Also also - Cohen is currently the Deputy Finance Chair for the RNC. It’s possible that his financial shenanigans extend well beyond Trump & Daniels.
What I’m seeing here is some delicious irony:
What probably really happened is that Trump, through his attorney, paid off Stormy Daniels. Although shady, there probably wasn’t actually anything illegal here, aside from technically the adultery, which nobody actually cares about. If Trump had just left it at that, then the worst that could happen to him is that the public finds out that he likes to be spanked.
But Trump can’t stand the possibility of the public finding that out, so he does what he always does: He lies. He says that there was no affair, and that he never paid Daniels, and that she’s not allowed to say otherwise.
But if he never paid Daniels, then Cohen’s payment was an illegal campaign contribution. And Trump’s statement is thus strong evidence that his lawyer committed a crime. Strong enough evidence, in fact, that the FBI can get a search warrant for Cohen’s home and office.
And in the course of that search, the FBI will probably find admissible evidence of all sorts of other crimes that Cohen and Trump really did commit. Evidence that would never have come to light, if it weren’t for Trump’s reflexive lying. And meanwhile, we still find out that he likes being spanked, anyway.
I think I see a way to pay down the national debt.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the Comey book. It comes out next Wednesday. That’ll be good fun.
An unnamed employee of Manafort’s is cooperating with the Mueller investigation and led them to a storage unit full of documents which Manafort is frantically trying to suppress.
The lawyer types on Twitter, including Preet Bharara, are speculating that this was referred to SDNY in order to have a separate clean team sort through all of the evidence and remove privileged stuff and provide only non privileged stuff to Mueller.
I’ve seen this statement before, but I don’t quite follow the reasoning: how is money going from Cohen to Daniels equivalent to money going to the Trump campaign? And what’s illegal about it?
If he spent money with the intention of influencing the election, that’s a campaign contribution. Given the amount of money involved, failure to report it as such would be a major felony.
The NDA was done a few days before the election so she couldn’t drop a bombshell right before the vote. That benefits the campaign. Cohen making the payment instead of the campaign is considered a contribution under election law.
Well, as usual, I’ve entirely misread the situation. Mueller probably referred it out because that was the proper procedure.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/michael-cohen-fbi-raid-experts-react
Also, what **Fiveyearlurker ** says.
This is, apparently, a Big Fucking Deal.
Of course, the last we heard from Mueller, Trump himself is not a target of the investigation. So he’s in the clear.
HAHAHAHAAA!
It’s the same theory that was used in the John Edwards case.
I want to know my enemy so I check out their “real honest opinion” shows in 1-2 minute doses whenever something big happens. Laura Ingram had some reasonable guy on, talking about how everything looks above-board and legal and she was whining “but what if it’s not - what can the president doooooooooo!!!”.
I checked Hannity but he was talking to Sebastian Gorka and they seemed pretty worked up so I moved on. 
Ah, Manafort. He is screwed in the worst way. If he tries to play fuck-around he goes to prison. If he cooperates, he still goes to prison. If they just turn him loose, Putin’s goons kill him because he knows too much and can’t be trusted. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
Probably ecstatic that his boss will be happy to okay bombing the shit out of some brown people.
I rise to quibble. I think John of House Bolton would much prefer to see our prospective enemies totally cave in the face of growls and veiled threats. Because that would prove that it works.
Which will be fine for him and not too bad for everyone else, he can beam with vindication every time it does work! Until the day comes when it doesn’t.
While it may have helped ice the cake, I don’t think the federal prosecutors move THAT fast. My guess is that they’ve been looking into this since the Stormy Daniels stuff came out.
This is kind of funny. Apparently the Manafort Gates employee was really low level and had absolutely no authority to allow access into the unit. But this low level employee was the person whose name was on the frigging lease of the storage unit — probably an attempt to conceal the existence of the unit and its contents. Boy, these are really grasping at straws
The Edwards case was sort of interesting. It’s been a long to me since I read the book written on the Edwards scandal but the wealthy donor did not give him money as a campaign contribution. In fact, after seeing Edwards get a lot of flack for getting expensive haircuts, she gave him a bunch of money that was specifically a personal gift and explicitly not a campaign contribution. Of course, the question of whether the donor could legallly make this distinction was still open and investigated.
Sometimes in reading these threads, I get the impression that some people think the feds went after Manafort in an attempt to put pressure on him and his cohort with regards to Trump. I don’t agree, because the international corruption Manafort was engaged in is worse, by several orders of magnitude, than anything the Trump campaign is accused of. I think there are probably factions within law enforcement that viewed the Trump investigation as a way to get to Manafort, rather than the reverse.
But I’m sure this whole investigation is somewhat overwhelming even for experienced investigators. Because most investigations can be likened to looking for a needle in a haystack. This one is like looking for hay in a haystack.
Life imitates farce as Tucker Carlson devotes a full segment to sex-crazed killer pandas in order to avoid covering the Cohen raid.
I thought trump’s name wasn’t actually in the nda, but rather a pseudonym. In that case, wouldn’t she just have to avoid talking about the fictitious guy?
Kelly Anne Conway’s husband continues to troll Trump.
Trump tweeted about the death of attorney client privilege. Conway posted the laws pertaining to when such privilege can be breached.
“David Dennison” didn’t sign the NDA either.