posted 04-19-2018 01:46 PM                  

Newsweek Greg Price,Newsweek 5 hours ago

The investigation into President Donald Trump’s personal attorney has reportedly put some of the Republican’s allies on edge, leaving them fearful that Michael Cohen could turn on the president to avoid spending the rest of his days in prison.

Cohen, whose office, home and hotel room were raided last week by the FBI, has long served as Trump’s “fixer,” making apparent problems go away behind the scenes while Trump ran his global real estate empire and later hit the American political stage.

It’s that kind of closeness and access to potential information about Trump’s dealings that have two people close to Trump worried Cohen could flip, according to a Politico report Thursday.

Famed attorney and television pundit Alan Dershowitz said federal prosecutors were likely to threaten Cohen with serious jail time.

“That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment,” Dershowitz told Politico. “They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”

The same claim was made by the attorney representing Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, earlier this week. He told MSNBC that he believed Cohen would be charged soon and that within in the next six months or so Cohen would “flip” on Trump.

The FBI has reportedly been investigating Cohen and his business dealings for months. The raid was at least in part intended to find information about payments made to Daniels and another woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen has stated publicly that he paid Daniels $130,000 less than two weeks before the 2016 general election. The payment has since been scrutinized as a potential campaign finance violation.

To date, Cohen has not been charged with any crimes but his attorneys are angling for the federal judge overseeing his case to appoint a “special master” to review the materials seized by the FBI before Southern District of New York prosecutors. On Tuesday, Cohen’s lawyers offered up four attorneys as recommendations for the special master, or independent counsel.

Cohen’s lawyers have argued that some of what the FBI obtained through search warrants would be covered by attorney-client privilege. They were also tasked with naming each of Cohen’s clients, which turned out to be Trump, former Republican National Committee deputy finance chair Elliott Broidy and Fox News anchor Sean Hannity.

Trump’s lawyers initially argued that the president’s very status afforded him the highest of attorney-client privilege, but the judge denied them access to seized materials.

posted 04-19-2018 03:26 PM                  

quote:

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Originally posted by cstall:
Nice copy/paste work Tom!
Here's the part that jumped out at me:
[B]"To date, Cohen has not been charged with any crimes..."[/B]

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Tom is not someone I am happy to defend for anything, but to be fair I copy and paste allot.

posted 04-20-2018 03:18 PM                  

To get a Federal Judge to sign off on this means overwhelm evident was present the a crime(s) were committed and Cohen was likely to try and destroy evidence.

Indictment and arrest will follow. But, Cohen could Flip to save his hide.

posted 04-20-2018 05:39 PM                  

quote:

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Originally posted by Tomcal:
cstall.... do you really think FBI had a search warrant for three of Cohen's premises for no good reason???

To get a Federal Judge to sign off on this means overwhelm evident was present the a crime(s) were committed and Cohen was likely to try and destroy evidence.

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Tomcal ... have you NOT been watching the news .... FISA warrants were ALL issued without due cause nor due process and done so rapidly through a corrupt and politically tainted system compliments of the former alien mooslim in chief.

posted 04-21-2018 04:26 PM                  

NY Times.... By Ken White
April 10, 2018

...... "What does this tell us? First, it reflects that numerous officials — not just Mr. Mueller — concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Mr. Cohen’s law office, home and hotel room contained evidence of a federal crime. A search warrant for a lawyer’s office implicates the attorney-client privilege and core constitutional rights, so the Department of Justice requires unusual levels of approval to seek one. Prosecutors must seek the approval of the United States attorney of the district — in this case the office of Geoffrey Berman, the interim United States attorney appointed by President Trump.

Prosecutors must also consult with the criminal division of the Justice Department in Washington. Finally, prosecutors must convince a United States magistrate judge that there’s probable cause to support the search. Faced with a warrant application destined for immediate worldwide publicity, the judge surely took unusual pains to examine it. This search was not the result of Mr. Mueller or his staff “going rogue.”

Second, the search demonstrates that federal prosecutors and supervisors in the Justice Department concluded that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to preserve and turn over documents voluntarily. The same regulations that require prosecutors to seek high-level approval for a warrant to search a law office also instruct them to use the least intrusive means to obtain evidence from a lawyer, and to consider requesting voluntary cooperation or serving a subpoena. Mr. Cohen’s lawyer has loudly protested that he had been cooperating. This search warrant means that prosecutors — including the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the criminal division at the Justice Department — believed that Mr. Cohen could not be trusted to respond fully to a subpoena or might destroy documents."

Full article here;
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/opinion/trump-michael-cohen-fbi-raid.html

The Brennan Center for Justice
By, Michael German
April 10, 2018

Michael German, a former FBI agent, answers questions about what the raid means for the Mueller investigation and the broader inquiry into the president and his associates.

..... Why not just ask for the documents in question? Is a raid like this standard?

MG: A raid like this indicates they may have concerns that evidence might be destroyed or otherwise not turned over, even with a lawful request. In a case where you’re dealing with drug dealers or hardcore criminals, you use a search warrant first because you don’t want to give them a heads up. In a white-collar case, when you’re dealing with accountants and lawyers and the types of people who may seek out legal advice, usually there’s a level of trust that this person isn’t going to do something dumb like destroy evidence.

In this case, the raid suggests that perhaps the investigators got a note from Cohen’s lawyers saying there are no more documents, but another source said there are. Or they figure cooperation isn’t going to get them what they need, so they’ll have to go and grab it. Most likely, there was a risk that evidence might be destroyed.

..... Does this mean Cohen might confess to wrongdoing?

MG: In the end, every smart criminal will fold. At some point, the idea of honor among thieves is more television than real life. For Cohen, he has to decide if he’s the one who’s going to help investigators get someone more important, or if he’s the one investigators are after. Usually the incentive is: I’m the little guy, he’s the big guy, and I’ll help you get that person. People tend to make decisions to mitigate the damage done to them.

Full article here;
http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/what-does-michael-cohen-raid-mean-mueller-investiga tion

The Atlantic
By, Adam Serwer Apr 10, 2018

Whatever evidence federal prosecutors have collected concerning Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime attorney, it is most likely extraordinarily strong.

Before federal agents raided Cohen’s home, hotel room, and office Monday afternoon, they would have had to convince high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice and a federal judge that a search warrant was necessary to obtain the evidence sought.

“Doing a search warrant rather than a subpoena suggests the investigators thought Cohen, if given a subpoena, would possibly destroy evidence or withhold key evidence, particularly if it were incriminating,” Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said.

Under normal circumstances, obtaining a search warrant on an attorney for the subject of a federal investigation is an incredibly aggressive move. When the attorney’s client is the president of the United States, the stakes couldn’t possibly get any higher.

Some of the president’s supporters in the conservative press have been invoking attorney-client privilege, the legal rule that says communications between an attorney and a client are typically protected. But there are important exceptions.

“Records of conversations between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump are not necessarily privileged,” Bruce Green, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Fordham University, said. “If the conversations do not relate to a legal representation, but Mr. Cohen was providing business assistance or other non-legal services, the privilege probably will not apply.”

There is also something known as the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. “When the communications between an attorney and client are in furtherance of criminal activity, it’s viewed as an exception to attorney-client privilege,” Barrett said.

In cases where an attorney’s records are seized, a separate team of federal investigators, known as a “taint team,” will go through those records and sort out which are protected, and which prosecutors will be allowed to see or use. “There are various other limitations and exceptions that could make the privilege inapplicable. If it isn’t clear whether documents are privileged, the issue may get litigated,” Green said.

Full Article here;

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/trumps-lawyer-is-in-big-trouble/557606/

posted 04-23-2018 08:56 AM                  

It truly is sickening how the media has been weaponized against this candidate and, upon reflection, was likely established 8 years ago to prop up the poser-in chief who had no right to be President

posted 04-23-2018 12:00 PM                  

Source NBC News
"The president may legally pardon people for specific or broad federal criminal acts, and while somewhat unusual, the president may legally do so before any judicial proceeding regarding the acts is complete — before prosecution, for example"
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/can-president-pardon-himself-n785181