again trying to evade accountability for his actions - Shameful!
3
I actually felt badly for Cohen, for a second, then I read the last paragraph of the article.
Ooops … LoL !!! I knew that, I read that stuff before !
1
Trump had a business deal with Pecker to "catch and kill" negative stories at least 1 year before Trump started his campaign. The payments made to the porn actress and playboy nude model were part of a continuing business and personal deal that existed a year before Trump announced his campaign. The federal prosecutor's sentencing memorandum of December 7, 2018 clearly stated that fact. The New York Times knows this fact.
3
Part of a continuing felony. FIFY
Donald J. Trump Presidential ^prison Library
4
Just about every night, a former federal agent or prosecutor appears on the news and says something on the order of, "Real-life conspiracies aren't like a heist movie, where everyone gets together in one room and the boss spells out the plan, step-by-step, in detail." The more I read about this caper, however, the more convinced I become not only that there was such an "Ocean's 11" moment, but it's also on tape.
3
Indy-1 in cell block D. Has a nice ring to it.
9
Yes! 'Cause D + one = Done ;-)
3
It just occurred to me that after years of watching Trump he must believe he has never done anything wrong, done anything illegal or hurt anyone in his dealings with people. What kind of mindset would believe they are perfect in every way when the evidence and facts point in the other direction?
20
Anything Trump says has at most a 50% chance of being True.
And Mr. Trump, you are the President and you are supposed to know the Constitution. If lying is a crime, as you say, then you need to be locked up (your words, not mine) for several life terms.
10
I think the president is trying to plead innocent by reason of insanity. He might just get away with it.
10
Simple case of birds of a feather.
2
bird brains of a feather
So now. In the Wild-Wild-West mind of Trump, the perfect legal defense is "My loiyah tell me I couldn't..."
For those of us without; will the Sixth Amendment be rewritten- requiring competent legal counsel before the fact?
Seriously. We are watching the uncomfortable reality of a prolific conman whose biggest con- the U.S. Presidency;which he never really wanted- and hates *doing* isn't playing out in business-as-usual fashion:
A lifetime of being allowed to keep matters in civil court- pay a fine; never admit to criminal wrongdoing (money laundering, housing discrimination-business fraud consumer fraud...)
The current "So what if I did.." mantra isn't falling on the same deaf ears- as past experience has trained trump to believe he is infallible; there are New Sheriffs In Town.
Quite frankly, it is a delicious manifestation to witness.
7
Trump began paying Cohen to hush Stormy Daniels years before he became a presidential candidate. In 2011, Trump paid Cohen to stop “In Touch Weekly” from publishing Stormy’s story by threatening it with a lawsuit. When news Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to buy her silence first broke, the news media ridiculed Cohen’s claim that he paid out of his own his own pocket. We now know Cohn billed Trump for the $130,000 plus a handsome fee. Trump has the invoice and wire transfer to prove it.
Coen pleaded guilty to making a contribution that exceeded the $2,700 limit because prosectors offered to reduce his sentence for tax evasion and bank fraud. He got a break on felony charges by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor. But the money actually came from Trump, who cannot be charged with making an excessive campaign contribution because there is no limit on the amount a candidate can contribute to his own campaign.
The Federal Election Commission, which has jurisdiction over campaign finance violations, has known about the hush money payment for about two years. But it has taken no action against Trump. The FEC has ruled that campaign money cannot be used to for such things as hush money that a candidate would have cause to pay even if he weren’t a candidate. This is why Trump paid out of his corporate picket rather than out of campaign funds. He has his 2011 legal action against “In Touch Weekly” to prove he was spending money to hush Stormy years before he became a candiate.
3
Thank you for injecting a note of reality into this.
Except that the two of you are forgetting to mention the felony of breaching the Campaign Finance Laws. William has done that in several posts. It's not working, William. The conspirators failed to report their payments.
1
Trump tweeted on Thursday: “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law.”
Trump/Colbert: "No, I only directed him to make the payments and to keep them secret!" What a criminal, moronic buffoon.
Don't at least 20 Republican Senators know that they can get all the tax cuts and conservative judges they want from a President Pence? Just impeach and convict him next month, and move on!
And at least half of his shrinking base are evangelicals, who will be happy with Pence.
5
@me You are making the mistake of assuming that his evangelical base actually cares about morality. Many of them don't -- they are as big of hypocrites as DJT.
7
When Donald Trump is talking about his current legal problems, he acts like he knows more about the law than anyone on the planet.
But, when it's discovered that he engaged in multiple campaign finance violations, he suddenly knows nothing at all about the law.
I guess that's how he can know more about the military than anyone that's ever lived, despite the fact that his imaginary 'bone spurs" prevented him from ever serving in it.
What's next?
Will Donald Trump claim to know more about poverty "than anyone on the planet", yet, somehow, not know that you don't need an ID to buy Ramen noodles?
Let's just say that Trump is an "expert" on everything he know absolutely nothing about.
14
With each indictment and subsequent plea deal or conviction of members of Mr. Trump's presidential campaign/inner circle his presidency descends to a lower circle of hellish venality and hypocrisy.
Mr. Cohen imperfectly pled guilty to numerous criminal offenses to avoid the enormous costs of being prosecuted and in all likelihood, found guilty at trial for a much larger and more serious list of criminal offenses. But Mr. Trump, true to form, tweets his former "fixer" and bagman is going to federal prison to embarrass HIM.
Mr. Trump may be unwilling or psychologically incapable of acknowledging the increasing serious revelations of the nature and extent of his corrupt presidential campaign and business activities to date represent just a fraction of Special Counsel Mueller, the federal prosecutors in New York's Southern District and Attorney General's offices have found.
One can almost hear the theme song from the TV show 'COPs" playing......
"Bad boy, bad boy whatcha gonna do
Whatcha gonna do when they come for YOU??"
5
Trump did not know he was breaking the law. “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon. Sad”
4
It only took the "Stable Genius" 11 years to figure out he hired a bad attorney according to him.
13
We are trusting this president for North Korean nuclear weapons.
4
Rand Paul, Orin Hatch, Susan Collins and others: shame on you for defending the President and his despicable behavior. If Trump were a Democrat, they would have their hatches out.
27
So the biggest liar in the world, who controls everything concerning his money, didn't tell his attorney to make hush payments.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Trump's nose just grew by about 3 feet.
9
Remember when all those people in the Obama Administration pleaded GUILTY to all those Crimes ???
Me neither.
46
Didn't know Trump had a law degree. Wondering if he got it from the same place as his illustrious attorney Jay Sekulow got his, Liberty University.
7
This president is a the worst human being to hold the office in my 54 years. If the rubes elect him again in ‘20 there will be consequences.
11
Will someone please refer deeply disturbed Individual 1 to a psychiatrist?
11
First there were no affairs
Second there were no payments
Third there were no illegal transactions
Fourth there were no election campaign violations
Now, he admits there were transactions that violated campaign laws but he did't request them even though he is heard clearly on tape.
This is how it is going to play out with every crime Trump has committed and gets investigated. Trump will always lie to the very end.
60
He’ll do interviews from prison and still lie about everything. It will never end.
The world watches on in open mouthed awe and wonder as America daily demonstrates it's dysfunction, corruption and it's utterly broken political system. The journalism produced by Carole Cadwalladr has joined the dots between the players in this game of undermining western civil societies. Trump was a major beneficiary of the fix. Maybe he didn't know about a massive conspiracy emanating from Putin's Russia. We will know more when the Mueller report is out in the open.
7
Robert DeNiro was right on SNL last weekend. The worst thing that has happened to DJT is not Robert Mueller, it’s that he actually was elected president! Good luck Donald, you are going to need it!
21
Last time I checked, ignorance of the law isn’t an excuse for breaking it.
17
@Mike, it would be great if it was just ignorance of the law, but most of us would agree that he's just plain ignorant.
3
Trump has a history of insulating himself from his crimes. He used to take the guests he was trying to impress across the street from his tower to an Italian jewelry store. There he would lavish the guests with gold chains and the sort and they would walk out of the store wearing the jewelry. The store owner would then mail the boxes the jewelry came in to an out of state Trump residence. This was to illegally avoid paying the state sales tax. Of course it was the jewelry store owner that got charged for the crime while Trump walked.
8
Lock him up! Lock him up!
Cohen did what Trump told him to do. Trump needs to spend time in jail -- lots of time.
12
At least Michael Cohen saw the inside of a courtroom and got busted for the lying more than for the crimes. I defy Trump to come into court and swear to tell the truth. The judge would have to admonish the jury for laughing so loud.
7
It would be interesting to compile a Trump "blame" list. I don't think he, himself would appear on it.
3
"Mr. Cohen had faced a much lengthier sentence for his crimes of tax evasion, bank fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress."
So let me get this straight, not only is Cohen not going to prison for supposed campaign finance violations, he received less time for copping to it.
You should be really worried. Cohen knows where all of Trump's illegal actions have been done AND he has recordings proving that.
I don't believe that Cohen cooperated in order to embarrass Trump. Trump is fully capable of doing that himself.
28
Trump says he is not concerned with impeachment. And that "the people would revolt." Apparently a revolt of against the government does not concern him....
7
tell trump not to worry. he will be surrounded by his best people, in jail!
9
Trump is innocent. Everybody else is dirty. And 63 million Americans believe that. 66 million do not. How does the jury find this man?
2
"So there was a buffer?"
"A what Senator?
"You know-- a buffer. Someone between you and Micheal C."
"Oh yeah, Senator, the family used a lot of buffers"
1
It's always someone else isn't it Dondi? You've never ever taken blame for anything, and yet, the illegal "actions" of all those others are always done for you, and ALWAYS YOU!!!
4
It is well past time for the New York Times and all other news outlets to accurately determine what IS and what is NOT news.
It IS news that Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison. It IS news that David Pecker's AMI has agreed to cooperate in the SDNY's ongoing investigation into federal campaign financing investigation. It IS news that Maria Butina has plead guilty and is now cooperating with those investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. It IS news that Mike Flynn will soon be sentenced for his role in the Trump campaign's cover-up of Russia's election meddling and ongoing connection to Trump business endeavors. It IS news that Manafort got caught double-dealing with the Special Counsel's Office.
But, what is decidedly NOT news is anything Trump says about any of the above. At last count, Trump has made well over 6,000 false statements since he became president. Any time his lips move or his thumbs twitch, he is lying to the American public and spinning reality into the world according to Trump.
Stop reporting everything this felonious, treasonous charlatan says. It erodes, for all of us, what is true, what is fair, what is just, what is moral, and what is decent.
33
Donald....you might look good in stripes.
2
Trump changes his stories so many times that I think the only rational response to anything he or FoxNews says about him is, “let’s wait and see”.
10
Michael Cohen obviously knew that he and his client were embarking on a path through multiple felonies when they decided on hush money payments in the midst of a presidential election. He recorded Mr. Trump discussing the payments. One recording was leaked and made public. I would be very surprised if that was the only recording of illegal activity in Mr. Cohen’s possession.
Cohen obviously knew what would happen if their criminal activities were exposed: Trump would blame it on his lawyer. Exactly what just happened. Cohen didn’t trust his client. He recorded him to insure that Trump will be held responsible for his crimes. Blaming your lawyer, Donald, does not work well when your lawyer made tape recordings.
Facts still matter. They matter in the voting booth, were the voters just put the Democratic Party in control of the House. They matter in a court of law.
Trump’s legal position has collapsed completely. Robert Mueller has done his job thoroughly and perfectly. He’s flipped one Trump ally after another.
I can foresee only two endings to this. Trump will resign and enter a plea bargain, mostly to keep Ivanka and Jared Kushner out of prison.
The other ending, more likely in my opinion, will be the Saturday night massacre, in broad daylight on a Tuesday morning and escalated to epic proportions. Trump will fire Mueller, fire anyone and everyone who stands in his way, and issue pardons to himself and everyone else.
It won't be pretty.
11
First, Trump denies having an affair with Stormy Daniels. Then he denies any hush money payments were made to her. Then that he had no knowledge of any payments to her. Then that any payments did not come out of campaign finance funds but from his personal funds. Then, the latest ever evolving version, that if it did come out of campaign funds, that it was his lawyer, Michael Cohen's, fault for not advising him that might be illegal. Reminds me of an old joke about the sociopath's response when accused of a crime--"I tell you that I wasn't even there, and--if I was there, then I didn't do anything, and if I might have done something, it was an accident, and...." Sad!
9
Just a brief reminder Mr. Trump. We've already listened to the taped phone call and your reaction.
11
The only law that Donald Trump, an authoritarian narcissist, adheres to is the law of loyalty to Trump. And "yes," Michael Cohen like John Dean before him broke that law by deciding that "the rule of Trump" was criminal under the real "rule of law" in our Constitution. And for that, the nation may be in his debt.
3
To which the only response is an eye-roll and an "oh puh-leeeze." Trump is the perfect demonstration of the saying that you have to get old but immaturity can be forever.
Sad indeed.
8
Whenever you read anything the President says, imagine him saying it while sitting on a witness stand, with a judge and jury watching and a prosecutor waiting to inquire. If you think any statement of his would dissolve from a combination of jury box snickers and withering cross-examination, you shouldn't give it any more credence because it is said outside of a courtroom. If the President were the Wicked Witch of the West, the courthouse would be his swimming pool.
3
Poor little President Trump would not have such difficulties, if he only had Sean Hannity for Chief of Staff!
3
I believe Mr Cohen was a vice-president of the Trump organization as well as Donald's 'personal' lawyer. Since when does the vice-president tell the president what to do?
7
Sure, I would agree to a jail term just to embarrass someone - not!
9
"Donald Trump is the president. I assume he would know what he's doing." ...yeah. There's no double-standard on this statement at all. Just resign already.
4
Will this guy ever accept responsibility for anything that he actually did?
4
The more trump talks, the hole gets bigger and darker. Un-hinged comes to mind.
4
Wonder who Melania thinks is to blame.
2
@MIMA yes let's not forget Melania. every day that goes by we learn a little more about the First Lady. Faustian comes to mind.
4
@jack zubrick -- it would be very amusing to read the prenup. It would also be very amusing to have a competent divorce lawyer's view of what would happen to it if Donald is sentenced to jail for any significant term.
I think the combination of proven adulteries and imprisoned for felonies would likely void any prenup.
And at a minimum if she chose to remain married while he was in jail, she'd likely control all his assets, even if he attempted to name another conservator.
Cohen needs to completely throw Trump under the bus and divulge EVERYTHING (if he hasn’t already). Tick tock Mr. President.
4
Is it possible that even a Trump supporter would believe this statement from Trump?
You better believe it!
4
Won’t he please just SHUT UP? Enough already. Please, anyone who has direct contact with him, including the media, please...when you hear him lie, please shout: “Enough already!”
3
A cynical conman believes that everyone else is a sucker, and that he can lie with impunity.
3
I. Can’t. Take. Anymore. Trump’s whining middle schooler routine is exhausting on every level. He tweets, full well knowing he is lying, and his base laps it up.
Meanwhile, we the people need ACTUAL leadership and a president who has the mental and moral capacity to act beyond their own selfish impulses.
10
First, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. With his background in national security, he certainly knew that would be a crime, and as a military officer, he also was aware that lying was not acceptable.
It is not the smallest of misstatements when so many of Trump's associates, campaign staff, and family members were lying repeatedly about their almost 100 contacts with Russians. Russia is a hostile power pointing almost 1,500 nuclear missiles at the United States.
Why should anyone lie for Trump? He has shown himself perfectly capable of lying for himself -- thousands of times -- and Trump supporters have also proven themselves capable of swallowing every single lie in the face of mountains of evidence including Trump on camera or tape contradicting the lies.
Sex, lies, and recordings -- never a good combination for a politician. Trump should have stayed a sleazy, tax-cheating, and mob-loving businessman.
5
Really Mr. President, you’re going to force the issue, state you just did a flyover of the tip of what appears likely a giant viceberg of your own creation?
Coming from a chief executive who claims to have control of every situation, somehow it more than strains credulity.
3
Oh Huuuuuge surprise! The man who never takes responsibility for any of his mistakes, dirty deeds , amoral character . Its gonna be time to pay the piper very soon.
3
"What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." ...Sir Walter Scott
1
Ladies and Gentlemen, Donald J. Trump. The " J. " stands for " Jenius ".
Sad.
4
actually, the j stands for jail.
1
Trump's lie that he did not direct Michael Cohen to do this is not going to work for very long. Not with David Pecker entering the scene.
2
More evidence that Trump is non compos mentis. I don't know how this ends. Trump can't lie his way out of this. It appears that he cannot and will not accept the the reality of what has happened to him.
20
@OSS Architect It does not matter that he will not accept the reality of what has occurred. The American People of all political parties need to embrace and accept what has happened and dedicate and commit to never allowing it to happen again. We must do this for the coming generations of Americans.
3
Donald Trump is a predictable and outrageous liar, which by itself should assure a sound and thorough drubbing in 2020.
8
@Victor Or assure his reelection?
@Gilbert C, God, and America would have to be blind. But.....
1
Surely Trump knew Cohen’s background as a personal injury lawyer before hiring him as his business lawyer. Lawyers, like doctors, have specialties. Why expect a personal injury lawyer who graduated from a less than prestigious law school to know election law? Trump passes the buck, time and time again. A real President, versus a TV reality President says, the buck stops here — Pres. Harry S. Truman.
9
the ending says it all:
"After he got married, Mr. Cohen started doing business with Russian and Ukranian immigrants from New York, Chicago and Florida in communities known for links to organized crime. He started working for the Trump Organization in 2007."
14
Maybe Donald and Maria Butina could share a cell.
5
52 USC s. 30109: Title 52 United States Code: Voting and Elections; Subtitle III Federal Campaign Finance; Chaprter 301 Federal Election Campaigns; Subchapter I Disclosure of Federal Campaign Funds; Section 30109 Enforcement; (d) Penalties; Defenses; Mitigation of Offences:
A) Any person who knowingly and willfully commits violation of this Act which involves the making, receiving, OR REPORTING of any contribution, donation, OR EXPENDITURE-(I) aggregating $25,000 or more during a calendar year shall be fined, or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both;
4
Really? Another "I didn't know" defense? Has anyone been keeping count of how many "ignorance of the law" defenses there have been from EVERYONE in this administration?
Seriously, either he's a "stable genius" or a "moron"... can't be both - and his supporters need to figure it out. If he's a "stable genius", he's a lying criminal - if he's a "moron", is this who really should be sitting in the oval office?
10
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, unless you consider the ignoramus involved.
4
Why does the Times print Trump statement as headline? Especially as it is provably false. The paper should be more cautious in its framing.
10
And over at Breitbart..not a single word on the guilty plea and AMI/Pecker turning states evidence. All the frothing is on the usual subjects. Watch for that AMI information to be especially enlightening.
5
WHO ME? No it’s that guy behind the tree.
8
"The president...[is] praising other former aides who have refused to cooperate with authorities."
If he were innocent, he would "cooperate fully with the investigation". But no, instead he offers the prospect of pardons in exchange for others' silence.
Sure, maybe Trump got bad advice about campaign finance law, but he's not getting bad advice now--he knows full well he's obstructing justice. Just a matter of time until Muller drops The Bomb.
7
In this same paper, I just read the story about Kaleb and his best friend KJ, who died at age 13. Kaleb raised money to buy his friend a headstone his family couldn’t afford. The story left me in tears. Contrast a young boy’s values and actions with the president, the selfishness of his behavior, never taking responsibility, blaming others, not doing what’s right. What happened? This can’t end soon enough.
15
Two thoughts:
1) Prosecutors call conduct like these tweets consciousness of guilt. Their creation suggests that our President is spending an inordinate amount of time focused on, responding to, denying, and offering counter arguments to what he must perceive as damaging evidence against him. Who but a guilty man would do this?
2) Who is running the country? This constant barrage of tweets suggest rather strongly that most of the President’s attention is focused on his own potential liability. How much time does that leave him to do Presidential stuff?
17
Trump believes Putin but not his own lawyer? Yet, both Putin and Cohen were indispensable for Trump's rise to the presidency. Mr. Putin, please, publish those Trump emails and let us watch Mr. Trump twist slowly in the wind for Christmas!
11
This is such an obvious evasion by Trump and as we've learned a concealed law. Trump can claim he never directed Cohen "to break a law" while knowing the activity was against the law. More over, can we possibly believe Trump wasn't aware of campaign financing laws when they prominently displayed on campaign solicitation mailings and web sites?
I for one would also point out the value of this open ended risk avoidance structured agreement between Cohen and Ms Daniels is not the mere $125,000 she received but is the value Cohen himself placed on the contract earlier this year, $22 million dollars. And by the terms of the agreement is today probably worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Trump and Cohen deliberately structured the agreement this way to avoid risk. They are due every penny and the criminal liability to go with it.
4
Trump says things that are not true.
Trump cannot have approved payoffs and then say Trump himself never directed Cohen to break the law. By approving payoffs, it was Trump's responsibility to know if Trump was breaking the law.
You cannot have it both ways.
6
The reason police investigators ask a suspect to repeat what happened over and over is that if it's the truth, it won't change.
End of story.
9
The money came from Trump. He knows what it is for. That is enough to lock-up Trump. The issue is can it be done while he is in the office or wait until he debit the office. There may be more piling up as Mueller wraps up his investigation. If Trump appears to be certain to loose re-election, his friends leave in droves that includes Russians and Saudis. They will try to swindle Trump as much as they can before it is all over. Next two years will be interesting as the events unfold.
3
This is analogous to the dog ate my homework defense, although it is not as believable.
11
All that vetting of the best people and this is what keeps on happening? Oh, we just did not know what they were the best at. Nobody believed the boy who cried wolf too often in the end - let alone the little boy who lied and lied and lied.
4
Trump is testing out his second legal defense. The first defense was his "personal transaction" line. This time he's trying to claim legal ignorance. That's a laugh.
If anyone was interested in the legality of Cohen's actions before his testimony, Don McGahn could have easily provided expert counsel on the subject. Cohen chose to conceal his actions anyway.
No Trump. The argument doesn't hold water. The payments were directed regardless of their legality. Trump actively disregarded appropriate due diligence and moved to cover the stories anyway. If he didn't, Cohen sought McGahn's advice and ignored it under pressure from Trump. I'm guessing the FBI already has the answer.
10
Especially during times in which he uses ignorance as an excuse for criminality, it helps to remember that he's a stable genius.
7
The only thing Trump is interested in is getting away with something. Anything.
3
Nixon only tried to cover up previous criminal acts by his campaign, and he had to resign. Trump actually directed criminal acts by his campaign, and the Senate will not even discuss impeachment.
19
As Mueller's steps grow close and loud Trump becomes more unhinged and weird (if that's possible) continuing with his usual predictable refrains of attacking, blaming and arrogantly denying any knowledge or involvement in what has become very clear and unambiguous factual accusations and likely indictments for violating campaign finance laws, fraud and obstruction of justice (hopefully). Very reminiscent of Nixon who was definitely off his rocker near the end. Little wonder that Rudy the Rat and his cadre of White House lawyers kept him away from actually testifying or giving a disposition - he would have been fodder in the hands of special investigator Mueller and his colleagues. Tweet on POTUS, thy time for reckoning is neigh.
9
@Horseshoe Crab Mea culpa POTUS - disposition above(perhaps resignation) should have read deposition ( inarticulate word salad).
Once again we see an example of Tweeting Bird's apparently uncontrollable urge to assert that everything is about himself.
I mean, who among us wouldn't be willing to serve three years in a federal prison, cut off from home, family, and society, if it meant they got to "embarrass" Donnie?
Yeah, right.
5
The word “pusillanimous” immediately comes to mind whenever Trump resorts to these blame shifting and deflection tactics. A petty little soul.
3
As always.. for all the wrongs is the rest of the world responsible.
2
When was the last time an accused criminal, has escaped sanction, by claiming they were unaware their activity was criminal?
Which part of the US Constitution allows ignorance of the law, as a complete defence?
It looks like Trump should have accepted the summary of the Constitution offered to him, from the gold star parent he insulted.
10
Apparently, Trump thinks it is OK for a president to pay money to hush a sex affair as long as it is done properly. In the Military I served in for 22 years, Trump could never have received an officer’s commission nor a security clearance. He is malignant.
17
The dog ate my homework. The devil made me do it. I was just standing there - I did not do anything. The buck stops elsewhere.
5
Trump has no respect for any intelligence in his acolytes. If he did, he would not be blaming Cohen for his misdeeds. The majority of us know better. Trump is the guy who throws spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.
3
He throws spaghetti on the wall just to make someone else clean up his mess.
“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,” Mr. Trump said in a series of Twitter posts. “He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law.”
President Trump, for all his self-proclaimed billions and interest in hiring only "the very best people," hires an attorney who graduated from the worst law school in America, and employs him for years. He hired Mr. Cohen precisely because of his willingness to engage in illegal, unethical, and immoral activity, while never wavering in his loyalty. The President certainly didn't hire him for his incredible legal mind and deep understanding of jurisprudence.
Only the willfully ignorant (of which there are unfortunately too many) would believe that President Trump neither directed nor knew of Mr. Cohen's campaign finance violations. In President Trump's reality, it's always, always, ALWAYS someone else's fault.
14
With friends like the Stable Genius, who needs enemies?
3
What's legal and what is not legal have never been relevant for Trump. The only thing that has ever mattered is "who do I need to pay and how much to make this thing go away?" That's what his fixers, from Roy Cohn to Michael Cohen, were there for. Payoffs and hush money: that's the closest Donald Trump has ever been to being held accountable for anything. And if you've never been held accountable, why not lie, and keep lying, until your face is blue?
7
Ah yes, blame your lawyer, perfect.
Of course at the time the payments were made to the ladies neither Trump nor Cohen gave a single thought to the issue of whether they could be considered a campaign contribution. Cohen did not know enough and Trump didn't care. The exigencies of the moment were to shut the ladies up. If Cohen had said, "of course we can do this Donald, but you will have to report the payments as campaign expenditures", what do you think would Trump have said? Are you crazy? Trump liked Cohen because Cohen did what Trump told him to do, he did not want legal advice, he did not want reasons not to do things, he wanted to do what he wanted to do and have someone to blame if it went sideways. Now that the whole story is known and all the secrets are out, Trump blames his lawyer, as if to say "I would never have done that if I knew it was wrong.
That is pretty disingenuous stuff, Donald. even for you.
10
I'm just like Trump. I find it much easier to blame others for my own shortcomings.
1
Trump,
Covering up lies by telling more lies will only delay your inevitable, political demise. You no longer have any credibility, and the American people collectively laugh out loud at the idea of you continuing to pretend to be in any way, shape or form a competent and honest American President. You can’t Tweet your out of the mess you created, and scapegoating and playing the blame game further erodes low levels of confidence in you.
Sincerely,
All sensible Americans
11
Democrats are desperate. Their Russian collusion delusion and obstruction of justice nonsense is falling apart, so now they’re trying to stretch an alleged campaign finance violation into an “impeachable offense.” Silly - and sad. The public views as it is - a man being blackmailed by a porn star and Playmate, and corrupt Dems twisting into some sort of “crime” (sorry the former FEC Chairman has already said it isn’t). Democrats have lost all credibility with the endless stream of phony baseless accusations. This will backfire politically for them just like impeachment will.
Tick tock Mr. President. You’re headed for a fall.
2
@AVR is that why a Republican Senator switched to the Democratic party today? Did she do that out of desperation?
3
This is how our leader spends his time. Not solving the opioid crisis. Not solving homelessness. Basically, our leader is embroiled in covering his tracks. Boo.
8
Jaw dropping commentary from our pathetic, criminally-minded president. Cohen is the one who led HIM astray? Cohen is the one who deceived and lied, not him? Too rich for words that can be printed here. Who could possibly look at the facts of this case and believe the smokescreen nonsense Trump is spouting about it?
5
It makes perfect sense. You're busy running for president of the United States with no qualifications whatsoever and making a deal to build a tower in Russia so you can hang out with your hero, Vlad, in the penthouse. You don't have time to ask your lawyer if paying hush money to two paramours is legal or not. We expect too, too much of our presidential candidates, especially the billionaire wheeler-dealers with bigger fish to fry than being president.
5
It seems everyone around Trump is crooked but somehow we're supposed to believe he's as pure as the driven snow. He's just a waif buffeted by malign winds. The only problem is he's supposed to be a sophisticated businessman able to successfully navigate the cutthroat New York real estate market. It doesn't pass the smell test.
Trump, an inveterate liar, is cornered and of course pulls out his only ace. He lies and then lies some more. The Feds are very likely to have copious supporting documentation including meeting calendars, tax filings, emails, and Cohen's audio recordings. Cohen, Weisselberg, and Pecker will all testify if needed.
Regardless, the Mueller and related investigations will grind on. Anyone who thinks this is the pinnacle of Trump's legal difficulties is delusional. They're methodically working their way up the Trump family organizational chart. There's likely much more to come on the obstruction and collusion fronts. When push comes to shove, very few Trump associates are willing to take a bullet for him.
2
None of FOX, Brietbart, National Review, Redstate are covering the fact that AMI signed a non-prosecution agreement and admits that Pecker conspired with Cohen, Trump. AND another unnamed member of the Trump Campaign over the payment to McDougal, stating directly that this was made to aid Trump in the election.
The right-wing media is all leading with the argument that Trump's payment to Cliffords "was legal," or if it wasn't then it's all Cohen's fault. They are also pounding the idea that "no jury would believe Cohen."
The admissions by Pecker and AMI are devastating to Trump's defense. A jury is highly likely to believe Pecker, and of course there are the paper and money trails.
Pecker's testimony destroys any hope of playing the "Edwards' precedent:" Edwards got off because it could not be proven that Edwards was aware of, let alone authorized, the payoffs made on his behalf. And pecker's testimony adds credence to Cohen's about the Clifford's payoff too.
Trump wants to play this as all excused by the Clinton impeachment precedent, but there are enormous differences between Clinton lying about adultery under oath in a civil suit, and Trump engineering multiple felonies (FECA, tax fraud, money laundering) during a campaign, to hide adulteries.
Perjury about adultery in civil suits is common, and usually goes unpunished; the longest sentence on record for it is 6 months.
Trump would get at least twice what Cohen got -- Trump hasn't turned state's evidence.
7
That's what all crime bosses always claim.
2
Roy Cohn last advice to Trump.
Lie till death , blame ever body else.
4
Nice try, Pres! But as only you would put it, "SAD!"
It's hard to believe that you could live 72 years in this country and not know that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law.
I also wonder about your years of business success (or was that just Daddy's money?), followed by your choices of "only the best" people for positions in your administration. How many have been indicted now?
I know -- it's not your fault that people target you for abuse. You should just pack your bags and go back home!!
2
Wonder if there is a tape recording somewhere that could shed some light on this issue?
Of course Trump would then say "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying ears?"
Once a liar, always a liar - Donald Trump the first US President who will be impeached and forced from office, and after being indicted will spend the rest of his life in jail.
Praise the Lord!!
4
This is a tale of two courts, the court of public opinion and the court of law. What set off President Trump’s temper tantrum is that he had a very bad day yesterday in a court of law. But he is of the opinion that he can vindicate himself in the court of public opinion, and this of course is the driver for his remarks. It’s amazing how much dirt he is kicking into the air here, and how many different angles he feels he has to work to make the point that he’s a super guy and his reversals in court say nothing bad about him personally.
The President's use of the court of public opinion does help him short term, at least with his faithful crew of loyal supporters. But in the end it’s what happens in the court of law that matters. And besides his problems in the Michael Cohen case, yesterday also brought the bad news that the National Enquirer is willing to testify about their collusion with the now-president to help cover up his sexual misdeeds during this campaign. So he can continue to work the court of pubic opinion, but in the end it’s the court of law that will matter, and the President’s future there is looking increasingly bleak.
436
@Jerry Schulz. Trump isn't helping himself in the "court of public opinion," by changing his story every other week.
12
@David, or maybe, also in a court of law. He has been through several versions of what all happened with the Stormy Daniels payment, what his involvement was and when, starting from I know nothing about it, and then backpedaling. So one day he will say, "the answer is A," and a few weeks later he will say, "the answer is B," seemingly oblivious to what he said earlier. But what makes this more bizarre is that these lies are in tweets that he sends out or in verbal public comments that he gives to the national press.
7
@Jerry Schulz
I don't think they care what his story was, is, or going to be. I happen to know someone very close to me. He and his wife were very vocal that they had voted for Trump. As a matter of fact, his wife's entire large family had voted and still support Trump. As far as they are concerned the reason they voted for Trump was because he would shake things up and government would not be able to continue under the guidance of Democrats nor Republicans. They are happy with everything he does because all it does is exactly what they wanted it to do and that is cause anarchy. They use to be Staunch Republican, then moved to Libertine in 2008. Then joined the Tea Party during the 1st Obama Administration. These are people who are well educated and work at responsible jobs. They voted Trump in to change the system and they really don't care how he does or what he does while doing fulfilling the destruction of democracy. To think for a minute that their opinion is going to change is to hold fool's gold.
3
Ignorance of the law, no matter how ignorant the source, is no excuse, Mr.President.
337
@rubbernecking The legal term is willful blindness. "Michael, pay off these broads secretly with some of that campaign money but make sure you do it "legally" (air quotes and winks)"
"Got it boss. I shall edge-ucate dem broads wit' savoyer fair."
11
Ignorance in this case is the difference between a civil violation of the law and a felony.
4
@rubbernecking
Ignorance of your lawyer's behaviour is not against the law, is it?
How many have been gypped by their legal representative?
Why are lawyers as a profession so low on the ladder of perceived honesty and integrity?
I do not expect a CEO to be closely in touch with the detail of their legal advisors work and many have been brought down because the lawyer was dud.
Impeach the criminal in the white house now. He is a disgusting thing and should be kicked out of our government immediately.
7
Let's see how many lies Donald Trump has told JUST on this case alone...
1. Nov. 4, 2016: Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks tells Wall Street Journal (WSJ) it was "absolutely, unequivocally" false that Trump and Daniels had had an affair.
2. Jan. 12, 2018: White House, Michael Cohen denies affair telling the WJS... "You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011. No evidence of $130,000 payment!"
3. April 5, 2018 Trump claims on Air Force 1 that he had no knowledge of the payment to Daniels also denies knowing Cohen’s funding source.
4. May 2, 2018: Giuliani reveals to Fox News that Trump not only knew of the payment but he reimbursed Cohen...i.e. saying it did not come out of campaign finances.
Now, Trump, does not dispute that he had directed Cohen to make the payments... but notes that if laws were broken, Cohen should have known better.
Donald Trump took an oath to uphold the law, when he took office. He was most likely elected due to Russian interference and he broke all kinds of laws even before entering office. Now he is breaking more laws by trying to cover it up. He really is illegitimate.
24
Okay, GOP....what are ya’ll going to do about this?
3
@CC
Nothing, many have declared openly that they don't care about trump's crimes. They will support him even if he shoots someone on Pennsylvania Ave. from his office or the East Wing.
Maybe it will all change when Democrats get in in January.
1
Orrin Hatch said , he doesn't care...
How in the world is Donald Trump president?
33
@Gord Lehmann It's like we entered an alternative reality in 2016 ...
@Gord Lehmann
How was Rob Ford elected mayor of Toronto? Apparently some Canadians are capable of being suckered, too.
Now Donald Trump will have to accuse David Pecker and the National Enquirer of lying. The list of Donald Trump's liars grows and grows. Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, Wray, Obama, Clinton, federal judges, climate scientists, sexual assault accusers, the media, the intelligence agencies all lying.
But Putin and Mohammed bin Salman both good in Donald Trump's world. Good lord.
48
Yes, that's it. Cohen went to jail to embarrass you, Trump. It wasn't because he was guilty of helping you commit campaign finance fraud. Power of attorney means they are acting in your name. Not the other way around. But you know that, you are just hoping there are enough people out there who are stupid or gullible enough to believe another string of lies spewing forth from your dishonest maw.
10
Lock. Him. Up.
31
@Willy P
Send him to live down a coal mine. The government could even build a small golf driving range down there to satisfy all his dreams. But no twitter access please.
1
Normally, a lawyer is supposed to tell you how to do what you want done, legally. If he does it for you, it should be legal.
attributed to Elihu Root--"About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop."
another old saying attributed to Elihu Root: "The client never wants to be told he can't do what he wants to do; he wants to be told how to do it, and it is the lawyer's business to tell him how."
Cohen failed both of these standards, and Trump was not a lawyer, he used Cohen for that.
8
@Mark Thomason
Rex Tillerson wasnt a lawyer and he had to tell Trump that half of what he wanted to do was illegal. Trump is no innocent.
He was cheating on his wife big time and paying to cover it up for his own ambitions. If he is too dumb to know that would be trouble, then he is too stupid for the job.
And he knew The National Inquirer was ditching dirty stories to protect him.
8
Nice try, what with Elihu Root and all, but nobody honest could possibly have thought that it’d be okay to play around on your wife, cover it up eighteen different ways, lie about it like crazy, and launder money through shell companies and cut-outs to try and make sure you didn’t get caught.
And nobody with the smarts of a concussed baby duck could have thought that there’s be no campaign finance problem with this, given that he was running for President and all.
So which is it: a crook, or dumb as a CBD?
5
How do you know that Cohen failed? Do you have access to e-mails, transcripts, recordings? Were you involved in the discussions?
3
When he got elected I said he would take credit for everything that went right and blame someone for anything that went wrong. Michael Cohen found that out to his regret, I'm hoping the American people realize Trump is the biggest con man huckster this country has ever seen and deny him a second term in office.
100
Due to Mueller's (and SDNY's) meticulous, methodical work and Trump's ongoing inability to tell the truth, we are now rushing headlong toward a very black-and-white endgame. The prosecutors clearly have direct evidence of Trump's hand in election law violations, at the very least, and multiple cooperating witnesses to make their case. Trump is going to be left with some combination of "Did not!," "Witch hunt!," and "Who cares?" At the end of the road, we the people are left to decide how much illegal activity we care to tolerate in our presidents.
590
@Stephen Miller
I'm not sure it's going to unfold that way. When Mueller's grand jury hands down indictments against one of more of his family members - Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, or Jared - Trump will look to cut a deal with prosecutors and ease himself out of office, to protect the kids and himself.
33
Or he may throw the whole lot of them under the bus.
41
@Stephen Miller
Delusional. SDNY prosecutors can say whatever they want in a sentencing memo - this doesn’t make it true. You do realize there was no trial. The retired FEC Chairman Bradley Smith has already clearly stated hush money payments are not campaign finance violations. Moreover, Trump has a long history of silencing affairs - good luck (1) trying to prove he “willfully and knowingly” committed a campaign finance violation when he told Cohen to handle things (as the statute requires) or (2) that it wasn’t intended to preserve his brand/reputation/family as it had been done in the past:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-a-playboy-model-and-a-system-for-concealing-infidelity-national-enquirer-karen-mcdougal
4
That white collar prison north of NYC that Cohen is likely to go to...could it also accomodate a former president with his Secret Service detail? How would that work, exactly? Does the detail have to wear those orange coveralls? Do they get better food than the former president? Will they have to work a job in the prison, like him? Can they bring their weapons into the prison grounds? How many adjacent cells will the secret service need?
I think the prison's management needs to start thinking through some of these questions.
42
@doug
A delicious comment! May it all come to pass before 11/20!
1
lf it comes to that, the government can set him up in an isolated building and confine him to a room with modest amenities. What Brazil did with Lulu exemplifies a good way to treat a former president convicted of criminal activities.
1
This is just the beginning of the end for the Trump family.
We haven't heard a word yet about what Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg has shared with prosecutors. This is the guy who oversaw the Trump Organization's finances, was treasurer of the Trump Foundation, and managed Trump's private trust alongside Eric Trump and Donald Jr.
We ain't seen nothin' yet, folks.
116
@GB
Agreed. Trump's tweet was correct about one thing: Cohen refused to sign a cooperation agreement because there is a lot more to reveal about criminal dealings that would implicate Cohen and his family. And Trump.
According to this article
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/a-brief-history-of-michael-cohens-criminal-ties-628875/
Cohen was the original conduit for the Trump Organization's Russian money connection after Cohen's father-in-law Fima Shusterman got him a job with Trump in 2006 or 2007.
There's a very large piece of this puzzle yet to be revealed.
14
@GB
trump can't say that Weisselberg is a liar & only worked on a few things for a short time because the man has been with trump organization for 40 years. Can't wait to finally hear what he exposes.
11
The Jack London story, "The Law of Life" seems to be particularly appropriate at this moment.
An old blind man abandoned by his tribe because he is no longer useful with the wolves circling.
13
Never in the history of unfairness has anybody ever been treated so unfairly at Donald Trump.
14
@Robert Never have we had a crook like him as president.
4
I know. Jesus and the Holocaust and the Scottsboro Boys ain’t in it.
“Won’t somebody help that poor man?”
4
@Robert
Sad. Reminds me of how Obama was treated. Remember birther witchhunt? Sad!! Sad sad sad!
3
Yes because people plead guilty to embarrass others all the time.
88
Months ago, trump said he didn't know anything about the payments. He lies to suit his current jeopardy; he is tripping over his lies in desperation, and Mueller is collecting them all.
Meanwhile, it seems nearly everyone in trump's orbit is pleading guilty to various crimes and pointing fingers in trump's direction.
trump must be scared spitless by now.
17
Just ask yourself: What if Obama had done a tenth of what Trump has done/is doing? The Right would go absolutely crazy. They would demand impeachment. And they would be right.
88
Let me get this right ....
So Trump is saying that had Cohen told him that it would constitute a violation of Campaign Finance Laws, he (Trump) would have instructed Cohen not to buy off these women ....
Well, I would believe that. Yes I would. Yes I would. Yes I would. That is just so Plausible ....
9
@Arthur
Rex Tillerson said just the other day that trump wants things done his way even if they break the law. Why should will believe his lies about this. He knew it was illegal but wanted it done.
3
Who knew ignorance of the law was so complicated?
16
Trump has only really two important skills:
1. Lie
2. Throw people under the bus
Despite this, 40% of our electorate is still in love with this man. Imagine.
128
I can imagine. I talked to some of them. It’s awhile ago. I stopped for fear of insanity by contagion. But when I did I could see the deranged love these folks feel for the ogre. It gives them a false sense of ‘gotcha, suckers of the elite’ - the rightwing version of the punk birdie.
2
The US Atty for the Southern District has more than enough evidence to indict Donald Trump right now for a variety of criminal offenses. He was appointed by Trump, and unlike Mueller, his investigation cannot be "shut down". Let Trump and his attys run to Federal District Court with a Motion to Dismiss based on the not tested theory that a sitting president can't be indicted. Let's see how the courts rule all the way up to the Supreme Court. Trump's criminal history, his blatantly disgraceful actions, his entire horrific presidency is a daily blight on our nation. For once, indict him and get on with it.
22
I have reached the point where reading and hearing Trump's constant and absurd lies makes me physically ill. This country has had good presidents and bad presidents, honest presidents and deceptive presidents. But we have never had a president who lies compulsively about anything and everything and doesn't seem capable of truthfulness or shame.
302
@Richard Cohen
And he keeps getting away with it. That is what I just cannot stomach! Wake up Republicans in Congress, at least rats know to run from a sinking ship. Get off this rotten ship of state. Wake up!
10
@Richard Cohen
It's not about Trump anymore. It's about McConnell and the Repub party. THEY make me physically ill.
17
@Joanna I suspect the Maria Butina saga with Russian money being funneled through the
NRA will go a long way towards pointing out why the rats (read Republicans) are so blindly and desperately clinging to the titanic's deck chairs.
12
Trump's words are worthless. Every word he utters is up for inspection. Here again, he ridiculously attempts to sliver out from his own illegal actions.
If Trump is consistent about anything at all, it is that he never accepts responsibility for his misdeeds. His behavior borders on psychosis.
Even on the eve of the Mueller report which will be absolutely devastating, he cannot be honest with us or with himself.
17
Trump will probably start blaming his mother for giving birth to him.
32
@DR
and blaming his father for giving him the money.
5
It's just amazing how many actions taken on Trump's behalf were NOT done at his direction, request, or even with his knowledge. It's unbelievable!!
Literally.
29
@Stevem. ...like family separation at the border!
1
“A conviction for a campaign finance related crime requires prosecutors to show the candidate knew the rules and violated them will fully”
This is Donald Trump people. There is zero chance he knew anything about campaign finance rules, particularly ones as obscure as this one
1
if he didn't know, why are there recordings of him talking with his lawyer
about opening a shell company to hide the payments? he knew. he is aware of every single illegal thing he has ever done.
1
Just when I thought it wasn’t possible Ttump hits new low of sleeez.
This is clearly sending a big message holding lawyers to an understandable higher standard to know undeniably what was legal or not.
Wouldn’t it be nice to hold the commander in chief to at least a similar standard? This president seems to be using it to amass more wealth and to deflect accountability?
5
All the American electorate should have needed to know is that Trump paid $25 million to settle with people whom he defrauded at Trump University.
As Trump becomes increasingly desperate and howls increasingly loudly, Republican senators should become all the more ashamed of themselves as they continue to aid and abet a common swindler.
63
Feelings the GOP and her voters have no knowledge of: responsibility, fairness, kindness, charity, peacefulness, etc
1
Donnie blames his fixer. Melania blames journalists and comedians for profiting off her family’s story and incorrectly writing history. I don’t really care what nonsense SHS spouts.
How about the ‘history’ that about 80K highly confused people in three states elected a sexual predator, adulterer, profiteer, and, likely, a traitor to be president, probably because they couldn’t stomach the thought of a woman in the Oval Office?
Neither History nor future comedians will be kind to this family or this administration.
158
@Gregg Or his fawning voters.
5
@Gregg:
SHS ?
1
@PJD
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
1
Rationalization is like watering a plant with toxic fluid. Trump is either woefully ignorant or drunk on self-promotion.
It is plausible that both play a role--that Trump relegates with little oversight or interest in understanding his accountability.
Agreeing to hide pay offs through dummy companies is not an innocent act; claiming he has no responsibility because he was ignorant of campaign finance law is a child's excuse.
If he could not understand the rules, he should not have jumped in the game.
Running his company clearly muddled his POV- giving him a delusional sense of confidence that he could squirm out of everything- from fraud to bankruptcies.
POTUS is neither like Trump Co. nor the fantasy boss of The Apprentice. Trump seems wildly confused having to face real grown up consequences, federal & state law and public scrutiny.
What was he thinking ? was he?
8
@Sara: you’re too kind. Why try to hide something if you don’t know you shouldn’t be doing it? He directed all this. And...sooo many Russians in his orbit right before the election...he had no idea there, either. Strains the imagination.
1
Trump, the child emperor, once again shows his true colors. And they aren't red white and blue.
21
To be fair, the Russian flag is also red, white, and blue.
2
Donald Trump is incapable of telling the truth nor will he ever take responsibility for anything proven to be unethical, illegal or worse. The blame and culpability will always be placed at the feet of a former associate.
As for the truth the WP has a list, as of early November, of more than 6,400 lies Trump has told so anything said by Individual 1 here is probably untrue.
How, or why, any person would align themselves with Individual 1 is a mystery considering how he so easily distances himself from them. Somewhat mafioso, or maybe learned during his term as Roy Cohn's intern.
2
Trump blaming someone other than himself? Big surprise.
7
Cohen pleaded guilty to his crimes in order to embarrass Trump, according to Trump.
If we look up "solipsism" in the dictionary, we'll find its definition -- the theory that only the self exists -- along with a picture of the sneering, sniveling, self-absorbed Donald Trump. He is not only the face of solipsism, he is the embodiment of evil.
9
Trump is a successful criminal who's been doing business for so long he's outraged when caught. Rich people are like this.
Because they previously got away with it, they feel it's unfair to change the rules now.
21
The trap was set and Trump jumped right in. The Mueller team didn't just take Cohen's word that you knew you were breaking the law. They're not stupid. Cohen had to prove it to them in order for them to give him any kind of a deal. Emails, taped phone conversations, texts, are all possibilities. But the biggest problem with your story now is that you previously denied knowing anything about the payments. Worse yet, if you weren't afraid of the payments being illegal why were they made so clandestinely?
10
"I tell ya, I'm a stable genius, Wiiillllbbrrrr..."
9
@Johnny Woodfin Yes, Mr. Ed for President!
1
The parade of sleaze continues. Here are the four current NYT headlines:
"Tabloid Publisher’s Deal With Prosecutors Adds to Trump’s Danger"
"How Big Oil Secretly Pushed for Trump’s Car Emission Rollbacks"
"Maria Butina, Accused Russian Agent, Pleads Guilty"
"Trump Blames Cohen for Campaign Finance Violations"
Trump is a criminal, and the Republican Party is completely compromised - bought and paid for.
And 40% of the country still supports this horror show?
36
This person whom we call our president is so insecure. Or is he scared because down deep he knows his time is coming..
4
The NYT needs to start playing permanent reverse day with all their reporting on Trump.
If he says anything the standing assumption must be that it is either a lie or is based on ignorance or if neither of the above, pure self-interest.
They should START by not by saying Trump said...but Trump lied, spun or was nonsensical and only THEN report the words that were recorded.
2
It is official Trump cheated on Melania, FBI certified.
oh yeah that campaign finance laws like your marriage oath, you should know better , you married three times.
1
You have to be a fantastically blinkered liberal partisan to think that Trump knew this payoff was a violation of a relatively obscure campaign finance law.
1
Except, you know, WE HAVE TRUMP ON TAPE.
17
@Luciano - Ah yes, the old "I'm not crooked just stupid and/or ignorant" defense. Flynn tried that just the other day.
1
@Ben You nailed it! Kinda like back to the 70s...
The late Nicholas von Hoffman once described then-president Nixon as the "dead-mouse" on America's kitchen floor. If Nixon was the dead mouse, then Trump is the dead rat. Would someone please pick him up by his tail and toss him out the door?
11
If I had to choose just one word to describe Trump, the word I would pick would be “coward.” Pretty much everything he says and does is due to the complete absence of a spine.
10
I doubt that the day will ever come when the "anti-president" accepts responsibility for anything but if it ever happens it should be presented in all caps 36 pt font on every masthead in the nation's newspapers. He's prepared to take the "blame" for a looming government shutdown only because he's dumb enough to believe it's a good thing.
3
PSA: Headlines beginning with "Trump says" are NOT somehow objective reporting.
Objective reporting would look more like: "Trump lyingly says," or, "Trump, fundamentally corrupt president and amoral human, says...."
3
There is no way that Trump knew that paying off these women was a campaign finance violation
However, Bill Clinton knew full well that lying under oath was perjury
Which was worse?
1
Both
A sleazy president or a sleazy and unintelligent president
which was worse.
1
@Luciano oh please, Trump is, has been and will go down in history as the sheer disaster he is as POTUS, and the GOP is officially a dead zone ....goofball, ridiculous & irrelevant comparisons to anyone or anything do not count, and should not come into play ...
2
@Luciano - Trump lies at least six times EVERY SINGLE DAY. Do you really think Trump doesn't know it's wrong to do this?
2
Trump rule number one, always blame somebody else.
2
Time for another installment of the Blame Game, starring our serial liar. Time is running out Pinnochio...
1
How do you spell 'hypocrisy personalized? T-R-U-M-P . And liar's den? As spelled out. And potential complicity with this vulgar brute? If we tolerate his criminal impunity.
Yo Trump, the indictment of Florida government officials, as the result of an FBI sting in Tallahassee, DOES NOT name Andrew Gillum as the criminal you proclaimed he was during our election. You knew he wasn't involved in any crime, however, as President you claimed Mayor Gillum was basically a gangster.
"The least racist person you'll ever meet", that is one your quotes. Yet during your beer hall rallies, you portrayed the Mayor as guilty and the city of Tallahassee as corrupt, with more than a hint, wink and fear of the black man.
Mayor Gillum should be our Governor. Because as our President, and as a person, you are never truthful, you succeed in rigging another election. The man who you endorsed, who resigned from Congress because he was about to be investigated for benefiting from a relationship with developers, just hired those people as his transition team. Thanks for helping elect yet another criminal, insert Scott, as the Governor of my state.
3
Crooked lawyers and their crooked clients often go to jail together. Let's hope Trump will not be the exception.
7
Gee. Of course he failed Trump, especially if Trump goes to jail. My gosh Cohen is his "fixer".
2
To quote Billy Martin "One's a born liar, the other one is convicted". That's all I have to say about this one.
2
Yes, sacrifice 3 years of his life, destroy his career, jeopardize the financial security of his family; all to embarrass Trump. Fake news!!
8
Just lock him up, already.
3
You'd think that a long lifetime of LYING would make one a better LIAR.
Sadly, you'd be wrong. Thanks, GOP. Again.
8
So when did Cohen become Trump's campaign finance lawyer?
1
Is this Michael Cohen, who the President says is a weak liar, the same Michael Cohen that once drew a $5000,000 salary from the Trump Organization? I guess there must have been a time when Cohen was a strong truth teller or could it be he was a better liar? It can't be easy covering up Trump's tracks. He leaves behind very distinctive footprints he acquired during his unarmy days.
4
This just another day in which I wonder what the President is smocking.
5
And #45, as a grown man you're supposed to know right from wrong. The truth is, you're an abject failure at everything you've done in life. You didn't win the presidency, you stole it from your opponent with sex, lies and audiotape.
5
What a Smocking Mess Little Donnie and company find themselves in. Sad!
Looking forward to holding a "Trump Impeachment and Incarceration" celebration party.
4
Cheer up, Donnie !
The worst is yet to come.
Looks like you picked the wrong country to commit massive consumer and election fraud in.
488
@Socrates
Perhaps the Prez will finally learn a decent trade while in prison: I hear there's a big demand for those vanity license plates these days.
Mine's gonna say, "Trump U."
Perhaps he'll even make it!
17
@Socrates
Well, one can hope, anyway.
2
My eight-year-old grandson is a more convincing liar.
90
Finally we have a leader with the guts necessary to stand up and say "I never had anything to do with it but if I did then it was legal and even if it was illegal it shouldn't be illegal and anyway somebody should have stopped me from doing things that I had no business doing and it's not my fault I rode that escalator down into the hearts of so many Americans and also I had no business being President but nobody stopped me so it's everyone else's fault, free will is a lie. The buck stops anywhere but here. "
Great job, much success USA.
260
@Albert Ross
he he he ....he he he..
9
@Albert Ross, best comment of the day!
12
@Albert Ross. You forgot, "Look what you made me do!"
16
Trump's Motto: In Lies, Blame and Deflection We Trust
11
@Sara G.
I thought his motto was "deny, deny deny".
1
Sign on Trump's desk: The bucks stop here. But the buck never does. Weasel.
12
Let's get a hand count.
Anyone who didn't know that Trump would throw Cohen under the bus when push came to shove, please raise your hand.
51
Only don't tell me you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.
14
The President is a Crook.
It's time to run the headline.
63
Never one to be troubled by details (nor oftentimes the big picture) Trump one again misses some key points in his dismissive response.
First, there are other witnesses, including Pecker at AMI, Flynn, and perhaps others at Trump HQ. The state’s case does depend entirely upon Cohen.
Second, it’s the cover up that’s the problem too. If Trump didn’t know the law, why would he authorize shell companies, hidden payments, and the like?
Third, not knowing the law isn’t an excuse. If Trump signed documents, he cannot reasonably feign ignorance.
Fourth, Cohen has audio recordings—and not just the one released to the media. He recorded everything.
If Trump wants to protect his family, business, and if he doesn’t want to die in a federal prison, his attorneys should be quietly negotiating a lesser plea with Mueller and his transition from office.
36
Donald Trump is getting more and more desperate.
What he doesn't want to think about or admit to himself is that David Pecker and Allen Weisselberg are corroborating witnesses in this crime and surely have documentation to back up their testimonies.
There is also the recording that Michael Cohen made of he and Trump discussing the National Enquirer's "safe" full of damaging information Trump paid Pecker through the years to hide.
It's only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.
13
Sorry, Trump, we have heard the tape of you and Cohen discussing the payment. As someone pointed out, never did you raise the issue of what you were planning to do was legal when you are running for President. Add the new information that you met with Pecker in the summer of 2015 regarding how these stories that might come out would be handled. American Media essentially acted as an arm of the campaign. Including disparaging stories not only about Hillary Clinton, but about opponents in the Republican primary.
17
Trump really is as ignorant as he pretends to be.
3
Attention every sychophant, grafter, hanger-on, suck-up, subordinate and obsequious yes-man in Trump's circle:
This is your future! You will be accused of Trump's crimes while he cried innocent! You will be used and discarded. You will be gaslighted and blamed. You will take the fall for this sociopath in the White House and everyone will call you crazy. You will sit in prison -- whether literally or emotionally -- shuddering and wondering how you could be taken in by Trump (a vile, deeply disordered man) while he surrounds himself with a new circle of equally doe-eyed subordinates. You can't warn them because they will be entranced in throes of his cult.
Trump is the epicenter of a pathological, highly destructuve quake of his making. He destroys everything and everyone in his sphere and walks away saying "what quake? I don't see anything so it must be you who caused it."
He is chaos embodied. So when you lie, cheat, steal, commit treason or worse for this man, just realize your life is over.
Good luck with that.
169
If they don't know by now...
1
@Misplaced Modifier President Trump continues to MAGA every day despite the fake news trying to bring him down. His administration has done more in 2 years than any other administration in history to include Julius Caesar's and Alexander the Great's.
Signed,
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
3
@Misplaced Modifier This is why no one wants the vacant Chief of Staff job!
Did the Mob Boss in Chief just threaten Michael Cohen's family?
18
@AllAtOnce: An order of protection should issue from SDNY to entire Cohen family. An alternative sentence should issue as a result of changed circumstances: 24/7 police/US Marshal protection for entire Cohen family; Michael Cohen to pay all taxes; study Torah for next 6 years etc. in US/NY/Israel Orthodox community with/for the rabbinate. Family are Holocaust survivors. End it.
It's the Cohen's that are said to have the mob connections, so I don't think they need an order of protection. Trump is out of his league here.
1
I am so glad that rump (individual 1) feels that lying deserves special punishment. He has already admitted that he lied about not knowing "the girls". Lock him up!
9
Michael Cohen, from the Swamp to the Do-Right Hotel. Perhaps he'll locate his moral compass there, but I doubt it.
Michael Cohen is now a cliché. And he's been Trumped.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
2
Manafort didn't tell me
Flynn didn't tell me
Papadopoulos didn't tell me.
Don Jr didn't tell me
Pecker didn't tell me
Cohen didn't tell me
Your Honor, No one told me anything.
8
@tom
But he's a stable genius. How can someone claim they're so dazzingly brillant one moment, and so stupid the next?
5
Really. How stupid and gullible does he think we are. He reads and lies at the level of a third-grader.
Never having faced any consequences for his criminality, Trump brings his inexperience in dealing with laws to the American people. Since he rarely follows laws and has mostly skirted them, he doesn’t even know any tactics for being caught. Blatent and obvious lying are his go-to defence. Guess what Donny. Dogs really don’t eat homework. We all know that.
51
@Kathryn, he doesn't think, he knows that 4 in 10 of our family, friends, and neighbors are indeed stupid and gullible enough to fall for his shtick.
3
@Dan Findlay The 4 of 10 you mention make me think of my grandmother, who was super-Christian, read the Enquirer and believed it, said lots of racial slurs, was worried the commies would take over, etc. I loved her, but can't help but say she would be the typical Trump voter today. She would definitely have fallen for the shtick!
4
What will the Don's ever-evolving defense be after the "tapes" from Cohen's many confiscated devices reveal their recorded conversations about the payments? Stay tuned.
5
I suspect that, yet again, Trump is playing with words in order to deceive. I doubt that Trump, unsavoury as he may be, would have "directed Michael Cohen to break the law". And I've not seen anything that says that Cohen claimed he was directed to break the law by Trump. However I have little doubt that Trump directed Cohen to make the payment and in so doing Cohen broke the law - not the same thing as being directed to break the law.
1
I seem to recall Mr. Cohen claiming he had recorded conversations with Trump. It would be interesting if one of them directly contradicts this latest bombast.
4
Once again, a newspaper story that purports to be about someone quickly evolves into another story about the president -- the ultimate scene-grabber.
I wonder if the Truman Library sells copies of the sign that used to sit on President Truman's desk:
The Buck Stops Here.
The only kind of bucks that the current president accepts is those that can be deposited in banks or converted into valuable items of ostentation. The buck of responsibility is an unfamiliar visitor to the Oval Office these days. He craves all of the attention and none of the blame.
He's an embarrassment to the government (which is why no one wants to be chief of staff) and to all of us who call ourselves Americans.
6
When a client and his lawyer conspire together to break the criminal law, the client is not automatically absolved because "his lawyer says it's okay" or his lawyer drafts the enabling documents and facilitates payment. It is pretty clear that any sane jury would find that Trump had the knowledge and intent to evade the law to help with his own election. Too bad that "sane jury" is a different universe from "Republican-controlled Senate."
967
@Richard Katz the GOP is about to get their corrupt heads handed to them..thank you Maria Butina.Watch your back..US should be providing protection for you.
23
@Richard Katz and too bad "sane jury" is also a different universe from a still-significant number of polled voters. Trump's approval ratings are shockingly high for how utterly devoid of integrity and honor he is.
26
@Richard Katz He's not pleading to a court of law, but to the "court of public opinion." He believes (perhaps with reason) that he is protected criminally until defeat or impeachment, and the key to avoiding both is to do well enough in that court (public opinion).
Of course he will have to leave office no matter what by the age of 79, but even if still alive then, Trump has *always* been focused on the "now" not the distant future.
11
Okay, here we go: "I do not eat eggs. I do not have egg on my face. If I did have egg on my face, someone put it there. If someone put it there, I haven't got the native wit to remove it. It is a set-up. Furthermore, lying is not criminal. It is just saying what you need to say to get what you want. There is nothing wrong with it; besides, everybody does it."
There, now that is cleared up.
352
A liar’s liar. Plain and simple.
12
@JCW -- a lying liar's liar.
8
Tweets from Trump nowadays seem like they are coming from a low-life, common criminal talking about fellow criminals. He is a long way away from a Presidential material.
Sad.
306
Not to mention a long way from being an honest human being.
13
@Sam Clay
He was a long way away from presidential material a long long time ago. This seems to be taking forever, but I hope along with the rest of the sane universe that it ends soon with him in tatters, humiliated and shown to be what he really is.
18
@Sam Clay
They *are* coming from a "low-life common criminal- talking about fellow criminals."
11
If ace makes it through the next 2 years without impeachment, SDNY's prosecuting team will then be in the hunt. Looking forward to January 2021 when he's marched out of Trump Tower in handcuffs.
A "Hallelujah" day.
215
"I never directed Micheal Cohen to break the law" says trump.
No, you expected him to. As you've done for most of your adult life. You got away with it. You assumed he would too. Business as usual.
182
@Deb
1
@Deb Actually, it looks like there may be witnesses to testify that Trump told Cohen to break the law. May there be similar witnesses to the rush to get in bed with the Russians for the Clinton e-mails.
1
"Mr. Trump said that his former lawyer had pleaded guilty to the charges in order to embarrass him"
President Individual-1 truly has the emotional maturity of a two-year old. It's always all about him.
87
Good help is so difficult to find. Employees are not loyal, they lie and, sometimes, can't even be hired. This could make some employers simply resign.
22
@jkenb that is a true nugget of wisdom!
1
When you decide to work for a promoter you have decided to become the promotee. You have agreed to carry the weight, to cover up the dirty deeds and to someday take the fall. When you have elected a promoter to the most powerful office in the world you have spread the risk to everyone.
3
That Trump has no concern for either truth or morality---especially where his personal pleasure and profits are concerned ---is so obvious that to take issue with this is to argue that the world is flat and that climate change is not a serious problem. Trump now hides behind the corrupt character of the people he picked to run his affairs. He picked these crooks but shakes off any responsibility for what they do. And these are crimes that he personally participated in. Trump now argues that his lawyer is totally responsible for breaking the law and he, the MAGA man, is totally innocent. Come on! The guy who drives the getaway car and the guy who stands near the shooter also bear responsibility for the murder. Without Trump's presence these crimes would never have happened. Only his base takes Trump's outbursts seriously.
10
Donnie is talking himself into a corner - does he not remember that the FBI got EVERYTHING from Cohen when they raided his various locations, including RECORDINGS Cohen made. Surely there's physical evidence backing up Cohen's admission that what he did was directed by Trump because Cohen was clearly a dishonest person himself and the federal prosecutors would not believe him without some form of corroboration. "I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law" doesn't pass the smell test coming from someone who lies, obfuscates and misdirects on many times every day.
14
Would Mr Cohen have been sentenced to 3 years in prison for his illegal activities if he never had any dealings with Donald J. Trump? Very unlikely. The source of the stench oozing out of Washington is not Mr Cohen, who arguably learned from the master of illegal dealing, D.J.Trump. The stench is coming from the White House where Trump is slowly rotting from the venom eating at the person who is responsible for all the evil he continually attributes to others. Mr Trump tweeted that Cohen should get a"full and complete sentence". We are all waiting for the rest of the indictments from the Mueller investigation. It is Mr Trump who deserves a full and complete sentence for what he has done to destroy our American democracy and the damage he has done to the Presidency of the United States. Trump's sins as we know so far are probably not the high crimes and misdemeanors written into the impeachment clause of the Constitution. But he has created more damage during his two years as POTUS by his lack of competence, intemperance, and willful ignorance which proved him unfit for the office to which he was fraudulently elected.
13