Trump's fatal combination of stupidity, arrogance and crookedness has always made it seem inevitable that he'd screw up in such a way as to drive him from office, but this is the first time I've really seen a plausible scenario for that happening.
All this seems like it's happening in a parallel universe. Large-scale white-collar crime is barely even investigated, and never prosecuted other than by issuing fines to corporations. Unlimited corrupt political donations are legal thanks to money now being speech. Flat-out political bribery was also legalized by the Supreme Court in the Bob McDonnell decision. Nobody gets punished for any of this stuff. Unless they're the President?
Trump is the Martha Stewart of unfairly punished presidents.
Someone! Make for me the joke I tried to make, but better.
Nobody gets punished for any of this stuff. Unless they're the President?
AFNIE yet.
What cares, should trump of given a speech to the pharmaceutical company for the $400,000 instead.
"AFNIE" has only occurred twice before in TFA, but it should be in common parlance.
2: Yup. Manafort's business dealings have always been a pretty obvious problem. But you piss the wrong people off if you are involved in a situation that provides kompromat on the president of the United States to the Russians.
7: Yes. He would not be having this problem had he done that, nor should he.
The combination of deep cynicism and deep ignorance that is basically why we have Donald Trump as President in the first place, it frankly doesn't make much difference when it comes with a lefty slant. Different things are different and constitute crimes or problems in different ways, perhaps people should learn some shit about basic law and procedure before they speak! But of course they won't, so goodbye and good luck, thread.
That should be "lefty" in quotes.
There is plenty to criticize in the current prosecution of white-collar crimes, many of which are under-prosecuted (often for the basic problem of lack of witnesses and lack of evidence. But:
Large-scale white-collar crime is barely even investigated, and never prosecuted other than by issuing fines to corporations.
Absolutely wrong. Check your average federal docket or talk to the many people in all major cities who do this work.
Unlimited corrupt political donations are legal thanks to money now being speech.
False, please actually read Citizens United and related cases.
Flat-out political bribery was also legalized by the Supreme Court in the Bob McDonnell decision.
False, again please read the case or learn about it before opining.
Again, there is plenty to criticize about (a) white collar prosecution (b) Citizens United (c) the standard set out by the Supreme Court in McConnell v. FEC. Have that conversation, it's important! But I'm so sick of people just spewing ignorant cynical bullshit (but in an ostensibly "left" way) that they don't know about when things of significance are at stake.
The last two paragraphs obviously shouldn't be in italics.
And I typed to quickly and mentioned the wrong opinion. It's McDonnell v. United States, read it before you have views of its consequences please.
You're bad at flouncing. It raises serious real about whether practice actually makes perfect.
I'm bad at commenting, obviously, and maybe also at English.
Is it even possible to flounce on a limp?
I thought 11 was about the OP and totally panicked.
||
Lest it get lost in the noise, NMM to the Iran deal.
|>
The Germans, French, and British should have given money to Michael Cohen.
Thanks Robert I needed a laugh. I'm sure that Trump's lawyer not filing the right paperwork, is going to be the moment that cynicism is going to stop paying off.
The technicalities of those filings aren't trivial. It's hard to prove quid pro quo bribery (for example) unless somebody is really stupid (worse than Cohen). Proving that somebody lied on the paperwork, because the truth could have cost Trump the election or curtailed his influence after, is much easier.
Any type of law that sent Dinesh D'Souza to prison isn't to be criticized lightly in my book.
Everyone seems pretty scared of the SEC.
Anyway, if Cohen flips, Putin's going to assassinate him, right?
I think Tom Hagen will just talk him into suicide.
Obviously I'm not shedding any tears no matter how Cohen goes down, if he does. The fact Trump doesn't stick by any of his gross allies is one of the few attractive things about him.
It's pretty clear that Cohen is going down. I have no idea if he'll take Trump with him or not.
I mean probably not right away regardless.
I'm enjoying the logic of the Trump/Broidy/Bechard semi-conspiracy theory, about the Playboy model and the abortion. It makes more sense than the official story!
On topic if Trump does go: I don't remember the last time I read a whole George Will column, but "Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying" kept me reading.
This jumped out at me from Josh Marshall's latest podcast: Michael Cohen registered Essential Consultants LLC... in Delaware.... under his own name?!
The name is common enough to be camouflage.
I am curious as to what extent that the leadership of these publicly-traded companies explicitly discuss the extent to which "regularity" in markets and doing business in general is hugely important to them. I assume at some level most of them get it, but I suspect/fear that it is often overwhelmed by short-term results (business and personal) thinking and greed. At some level they will all be flexible* and work within whatever system they encounter but a *lot* of downside** for them in the long-term.
*For instance if the country complete's its turn towards functioning as a White Supremacist Autocratic Kleptocracy, the NYTimes certainly intends to continue being the paper of record for that regime.
**A number of big political law firms/lawyers seem to be appreciating the downside. However, they would be inviting short-term chaos by working with Trump and gang with the added real possibility of getting stiffed so their calculus is probably different.
I think Tom Hagen will just talk him into suicide.
I thought Cohen was the Trumps' Tom Hagen.
Anyway, if Cohen flips, Putin's going to assassinate him, right?
If it happens in broad daylight on 5th Avenue, I'm moving to a country that doesn't have foreshadowing.
I believe we are still in a close "race" to see where this (beyond just Trump, the whole 25+ year arc of the Republican party and its base) ends up. Governance and justice systems being actively subverted as they attempt to grapple with it. At least there's the media ...
Ok, so I guess we are on track to be inflating our GDP by 15-30% per this great study.
I study the manipulation of GDP statistics in weak and non-democracies. I show that the elasticity of official GDP figures to nighttime lights is systematically larger in more authoritarian regimes. This autocracy gradient in the night-lights elasticity of GDP cannot be explained by differences in a wide range of factors that may affect the mapping of night lights to GDP, such as economic structure, statistical capacity, rates of urbanization or electrification. The gradient is larger when there is a stronger incentive to exaggerate economic performance (years of low growth, before elections or after becoming ineligible for foreign aid) and is only present for GDP sub-components that rely on government information and have low third-party verification. The results indicate that yearly GDP growth rates are inflated by a factor of between 1.15 and 1.3 in the most authoritarian regimes. Correcting for manipulation substantially changes our understanding of comparative economic performance at the turn of the XXI century.
I thought Cohen was the Trumps' Tom Hagen.
Yes, but not Putin's.
36.last: Of course Trump has already killed a man on 5 Avenue, and bragged about it. (Sort of, at least about the construction.)
39: When your attempt to subtly dis dalriata by deloying the sup tag goes horribly wrong.
From April of last year. Wynn and Broidy are gone but as far as I know Cohen is still in the position. Hell of a party.
Today Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna [Romney] McDaniel and RNC Finance Chairman Steve Wynn announced additional members of the RNC's Finance leadership team:
"I am delighted to announce the addition of these longtime friends of the Party and supporters of this administration to our Finance leadership team," said Chairwoman McDaniel. "Elliott Broidy, Michael Cohen, and Louis DeJoy will serve as National Deputy Finance Chairmen,
40: +p
And there's always a typo.
You're right. $5^{\textrm{th}}$ Avenue. The one in Manhattan.
Anyway, that horrible and avoidable death wasn't quite on the nose enough for this administration's plotting.
37.1: Yes. Trump is a symptom. People like Nunes and Cocaine Mitch are doing the worst damage.
20: I was thinking about the timing of that. Because it seems like a good bone to throw to the violent warmonger part of the base during a troubling week and a way to distract all the serious people who are uncomfortable with the fact that the woman with the sweater kittens is more likely to bring down Trump than they are.
There seems to be some actual shooting between Israel and Iran. Just to distract us from Gina Haspel, I suppose.
\\ our serious (for us) flooding isn't making your news, is it? \>
45: Been in the works for a while. Specific timing was dictated by some deal-related timeline the details of which I am forgetting.
Also fracking John Bolton. Twitter thread on Bolton's role on being a supreme asshole on this stuff for decades.
The Iran deal thing is too depressing to even think about. I'd love to believe it doesn't somehow lead to some war somewhere. At a minimum, it's more evidence to the theory that the United States won't take you seriously until you have nukes.
47: Nope.
47; Not that I had seen. Maybe send some money to a Michael Cohen LLC to get airtime.
48 is correct. IIRC a timeline not created by the deal itself but by an act of Congress requiring the president to recertify Iranian compliance every 150 days (because Democratic presidents aren't allowed to have foreign policies). And apparently it took literal hours of browbeating from McMaster & C to get him to recertify the other times, so this probably just reflects Bolton.
Trump apparently is driven overwhelmingly by hatred of Obama. Apparently the surest way to get any policy past him is to say Obama did the opposite.
I mean, "never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by incompetence" was invented for this administration.
54: Him and half the Republican Party.
The Republicans would be there anyway. Trump is a single-issue voter.
I'm looking for a babysitter in Pittsburgh in mid-August and posting here for the first time in a million years honestly seemed like my best bet on getting a personal recommendation for one. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Trump apparently is driven overwhelmingly by hatred of Obama. Apparently the surest way to get any policy past him is to say Obama did the opposite.
When Trump was elected, I was hoping someone could sell him on implementing a working universal health insurance system as the ultimate fuck you to Obama who couldn't get it done.
Oh great. Israel and Iran are shooting at each other now. I wonder what destabilizing, buffoonish nincompoopery could have precipitated this?
Maybe if the Iranian state implodes in the wake of a ham-fisted American invasion regional security will improve. Third time's the charm, right?
63: the lesson of the Cold War is that it is important for superpowers to remember that not everything that happens in the world is about you; in this specific case there is more than enough regionally supplied destabilizing, buffoonish nincompoopery to account for this sort of thing without needing to import more. The Middle East is, if anything, a net exporter of destabilizing, buffoonish nincompoopery.
You knew how Trump feels about trade deficits.
58: No one comes to mind now, but ink think about it. Are you looking for full-time or everyday after school or less regular?
it is important for superpowers to remember that not everything that happens in the world is about you
Of course not, but the timing is highly suspicious, no? Iran has never launched missiles at Israel before.... The US welshes on the Iran deal, and then the day after, rockets start falling in the Golan Heights.
I think there have been some incidents involving the Golan Heights and Hezbollah. Incidentally, missiles launched at IDF positions in the Golan Heights are not being launched at Israel. Golan is occupied Syrian territory.
Also, I agree with ajay's larger point above, this almost certainly has nothing to do with Trump's stupid decision to withdraw from the JCPOA.
Iranians and their confederates have been getting closer to that border for years. The timing may be related, but this was coming anyway.
It's interesting that Syria contends that Israel fired first. It's depressing that I find this claim plausible.
Either way, and contra ajay, it's pretty easy to imagine a counterfactual US presidency that would significantly reduce the likelihood of this sort of thing.
It is of course most tragifarcical that the Jerusalem Way was finally cleared by neocons and freedom fighters.
71.2 Agreed but at the same time I don't think it contradicts ajay's point.
contra ajay, it's pretty easy to imagine a counterfactual US presidency that would significantly reduce the likelihood of this sort of thing.
Contra pf, this isn't contra me - I agree absolutely. But there's a difference between thinking that there is stuff the US could do (under a different president) that would reduce the risk of this sort of thing happening in general and thinking that this specific event was a direct response to a specific thing the US has done.
As Mossy says, this sort of thing has been coming for some time; and don't forget that Israel has been hitting Iranian positions in Syria, and killing Iranians, for weeks. And also this was a fairly minor strike. No Israeli casualties, no significant damage done, just one salvo of unguided rockets from a single truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher (something like a BM-21, I assume).
Would either Contra A.J. or Contra P.F. like some illegal guns? You guys used to have Spanish names, but I'll arm you just the same.
How come we're always taking the Sunni side in this thing when all the main terrorists have been Sunni. I guess they have better oil?
74: And it's wrong to blame hot weather in any given year on climate change. Still, I have zero problem with people who take the opportunity of a hot day to ponder the climate. To say, in response to such folks, that "not everything that happens in the weather is about climate change" is true, but trivial in context.*
*If I weren't already banned for the analogy, it would probably be reasonable to ban me for the hair-splitting nature of my contribution to this conversation.
just one salvo of unguided rockets from a single truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher
Right. This wasn't an attack intended to do serious damage. It was an attack to intended to convey message.
The message, I believe, was "fuck you." And, while there is indeed a lot of broader context surrounding it, the timing of the thing really doesn't leave a question in my mind that it was a response to the US - at Israel's behest - walking away from the agreement it had made.
72: Is the Jerusalem Way like the Ho Chi Minh Trail?
*googles* Oh, that looks much more interesting than the Pacific Coast Trail.
The message, I believe, was "fuck you."
If that's an option for communicating that message, it's probably best I don't have a rocket launcher.
79: Actually, this Jerusalem Way. (ISTR there were a half-dozen more by that name, but I'm not finding them.)
the timing of the thing really doesn't leave a question in my mind that it was a response to the US - at Israel's behest - walking away from the agreement it had made.
So, if the US had not walked away from the JCPOA, you reckon that Iran would never have launched any attacks against Israeli forces on the Golan?
That seems unlikely.
Why is that unlikely? They've always used a proxy before Trump broke the deal. I think it's a safe assumption that the deal constrained them.
It seems I was thinking of Operations Karbala, Dawn, and Zafar.
Would never have done so this week? That seems way less unlikely.
This is shaping up to be a remarkably pointless dispute.
Trump apparently is driven overwhelmingly by hatred of Obama. Apparently the surest way to get any policy past him is to say Obama did the opposite.
My greatest wish at the moment is for Obama to start tweeting reverse-psychology tweets at Trump: Sure do hate that Iran deal! Good job doing what I would have done as President! Don't fund social programs and I hate abortion!
I'm thinking the lefty internet might have difficulties with the irony.
But imagine the whole country watching, dumbstruck, as Trump fell for it. Imagine his constituents screaming "HE DOESN'T LOVE GUNS! WE LOVE GUNS! WHAT THE FUCK HOW COULD YOU BE SO DUMB!" Imagine his advisors having a productive conversation with him, where he seems to be tracking and saying all the coherent things, like "Oh, right, Obama is doing that psych-trick again!" and then heads back to his bedroom and tweet out a fucking shitstorm of anti-NRA pro-choice stuff to larn the black guy to be wrong.
Speaking of irony, I enjoy that Sen. Schumer responded to Trump's insult with #BeBest.
"AFNIE" has only occurred twice before in TFA, but it should be in common parlance
I don't see how Adam fathering Nephilim in Eden is relevant to the thread, or really to anything.
Sen. Schumer
Now there is a Senator who needs a good nickname. How about Methamphetamine Chuck?
35.**: For instance, Greenberg Traurig almost certainly just forced Rudy out although the official statement was tha the wanted to spend more time with his mob family.
Possibly they just hated him, independent of Trumping.
So, um, back to the OP: has Avenetti revealed where he got the information about Michael Cohen's consulting contracts? Not as far as I can tell.
96: People are saying the level of detail is the kind found in bank-filed Suspicious Activity Reports, and the Treasury IG just launched an investigation, since they're supposed to be super-confidential with major penalties for leaking. But it could have been a lot of people in the banks or law enforcement with access.
Not an FBI agent, that's for sure.
96: It was Cohen. It's a warning shot to make Trump realize he has to pardon him.
97: Yeah, I know about that (the SARs, the Treasury Dept. investigation). I was just wondering whether Avenetti himself has revealed anything helpful whatsoever. He was on Maddow last night, but I didn't see that, and I'm guessing he's just hand-waving at this point. Particularly because the stuff he revealed contained some notable errors - so who the fuck leaked this to him?
It's not good to go full leak behavior if you don't even get it right.
I mean, he's just going to damage his/his client's case. What does this even have to do with Stormy Daniels' case?
101: Stormy Daniels went on national TV and said all she wants is for Trump to resign. Avenetti is representing her interests.
That sounds like fodder for conservatives: her goal is to take down the President. Sorry, not good.
It's not good to go full leak behavior if you don't even get it right.
I don't agree with this. If it came from Mueller, maybe. But from Avenatti? Go full attack dog, and pass the popcorn.
The errors seem to be in some records referring to a different Michael Cohen. not any of the areas of main interest. Mixed on whether this is "good" for his client or not, but it was worth just for the absurdity of the responses of the companies.
Well, I disagree. The right-wingers are actively seeking to discredit Avenetti/Stormy Daniels because they (the latter) seem to be releasing information that's not fully accurate, has no clear relation to her legal case against Trump, and looks like nothing more than a partisan agenda.
Sorry. If Avenetti can't answer the simple question(s), "How did you gain access to this information, what does it have to do with your client's case, and how does it support her case" then there's a problem.
When right-wingers go on the attack, it's best to take them seriously and halt the offensive behavior until everyone is on common ground again. Sounds sensible enough.
When things get dodgy, I find myself reading about the Nuremberg trials just for the reassurance of knowing that Nazis can be stuck in front of a court and forced to listen to their crimes. Anyway, I'm struck by the fact that Karl Dönitz's eyes are clearly too close together.
106 to 104.
105: Yes, records relating to a different Michael Cohen (or several or them) altogether. C'mon, don't be dumb here Avenetti!
That said, I do agree that it's worth it to see AT&T and Novartis et al. scramble for explanations. The notion of someone being paid $1.2 million over one year for doing absolutely nothing makes me gag.
Isn't it considered legitimate to protect the source of a leak if the leak was in the public interest?
The mistaken information was that of the many accounts the SARs referenced, one was from a different bank with some much smaller transactions, likely a Michael Cohen. None of the big names involved (Novartis, AT&T, Columbus Nova) have been in question. It doesn't seem that significant.
As to relevance to Avenatti's own case, his original tweet said "these monies may have reimbursed the $130k payment". Since they're litigating the NDA that came with that payment, it seems plausibly relevant to a story they need to put together.
Don't look at what relief pitchers earn.
Likely a different Michael Cohen, that should be.
110: Isn't it considered legitimate to protect the source of a leak if the leak was in the public interest?
That would pertain if Avenatti [how the fuck is the guy's name spelled?] were a journalist, it seems to me. Maybe not. Maybe also relevant if you're an attorney for a private citizen? Hrmm.
At any rate, sure, the information is plausibly relevant if the same funds were used to pay off Stormy Daniels, which I believe is indeed true.
I would still prefer that this stuff had come out through official court filings.
I think most of us are leery about having any rights that are explicitly only available to journalists. Who defines? And are journalists more members of the public than any other?
What was Novartis' first excuse for paying off Cohen?
115: He told them he had a cure for the common cold.
That he had some insight into the US healthcare system.
Having tried to get approval for a collaboration with Novartis that didn't even involve money changing hands, just a swap of materials and experimental effort, and seeing the layers of layers involved in that, this story is completely boggling.
In both the case of Essential Consultants and the Trump Foundation, you have a fund paying out money to Trump's benefit. Initially, Trump put some money in. Then most of the inflows are from those trying to curry favors with Trump.
I believe I'm the first to say these are examples of the same method of operations.
I'm kind of with Parsimon here. Much as I'm enjoying the fallout from the revelations and hope they help to bring down Trump, Avenatti's conduct seems like the sort of thing that would get you in trouble in the English courts. In particular, I think it's telling, and not in a good way for him, that there's a big difference between how cautious he is in his description of the factual allegations ( not Vekselberg paid Cohen/Essential Consultants, but "[Vekselberg] caused substantial funds to be deposited into the bank account from which Mr. Cohen made the payment") and how loose he is in his implications (it is described as "subsequent reimbursement" of the Daniels payment, for instance). It strongly suggests to me he knows it is, for his specific case, irrelevant, and he's just throwing muck out there in an attempt to get them to settle. It will be interesting to see how much if any of this ends up in actual filings in the Daniels case.
That said, quite a lot of it may well end up in filings by New York prosecutors and/or Mueller.
I'm not a lawyer, but aren't you supposed to be caution in the factual parts and allowed to be much less cautious when interpreting?
Five goals is pretty good, but will he be able to make record time swimming in the Yangtze when he's ten years older.
Show of hands: who thinks Trump got some (most?) of that money?
Jeez, not even trying to cover him. The goal by #10 at the end was nice though.
Honestly, I would be disappointed in Cohen if he didn't keep most/all of it.
Was Cohen the guy who was mailing incriminating documents back and forth because he couldn't print to a PDF? Or was he the guy printing the PDFs for the other guy. I think that matters because being able to print to a PDF is clearly worth $600,000 a year.
67: One or at most two times watching the kid, possibly entirely while he is asleep. Coming for a long weekend, would like to go to out for a night.
125: No, you're thinking of Manafort and Rick Gates.
126: if you can't find anyone else, and assuming your kid isn't so young that that requires special care or has other complexities, I could probably do that.
126: We've never used a sitter for that because my mother-in-law is generous with her time (and I think maybe afraid of strangers watching her grandchildren at night).
I'm personally done with the watching-babies time of my life. It was fun, but they are the very definition of needy.
And by "they", I mean just the one. I don't know how people work it with two or more.
Yeah. I'm assuming this is babies in the metaphorical sense. I wouldn't trust me with real ones yet.
Maybe I'm too optimistic about the court system, or maybe I'm too pessimistic about the political system and Halford will yell at me, but either way, I'd like to think that Avenatti's smaller errors won't be a huge deal in the legal system because the legal system has to go through each claim carefully and smaller errors that don't affect the big charges won't sink the big charges. Whereas in the broader political and media environment, any small error, or even something that turns out later to be a non-error, potentially has thousands of dollars that will be thrown at it until there's no room to talk about major charges because emails or whatever.
Ok, serious question. If the Trump Organization is as systematically and sloppily criminal as it appears to be, why hasn't Trump landed in jail long ago?
New York and New Jersey state governments are equally corrupt?
But many of the offenses are federal, and Trump would be such a good scalp for a US attorney's career.
He's changed his modus operandi since 2006. Is it possible that most of his presumed federal crimes are recent, and the machinery of justice acts slowly, at least when white collar crimes are involved? I'm out of my ken here.
Shit, run fast, Halford might be awake.
The first of his large, mostly-cash purchases, a golf course in Scotland.
It seems like they previously had NDAs and settlement agreements that mostly kept things bottled up, plus Trump wasn't exactly big-time in the business world, despite the celebrity. But now the scope of work or "work" for cronies is so much larger, and along lines they've never been in before, so the opportunities to blunder into implicating themselves are also much greater.
Campaign finance violations were never a thing for non-campaign Trump.
Interesting thread here: https://twitter.com/jkbloodtreasure/status/994704207411335169?s=19
I believe it was Asha Rangappa who was talking about how in the post-9/11 world almost all of the money laundering attention was laser-focused on anything potentially related to funding for "terrorism."
Other type of prosecutions for money laundering did not stop, but together with considerations like 143 I think Trump did not rise to special notice. For instance, I think Manafort was noticed and I think "investigated" but did not seem to be any kind of priority.
Possibly when the counterparty is the Russian government, you have access to methods of laundering that are harder to find.
OT: Now I'm not saying she's a gold digger, but she's not texting about how Hitler was a genius to a broke ...."
143/147: The involvement and history of Felix Sater makes it seem very plausible to me Trump or his people had a cozy informal understanding with elements of the FBI and/or CIA, that he could take in the dirty money as long as they stayed informed and would know quickly if it rose to a level they cared more about, like espionage or terrorism. Maybe just a good-old-boys thing, maybe actual quae pro quibus. (This surmise is consistent with the stories about the FBI New York office being in the tank for Trump in 2016, affecting Comey's decisionmaking.)
Ex recto and obviously IANAL, but my impression is that until about 10 years ago or so, the Trump Organization's malfeasance was little actual crime, a lot of civil offenses like breach of contract (I know they have been sued a lot, the results of which vary greatly, but as I understand it wouldn't include anyone going to jail), and lots of sleazy things that aren't even civil offenses. That article about how he lied his way onto a Forbes list comes to mind.
151: There was probably a fair amount of fraud in with all the breach of contract, but certainly the sort of thing that doesn't get prosecuted much.
119: There's a basic journalistic assumption that information of public import is something the public should have. I'm onboard with that view. Avenatti is not a journalist, but he's also not the one who put the information on the front page of the New York Times -- where it absolutely belonged.
Avenatti's factual error was quickly rectified, and doesn't detract meaningfully from the genuine significance of the information he revealed. People are going to be better informed because of his action. AT&T, for instance, has acknowledged the "big mistake" that was made, and the company parted ways with the guy responsible.
Should AT&T be deprived of the information that one of its people was dealing with a crook? Should we?
Parsimon's view seems to be that Avenatti should have suppressed the information on the grounds that revealing it will offend the people who sympathize with the crook. I say: Fuck 'em.
From a colleague with relevant knowledge, basically low-level indirect assistance in money laundering that was not related to terrorism or a drug crime happening in the US and targeted in another investigation was not a DOJ priority from 2000 on. So, sure, if the case comes in wrapped up with a bow on it the DOJ prosecutes, but if that doesn't happen and, say, the Russians are funneling in ill-gotten-gains from criminal activity entirely outside the US through complex real estate transactions that meet facial criteria for legality, the feds aren't going to care or investigate much unless there's an identifiable victim in the US who is mad.
Avenatti is not a journalist, but he's also not the one who put the information on the front page of the New York Times -- where it absolutely belonged.
No, he put it on Twitter.
And I'm not really talking about the factual errors, or even making it public, though I don't know the legality around handling SARs. Like I say, the thing that grates with me is the implied connection between the other payments and the Daniels one, when his description of the the other payments clearly indicates he doesn't actually believe they are connected.
Another tidbit I got from the last JM podcast (they're coming fast these past weeks): Trump Tower historically was one of only two high-class buildings in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
Basically it's a case management issue. Maybe it's just different norms, but when I've seen similar behaviour in the UK it tends to get a reprimand from the judge (though probably not formal sanction).
157 - Norms are a little different here. Judges don't look particularly fondly on "trying your case in the press" but especially here where Avenatti's cases are pending it's common enough so that they don't care much and there's nothing that judges can do about it. You're not protected particularly as a lawyer for making public statements that are potentially defamatory, and lawyers can (and often do!) sometimes screw up their cases in other ways by dumb public statements. But in this case Avenatti's never going to be sued by Trump or Cohen or anyone else and if he were to be he would have a field day in discovery, and the whole point of his cases are public exposure, so it doesn't really matter.
155:
1. Cohen made payments on Trump's behalf through a shell company.
2. Companies subsequently made payments to that same company.
Sure, yeah, it's loose talk to refer to those corporate payments as "reimbursement." I imagine in the UK, lawyers are more fastidious in their representation of porn stars involved in sex scandals with the head of state.
They haven't had them go any higher than Minister of Defense.
basically low-level indirect assistance in money laundering
They prefer the term "banking."
How Avenatti got the Suspicious Activity Reports (pure speculation): He issued a document subpoena to the Bank, since the information is relevant to his civil case against Michael Cohen, presumably before the judge stayed that case. The information is relevant to that case. A bank would not ordinarily just hand over those documents in a civil case. The General Counsel at the bank forwarded the subpoena, which would have Avenatti's contact information, to a file clerk to pull the stuff together so they cold file a motion opposing disclosure.
The file clerk was politically sympathetic to Avenatti, and about to change jobs anyway, so they forwarded the file directly to Avenatti.
Or more amusingly, the file clerk misunderstood what to do with the subpoena. It says on its face that you are commanded to produce documents. The clerk just did that without checking with higher-ups.*
*This happened to me once. A clerk at a Fortune 500 Company handed over some highly sensitive information (boring stuff, trade secrets and such) to me as opposing counsel, rather than running it through General Counsel. We agreed to give most of it back.
162 is fascinating! Because I have indeed been wondering how the hell Avenatti got this information.
Prior to 162, I had been assuming that someone deliberately leaked the information to Avenatti (in a whistle-blower kind of way), and had been thinking that if they were going to that, they should have leaked it directly to the press, rather than Avenatti himself. That's been the weird part.
But yeah, a general fuck-up on one or more levels sounds more plausible.
On the other hand, I believe there were a number of banks (or Banks) involved in Cohen's transactions through Essential Services.
Essential Services would be a not-bad GSV name.
Stormy Daniels in Essential Services
I'd already forgotten about that turn of phrase.
My book, Very Stable Genius, The Collected Wisdom of Donald Trump will be out soon.
Yes, it's another one of those stupid blank books.
ding dong
Stormy: Hello? Are you the plumber?
Cohen: For $1.2M, I can provide insight into American plumbing systems.
"Stable genius" gave rise to a pretty sweet legislative troll: the Standardizing Testing and Accountability Before Large Elections Giving Electors Necessary Information for Unobstructed Selection Act.
In the category of unhelpful jokes that I keep to myself, I constantly want to say, "Stormy? Oh, the gender-neutral kid in Canada?"
175: Posting it on unfogged is pretty much the same thing as keeping it to yourself.
Up till now, I'd just been writing my worst jokes on paper and xeroxing them over and over, trusting that no one would ever see it. But now I post them here.
Is xerox still an adjective?
Though the verb did give rise to an adjective. While itself arising from a noun.
My question, in fact, extends to all Xerox-based parts of speech.
Kids might not believe it, but people used to photocopy jokes and circulate them like they were memes.
Like samizdat, but without the manual labor.
Everyone should read the link in 150.
129-133: Thanks so much for all your help and indulging me in dipping back into unfogged to ask for help. He now self-identifies as "big boy" but will be almost exactly two years old when we're in Pittsburgh, which might make him a baby by some measures. I'd say toddler. Anyway, we'll figure out the care situation.
Nice to see a bunch of familiar "faces" on a brief drop in.