Michael Cohen asserts that he was with Trump when Trump learned from Don Jr. that the Russians wanted to meet with the campaign in Trump Tower – as ultimately happened on June 2016 – where the Russians were to offer dirt on Hillary.
CNN reports that Cohen’s attorney has offered such testimony to the Robert Mueller investigation.
Such testimony, if credible, is invaluable. According to former Eastern Virginia U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, if Trump knew of the Russian effort to elect him, knew that the meeting would involve Russians, and gave the go-ahead, it would immediately implicate Trump within the Russian conspiracy already filed. (Recall my story that the Russian election fraud becomes the predicate crime to which the feds will link co-conspirators through knowing actions in furtherance of the conspiracy). This would tie a red ribbon around the bow making Trump every bit as guilty for the original conspiracy as the Russians named in the Mueller indictment.
Another element to be examined would be the fact that Donald Jr. told the Senate Investigation committee that his father didn’t know of the meeting. Thus, Donald Trump Junior is guilty of perjury before congress (provided Cohen’s testimony is credible, that he can back up why he should be believed). Another question would then be, did Don Jr. decide on his own to lie before the Senate, or did he speak to his father about it? If he spoke to his father about it and was told to lie, just add one more obstruction of justice charge to the pile.
Trump also finds himself in a real sticky situation with respect to that meeting, because we know he was in the building during the meeting. The question would become, did Trump himself go to the meeting? It seems unlikely, because we have not heard anything suggesting he did. But, the fact that the entire senior campaign staff would meet with a Russian agent, one floor below where the candidate himself sat, begs the question: Why would a meeting be so important as to require the attendance of everyone in the Trump campaign, except the candidate, when the candidate was available? The most logical answer – in my mind – is that they knew the meeting was at the very least sketchy, outright illegal at worst, and thus they attempted to give Trump plausible deniability with respect to the meeting.
The more lies told about this meeting, the less I believe that no information of any import came out during the meeting. They knew the importance of this meeting all along. The Trump campaign was a sieve. It held no secrets at all – but it did hold this one, at least for a year, until after the election. So, that tells me they knew this meeting was “different” than the usual back-biting stuff.
Interestingly, tonight’s newly released information was not put out by the Cohen camp. Speculation in the news reports includes the possibility that the Trump camp put the news out ahead of time in order to takeaway the power of that “offer” of evidence from Cohen to the prosecutors. If that’s the case, it merely proves the Trump camp to be as stupid as it has acted all along. The government still needs someone to take that witness stand and say it happened. The fact that the information is out there does no good until the government has secured a witness to affirm the testimony.
Last thing.
So long as Trump knew the Russians were coming to the meeting with the offer, and he did nothing to stop it, it proves collusion, period. He agreed to work with the Russians, who were working against our election, whether the meeting came to anything or not doesn’t matter. He can whine, claim whatever he wants, and the legal definitions will be tested and twisted, but the man agreed to have Russia assist his campaign, knowing that Russia was working to get him elected – in an illegal manner.
The really last thing, I think the bigger hammers yet to drop STILL involve manipulation of data by Russian hackers, the use of the micro-targeting with Cambridge Analytica, an possible voter suppression in those 3 key states. Never forget just how perfectly the stars aligned that night with respect to the electoral college.
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Follow me on Twitter, we just got to some UFO stuff, such a nice diversion. @MiciakZoom
