Posted on 08/24/2018 10:40:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
"If anyone is looking for a good lawyer," said President Donald Trump ruefully, "I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." Michael Cohen is no Roy Cohn.
Tuesday, Trump's ex-lawyer, staring at five years in prison, pled guilty to a campaign violation that may not even be a crime.
Cohen had fronted the cash, $130,000, to pay porn star Stormy Daniels for keeping quiet about a decade-old tryst with Trump. He had also brokered a deal whereby the National Enquirer bought the rights to a story about a Trump affair with a Playboy model, to kill it.
Cohen claims he and Trump thus conspired to violate federal law. But paying girlfriends to keep past indiscretions private is neither a crime nor a campaign violation. And Trump could legally contribute as much as he wished to his own campaign for president.
Would a Democratic House, assuming we get one, really impeach a president for paying hush money to old girlfriends?
Hence the high-fives among never-Trumpers are premature.
But if Cohen's guilty plea and Tuesday's conviction of campaign manager Paul Manafort do not imperil Trump today, what they portend is ominous. For Cohen handled Trump's dealings for more than a decade and has pledged full cooperation with prosecutors from both the Southern District of New York and the Robert Mueller investigation.
Nothing that comes of this collaboration will be helpful to Trump.
Also, Manafort, now a convicted felon facing life in prison, has the most compelling of motives to "flip" and reveal anything that could be useful to Mueller and harmful to Trump.
Then there is the Mueller probe itself.
Twenty-six months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had resigned. Twenty-six months after the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails, Mueller has yet to deliver hard evidence the Trump campaign colluded with Putin's Russia, though this was his mandate.
However, having, for a year now, been marching White House aides and campaign associates of Trump before a grand jury, Mueller has to be holding more cards than he is showing. And even if they do not directly implicate the president, more indictments may be coming down.
Mueller may not have the power to haul the president before a grand jury or indict him. After all, it is Parliament that deposes and beheads the king, not the sheriff of Nottingham. But Mueller will file a report with the Department of Justice that will be sent to the House. And as this Congress has only weeks left before the 2018 elections, it will be the new House that meets in January, which may well be Democratic, that will receive Mueller's report.
Still, as of now, it is hard to see how two-thirds of a new Senate would convict this president of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Thus we are in for a hellish year.
Trump is not going to resign. To do so would open him up to grand jury subpoenas, federal charges and civil suits for the rest of his life. To resign would be to give up his sword and shield, and all of his immunity. He would be crazy to leave himself naked to his enemies.
No, given his belief that he is under attack by people who hate him and believe he is an illegitimate president, and seek to bring him down, he will use all the powers of the presidency in his fight for survival. And as he has shown, these powers are considerable: the power to rally his emotional following, to challenge courts, to fire Justice officials and FBI executives, to pull security clearances, to pardon the convicted.
Democrats who have grown giddy about taking the House should consider what a campaign to bring down a president, who is supported by a huge swath of the nation and has fighting allies in the press, would be like. Why do it? Especially if they knew in advance the Senate would not convict.
That America has no desire for a political struggle to the death over impeachment is evident. Recognition of this reality is why the Democratic Party is assuring America that impeachment is not what they have in mind.
Today, it is Republicans leaders who are under pressure to break with Trump, denounce him, and call for new investigations into alleged collusion with the Russians. But if Democrats capture the House, then they will be the ones under intolerable pressure from their own media auxiliaries to pursue impeachment.
Taking the House would put newly elected Democrats under fire from the right for forming a lynch mob, and from the mainstream media for not doing their duty and moving immediately to impeach Trump.
Democrats have been laboring for two years to win back the House. But if they discover that the first duty demanded of them, by their own rabid followers, is to impeach President Trump, they may wonder why they were so eager to win it.
They want a impeachment fight but will get a civil war which they will lose badly.
According to Levin: The President can not be impeached for anything that happened before he sworn in.
Apparently, Trump told his lawyer Cohen to pay a woman.
There is an implicit assumption that it should be done in a legal manner.
It would have been possible to do so in a legal manner.
Manner 1: Cohen could have made a few call to lawyer friends who would have had to make more calls.
Manner 2: Cohen could walk down Fifth Avenue with a collections can and proof that he is Trump’s lawyer.
Manner 3: Cohen could have called Trump campaign headquarters and got them to write a check.
Manner 4: Cohen could have called Trump’s personal accountants and got them to write a check.
Mueller lacks sufficient proof to prove Trump committed a crime.
Yes. Their desire is seen in the daily output of impeachment porn from every American Soviet Media outlet.
Clinton Administration officials said a check for $850,000, the amount agreed to in November to settle the case, was being sent by overnight mail to Ms. Jones and her lawyers.
NY TIMES 1/13/1999
No, they don’t. They are just pandering to their ignorant base.
There will be no impeachment.
There will be no impeachment fight.
What you said!
Trump will never resign. In that regard, he’s not unlike Clinton. His poor kids need to lawyer up because Mueller is happy to destroy even Baron.
A somewhat related article:
“The following year he[Keith Davidson] represented Daniels in her effort to have a story about her having sex with Trump removed from a gossip website called TheDirty.com
....
Davidson said that when he made it clear that Daniels wanted the story removed, too, and they were on the same side, Cohen’s demeanor changed dramatically.”
“McDougal....In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, she said she initially considered the deal ‘a win-win’ because she didn’t want her story to go public and wanted to resurrect her career.”
The porn gals were golddiggers. They were simply after $$$$$$ and were happy with what they got when they got it.
I’m not sure why you’re so confident about it. I see lot more Trump supporters getting beaten up than fighting back.
And what is the effect on the Republucans as the party fails to stick up for Trump? They can’t win without Trump’s voters. Will some stay home out of disgust?
There will be five conservative Supreme Court justices.
The Chief Justice frowns on campaign finance law.
He knows Amendment I says “Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Impeaching Trump will be a Pyrrhic victory for the Dems. The Senate won't convict Trump and the GOP base will be enraged as we enter 2020.
“I’m not sure why you’re so confident about it. I see lot more Trump supporters getting beaten up than fighting back.”
You do what you can and others will do what they can.
But if nothing happens then the left will be emboldened and what happens in DC will be repeated endlessly around our country until the Bolsheviks run everything.
Mueller is evil
DJT will be impeached if the Rats take the House.And there's not a damn thing anyone,including SCOTUS,can do about it.
Of course he won't be removed from office so all is not lost.
I despise him.
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