DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Michael Cohen to testify before House & Senate

The GOP does not have to defend him.

As long as his base and independents are behind him (which they are since they cannot back the socialists), that is all that matters when it comes to 2020.

Says a Republican after Trump's 8000+ lies.

When are people on this board going to realize that every politician lies. EVERY ONE.

Be patient with him, he can't see beyond his bubble of hate.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of boilerplate text.

There is nothing worse than seeing someone with one job 'phone it in.'

Capable of so much more.
Or maybe not.

Yeah, 8000+ in two years.



He just said he believed Un when he said he didn't know about the death of an America.



Putin over American intel



And Putin over American intel again in regards to N. Korean nuclear missile capabilities.

When you start believing everything a man says and question nothing, you end up where you are now.

I am in a fantastic spot.

So again - the narrative / script the Trump stooges are following: Deflect and disinformation ... with a liberal sprinkle of false equivalency.

If there is anyone who doesn't think Trump - as the candidate or as the President - isn't in the deepest pile of crap, they are in denial. I hope all these stooges will feel as contrite and humbled as Cohen is once they are exposed to have been following the pied piper mindlessly.

I was wondering why no-one mentioned this yesterday and wanted to double check my recollection ....

So a the ONLY part of Cohen's testimony that matters - is anything he says that can be corroborated. I think we all agree on that. . . . the comment about Trump Jr and the meeting - the Stone call on the data dump are going to be very hard to corroborate in my opinion.

However - there was a name that was CONSTANTLY mentioned by Cohen as someone who can substantiate and illuminate what Cohen said.

Allen Weisselberg

And did everyone forget - this is the same guy along with Pecker who was granted immunity ....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/politics/allen-weisselberg-immunity-cohen-trump.html

It's not Mensa.

I don't need to banter with these Trump Trolls and their cronyism ... I'll wait for Mueller and the Sthn District of NY prosecutors office.

Yes - Ignorance is Bliss. Total Ignorance must be Total Bliss.

I am sure you can school me on that.

If Trump had a G spot maybe.

Russia says US sought "advice" ahead of Trump-Kim summit on North Korea's nukes
FEBRUARY 25, 2019 / 9:43 AM / CBS/AP

Moscow -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday that the United States had asked Moscow's advice in dealing with North Korea ahead of a summit between President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader.


Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un were expected to meet Thursday, possibly even the day before, in Vietnam's capital. Their first meeting last summer ended without substantive agreements on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

Lavrov, who is also visiting Vietnam this week, said in comments carried by Russian news agencies on Monday that Russia believes that the U.S. ought to offer Pyongyang "security guarantees" for the disarmament deal to succeed. He also mentioned that "the U.S. is even asking our advice, our views on this or that scenario of" how the summit in Hanoi could pan out.

It was not immediately clear what discussions with U.S. officials Lavrov was referring to on Monday. The Trump administration has not confirmed any outreach to Moscow over the negotiations with the Kim regime.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not discussed the summit in Hanoi with Donald Trump directly. "They haven't spoken on the phone for a long time," Peskov said on Monday, commenting on Lavrov's earlier remark, according to Russia's state-controlled press.

Lavrov said the United States was holding consultations with Russia on the North Korean issue -- including on the eve of the Trump-Kim summit. He noted that Russia was pushing for an "action for an action" approach to the talks between Washington and Pyongyang, and said that view appeared to be gaining support in Washington.

"At least, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov's contacts with his U.S. counterpart show that the U.S. is ready to ask about our view of a certain scenario concerning what is going to happen in Hanoi in a couple of days," Lavrov said.


As CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reported on Monday, President Trump declared North Korea no longer a nuclear threat following his first summit with Kim last summer, but since then the isolated regime has done little to move toward the goal of "denuclearization" that was agreed to during that meeting.


Just hours before departing for Hanoi, Mr. Trump appeared to lower his expectations, or at least the timescale for his expectations to be met, in the diplomatic process with North Korea. He said on Sunday that he was, "not in a rush. I don't want to rush anybody. I just don't want (nuclear or missile) testing."

Kim hasn't tested a missile or nuclear device since long before the Singapore summit in June of last year, but Mr. Trump's administration said right after that meeting that they expected North Korea to take immediate steps to start getting rid of its nuclear weapons. That, noted Tracy, has not happened, and it was still unclear just a day before Mr. Trump's arrival in Vietnam how much headway the U.S. expected to make -- if any -- in getting Kim to comply.

The month after Mr. Trump last met Kim, he sat down for another landmark bilateral summit -- with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Trump neglected to hold the Russian leader to account for his country's efforts to influence the U.S. democratic process in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election -- saving most of his criticism for America itself.

"I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think that we've all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time, frankly, before I got to office," Mr. Trump said during a joint press conference with Putin.


His handling of that top-level diplomatic overture appeared, according to a CBS News Poll conducted soon after the summit in Helsinki, to inspire little new confidence in Mr. Trump's handling of the relationship with one of the United States' most formidable adversaries. The results of the poll were sharply divided down partisan lines in the U.S., but overall only a third of Americans (32 percent) said they approved of the way Mr. Trump handled the summit with Putin.

Did you ever get around to questioning why Cohen testified that Trump thought he could not win the election but later said Trump paid hush money because he didn't want her to hurt his chance to win?

Trump is not the type to foolishly pay for something that makes zero difference if he thought he would lose.



Cohen is an admitted fool and the Democrats are joining him quickly.

I was born in ‘72 so I wasn’t watching the news, nor did I follow politics when Nixon was going down. To those that were... were there supporters of Nixon that denied it to the end? Those that kept their head in the sand during and then even after he was impeached? Stating it was all lies on the other’s part?

There were facts in the Nixon case, unlike today.

68 here ... so IDK the answer.

Can an adult answer the question?
Thank you.

Truth hurts doesn't it?

You keep grasping at straws and coming up empty.

You think this proves something?

By your estimate - Trump has surrounded himself by criminals and fools endlessly. And you crow about it.

Hmmmm - I wonder if Trump - the narcissist who ensured a portrait of him was the highest bid item at an auction (that was paid by his charity and then he kept the painting) ... was more concerned about his public image / persona / perception / and that's not even mentioning his wife ..... pfft. What a crock of steaming manure you come up with.

I was 13 when the Watergate hearings aired. They ruined my entire summer, for tv watching. We only had ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS and they all aired that crap live during the day. I learned to hate politics that summer.

Does anyone care about policy anymore?

He pretty much had support to the bitter end. But what you have to consider is that there wasn't a pretty much state sponsored media campaign like FOX News to work at converting people to deny facts. Yes, I'm aware that depending on the source, the media works in both directions.

But at this time, we have what the right considers a credible source denying everything that Trump does. They avoid reporting things that don't support him and twist everything else. So while in the time of Nixon people were often opening their minds to things as they were unfolding, you don't see that now.

So in terms of the amount of support for Nixon, it slowly waned as evidence came out. In regards to Trump, no amount of evidence will change the mind of his minions who watch state sponsored media.

WHITE HOUSE

Trump can’t run the Mueller playbook on New York feds
For starters, they have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that executive privilege doesn't cover.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 02/18/2019 08:05 AM EST
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Even as speculation mounts that special counsel Robert Mueller might be winding down his investigation, a parallel threat to President Donald Trump only seems to be growing within his own Justice Department: the Southern District of New York.

Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report. From a PR perspective, Trump has been unable to run the same playbook on SDNY that he’s used to erode conservatives’ faith in Mueller, the former George W. Bush-appointed FBI director. Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.


The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.

Add it all up and the result is a spate of hard-to-stymie, legally perilous probes that appears on track to drag on well into Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. SDNY stands poised to carry on Mueller’s efforts whenever the special counsel’s office closes shop, and it’s likely to draw even more attention if freshly confirmed Attorney General William Barr — who now oversees the Russia probe as DOJ head — clamps down on the public release of Mueller’s findings.

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“When you combine their experience with the traditional independence of the southern district and the reputation it has, this is like another Mueller investigation going on,” said Nick Akerman, a former SDNY assistant attorney who also worked on the Watergate prosecution team.

Mueller can take credit for spawning significant parts of SDNY’s work. The two DOJ units have shared staff, witnesses and leads, and SDNY has been well-positioned to pick up anything that is outside Mueller’s primary lane of investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A Mueller referral to SDNY, for example, triggered an FBI raid on Michael Cohen's office and hotel room, according to Cohen’s former lawyer. And the fruits of that raid culminated late last year in Cohen’s guilty plea, in which the former Trump fixer and attorney admitted in federal court that Trump directed him to make hush money payments to sway the 2016 presidential election.
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The New York federal prosecutors are far from finished. They’re still seeking interviews with Trump Organization executives, according to a source with knowledge of the probe. And Trump’s inaugural committee confirmed earlier this month that it had received a wide-ranging subpoena from SDNY for documents as part of a probe into how the group raised and doled out a record $107 million. Investigators are looking at everything from potential mail and wire fraud to illegal foreign contributions and money laundering.

“This is why I’ve been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing,” Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and former federal prosecutor, told ABC News earlier this month.

Trump declares a national emergency full
WHITE HOUSE

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By ANITA KUMAR and CAITLIN OPRYSKO
Elaborating on MSNBC, Christie said that SDNY, unlike Mueller, has “no restrictions on their purview.”

“Bob Mueller has a task: It’s Russian interference and potential collusion in the 2016 election,” he said. “Southern District of New York is whatever the heck you want.”

SDNY poses a potent threat because the office has accumulated a perfect storm of witnesses who have guided Trump throughout his career, from his businesses to his meteoric rise in presidential politics up through his inauguration to the White House.

The list of cooperators includes Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer; David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company who has admitted to working with Trump for years to kill incriminating media stories; and Rick Gates, who served as Trump campaign deputy and then de facto leader of the inaugural committee. Gates pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe to lying to the FBI last February but his sentencing has been delayed while he cooperates in “several ongoing investigations,” according to a filing last month from the special counsel’s office.

Then there’s Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer who is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence next month. Christie called Cohen a “tour guide” for SDNY investigators into the president’s orbit.

Another concern for Trump: SDNY’s independence. Its nickname is the “Sovereign District of New York," and former prosecutors who have worked there describe its authorities and experience as unique among the nation's 93 U.S. attorney offices.

The president’s hand-selected SDNY head, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, has been recused from the Cohen probe, deferring to a pair of longtime federal prosecutors: Robert Khuzami and Audrey Strauss.

An SDNY spokesman declined to comment for this story.


Alumni from the office have said SDNY's investigative powers and independent streak are so robust that — depending on what it finds on Trump — the office could skirt DOJ legal protocol dating to Watergate that holds a sitting president can’t be indicted.

“I’m thoroughly convinced the SDNY will make its own evaluation. They will not say that’s a department policy,” said Jon Sale, a former SDNY and Watergate prosecutor who is close with Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “They’re obviously looking at the president and I wouldn’t rule out that they could decide you can indict a sitting president.”

Elliot Engel and Adam Schiff
CONGRESS

Dems prepare to force Trump to reveal private talks with Putin
By ANDREW DESIDERIO
Trump's attack-Mueller playbook can’t be replicated in New York. For starters, the bounds of what SDNY is looking at don’t deal with Trump’s tenure in the White House, meaning any pushback on executive privilege grounds won’t fly. Trump’s lawyers have said they’ve resisted Mueller’s attempts to get the president to answer questions about potential obstruction of justice matters dealing with his time in the Oval Office. And they continue to signal the president’s team should be allowed to review the special counsel’s finished report to ensure it doesn’t violate the president’s rights.

Trump is limited in his abilities to use his bully pulpit against SDNY — which has nowhere near the name recognition of the special counsel — in the way he has used Twitter, rallies and even the State of the Union to lambaste Mueller.

That’s not to say the president isn’t concerned about SDNY. Trump reportedly complained about SDNY’s pursuit of Cohen to Matthew Whitaker, his former acting attorney general, though Whitaker last week denied to Congress that the president had chided him.

Giuliani has confirmed Trump’s frustrations with SDNY’s handling of the Cohen probe.

“The president and his lawyers are upset about the professional prosecutors in the Southern District of New York going after a noncrime and the innuendo the president was involved,” Giuliani, who served as the U.S. attorney leading SDNY for more than five years during the Reagan administration, told CNN in December.

But in an interview with POLITICO on Friday, Giuliani downplayed any broader concerns that his former office posed a wider threat to the president.

“The same thing will happen as has happened over the last two years with all of these things. They’ll run them down and they’ll find out the president didn’t do anything wrong. Not a darn thing,” Giuliani said.

Trump’s complaints about the Mueller probe — railing against his team of “angry Democrats” and even going after the special counsel himself in more than 70 mentions on Twitter since last March — have helped the president turn his political base against the Russia investigation. A record low 13 percent of registered Republican voters reported having a favorable view of Mueller in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. While that can help the president maintain GOP support in an impeachment battle, legal experts and Trump’s allies have said similar attacks on SDNY won’t matter much should the battleground become a court of law and not the halls of Congress.

“That’s one you can’t win,” said Andrew McCarthy, a former SDNY prosecutor and National Review columnist whom the president has cited on Twitter while blasting the Mueller probe. “There’s no upside for Trump in attacking the southern district, whereas there might be in attacking Mueller.”

President Donald Trump
NATIONAL EMERGENCY

Lawsuit targets Trump’s emergency declaration to build border wall
By TED HESSON
What’s more, SDNY’s efforts have found allies in Democratic lawmakers who have made the U.S. attorney’s office a key feature of their hearings, floor speeches and written demands of Trump’s Justice Department.

Ahead of Whitaker’s recent appearance before Congress, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler told the acting DOJ head that SDNY’s work would be one of his primary lines of questioning. And in a follow-up letter after the hearing, the New York Democrat pressed Whitaker over his denials that Trump lashed out at him about SDNY. Whitaker’s rebuttals, Nadler said, were “directly contradicted by several media reports” and other people with “direct knowledge” of the calls he got from the White House.

In a floor speech last week announcing his opposition to Barr’s confirmation, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that any Trump pardons for people tied up in either the Mueller or SDNY investigation “would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress.”


Barr said SDNY’s work stands on the other side of a red line that he wouldn’t let Trump cross. Pressed by Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing last month, the soon-to-be attorney general said he’d protest the removal of SDNY’s head if he thought the president had nefarious intentions.

“I would not stand by and allow a U.S. attorney to be fired for the purpose of stopping an investigation,” Barr said.

Yes, there were those who chose to believe Nixon. Over time, their numbers dwindled. For some, it took as long as 20 years. Eventually, most everybody accepted the findings and were certain that the appropriate course of action was taken, with the appropriate results.

IMO, When the tapes came out, it was pretty much a done deal. That and Dean's (Nixon's former lawyer) testimony shut the door on the chance they were wrong.

He provided a check.

How do you feel about Congress' 'slush fund' to pay complaints of, among other things, sexual harassment?

Please note: it's not technically called a 'slush fund'. I wonder why?

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/21/congress-sexual-harassment-slush-fund-255547

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/congress-use-slush-fund-pay-17-million-women-sexually-harassed/ (interestingly enough, in this article, the link to ' for example money laid out from the fund in Fiscal Year 2016 can be viewed here under “Awards and Settlements, Office of Compliance.” is a non working link. Hmmmm.

Don't like those links? Try this one.........from the NY Post, reported by MSNBC. https://nypost.com/2017/11/14/rep-says-congress-paid-out-15m-to-silence-sex-harassment-victims/


You know what's worse? Listen to the last link. Rep. Jackie Speier, a democrat, from Cal, is the one talking about it.

So, what are your thoughts on this?

Better than it coming from my tax, and your tax money, don't you think?

So you try comparing something that's legal to something that's illegal?

I agree that laws need to change but that doesn't change the laws.

GOP reps refer Michael Cohen to DOJ for alleged perjury during hearing

House Oversight Committee Republicans on Thursday referred ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen to the Justice Department for alleged perjury, claiming he lied during sworn testimony before the panel a day earlier about a number of issues including his ambitions to work in the Trump administration and contracts with foreign entities.

Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., penned a letter Thursday to newly sworn-in Attorney General William Barr, citing evidence that Cohen “committed perjury” during his hearing before the committee on Wednesday.

“We write to refer significant evidence that Michael D. Cohen committed perjury and knowingly made false statements during his testimony before an Oversight and Reform Committee hearing,” they wrote. “While testifying under oath, Mr. Cohen made what appear to be numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the Justice Department in United States v. Cohen.”

They added: “Mr. Cohen’s testimony before the Committee at times was in direct contradiction to assertions contained in pleadings authored by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY.) There are other instances in which Mr. Cohen’s statements to the Committee were immediately contradicted by witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the subject matter.”

Cohen previously pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress, in relation to past statements before a Senate committee.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-rep...-during-hearing

Guess we will be adding more time to his prison time.
Liar Liar pants on fire.

I wasn't trying to compare something that is legal to something that is illegal. Are NDA's legal, or not?

Now, if you're saying campaign money was used in the case of Trump, okay. BUt, rockets comment referenced a personal check/s. Written to an attorney. I believe that would be legal. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Congress is allowed to use tax money to do the same thing.....I find that odd.

Using funds to try to influence the outcome of an election is illegal. Paying hush money to hide evidence that may change the results of an election is illegal.

So, there's a number of congressmen that did something illegal? After all, you pay someone to shut up so their story doesn't negatively affect you, correct?

Fodder for foolish sheep. Anyone who buys into this line is blind to the obvious. I've told you all along that Trump is a crook. You were warned, so when it all comes crashing down I will have very little pity for you.

Dems just need to follow the money. In this case it all leads to a crook.

I think this just got about a 100 times worse than Watergate yesterday. Trump won't resign and the GOPers won't vote to impeach. They will be run out on a rail come election time though. And the Trumps will all meet lady Justice up close and personal then, proctology style.

I truly feel sorry for the GOP being so invested in Trump. They may never recover from the devastation they've brought onto this country and themselves.

I don't know arch, I'm not an attorney. But we both know that's not the only issue here.

I don't think you can try to tell a bank you're worth twice as much to secure a loan as you tell the tax people you're worth at tax time, do you?

I'm not following your line of thinking. What exactly are you trying to say? Are you saying Trump is innocent? Are you saying he's maybe guilty but you want to shine the spotlight elsewhere? Are you saying that whoever is guilty they all need to be held accountable?

I don't know.

I thought he told a paper/magazine.

I do know this: If I go for a loan, their isn't a bank around that is going to take my word for what I'm worth. They need to see proof.

I also know I can't blow smoke in talking about my property value when it comes to talking value.


I also know I could blow smoke to a news outlet. I could tell you I'm worth a million. You can't prove it wrong. But when I'm paying property tax, my home is worth what the county says it is, not what I say it is. My income and debts are what they are, not what I might tell you they are.

Are NDA's illegal? If so, how? If so, why isn't congress' NDA's illegal?

I believe most NDAs are perfectly legal, but I also think there are exceptions like not being able to use them to silence a whistleblower or cover up a crime.

Are NDA's illegal? That's what I'm saying. You can't be innocent of something that is legal.

Is it legal for congressmen to use tax money to settle sex harassment charges?

As he testified in congress, Cohen himself said he used his own money to pay the NDA, with the understanding Trump would pay him back.

Apparently TRump did, from his own account. To my limited knowledge, that is not illegal. Why it happened that way, I don't know. My guess is Trump didn't want his name out there. Dumb? Sure. Illegal? No. Unless it can be proven campaign money was spent, I guess.


What I'm saying is, without proof, trump is not guilty or innocent of anything other than spending money. His money.


Are the congressmen that use tax payers money to settle claims guilty?

Again, what crime was committed?

Look, we all know (and most despise) that an NDA was agreed upon concerning any number of women. They, the women, did not have to agree to any settlement. They accepted the money. Period.


Does that make trump a jackwad? Yup, in my book, it does. Was it illegal? No. Not anymore than congress people doing the same thing, except with tax money.