Friday, March 1, 2019

Vice

By the time Cohen’s televised session before Congress wrapped up Wednesday, he’d provided testimony and evidence suggesting Trump may have been involved in at least 11 different felonies, according to a VICE News review of the testimony and conversations with former prosecutors.

Now the question will be how many of Cohen’s claims can be backed up by documentary evidence or by testimony from other witnesses.

  Vice News
My guess would be all of them. I think that's why he was willing to say what he did.
“We have unambiguous evidence that the president has committed a crime at this point, I think,” Rep Jerrold Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told the New York Times. “Do we have unambiguous evidence he has done impeachable offenses? We’ve got a ways to go yet.”
Jerrold, I think you know very well you have unambiguous evidence. You don't have to prove he committed a crime.
[H]ere’s an incomplete list of the criminal activity Trump’s former personal attorney dropped at the feet of the president.

[...]

Cohen introduced new information linking Trump and his campaign to a possible criminal conspiracy relating to the hacked Democratic emails that were stolen by Russian spies and released by WikiLeaks before the 2016 election.

[...]

Russian agents have already been charged with a conspiracy to hack into Democratic computers by special counsel Robert Mueller. If anyone from the Trump campaign can be shown to have helped out with that operation, or to have coordinated the release of the emails, they could be added to Mueller’s existing list of defendants as co-conspirators.

Cohen’s assertion supplies new evidence that Trump knew about, and made encouraging statements about, the release of the pilfered documents.

[...]

Cohen’s story about Trump’s conversation with Stone also contradicts what Trump reportedly told Mueller in writing. Trump’s legal team reportedly rejected Mueller’s request for an interview with the president, and instead responded to the Special Counsel’s questions in a letter.

Trump told Mueller’s team in written answers that Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, CNN has reported, citing two sources “familiar with the matter.”

That stark contrast should concern Trump, because lying to a federal investigator is a crime.

[...]

Cohen said Wednesday that Trump implicitly told him to lie to Congress under oath about attempts to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow in the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign — a move that could potentially constitute the crime of suborning perjury.

[...]

Cohen said his former boss directed him to organize hush-money payments during the campaign to women who claimed that they’d slept with Trump. This accusation isn’t new, and has been backed up by prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, which wrote in a sentencing memo that Cohen committed crimes “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

Cohen added fresh evidence on Wednesday in the form of a check signed by Trump that reimbursed Cohen for the payout to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

[...]

Cohen said Trump knew exactly what he was giving Cohen money for: to silence the women and keep voters from finding out about Trump’s affairs. If so, then aside from the campaign finance violation, Trump may have also entered into a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. — by thwarting the administration of a fair election [-- election fraud].

[...]

Cohen also alleged that Trump made false claims to insurance companies by inflating the size of his assets, a move that Cohen said would have allowed him to reduce his premiums [-- insurance fraud].

[...]

Cohen and Democrats in Congress have accused Trump of attempting to intimidate him out of testifying against Trump by making threats against Cohen’s family [-- witness tampering].

[...]

Cohen said Trump inflated his wealth while seeking to borrow money from Deutsche Bank in a failed attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014.

Lying to a financial institution to get a loan would be bank fraud, which carries a maximum 30 year sentence.

[...]

Cohen also said Trump “deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes [-- tax fraud].”

[...]

Trump may have broken the law by failing to disclose the money he owed Cohen for making the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels.

[...]

“There could be a conspiracy to cause false entries in the accounting of the Trump Organization by disguising hush-money payments as legal fees, and that could be the basis for separate charges in New York State.”

[...]

Cohen said Trump used his charity’s money to buy a painting of himself — a potentially improper misuse of charitable funds.

[...]

The New York attorney general is already suing the Trump Foundation, arguing that the charity engaged in a “shocking pattern of illegality.”

“This one might fall into the civil category under the New York AG’s office,” Levin said. “But if it can be determined that money was funneled into, or out of, the foundation in order to evade taxes, it could also be the basis of tax crimes.”
If you need this reference, there'll be a link to it always in the right sidebar.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:







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