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Trump Attacks Michael Cohen as a ‘Rat’ and Ramps up FBI Criticism

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By Washington Examiner. President Trump raged on Twitter Sunday morning over his former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen and treatment by the FBI in a range of probes into his activities before and during his White House tenure.

Trump attacked his former fixer, calling him a “rat,” and said the FBI raiding the one-time Trump Organization attorney’s office “was absolutely unthinkable” and “unheard of,” before the bureau began its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The FBI raided Cohen’s office and hotel room in New York in April, seizing business records, emails, and documents related to Trump. Cohen on Wednesday was sentenced to three years in prison for bank and tax fraud crimes, including campaign finance violations related to Trump. In the months since the raid, Cohen has turned intensely critical of his former boss.

In his tweet, Trump also questioned why the FBI never broke into the Democratic National Committee offices or those of his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, to get servers believed by the U.S. intelligence community of having been hacked by Russia.

(Read more from “Trump Attacks Michael Cohen as a ‘Rat’ and Ramps up FBI Criticism” HERE)

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Rudy Giuliani Claims Michael Cohen Hush Payments, Possible Russia Collusion ‘Not a Crime’

By NBC News. Hush money during the campaign? “Collusion” with Russia? No crimes here, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani asserted in two contentious Sunday show interviews.

Giuliani was peppered with questions during interviews with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” and Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” about the hush payments to women that contributed to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s three year prison sentence, which he received on Wednesday, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“Even if” Cohen’s story “were true, it’s not a crime,” Giuliani told Wallace.

In both interviews, Giuliani was asked to respond to Cohen’s Friday interview with Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.”

“Pathetic. The man is pathetic,” Giuliani told Stephanopoulos in response to Cohen’s interview. “That was a lawyer you were interviewing. … He’s the guy you depend on to determine whether or not you should do it this way or that way.” (Read more from “Rudy Giuliani Claims Michael Cohen Hush Payments, Possible Russia Collusion ‘Not a Crime'” HERE)

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Trump Unconcerned About Impeachment: The People Would Revolt

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By GOP USA. President Trump warned against efforts to impeach him Tuesday, raising the specter of a popular uprising against a Congress that did that.

Mr. Trump issued his caution in an Oval Office interview with Reuters news agency, saying he wasn’t worried that Democrats, more of whom are publicly demanding he be removed from office, will be in control of the House next month.

“I’m not concerned, no,” he added. “I think that the people would revolt if that happened.” . . .

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” he told the British wire service. (Read more from “Trump Unconcerned About Impeachment: The People Would Revolt” HERE)

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Dems’ Post-Midterm Strategy to Bring Down Trump Emerges

By Fox News. California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff disclosed in an interview Sunday that Democrats are in talks with counsel for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to “bring him back” for further testimony, less than two weeks after Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2017 about an abandoned Trump Tower project in Moscow.

Schiff suggested Cohen will return voluntarily. If Schiff becomes the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats retake the House in January, as expected, he would have the power to subpoena Cohen to testify and provide documents — but Cohen would retain the option of pleading his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. . .

Schiff also suggested Cohen could provide information on potential campaign-finance violations by the president. Cohen separately pleaded guilty in August to several charges brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), including five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution. (Read more from “Dems’ Post-Midterm Strategy to Bring Down Trump Emerges” HERE)

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WATCH: Trump’s Next Chief of Staff Called Him ‘a Terrible Human Being’ Just Before He Was Elected President

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Mick Mulvaney, the Office of Management and Budget Director who President Donald Trump tweeted Friday would serve as acting chief of staff after John Kelly departs in January, has been a loyal Trump supporter — he just didn’t always like it so much.

During a debate with his then-congressional challenger, Democrat Fran Person, on Nov. 2 of 2016, less than a week before Trump was elected president, then- congressman Mulvaney was blunt with those gathered at York Middle School in York, South Carolina.

After decrying the Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a liberal who would take the country in the wrong direction, Mulvaney said he was supporting Trump, essentially by default.

“Yes, I am supporting Donald Trump, but I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being,” he said, according to a report in The State newspaper.

(Read more from “Trump’s Next Chief of Staff Called Him ‘a Terrible Human Being’ Just Before He Was Elected President” HERE)

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Will Trump Be Impeached? Here’s What Comes Next.

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This week, it has become clear that House Democrats will likely be forced to vote to impeach President Trump in 2019 on allegations of conspiracy to violate campaign finance law, obstruction of justice, and suborning of perjury. The case that Trump committed such violations isn’t implausible, at least after developments this week concerning American Media Inc. (AMI), parent company of The National Enquirer, and Michael Cohen. That doesn’t mean there’s enough evidence to prosecute — but it does mean that there may soon be. And it doesn’t mean that there’s enough there to impeach — but it’s likely that Democrats will do it anyway. . .

Campaign Finance Violation. The case here is that Trump worked with Michael Cohen, pushing Cohen to pay off former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels in the midst of an election cycle after hearing via AMI that Daniels was looking to tell her story. The alleged crime would be that the Daniels hush money was a campaign expenditure, given that it would not have existed “irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign.” How do we know that Trump wouldn’t have paid off Daniels outside the campaign? AMI has now admitted that it paid former Trump paramour Karen MacDougal $150,000 “in concert with a candidate’s presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that [MacDougal] did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election. AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.” Cohen has said that his payoffs were made at Trump’s direction, as well. . .

Surborning Perjury And Obstructing Justice. The crime of suborning perjury requires these elements, according to the Department of Justice: “that perjury was committed; that the defendant procured the perjury corruptly, knowing, believing or having reason to believe it to be false testimony; and that the defendant knew, believed or had reason to believe that the perjurer had knowledge of the falsity of his or her testimony.” Cohen is already setting Trump up for this, having pled guilty to perjury himself in his testimony before Congress. Now all he has to establish is that Trump instructed him to lie for him. Trump’s defense: Cohen is lying to procure a better deal from prosecutors. It’s not merely Cohen who puts Trump in the line of fire for suborning perjury: Michael Flynn, who has pled guilty to lying to the FBI, could theoretically do the same, although we’ve seen no indicators that Flynn will blame his lying to the FBI on Trump. . .

But is this stuff impeachable? . . .

After Bill Clinton’s impeachment and acquittal, the answer is pretty obviously no. (Read more from “Will Trump Be Impeached? Here’s What Comes Next.” HERE)

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Michael Cohen Receives His Official Sentence

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On Wednesday, President Trump’s case against an indictment on the basis of campaign finance violations became much more difficult. Michael Cohen, the president’s personal attorney for years including the 2016 campaign, was sentenced to three years in prison – and his sentencing included an open acknowledgment by Cohen that he had directed hush payments to former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels with an eye toward affecting the 2016 election.

Judge William H. Pauley III said Cohen had committed a bevy of crimes with an eye toward deception. Cohen, for his part, threw himself on the mercy of the court, stating, “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness and blind loyalty to [President Trump] that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.” He added, “time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.”

More damaging than Cohen’s open-court mea culpa, though, was the prosecution’s announcement that they had reached a non-prosecution agreement with American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer – the entity Cohen attempted to used to silence Karen McDougal. AMI would purchase the stories of Trump’s lovers and then bury them at Trump’s behest; Cohen would then attempt to reimburse AMI, so the allegations go.

(Read more from “Michael Cohen Receives His Official Sentence” HERE)

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California Rep Claims Trump Could ‘Face Jail Time’

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By The Washington Examiner. California Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday he believes President Trump could spend time in jail once he leaves the White House, after his former attorney Michael Cohen implicated him in campaign finance violations.

“My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” the California Democrat said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Schiff, who likely will lead the House Intelligence Committee next year, has been a persistent critic of Trump’s during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump referred to him on Twitter last month as ” little Adam Schitt.” (Read more from “California Rep Claims Trump Could ‘Face Jail Time'” HERE)

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Top House Dems Raise Prospect of Impeachment, Jail for Trump

By AP. Top House Democrats on Sunday raised the prospect of impeachment or almost-certain prison time for President Donald Trump if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the president over the Russia investigation and other scandals. . .

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, described the details in prosecutors’ filings Friday in the case of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as evidence that Trump was “at the center of a massive fraud.” . . .

In the filings, prosecutors in New York for the first time link Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office also laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business interests. (Read more from “Top House Dems Raise Prospect of Impeachment, Jail for Trump” HERE)

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Trump’s Possible New Chief of Staff

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President Trump is looking for a new chief of staff to replace John Kelly, and there’s a good chance he might pick hard-line conservative Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

Meadows would like the job; he said in a statement, according to Politico, “Serving as Chief of Staff would be an incredible honor. The President has a long list of qualified candidates and I know he’ll make the best selection for his administration and for the country.” Politico notes that Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), his closest friend in Congress, have championed Trump’s cause by initiating counter-investigations of the FBI and how the bureau has conducted the Russia investigation. Jordan said of Meadows, “I think he’d be great. Mark understands how Capitol Hill works. He’s a smart guy. This decision is between the president and Mark, but I think he’d do an outstanding job.”

One White House official told Politico, “He’d have a keen sense of what to do, what groups to engage with, what events to hold, going into a hyperpolitical time. He also knows oversight better than most. Going into a Democratic House takeover, he would know tools Republicans have at their disposal to push back on Democrats better than anyone.”

Meadows has his supporters in Congress, among them, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who stated, “Meadows understands the oversight process, the media and how to pick fights we can win,” adding he’s doing “all I can to encourage the president to pick him … I lobbied the president the best way I know how. I made the Meadows case on Fox News.” Gaetz said on Fox News, “It’s one of the reasons I think President Trump needs to pick Mark Meadows to be his chief of staff, because Mark fully understands the facts and the timeline and will make sure the White House is prepared to go toe-to-toe with a far more politically engaged James Comey,” (Read more from “Trump’s Possible New Chief of Staff” HERE)

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Dem Floats Impeachment, Says New Mueller Revelations Could Justify Removing Trump

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By The Daily Caller. New evidence suggesting that President Donald Trump directed his onetime fixer Michael Cohen to break campaign finance laws could constitute an impeachable offense, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York told CNN’s Jack Tapper Sunday.

Nadler is the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which drafts articles of impeachment.

“They would be impeachable offenses,” Nadler said. “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But, certainly, they would be impeachable offenses, because, even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.”

Nadler went on to say that the outgoing Republican majority in Congress effectively shielded the president from legal exposure, but that the new Democratic majority would not do so. From his new perch as Judiciary chair, Nadler is expected to investigate the administration on a range of topics.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller released a charging memo recommending a “substantial” prison sentence for Cohen on Friday. The document alleges that Cohen executed a $130,000 hush payment to Stephanie Clifford, who appears in adult films under the name “Stormy Daniels,” at Trump’s direction. (Read more from “Dem Floats Impeachment, Says New Mueller Revelations Could Justify Removing Trump” HERE)

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Comey: Trump Is Lucky a Sitting President Can’t Be Indicted for Being Linked to Cohen Case

By Fox News. Former FBI Director James Comey said Sunday in an interview that President Trump, if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, would be in violation of campaign finance laws, but he is lucky that the rule of the Justice Department remains that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“I don’t know,” Comey replied to an MSNBC host at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, when asked if Trump is now an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the case of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. “Not in the formal sense that he’s been named in an indictment. … But if he’s not there, he’s certainly close given the language in the filing that the crimes were committed at his direction.”

In filings Friday, prosecutors in New York linked Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office also laid out contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries, and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to his political and personal business interests. (Read more from “Comey: Trump Is Lucky a Sitting President Can’t Be Indicted for Being Linked to Cohen Case” HERE)

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Bombshell: Giuliani Says Mueller Investigation Thinks Trump Knew About Trump Tower Meeting

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On Friday, President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani dropped some bombshell news: he says that the Robert Mueller special counsel team doesn’t believe Trump when Trump claims that he was unaware of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian-connected lawyer.

Giuliani stated, “In the questioning of [former Trump campaign Paul] Manafort, they did tell them at the time that they believed he was lying about certain things related to us that he’s not lying about.” That meeting, details of which were revealed by Donald Trump Jr., surrounded an open attempt by a Russian go-between, Rob Goldstone, to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton – an attempt celebrated via email by Trump Jr. Trump has denied knowledge of the meeting. Other attendees of the meeting reportedly included Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Michael Cohen, who currently has a plea deal with Mueller, has also said that Trump had knowledge of the meeting.

On June 7, the day the meeting was confirmed between Trump Jr. and Goldstone, Trump gave a speech in which he stated, “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very imformative and very, very interesting.” The speech never took place, but Hope Hicks, a trusted campaign aide, said it had nothing to do with the Trump Tower meeting anyway. In the end, the meeting came to nothing, as the Russian lawyer wanted to speak only about lifting American sanctions pressure.

According to Giuliani, the Mueller team tried to cudgel Manafort into attributing knowledge of the meeting to Trump in exchange for continuing with his plea deal. Giuliani said, “They repeated that conduct over and over again which gives us a clear indication of what they want him to say in order to get him out of solitary confinement. I find that abominable.” (Read more from “Bombshell: Giuliani Says Mueller Investigation Thinks Trump Knew About Trump Tower Meeting” HERE)

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Charles Blow’s Latest Column Accidentally Reinforces That Russia Collusion Is a Hoax

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The New York Times published an opinion article Sunday by Charles M. Blow titled, “What Would Happen If,” which attempts to argue that the day of reckoning with accusations of Trump-Russia collusion has arrived for President Trump supporters. RealClearPolitics.com assigned it the misleading click-bait title, “It’s Becoming Clear Trump Colluded with Russia.”

I’ve been searching for a coherent and updated Russia collusion piece for some time, because it’s been so clear for so long that the Trump-Russia collusion story is a hoax. What am I missing? Maybe this New York Times article can explain to me how liberals continue to believe the story in spite of the mounting evidence to the contrary. I thirst for evidence contradicting my beliefs, because I find it so hard to believe that honest liberal journalists would knowingly continue to advance a story that appears to have been so thoroughly debunked as a hoax. So I took the bait and clicked.

Blow begins with one of those famous “We know” statements that pundits tend to use when they actually don’t know, but don’t want to argue threshold assumptions. “A crime has been committed by Russia and Trump cheered the crime and used the loot thereof to advance his candidacy,” Blow writes. “That is clear.” I looked for a hyperlink to support this bold statement, to no avail. I’m left to guess what he means. What crime? What loot? . . .

For a more detailed write-up, click here. Alternatively, the crime to which Blow so un-clearly refers might be the case against the named Russian GRU operatives, which again, are mere allegations and not proven. That case will likely never see the inside of a courtroom and probably ended with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s self-congratulatory press conference. To quote Rosenstein during the press conference: “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”

I assume “any American citizen” includes candidate Donald Trump. Indeed, the culpability for the Democratic National Committee server hack and the John Podesta email hack have not been established beyond the mere indictment. As far as the DNC server is concerned, intelligence experts have offered plausible alternate theories. Why is this still not clear two years after the hack? Because the DNC’s subcontractor Crowdstrike likely destroyed the original evidence before obtaining a third-party review of its attribution accusing the Russians. (Read more from “Charles Blow’s Latest Column Accidentally Reinforces That Russia Collusion Is a Hoax” HERE)

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