Maybe investigators found some documents that can be used in a lawsuit against the corrupt Trump Organization, although I don't know if that would be legally permissible. Anonymous leaks?At one point, when the fast-food company officials had not yet hired Burke’s firm to do property tax appeal work, the firm’s specialty, Burke and one of his ward employees agree to turn the screws on them regarding permits they need. “All right, I’ll play as hard ball as I can,” the unidentified ward employee says, according to the complaint.
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Burke is also accused of pressuring the company to make a donation to the campaign of an unnamed politician. One company official gave $10,000 to the politician but that was eventually reduced to the legal limit of $5,600, according to the complaint.
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Burke has faced scrutiny over the years for a variety of reasons, including the $100 million city workers’ compensation fund operated by the Finance Committee he heads. His law firm represents clients who do business with the city, forcing him to abstain from many votes.
He has survived federal investigations that threatened to undercut his power base, once even by blaming a dead man for ghost-payrolling irregularities on his committee payroll.
Burke’s law firm, Klafter & Burke, repeatedly has sought to reduce the property taxes that Trump Tower and other commercial properties have to pay.
He’s even been in the public spotlight for having taxpayer-funded bodyguards drive him to and from City Hall — and for how quickly city snowplows clear the pavement on his Southwest Side block.
Chicago Suntimes
While it had been reported that Mr Trump planned on sitting down with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, those meetings will be "pull-asides". That means that the meetings between the international leaders will be informal, and potentially very brief.
UK Independent
Second: it's not primarily ABOUT Cohen. See, this is bouncing the rubble. It adds one more felony to those Cohen has already taken, with no real marginal effect. It will have an extremely negligible effect, IF ANY, on his sentence. So why bother?It was awfully short-sighted of His Lardship to turn Michael Cohen out in the cold.
Well, normally a federal prosecutor WOULDN'T bother with a plea that has no impact. But here, the impact is telling the story of the investigation as a whole, and promoting the case that the entire Trump Organization was lying about its degree of involvement with Russia.
Though Trump isn't named explicitly, he and his organization figure prominently and obviously in the charging document and plea. That's not something federal prosecutors do lightly. This strongly implies further action against someone.
Now, we don't have the written factual basis yet (the statement of supporting facts that Cohen agrees to). But reports of Cohen's plea suggest he admitted to these lies to help Trump and Trump's narrative, but notably NOT claiming that Trump knew he'd lie to Congress.
But the conclusion that the President of the United States knew that his personal counsel was repeatedly lying to the Congress of the United States about the President's business is inescapable under these circumstances.
The new charge?Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, who pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws, made a surprise appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning to plead guilty to a new criminal charge.
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The expected new guilty plea in Federal District Court marks the first time the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has charged Mr. Cohen. In exchange for pleading guilty and continuing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller, he may hope to receive a lighter sentence than he otherwise would.
The moves comes just two weeks before Mr. Cohen, 52, is scheduled to be sentenced for his earlier guilty plea. That case, which also included bank and tax crimes, was brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
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The Southern District said last month in a court filing that it was continuing to investigate “Michael Cohen and others.” While the filing did not identify other suspects, the prosecutors are expected to examine whether people in Mr. Trump’s circle were aware of Mr. Cohen’s criminal conduct.
In the Southern District case, Mr. Cohen already faced a potential prison sentence of about four to five years under the nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines, according to his plea agreement. It is unclear what additional time he could face with the new guilty plea.
NYT
