Stanley Cohen, attorney to terrorist suspects, pleads guilty to obstructing the IRS
Posted on 04/14/2014 9:03:04 AM PDT by george76
Attorney Stanley Cohen, who has defended Osama bin Laden's son-in-law and the leader of Hamas ..
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Stanley Cohen, a prominent lawyer who has represented political activists and terrorism suspects, among them Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, pleaded guilty this morning in Syracuse to obstructing the IRS.
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Last month, Cohen was the lawyer representing Osama bin Laden's son-in-law in a high-profile New York City criminal trial. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and of other terrorism charges.
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Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan wrote that Cohen failed to file tax returns from 2005 through 2010, and filed an inaccurate return in 2004.
Cohen solicited cash payments for his legal services as a way to avoid banking institutions automatically reporting to the IRS any large payments, Duncan wrote.
"On multiple occasions, the defendant received cash payments for his services in amounts exceeding $10,000," Duncan wrote.
A search warrant executed on Cohen's safe deposit box turned up $50,000 in cash.
"Much of that cash had a strong odor of marijuana," which was noticed by bank tellers, a state police drug dog, and police, Duncan wrote.
Cohen made regular bank deposits of cash in the thousands of dollars, but never more than $10,000, the prosecutor wrote. Deposits of that amount or more result in the bank automatically notifying the IRS.
(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...
Of course, none of these revelations are meant to construe The Messiah is connected in any shape, form or manner. Don’t believe what you see; believe what we tell you.
A Manhattan lawyer who has represented Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Hamas officials and other big-name defendants in terrorism cases was indicted December 2013 on federal charges that he failed to report more than $3 million in income.
The government alleged that Cohen was paid at least $500,000 in fees each of those years but hid the money by having clients pay in cash or telling them to wire payments directly to American Express to pay his card bills.
December 18th 2013
There is no one in, around, or even remotely connected to this administration that is not breaking the law counting on a sympathetic Attorney General to let the problem be shoved under a convenient rug.
Self-loathing Jews should go live in Saudi Arabia.
Stanley Cohen, attorney to terrorist suspects, pleads guilty to obstructing the IRS
But I bet he is in favor of tax increases on the “wealthy”.
Cohen was a flight risk and asked U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue to stipulate that Cohen surrender his passport.
argued vehemently against it, saying he needed his passport for speaking engagements in Yemen and Switzerland, and to work for clients around the world.
How Stanley Cohen Went From Orthodox to Defending bin Laden’s Son-In-Law
At the head of the defense team stands Cohen, who after years of defending Muslim terror suspects, feels just as much at home in Beirut and Gaza as he does in New York and who is as comfortable with leaders of Hamas as with the Jewish friends and neighbors he grew up with.
Cohen, 62, with a full graying beard and ruffled hair, is a veteran of courtroom battles for defendants too controversial for others to take on. He won his fame, and some say notoriety, when defending Hamas activist Mousa Abu Marzook and later becoming a close ally of the Palestinian resistance group classified in the United States as a terror organization.
from the Warrior Society of the Mohawk Nation, to the Weather Underground and Muslims on trial after 9/11. His partner in some of these cases was Lynne Stewart, who was later convicted of supporting terrorists by passing on messages from her client, the blind sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, to his followers.
A protégé of activist lawyer William Kunstler
Cohen said that his parents, who have passed away, supported his work on behalf of Palestinian defendants. Both were “disillusioned from what has become of Israel and walked away from Zionism completely, ” he said.
Cohen seems to have inherited those views. He has been to Israel numerous times, mostly as an entry port to the West Bank and Gaza, where he meets with friends and clients.
During the second intifada, Cohen led a failed legal and legislative drive to stop U.S. foreign aid to Israel, a country he accuses of generating “a view of Jews worldwide that is unhealthy, that is dangerous, that is counterproductive, that creates problems.”
His sympathy lay with Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that now controls the Gaza Strip.
Cohen’s path to Hamas came through the defense of Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader, who was arrested at an airport in New York and faced extradition to Israel on terrorism charges. He was eventually deported to Jordan and is based today in Cairo. Cohen still considers Abu Marzook a friend, although since the military takeover of Egypt, Cohen has been banned from entry.
In his closing argument yesterday, Cohen sought to keep it simple, urging jurors to look at the case in front of them and not at their wish to revenge the 9/11 attacks. “I’m a country lawyer,” Cohen said, “and as one federal prosecutor once said to me: ‘we know that, the question is which country?’”
Israel is a “terrorist state,” he says. Palestinians have no choice but to attack Israelis “by any means necessary,” he says. Yes, that includes suicide bombings.
Who is this bearded supporter of jihad and what’s he doing in a Lower East Side loft decorated with Syrian banknotes, a close-up photo of an AK-47 and his own mug shots? He is Stanley L. Cohen, Esq., defender of accused terrorists and possibly one of the most hated lawyers in this city.
He points proudly to a recent picture of him sitting side by side with Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader who cheers on the shrapnel-laden Palestinian bombers from his wheelchair in Gaza.
“I’ve been arrested on a good number of occasions – it comes with the turf – both before being a lawyer and since being a lawyer. But, as we say, inshallah” – Allah willing – “my record is perfect.”
Manhattan attorney Stanley Cohen, whose clients included Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and Lynne Stewart, who was convicted for passing messages from her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, was indicted Thursday for failing to report some $3 million in income, the NY Post reported.
The federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted Stanley L. Cohen on five counts of failure to file individual income tax returns for the 2006-2010 tax years and one count of wire fraud. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
According to NBC News, the government is accusing Cohen of receiving cash payments of “at least $500,000; from his clients, as well as having them make wire payments directly to American Express to pay his card bills. The indictment also said Cohen stored cash payments in a safety deposit box, rather than depositing them in a bank account. He also deposited legal fees in his personal accounts, thus defrauding the state and the feds of income tax.
In the early 1980s, when he was still a law student, Cohen teamed up with attorney Lynne Stewart to defend a number of far-left radicals against state prosecution in New York. In one of their more high-profile cases, the pair together represented Kathy Boudin—a Weather Underground and May 19 Communist Organization member who had participated in the deadly 1981 Brinks robbery, a heist whose purpose was to acquire the funds needed to finance a war against “Amerikka” and establish a “Republic of Black Afrika” in the United States.
For the sake of argument – and Cohen’s life is all about argument – he will concede certain points. “I’m a pig. I’m a self-hating Jew. I’m a communist.”
Cohen points proudly to a recent picture of him sitting side by side with Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader who cheers on the shrapnel-laden Palestinian bombers from his wheelchair in Gaza.
“Look at the noses and foreheads,” he says.
“Who says we’re not cousins?” He chuckles. “We’re cousins!”
As far as I’m concerned whoever obstructs the IRS is doing the country a favor.
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