So?
Talking about how you’re worried one of your people is going to “flip” is something you’d hear from a mob boss in a bad movie. Now imagine Edward G. Robinson saying it.
That’s how Fox maintains dudgeon among its faithful over Hillary’s e-mails.
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New York’s double jeopardy law currently prevents prosecuting someone under state law if they have been pardoned for federal crimes for the same act.
Yeah. It’s interesting that no Trump defender is making the argument “I’m happy to have my lawyer cooperate because nothing he says could remotely be considered damaging.” Nope. Going straight to invoking omertà.
Grampa? Who’s “Edward G. Robinson”?
“Some old guy who was on TV when I was a kid” is the most likely response. The end of EGR’s heyday was 60+ years ago, after all.
TRUMP: “I swear I didn’t eat the cookie. And besides, it didn’t taste very good anyway.”
The stereotypical mob-boss voice, even today, is his, whether you know it or not. Or you mistake it for Chief Wiggum’s.
“Where’s yer Messiah neeeoww, see?”
Cohen is taking the Fifth. Rachel Maddow played a clip of Trump saying that only mob bosses took the fifth. Snicker.
“It’s curtains for you, Rocky! Curtains!”
Ah, so Cohen is the capo. If Trump did anything illegal, which he didn’t, it was because of fear for his own and his family’s safety that he did it. Mueller’s investigation, which is a witch hunt anyway, should offer Trump immunity for testifying against Capo Cohen. Jews make the best mob bosses! [/Poe’s law]
Michael Cohen has been trying to keep the SDNY from reviewing the documents they took from his home and office, claiming that the majority of them are privileged because he was acting as Trump’s lawyer. The SDNY has been arguing that Cohen isn’t doing much, if any, real legal work, so the documents are not privileged. (My layperson’s paraphrase of the issue; lawyers please don’t jump my shit.) So, Trump went on Fox and Friends this morning and, in the middle of a bonkers interview, tried to distance himself from Cohen, claiming in part that Cohen only handled a “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of Trump’s overall legal work. Within hours, the SDNY had filed a request with the court to expedite the document review process. The request cited Trump’s statement on Fox and Friends as evidence that the documents they seized were unlikely to be privileged since Cohen only handled a “tiny little fraction” of Trump’s legal work. The request also cited similar statements by Sean Hannity.
So. The SDNY seized “millions” of documents that Cohen claimed were privileged. Trump and Hannity both rushed to claim that Cohen wasn’t really doing much legal work for them. They barely know the guy! SDNY says, “No privilege then, right?” Presumably Trump and Hannity are both now reloading and taking aim at their other foot.
In related news:
A majority of Americans think the President probably committed serious crimes and think that the President will try to obstruct justice.
Trump also admitted that the “tiny little fraction” that Cohen did on his behalf included representing him in the Stormy Daniels matter – which he had previously denied any involvement. So he managed to hit both feet with a single shot.
I can’t stop laughing. This is hilarious.* It seems that Trump is incapable of talking about his legal affairs without admitting something damaging.
The average mob boss is a lot cleverer. I wonder if the end game for Trump will be to follow the strategy of Vinny “The Chin” Giganteand claim he was crazy all along. He sure seems to be providing a lot of evidence to back that up.
*Well, horrifying in its sheer incompetence as well.
Ha! I was thinking of that the other day too! He just needs to don a ratty bathrobe, and he’s there.
I’ve also been thinking of him as Caligula lately. Soon he will nominate a horse to run the VA.
I agree with this in general, but I don’t see why it’s true in this instance. Trump’s position is apparently that he didn’t know anything about the payoff. But it’s pretty obvious that Cohen was acting on his behalf and that Trump was the primary beneficiary of that payoff. So I don’t see any contradiction at all here.
There’s something else that happened yesterday that I thought was significant:
The Judges of the Federal District Court Acted to Appoint Geoffrey Berman as US Attorney for SDNY (New York Times).
The reason this matters is because Berman was one of Trump’s hand-picked, privately interviewed US attorney nominees then appointed by AG Jeff Sessions. But Berman recused himself from having any involvement with the Michael Cohen case. Before Trump had a chance to appoint a different interim US attorney prior to the 120-day expiration date – one that may have meddled more in the Cohen investigation – the judges acted to put the recused Berman in place unless/until Trump can get a new nominee confirmed by the Senate.
I am not particularly a Berman fan, but during this critical period, the SDNY case against Cohen is safer for the action of the judges. And I doubt Berman will serve much past 2020 in any event.