As Democrats and the mainstream media revel in Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, evidence is mounting that the fix was in before his case ever went trial. Some liberals see a quick path to impeachment but several legal and Constitutional scholars see otherwise. Like everything Robert Mueller has touched, the final charges Cohen pleaded guilty to, were not based, as commentator Mark Levin says, on anything that could be called “sound Law.”
The Cohen case began with an attorney (Cohen) breaking the law by recording video and sound of his client (Donald Trump) without his knowledge and ended with the F.B.I. raiding Cohen’s law offices in April. From there, Cohen was charged with financial indiscretions and paying women to not speak about claims they had affairs with Trump.
There is no dispute that Cohen was behind making a $130,000 payment on Trump’s behalf to adult film star Stormy Daniels and discussed Trump also paying former Playboy model Karen McDougal who claims they had an affair in 2006.
Unrelated to the President was a charge for illegal activity in New York taxicab industry. The New York Times reports that investigators are also vacillating on whether or not to charge Cohen with bank fraud on over $20 million worth of loans related to his taxi business.
Cohen pleaded guilty to one central matter that was disputed by Levin and others: crimes that were named in the guilty plea as hush money directed by Trump to silence two women who claim to have had affairs with him.
Trump slammed Cohen during a West Virginia speech and tweeted that Cohen “plead[ed] guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!” He was probably speaking of Obama’s 2008 campaign when the Federal Election Commission fined his campaign $375,000 for missing notices for donations received during the final days of the campaign.
Cohen said in his plea deal before the trial that “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office he kept information that would have been harmful to the candidate and the campaign from becoming public.”
It is important to remember Michael Cohen was investigated in the first place because of a questionable fishing expedition by Comey and Mueller’s F.B.I. The now debunked “Steel dossier” led Cohen to make secret trips that never happened to meet with Russians who have never been identified. Because Mueller had his sights on proving guilt Cohen’s business dealings were thoroughly scrubbed.
Like Bill Clinton and Johnathan Edward back in the 90s presidents and presidential candidates covering up their alleged marital misdeeds and prosecutors inventing new crimes, so they could turn legal acts into illegal ones by inventing new crimes.
The trail of Democratic complicity ended up with Lanny Davis, a longtime mouthpiece for the Clintons, representing Cohen. Cohen recorded his client to entrap him, sold information about Trump for millions of dollar and then didn’t pay taxes on millions. For that he is being hailed as a hero by the likes of CNBC.
What’s obvious in the plea deal is that Cohen was shown leniency when it comes to tax evasion charges. Perhaps it was in exchange for a guilty plea to lesser trumped-up charges that sought to prove a Trump connection. The problem with this is that Cohen was allowed to plead guilty to acts that, while they are unseemly, are not crimes.
The prosecution labeled monies paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal as campaign expenditures. Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign violation charge for having “coordinated” the American Media Inc. payment to Karen McDougal but not actually making the payment. So, he pleaded guilty to making a corporate contribution that he in fact did not make.
In John Edwards 2012 case, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruled that payments from donors were not campaign contributions. The prosecution in Cohen’s case worked to suppress that fact at trial.
Should Donald Trump have vetted his personal and tax lawyers better? No doubt. But is he responsible for their crimes? Only in a world where Robert Mueller is allowed to press people through his sieve until something comes out.
Paying for nondisclosure agreements for perfectly legal activities is neither a campaign contribution nor a crime – forcing guilty pleas out of cash-strapped witnesses IS a crime of a different kind.
~ American Liberty Report
