Nothing says “2019” quite like a sitting US president having dinner in Vietnam with the leader of North Korea while that same sitting president’s former fixer tells Congress that the leader of the free world engaged in porn star-related criminal activity while in office.
That surreal state of affairs (and “affairs” is a double entendre there) will become reality on Wednesday, because according to one person with knowledge of the situation, Michael Cohen will tell the House Oversight Committee that Trump engaged in criminal conduct while he was president tied to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
And that’s not all he’ll say. “Cohen also will make public some of Trump’s private financial statements and allege that Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes”, the Wall Street Journal reports. Specifically, Cohen will accuse Trump of using accounting gimmicks for personal gain.
Cohen starts three days worth of congressional testimony on Tuesday. He’ll deliver closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hear it straight from the horse’s mouth when it comes to what Trump’s former confidant knows about the president’s contacts with Russia. Cohen will also discuss the hush money payments with Senators.
According to NBC, Cohen will “describe behind the scenes eyewitness and personal observation anecdotes which include lies, racism, and cheating as a private businessman when Cohen worked for [Trump]”.
Meanwhile, Reuters says Cohen will “tell US lawmakers that Trump asked him several times about a proposed skyscraper project in Moscow long after he secured the Republican presidential nomination.” That would lend further credence to the notion that Trump was knee-deep in business discussions with Russia well into his campaign, a contention Rudy Giuliani has been at pains to refute and has, at times, accidentally validated.
At one point last month, during a disastrous interview with Chuck Todd, Giuliani explicitly said the conversations went on right up until election eve. Recall this exchange:
RUDY GIULIANI: “No. It’s our understanding that it, that they went on throughout 2016, not a lot of them, but there were conversations, can’t be sure of the exact date, but the president can remember having conversations with him about it. The president also remembers …”
CHUCK TODD: “Throughout 2016?”
RUDY GIULIANI: “Yeah. Probably up to, could be up to as far as October, November. Our answers cover until the election.
Clearly, that’s not what Trump’s lawyer should be saying right now, especially not at a time when Trump’s former lawyer is running around telling anyone who will listen that the president is a criminal.
Read more
Rudy Giuliani Changes Moscow Tower Story, Says He Only Snitched On Trump ‘Hypothetically’
Rudy Giuliani Inexplicably Admits Trump, Cohen Discussed Moscow Project Until Eve Of Election
Reuters sources described Cohen’s planned public comments about Stormy Daniels as providing “granular details” regarding the hush money payments. Let’s hope there are no more “granular details” about exactly what went on with Trump and Daniels in the bedroom. The sources also said Cohen will reveal information that “has never been produced before” about Trump’s finances.
On Friday, reports indicated that Cohen met with federal prosecutors in Manhattan again last month, this time to discuss “possible irregularities within the president’s family business and about a donor to the inaugural committee.”
Obviously, there are questions about Cohen’s credibility, but then again, he’s already going to jail (in May), and it’s not entirely clear at this point why he would lie. He cannot avoid prison time and it’s not exactly like he’s got a sterling “reputation” to protect.
In any case, this is going to be some spectacle and you can bet Trump will have a lot to say tweet about it – in between snapping selfies with Kim in Hanoi, of course.
Fake nudes. Er news.
Which part? The hush money payment to the pron star? The cheating on his taxes? The constant lying?
Depending on one’s point of view, Mr. Cohen snd his family will most likely (and should) end up in witness protection. Trump has been carefully drumming up, proselytizing, encouraging, soliciting, recruiting, ennobling, emboldening, enabling and supporting America’s worst of the worst to become his America’s modern day “Sturmabteilung”(a/k/a “Stormtroopers or Brownshirts” https://www.military-history.org/books/stormtroopers-a-new-history-of-hitlers-brownshirts.htm).
Tragically, we have seen the efforts of Trump’s bear fruit starting at Trump’s campaign rallies in 2016, and with the Charlottesville Nazi march where we witnessed a brown shirt murder of a protestor, to another Trump follower murder eleven sabbath worshippers in Temple Etz Chaim in Pennsylvania, followed by another brown shirter sending pipe bombs to various democrats around the country, and most recently a white supremacist lieutenant in the Coast Guard was caught plotting to kill the speaker of the house and a grand list of other democrats and journalists. They are hard at work for Trump carrying out his mission for them.
Michael Cohen may be liar and thug, but today he is risking his life and that of his family by testifying publicly and privately as he is and for that right thinking Americans owe him a debt of gratitude plus protection. For those who would argue that he’s doing all of this to reduce his sentence, I say, so what. Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, was a former underboss of the Gambino crime family, who helped Mueller take down another mob boss and Godfather, John Gotti, in exchange for witness protection and the granting of complete immunity from prosecution for 19 murders he confessed his involvement in. Cohen deserves no less and given the risk Trump poses to the world, Cohen deserves lots more if his testimony warrants it.
Propaganda(more of the same).
Right. “Propaganda” — kind of like how Sarah Huckabee Sanders literally tells you not to believe your eyes and ears. And when Larry Kudlow tells you the deficit is “coming down rapidly” even as it is actually ballooning wider. And kind of like when Trump says (and this is a direct quote): “Remember, what you’re seeing is not what’s really happening.”
Mr. Propaganda: Always remember, we don’t know what we don’t know. You actually sound like a close personal friend of Schiff. No political bias there either! Winning is everything, the truth be damned.
Marty, the thought (however far-fetched) that this former “lawyer” would need witness protection in order to keep him safe from possible revenge OF THE SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A. is sickening.
Just what the hell went wrong that this sounds like even a remote possibility in 2019?
It’s really hard to believe that this world is so fucked.
Brown Shirts come in every form. What do you think this piece of trash was doing gaslighting Cohen and his family the night before Cohen’s testimony???
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/26/gop-rep-tweets-at-michael-cohen-does-your-wife-know-about-your-girlfriends.html
Matt Gaetz, just another Trump Punk, a conspiracy theorist, who dangerously speeds around the roads of Florida and under the influence of alcohol according to police, who pals around with Holocaust denier Charles C. Johnson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_C._Johnson, and is an NRA A+ rated fanatic who believes that the open carry of weapons was a right “granted not by government but by God.”
Matt Gaetz, a Trump Brown Shirt by any other name.
Of course Cohen and his family will need witness protection.
Today was the master of misdirection at play. Anyone who thinks the T Rump leaving the plane at the exact moment M Cohen walked into Congress is coincidental….
Only thing for certain, he will definetly be the most mendacious President to ever sit in the Oval Office. somehow I believe he will twist that fact to make himself proud of that record.
The Whole meet Kim in Hanoi caper serves several purposes:
1) Miss-direction of the ‘lamestream’ media (and public);
2) Getting the ‘stable genius’ out of town when Cohen’s Congressional testimony causes the ‘fit to hit the shan;’
3) Make it appear ‘the Donald’ is doing something useful (for a change, he’s not on executive time, or golfing).