FBI raids Trump lawyer's office

[NATI BENGALS]

(04-11-2018, 01:58 PM)GMDino Wrote: Trump is pro Russia.

Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018

So here we are.

Wow. 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a19747585/russia-jamming-us-drones-over-syria/

The longer this traitor with allegiances to our most dangerous adversary is in office the worse off we are. 

I have great concerns about that weirdo Pence. But god damn. As of now i trust him more with the longevity of my country as i know it than i do the piece of orange snake shit.

[jj22]

100's of hearings and investigations into HRC by Republicans over 20 years. If there was something there they would have got her.

Important to note these are Republicans that are indicting and investigating Trump and his associates. Not Dems.

The problem is much of the Clinton hate is based on conspiracy theories, and that isn't enough to indict or get people arrested.

Ignore rhetoric and follow the law. Republicans hate HRC. You can't tell me they would cover for her and not the Republican POTUS like people like to claim now.

We must take off the political blinders and use logic and common sense or Politicians will forever play people for fools.

[ballsofsteel]

(04-12-2018, 01:56 PM)jj22 Wrote: 100's of hearings and investigations into HRC by Republicans over 20 years. If there was something there they would have got her.

Important to note these are Republicans that are indicting and investigating Trump and his associates. Not Dems.

The problem is much of the Clinton hate is based on conspiracy theories, and that isn't enough to indict or get people arrested.

Ignore rhetoric and follow the law. Republicans hate HRC. You can't tell me they would cover for her and not the Republican POTUS like people like to claim now.

We must take off the political blinders and use logic and common sense or Politicians will forever play people for fools.

1. You hit the nail on the head with this observation.
   

[fredtoast]

(04-12-2018, 01:56 PM)jj22 Wrote: 100's of hearings and investigations into HRC by Republicans over 20 years. If there was something there they would have got her.

Important to note these are Republicans that are indicting and investigating Trump and his associates. Not Dems.

The problem is much of the Clinton hate is based on conspiracy theories, and that isn't enough to indict or get people arrested.

Ignore rhetoric and follow the law. Republicans hate HRC. You can't tell me they would cover for her and not the Republican POTUS like people like to claim now.

We must take off the political blinders and use logic and common sense or Politicians will forever play people for fools.

This.

[Belsnickel]

Anyone else read the response from the USAO-SDNY to Cohen's lawyer's filings?

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2018_0413_cohen_vs_USA.pdf

I thought this was intriguing:

Quote:Fourth, the USAO-SDNY has specific reason to doubt that the seized materials will include the volume and nature of attorney-client communications that Cohen claims. This is because the USAO-SDNY has already obtained search warrants – covert until this point – on multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen, and has conducted a privilege review of the materials obtained pursuant to those warrants. The results of that review, as reported by the USAO’s Filter Team, indicate that Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero emails were exchanged with President Trump.

[GMDino]

(04-13-2018, 04:37 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Anyone else read the response from the USAO-SDNY to Cohen's lawyer's filings?

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2018_0413_cohen_vs_USA.pdf

I thought this was intriguing:

What's up with that?  

Could it be they are just not using electronic correspondence?

That's weird.

Also, I wonder what they DID find...covertly. 

[Belsnickel]

Here is a good opinion piece from a couple of days ago on this, as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/opinion/trump-michael-cohen-fbi-raid.html

The author is the well-known Twitter denizen, @popehat. His actual name is Ken White and he is a former federal prosecutor and is currently a criminal defense attorney.

Quote:After a year of almost weekly revelations about Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, even indictments and guilty pleas of campaign officials have grown familiar. It’s not that the special counsel, Mr. Mueller, is crying wolf; it’s that we’ve gotten used to real wolves. Only truly startling developments engage a lot of us.

The F.B.I. search of the office, home and hotel room of Mr. Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen is such a development. It’s historic, even in the lofty context of a special counsel investigation of the president.

This is what we know, in part from Mr. Cohen’s attorney: The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, acting on a referral from Mr. Mueller, sought and obtained search warrants for Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room, seeking evidence related at least in part to his payment of $130,000 in hush money to the adult actress Stephanie Clifford, who goes by her stage name, Stormy Daniels. There are reports that the warrant sought evidence of bank fraud and campaign finance violations, which is consistent with an investigation into allegations that the Daniels payment was illegally sourced or disguised. (For example, routing a payment through a shell company to hide the fact that the money came from the Trump campaign — if that is what happened — would probably violate federal money-laundering laws.)

What does this tell us? First, it reflects that numerous officials — not just Mr. Mueller — concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room contained evidence of a federal crime. A search warrant for a lawyer’s office implicates the attorney-client privilege and core constitutional rights, so the Department of Justice requires unusual levels of approval to seek one. Prosecutors must seek the approval of the United States attorney of the district — in this case the office of Geoffrey Berman, the interim United States attorney appointed by President Trump.

Prosecutors must also consult with the criminal division of the Justice Department in Washington. Finally, prosecutors must convince a United States magistrate judge that there’s probable cause to support the search. Faced with a warrant application destined for immediate worldwide publicity, the judge surely took unusual pains to examine it. This search was not the result of Mr. Mueller or his staff “going rogue.”

Second, the search demonstrates that federal prosecutors and supervisors in the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to preserve and turn over documents voluntarily. The same regulations that require prosecutors to seek high-level approval for a warrant to search a law office also instruct them to use the least intrusive means to obtain evidence from a lawyer, and to consider requesting voluntary cooperation or serving a subpoena. Mr. Cohen’s lawyer has loudly protested that he had been cooperating. This search warrant means that prosecutors — including the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the criminal division at the Justice Department — believed that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to respond fully to a subpoena or might destroy documents.

Third, the search suggests that prosecutors most likely believe that Mr. Cohen’s clients used his legal services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud. Attorney-client communications are privileged, which is why it’s so unusual and difficult for prosecutors to get approval to search a law office. Justice Department regulations require federal prosecutors to set up a system to have a separate group — a so-called dirty team — review the files and separate out attorney-client communications so that the investigators and prosecutors won’t see anything protected by the privilege.

But if a client is using a lawyer’s services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud, there is no privilege. The very aggressive search of Mr. Cohen’s office for attorney-client files suggests that the prosecutors believe they can convince a judge that communications between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen fall under the crime-fraud exception. If you think they can’t pull that off, think again — they’ve already done it once: Mr. Mueller persuaded a judge to apply the exception to compel testimony from Paul Manafort’s lawyer, arguing successfully that he engaged her services in order to commit fraud.

Finally, it’s significant that Mr. Mueller sent this matter to the federal attorney’s office in New York for it to pursue. Mr. Mueller is empowered to investigate both alleged coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and any matters “that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” Mr. Mueller’s referral of the Stormy Daniels matter to New York suggests he believes it is outside that scope of his investigation. Perhaps it arose from press coverage of Ms. Daniels’s incendiary claims and from the bumbling and inconsistent public responses of Mr. Cohen and President Trump. In other words, this could be an own goal by the president and Mr. Cohen.

A federal criminal defense lawyer’s favorite advice, delivered with varying degrees of diplomacy and accompanying obscenities, is “shut up.” Mr. Cohen would not be the first person to ignore such advice, nor the first person to talk himself into trouble. Many of the people Mr. Mueller has snared to date have fallen into that category, finding themselves charged for lying to the investigative team.

But consider this: The Stormy Daniels payout may be outside the scope of the Russia investigation, but it’s possible that Mr. Cohen’s records are full of materials that are squarely within that scope. And the law is clear: If investigators executing a lawful warrant seize evidence of additional crimes, they may use that evidence. Thus Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, with their catastrophically clumsy handling of the Daniels affair, may have handed Mr. Mueller devastating evidence.

It’s easy to conclude that after so many bombshells, this is just another overfrantic news cycle. It’s not. It’s highly dangerous, and not just for Mr. Cohen. It’s perilous for the president, whose personal lawyer now may face a choice between going down fighting alone or saving his own skin by giving the wolves what they want.

[Belsnickel]

(04-13-2018, 04:39 PM)GMDino Wrote: What's up with that?  

Could it be they are just not using electronic correspondence?

That's weird.

Also, I wonder what they DID find...covertly. 

There are a number of things it could mean. Who knows, maybe they DM on Twitter?

I follow a couple of folks online that will have some posts to explain this over the weekend, I'm curious about this part specifically, though.

[Belsnickel]

Only the best people: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/us/politics/lawyers-for-trumps-personal-attorney-set-for-friday-court-appearance.html?smid=tw-share

Quote:President Trump phoned his longtime confidant, Michael D. Cohen, to “check in” on Friday as lawyers for the two men went to court to block the Justice Department from reading seized documents related to Mr. Cohen’s decade of work for Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the call.

It is not clear what else they discussed in a call that came days after a series of F.B.I. raids. Depending on what was said, the call could be problematic for both men, as defense lawyers often advise their clients not to talk to each other during investigations. Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen still were trying to determine what exactly was seized.

Cohen's emails were (are) under surveillance, his calls may be, as well.

[GMDino]

(04-13-2018, 05:15 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Only the best people: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/us/politics/lawyers-for-trumps-personal-attorney-set-for-friday-court-appearance.html?smid=tw-share


Cohen's emails were (are) under surveillance, his calls may be, as well.

"Knowing" that Trump was always a conman and (probably) a crook I wonder if he was so confident that he really thought he could act the same was as POTUS.

I mean, I think he would believee that since he's a stable genius and all, but a "man" like Trump has never had THIS level of scrutiny.  The few times he HAS been scrutinized he ends up paying (Trump U, for example).

He may not be impeached.  I doubt he'll ever do jail time.  But if we can at least get a glimpse of the criminal he is I'd be happy.

[ballsofsteel]

Being Drumph is from NY, will he serve his prison time at Sing Sing?

[Belsnickel]

This kind of straddles the investigations, and I'm not sure if it is true, but it would be huge if it is. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article208870264.html#cardLink=tallRow1_card1

Quote:The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

[StLucieBengal]

(04-11-2018, 01:58 PM)GMDino Wrote: Trump is pro Russia.

Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2018

So here we are.

We should be working with Russia when we can, unlike Iran they are rational.

[Belsnickel]

Anyone else as nerdy as me and following the hearing, today?

[GMDino]

(04-16-2018, 03:29 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Anyone else as nerdy as me and following the hearing, today?

At work today.  Anything interesting?

[Belsnickel]

(04-16-2018, 03:31 PM)GMDino Wrote: At work today.  Anything interesting?

Apparently, Cohen says he has only three clients, and won't name one of them. Things just got started, really, with the prosecutor pointing out that this shouldn't be treated any differently than any other case and that this is about Cohen's business dealings, not his being an attorney. "Mr. Cohen might have a legal degree, but this investigation and the search is largely focused on his business dealings and personal financial dealings."

[GMDino]

(04-16-2018, 03:36 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Apparently, Cohen says he has only three clients, and won't name one of them. Things just got started, really, with the prosecutor pointing out that this shouldn't be treated any differently than any other case and that this is about Cohen's business dealings, not his being an attorney. "Mr. Cohen might have a legal degree, but this investigation and the search is largely focused on his business dealings and personal financial dealings."

If what I read earlier is accurate he'll have a hard time demanding attorney/client privilege if there is no client to demand the privilege.

[Belsnickel]

Cohen's third client is Sean Hannity.

[GMDino]

(04-16-2018, 03:58 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Cohen's third client is Sean Hannity.

He must make a fortune off just three clients.  

[GMDino]

(04-16-2018, 03:58 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Cohen's third client is Sean Hannity.

Also what does this say about Hannity's reporting on the raid?  Without acknowledging he too was a client?  Pretty shady....and maybe cracked th top three shady things he's ever done!