Posted on 08/23/2018 6:32:45 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: Months ago, weeks ago, this Michael Cohen guy was another reason why Trump should never have been elected. Now Michael Cohen’s a hero. Michael Cohen is one of the greatest assets this bunch of people has ever run into. Now they love Michael Cohen.
In truth, when they’re through with him, they won’t have anything to do with him, and, if he goes to jail, they’ll applaud that too. Right now they’ve got Michael Cohen thinking that they’re gonna let him in the club because he’s doing such great work in helping them get rid of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, everything that Michael Cohen allocuted to is not a crime where it involves Donald Trump. I’ve looked at this. I knew it yesterday and the day before when I said so. These payments to these women are not crimes. They are not campaign violations, campaign finance violations.
They do not constitute illegal acts in any way, shape, manner, or form. No matter who made the payment, no matter who reimbursed the payment, no matter who wrote the check, no matter who signed the check, no matter who delivered the money! None of it is illegal! Michael Cohen pled guilty to things that are not illegal! Because they’ve got him on so many other things that he did that are. This guy has got apparently tax fraud for years and years and years. I mean, he’s got more financial problems than you can conceive of, and they’re letting him out of most of that in order for saying what they wanted him to say about Trump and the checks to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
By the way, Professor Dershowitz got a little frustrated'’cause he’s got a bunch of these people that he taught as a law professor at Harvard, they’re on television now claiming Dershowitz doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says exactly what I just said. So Dershowitz has written a column: I have been teaching criminal law for 50 years. I’m wrong? No way. I’m right, and they’re wrong.
Professor Dershowitz is saying the same thing. There isn’t any crime. Cohen describing either what he did or what Trump asked him to do, there isn’t any crime. And there’s something else. Grab audio sound bite number 1.
I missed this yesterday, but I caught this last night so I told ’em I want this today. I did mention, Michael Cohen is mentioned in the dossier, the Trump dossier, the golden showers dossier. In the dossier it is said that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague in the Czech Republic to have meetings with Russians to plan the collusion that would lead to Trump and Putin stealing the election. It mentions that Cohen went there a bunch of times.
Cohen has said repeatedly he’s never been there. He’s never been to Prague. He’s shown his passport that doesn’t have Prague on it. It doesn’t have the Czech Republic on it. It doesn’t matter; the Drive-Bys and others have kept saying that he was there. And one of the reasons that Mueller and the gang pursued Cohen was because of the dossier, which is, again, a total pack of lies. Well, Lanny Davis stepped in it yesterday talking to F. Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Daily. Here is the sound bite. This is Lanny, I’ll guarantee you he wishes he could have this back.
TODD: Can you say definitively whether you know if Michael Cohen ever was in Prague in 2016?
DAVIS: Never, never in Prague. Did I make that — never, never —
TODD: Never in Prague.
DAVIS: — in Prague. Ever.
TODD: Without —
DAVIS: Ever. And we were — just to let your viewers know what we’re talking about, is that the dossier, so-called, mentions his name 14 times, one of which is a meeting with Russians in Prague.
TODD: Yep.
DAVIS: Fourteen times false.
Full Lanny Davis Interview: Michael Cohen Was 'Never, Ever' In Prague
RUSH: So in his zest to defend his scummy client, Lanny Davis admits and helps pile on the reality that the dossier is a bunch of crap, a load of it, in fact, that Cohen was never there. Now, this is important because Cohen being in Prague has been utilized by people on the Mueller side of things and on the DOJ, FBI side of things who desperately want that dossier to have elements of truth in it. The point is, Michael Cohen, no matter what he says, no matter what the prosecutors demand that he say, Michael Cohen has not a shred of evidence, news, credibility on the premise of this whole thing, and that is Russian collusion.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now let me tell you what Trump meant when he said that flipping should be outlawed. What he meant was — and he’s not the most articulate guy around, but if you take the time to understand Donald Trump, which these people haven’t, they continue to construct this caricature that is Trump, and it’s possessed by and shaped by sheer hatred. I mean, the poison of hatred is so obviously flowing through all of these people.
Here’s what Trump meant by flipping ought to be outlawed. He’s talking about the process of prosecutors squeezing, threatening, imprisoning, impoverishing somebody to lie! It’s what happened to Flynn! All of these people, they got Cohen, folks, they got Cohen to agree to commit to crimes he did not commit. These charges will never be tested in court.
Cohen goes before the judge and says that he did this crime and that crime because the prosecutors are squeezing him to ruin him on other areas of illegality where he has perhaps committed crimes, but the target is Trump. The crimes that he admitted to committing regarding Trump and the payment to the women are not criminal, they’re not criminal acts. Trump’s talking about the fact prosecutors should not be able to lie and threaten people with ruination to get them to lie.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So Michael Cohen pled guilty to things that are not crimes because prosecutors are desperate to claim that Trump committed a crime. But the farce of Cohen pleading guilty to a crime that isn’t a crime is the only reason he was given such a sweetheart deal. But, I mean, this is what I mean about the daily minutia. This is just one of probably 10 things today.
There was a Fox News poll today. And I haven’t seen all of it. One of the numbers, if I’ve got this right, there’s a bunch of polling data out there, if I’ve got this right, a new Fox News poll shows that all of a sudden 59% of the American people now approve of the Mueller investigation, up from 48% after these two convictions, after Cohen and after Manafort. And I think Trump’s approval number in the Fox News poll is down to 45%.
So of course the Drive-Bys are harping all over it. Whenever Fox has negative news for Trump, all of a sudden Fox News is very, very credible. Fox News is very worthwhile being singled out and pointed to.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to remind you again that Cohen did not violate campaign law. I want to go through this one more time for whatever this is worth. It makes no difference whatsoever if Trump paid the porn stars with his money, if he paid them with his corporate money.
It makes no difference if he directed Cohen to pay and then reimburse him, or if he directed Cohen to pay and not reimburse him! It doesn’t matter! Or if the lawyer paid on his own and was not reimbursed, none of it matters. None of it is criminal. Paying off these women is not a crime under federal election law, and it’s not a crime under any other law. But they’re looking at election law here. They’re trying to find that Trump violated campaign finance.
If you look at, by the way, at the list of Democrats who still have — like Joe Biden still owes the FEC 200 and some odd thousand dollars. Barack Hussein Obama was fined nearly $400,000 just for 2008 alone. But, of course, when the Democrats do it, nobody cares, the media doesn’t report on it. It’s honest mistakes. And besides, whatever it takes to get Democrats elected is perfectly fine. The Democrats don’t commit crimes because power and victory are their entitlements. They’re winning and their occupying power is the natural order of things.
So however you get there cannot possibly be wrong. And that is not much of an exaggeration. I’m talking about the attitudes of people on the left and inside the Washington establishment. That’s exactly how it’s looked at. They run it. Power is theirs. However they get it is perfectly fine. There is no violation they can commit because it’s theirs!
When they’re out of power, it’s because somebody has tricked them, somebody has stolen what is theirs. And thus, they are entitled to do whatever to get it back, which is what we’re watching now. That is exactly what we’re watching. The Democrats think they had that election in the bag. Now they think it was stolen from them. They’ve made up this business about the Russians. We’ve got a phony investigation started by a phony campaign opposition research document!
What we have here, what we really have here is one of the most blatant, visible, frontal attacks on the United States Constitution I have ever seen. That’s what we really have here.
But, anyway, on Cohen, the payment of private money is part of a nondisclosure agreement respecting a matter unrelated to the election. It’s not a crime. If you can show a legitimate reason for an expenditure outside of a campaign, then federal election law says it’s not a campaign violation.
Remember, these are the people who wrote the law. I was telling Snerdley today, the people that wrote these laws are the people that want to get away with breaking ’em! The people that wrote election law specifically wrote — here, let me give you exactly what it is. And let’s use Trump. Okay. Trump has Stormy Daniels. Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels. He makes Stormy sign an NDA, Stormy signs it, she’s paid off, 150 grand. After a while, Stormy says, “You know what? I’m mad I did that. I want to tell the world.”
So she goes, gets a sleazebag lawyer who helps her go to the media and let the story out. She’s now in violation of the NDA. But she’s got the entire Washington establishment behind her, the sleazebag lawyer is totally behind her, she’s become a star and a heroine because she has a story that can take Trump down, they hope, even though the Access Hollywood video didn’t.
So now they start broadcasting the details of the Stormy Daniels version of the story, and the details include the fact that Trump wrote her a check, and the check was for whatever amount of money that was agreed to, that she would shut up about this. It doesn’t matter if Cohen wrote the check and Trump reimbursed him. It doesn’t matter if Cohen wrote the check and wasn’t reimbursed. It doesn’t matter if Trump wrote the check. It doesn’t matter where the check came from because federal election law specifically says that if there is a reason above and beyond an election or campaign business to justify the expense, the expenditure, then it’s not a violation!
Well, this, Trump could clearly and easily say, “I paid her off to spare my family the embarrassment of knowing what I had done.” Now, that may not be one of the most gold star defenses, but it is a defense against breaking election law. If there is a legitimate reason for making an expenditure, it doesn’t matter what it is. If there’s a legitimate reason for doing it outside of a campaign, then the legitimate reason is what dominates in trying to determine whether or not the law has been broken.
Federal election law was written by people after the Nixon Watergate episode. And it was written by people to be able to nail primarily Republicans who violate election law. It was written overall in a way to be very, very wide and open-ended. Politicians wrote it and gave themselves all kinds of outs and exits. And this is one of them.
So the prosecutors convinced Cohen, they didn’t convince; they threatened Cohen to go before the judge and say that what he did here in paying off the porn stars was criminal! He just had to use the word “criminal” in talking to the judge. He just had to say, “I engaged in criminal acts, Judge. I violated the law.” They just wanted him on record admitting it. That allows the media to start covering it. That gets the prosecutors many steps moving forward. They’ve got the acknowledgment of a crime. But a crime wasn’t committed here.
The same as there was no Russian collusion with Trump. The same as there was no Russian meddling with Trump! None of what is being alleged here has happened! All of this that involves Trump and breaking the law and colluding with Russians and all the rest of this is made up! Even if the Russians meddled, which the Russians meddle in everything, and they always have, even at that there is no evidence that Trump had anything to do with it! There’s not a shred of evidence that the election was affected by anything the Russians did, and we have no less than Rod Rosenstein saying so.
So what is all this about? It’s about getting Donald Trump out of office. It’s about overturning the results of the 2016 election.
It seems to me any judge worth his salt would have challenged the guilty plea declaring there not to have been a crime committed. Then he should direct his attention to the defense team and refer them for disbarment.
He could also give them a sentence for contempt of court.
Very good point.
according to BBC, and their interviewees - Sidney Blumenthal/Lanny Davis/Jonathan Winer (no disclosures about their politics etc) - Trump has never been in more trouble re collusion!
Youtube: 5:18: 22 Aug: BBC Newsnight: Cohen pleads guilty, what’s next for President Trump? - BBC Newsnight
The BBC’s Paul Wood has been following the Trump-Russia allegations since the president took office.
Subscribe to our channel here: https://goo.gl/31Q53F
In this report, Paul explores what could be in store for President Trump now that his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to violating finance laws during the 2016 presidential election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBUI3i0uOeo
Best of Today, 23 Aug Will Donald Trump be impeached? · BBC
Joel Benenson, chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, on whether the Democrats should try to have Donald Trump impeached
22 Aug: BBC: Can Democrats keep avoiding impeachment talk?
by Anthony Zurcher
GIANT PIC “IMPEACH TRUMP”
“I expect that we will confront it,” Democratic Congressman David Price of North Carolina told the Raleigh News and Observer on Tuesday.
“At a minimum, we’re going to confront the need to investigate a great many things.”...
At a progressive event earlier this month, Mr Steyer accused the Democratic “establishment” of agreeing with him in private, while giving long-winded excuses in public...
Complicating matters is a certain amount of awakening on the right, among disaffected conservatives, to the thought that maybe impeachment is a realistic option...
While the number of Republican officeholders publicly saying such a thing can be counted on one hand, pundits and commentators are beginning to chime in...
“I’ve been sceptical about the wisdom and merit of impeachment. Cohen’s guilty plea changes that,” New York Times columnist Brett Stephens tweeted on Tuesday.
“The president is clearly guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. He should resign his office or be impeached and removed from office.”...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45277432
on BBC world service, the studio presenter asks Buckler why would the President be mentioning “impeachment” when there’s been no move by the Dems calling for impeachment. BBC is obsessed with “impeachment” just like the rest of the FakeNewsMSM, but of course the President just brought up the topic for no reason!
23 Aug: BBC: Trump: Impeach me and the market crashes
Russia-Trump Inquiry
VIDEO: A law professor (Jonathan Turley) outlines President Trump’s perilous legal situation
US President Donald Trump has responded to speculation that he might be impeached by warning that any such move would damage the economy...
What happens next?
Analysis by Chris Buckler, BBC News, Washington
A president who often seems defiant and even dismissive is for the moment on the defensive.
It is a sign of the pressure on Donald Trump that he is not only having to answer questions about the possibility of impeachment, but having to make economic arguments against it.
Control of Congress has now become a crucial issue because the House of Representatives would need to vote to impeach a sitting president.
For the moment he is protected by the dominance of the Republicans in Congress, but the party looks nervous and unsettled after a week that has truly rocked Washington...
How the impeachment process works...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45285585
Thanks Revel. I’m not an attorney, but this thing stinks.
Thank you for the two posts from the BBC.
Interesting...
My question is - Why is Trump’s choice of people so poor? Flynn, Cohen, Omarosa, Sessions, Manafort, and on and on... Sure the Deep State is after most of them, but they are not exactly sterling characters, are they?
Most lawyers were the kid in school who never played sports, hung around the most popular guys and BS’s them. They are mostly the suck up types who have no business IQ, personality, nor the guts to invest in a real business. A number are crooks themselves who use the law to use desperate older wealthy women.
“It seems to me any judge worth his salt would have challenged the guilty plea declaring there not to have been a crime committed. Then he should direct his attention to the defense team and refer them for disbarment.”
I was wondering the same thing. Seems very unlikely. It’s worrysome that Rush is blowing smoke up our butts.
Isn’t he saying a crime wasn’t committed?
That’s essentially all I was saying, and that the judge should take measures concerning a guilty plea.
Lanny Davis isn’t a very good lawyer.
He’s not a real lawyer. He’s a P.R. guy who has closed on a house or two in his career.
The plaid coat is the real indicator of a sleaze-ball.
Didn’t President Clinton pay off a couple of his accusers? That was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And no one called it illegal campaign contributions at the time.
According to Levin: A President can not be impeached for anything that happened before he was sworn in. Bursts another liberal bubble.
Well, the judge is part of the cabal to get rid of the President, so we know that would never happen.
And since he took a plea, he can’t appeal anything or claim that he had a crappy lawyer.
Annnnnd, what kind of lawyer was he that he doesn’t know any of this and did it anyway.
Maybe he was given an option he couldn’t refuse.
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