WTF Community

Day 769

General Discussion
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Updated 2/27/2019 10:55 AM PST

overview/ During public testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Michael Cohen accused Trump of "criminal conduct" while in office and that Trump knew ahead of time about WikiLeaks' plan to release DNC emails that were intended to damage Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen testified that Trump "asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair" with $130,000 of his own money weeks before the 2016 election "to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign." Cohen also described his relationship with Trump: "He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat." (New York Times / Washington Post /Reuters / Vox / Wall Street Journal / Politico)

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2019/02/27/day-769/
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Michael Cohen's public testimony: The Slow Liveblog
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New!

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#4

Roger Stone! :joy::joy::joy:

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#5

New Manafort docs reported by Ken Vogel

Sorry I posted on the wrong thread earlier. I’m just going to leave it.

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#6

And Max Boot believes Cohen has implicated the president in at least five felonies today.

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#7

This is one of the smallest of stories in one of the craziest days, yet maybe the most symbolic. The border wall prototypes in San Diego are being torn down today.

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#8

Just reporting an update on Grand Jury Subpoena re: Company A.

(not sure I understand this…just posting!)

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#9
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#10

More subpoena requests from DC court after Inaugural Committee wants some documents. :boom:

The District of Columbia attorney general’s office has subpoenaed President Trump’s inaugural committee for documents related to an investigation into whether the fund’s spending was “wasteful, mismanaged” or “improperly provided private benefit.”

The subpoena, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, is the third such request to the committee, which is also the subject of investigations by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and the New Jersey attorney general.

“The Presidential Inauguration Committee is in receipt of the subpoena issued by the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, and is in contact with staff regarding this inquiry,” a spokesman for the committee said.

The subpoena was first reported by the New York Times.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine’s subpoena appears more narrowly focused than the other two subpoenas the committee has received, signaling an interest by investigators into dealings between the inaugural committee and Mr. Trump’s family business.

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#11

Here’s a place to discuss the Cohen testimony in real-time.

Livestream:
https://youtu.be/8rKCWG0VOYw

:pencil2: LIVE BLOGS:

tl;dr

  • Cohen’s opening statement about his relationship with Trump: "He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”

  • Cohen: Trump lied about Trump Moscow negotiations. “I lied to Congress about when Mr Trump stopped negotiating the Moscow Tower project in Russia,” Cohen said. “I stated that we stopped negotiating in January 2016. That was false – our negotiations continued for months later during the campaign.”

    • Cohen: Trump did not “directly tell me to lie to Congress” but as a presidential candidate Trump did “lie to the American people” by denying business in Russia.

  • "Individual-1 is Donald J. Trump (background context)

  • Cohen doesn’t “know of direct evidence” that “Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia” during the 2016 election, “but I have my suspicions.” Cohen added that he was in the room with Trump, “probably in early June 2016,” when Trump Jr. “came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk” and leaned over "to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: ‘The meeting is all set.’ I remember Mr. Trump saying, ‘Ok good…let me know.’”

  • Cohen publicly released to the House committee showing that Trump attempted to lower the value of the Trump National Golf Club to avoid tax, claiming it was worth just $1.4m.

  • Cohen said he would not accept a pardon from Trump.

  • Rep. Jim Jordan accused Democrats of encouraging Cohen to violate attorney-client privilege and complained that they can’t ask questions about ongoing investigations. He called Cohen a “patsy.”

Headlines-only

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#12

poll/ 68% of Americans say they want the Robert Mueller report to be made public, while 10% say it shouldn’t be made public, and 22% are undecided. (Politico)

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#13

:hushed: One of Robert Mueller’s lead prosecutors in the obstruction of justice investigation received detailed notes about Trump’s conduct in the West Wing from Annie Donaldson, the chief of staff to former White House counsel Don McGahn. Andrew Goldstein also spent dozens of hours questioning Stephen Bannon and nearly seven hours with Jared Kushner as part of the determining Trump’s motives in firing James Comey.

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#14

The reimbursement check Michael Cohen says Trump signed. It is dated August 1, 2017 for the amount of $35,000, which Cohen says was part of the reimbursement for “illegal hush money I paid on his behalf.”

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#15

I can’t hear anything he’s saying because all I can focus on is the air that keeps popping the mic whenever Cohen is talking

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#16

The House Oversight Committee wants to depose both Trump’s long-time tax lawyer and the former deputy White House Counsel in charge of compliance and ethics. The panel wants to ask about Trump’s legally mandated financial ethics disclosures for the payments made before the 2016 presidential election by Cohen to buy the silence of women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.

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#17

:north_korea: The White Hous banned four U.S. journalists from covering Trump’s dinner with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un after they shouted questions at the leaders during their earlier meetings. Reporters from the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Times and Reuters were excluded because of what White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said were “sensitivities over shouted questions in the previous sprays.” (Washington Post)

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#18

In Cohen’s testimony he said was aware that T was knowledgeable about when the DNC emails were to be dumped per Stone, and communications with Wikileaks.

T denied knowing this.

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#19

Question: Who are the folks sitting directly behind Cohen? I think the older guy behind him to his right (our left) is his lawyer/media guy (I saw him on Maddow one night). Who are the rest?

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#20

I believe they’re Cohen’s lawyers, Michael Monico and Lanny Davis

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#21

Ya, I assumed some were lawyers. But there are lots of other folks back there. They are family?

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