Well the hottest story in this weeks update of Trump-Russia Corruption Timeline appears to be thate Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen has had his offices raided using a no-knock warrant by the office of the Southern District of New York — on referral by Robert Mueller — over potential criminal matters related to his paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 worth of hush money.
The FBI on Monday raided the office of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, obtaining a search warrant after a referral from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller according to the New York Times.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the agents also searched Cohen’s home and Manhattan hotel room.
Agents reportedly seized materials related to the $130,000 payment Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 election to prevent her from speaking out about the alleged affair she had with President Donald Trump. The FBI, the Times reported, seized “records related to several topics.”
Considering the fact that the transaction to facilitate this payment was flagged by his bank and referred to the Treasury Dept, that Trump’s own claim that he didn’t know anything about the Daniel’s payment indicates that Cohen may have committed fraud when setting up the NDA without the knowledge of one of the parties and it was reported several days ago that Mueller’s investigators had been showing up on the doorsteps of Trump businesses associates armed with subpoenas and asking questions about Michael Cohen most likely to see if the way he handled the Daniels deal was his regular way of doing business — and it probably was — this raid shouldn’t have been a surprise. But then again considering how clueless Trumptards like Cohen have behaved so far perhaps he didn’t realize that the bright shiny oncoming light racing toward him was really an FBI No-Knock Warrant Team on the way.
Surprise!
People in Trumpland are reportedly freaking out saying “Mueller has gone rogue” and Trump is screaming that this is “An Attack on our Country” which it isn’t, but it may increase talk that Mueller should be fired, however Mueller didn’t execute this warrant, Mueller didn’t seize Cohen documents and materials this was implemented by Trump’s own hand picked Acting U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman who is the replacement for Preet Bharara and his deputy who had both been fired last year. All Mueller did was make a referral and apparently a Federal Judge approved the use of a no-knock warrant — so there’s really no “there” there to blame Mueller of this.
If he fires Mueller anyway, particularly for this, it won’t stop the investigation because his deputy will just pick up the reins and continue on, and Trump could be headed for Impeachment town although i still doubt he’ll be removed for it.
And there have been plenty more hijinks under the Trump bridge this week.
Update: The Washington Post has the story that Cohen is being investigated for Bank Fraud, Wire Fraud and Campaign Finance violations in relation to his payments to Daniels.
Trump has responded to this before the camera is classic Trumpian conspiracy theory style railing about the Hillary investigation and how Mueller office is “Full of conflicts”and yadda yadda yadda.
Responding to news that his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen had been raided by the FBI, President Donald Trump called the search a “disgrace” and an “attack on our country.”
Seated between Vice President Mike Pence and his new national security adviser John Bolton, Trump told reporters the raid was a “disgraceful situation,” a “witch hunt” and a “whole new level of unfairness.” He then switched gears to point the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he said made a “terrible mistake.”
Trump also suggested that he learned of the raid on Cohen’s office and residence by the FBI from news reports — a claim refuted by prior reporting by CNN, who said he knew about the raid after it happened but before it was publicized.
During his rant Trump claims they “found no collusion” but Rep. Adam Schiff clearly disagree with that plus it’s fairly obvious from the Papadopoulos guily plea that that isn’t true and Robert Mueller hasn’t shared an opinion on the issue one way or the other yet. He whines yet again that nobody has looked into Hillary deleting 33,000 emails that she “acid washed” after receiving a subpoena, but that absolutely has been looked at and she had nothing to do with it.
On top of this we’ve also got Trump beginning his tariff war with China while the DOW begins acting like looping rollercoaster although those tariffs just magically don’t happen to include any of the suppliers for Ivanka Trump’s companies.
The steel and aluminum industries in China will soon be slapped with tariffs up to $50 billion by President Donald Trump. On Thursday, after China announced their intentions to retaliate against the United States with $50 billion in tariffs of their own against U.S. goods, Trump warned that his administration would respond with another set of tariffs, this time targeting $100 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Exempt from the proposed tariffs against China, however, is the clothing manufacturing industry.
U.S. officials say they used an algorithm to determine which goods to exclude from new tariffs. According to the Washington Post, the list was drafted to achieve “the lowest consumer impact,” ensuring goods like clothing and toys were excluded so as not to raise the cost on domestic consumer goods.
Well, isn’t that convenient?
Syria has perpetrated yet another chemical attack which obviously means they were very massively impressed by Trump’s Tomahawk missiles last time — however this attack has finally, finally, resulted in Trump calling out Putin for something.
Russia has of course said that this attack is merely a “hoax” and “Fake News” which sounds an awful lot like someone else we know. Who could that be again?
Anyhoo it appears that Trump is now doing a River Dance on his very one personal “Red Line.”
Don’t Trip Up there Donny, it might not be a pretty landing.
Also this week there was a deadly fire inside Trump Tower New York and Trump himself had all the class to tweet about the fire being put out, but not mentioning that one of his tenants, Todd Brasher, was killed in the fire between continuing to complain about Hillary Clinton and her emails.
Brasher was a 67 year-old artist whom Trump had called “crazy jew” who had been falling on hard financial times and was trying to sell his $2.5 Million apartment, but couldn’t give it away because of the association to Trump.
Also Trump Tower doesn’t have an internal sprinkler system which could have helped with the fire since it was built before inclusion of such systems became mandatory. In the 90’s when then Mayor Rudy Guilianni made an effort to update the standard due to a deadly high rise fire, Trump opposed it supposedly due to cost. According to The New York Post, Trump called at least six city council members to lobby against the sprinkler rules, and he even retired the campaign debt of one NYC councilman at a cost of $5,000.
So that sounds like typical Trump. Here are the daily details for Update #45 of Trump Russia Timeline.
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April 4th —
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NBC news reports that Trump has restricted what his staff can say about Russia. Multiple senior administration officials told the outlet that Trump said they should not tout the decision to provide arms to Ukraine for fear of agitating Putin. When the administration announced the expulsion of diplomats, he insisted that the White House should send the message that he “still wants to work with Russia.”
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Axios reports that the email system in Trump’s White House is not following protocols established by the Homeland Security and is at risk for hackers who could generate fake messages and spoof government addresses
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Trump admin ramps up their trade war with China by releasing a new list of $12 billion in Tariffs, then he announces that the Saudi’s “need to pay” if we’re going to keep Troops in Syria [Oh, so our military is basically a protection racket now?] and he lashes out at Democrats over the border again “CRIME!!” even though immigrants still commit less crime than native citizens.
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The DOW Opens another 500 points down as China announces counter tariffs against U.S. manufacturing as well as Trump-state agriculture.
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Mexican officials begin vetting the migrant caravan of refugees in an effort to disperse or return them. The group drops from 1,500 down to about 1,100.
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Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz [on Fox of course] says the Trump’s “not in the clear” since Mueller has named him a subject of his investigation.
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Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross claims America will WIN the Trade War — and the Dow crashes again as he speaks.
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In response to the attack on Youtube headquarters Don Jr. sends a hamfisted tweet accusing social media platforms of favoring mass shooters who are “liberal Vegan PETA activists” over NRA-supporting mass shooters because he claims Nasim Aghdam’s Youtube and Instagram accounts hasn’t been pulled yet. [Which is him completely missing the point about why those accounts with hateful threats vs Vegan recipes were pulled down.] Also Aghdam’s primary beef with Youtube was the fact that they’d already yanked some of her videos long before the shooting, and then the entire channel after the shooting so his complaint makes no sense.
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NRATV blames Youtube’s new restrictive policies on pro-Gun videos for the San Bruno shooting. Dana Rohrabacher links the shooting to “illegal aliens” [From Iran??]
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People Magazine reports that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards will be writing in her new book that Jared and Ivanka met with her and essentially offered a bribe of increased funding if they stopped offering abortion services. “In their eyes, if they could stop Planned Parenthood from providing abortions, it would confirm their reputation as savvy dealmakers. It was surreal, essentially being asked to barter away women’s rights for more money.” [How many pieces of silver was it?]
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Newly appointed Economics Czar Larry Kudlows claims Trump won’t take credit for ‘trade war’ market selloff: ‘Blame China, not Trump’. [And who started this war again?]
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Judge Amy Berman Jackson hears motions on Manafort’s civil suit against Mueller claiming he’s overstepped his authority — but she sounds real skeptical about it. “I don’t really understand what’s left to your case, “Nobody challenges prosecutions under the APA,” Jackson said while questioning Manaforts attorney. “Do you have case that supports this?” He didn’t.
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Felix Sater who has recently claimed that he had worked as an intelligence asset for the U.S. talks to the Senate Intel committee for 7 hours, he’s already spoken to Mueller and House Intel.
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CNN Analyst Juliette Kayyem, who previously oversaw the National Guard for the state of Massachusetts before becoming DHS’ Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs, said that guard deployments in the past have always been done with the coordination of governors — but not this time with Trump.
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Reports are that the Trump admin may finally begin sanctioning Russian Oligarchs this week — maybe.
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Migrant caravan members fleeing gang violence, poverty and political repression plead with Trump to “Give us a chance.”
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Pruitt says to Fox News that he just ‘Found Out About’ Aides’ Huge Raises ‘Yesterday’ but he’s been previously part of the approval process for them over the objections of the WH.
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Session touts Trump “Successful” attacks on the migrant caravan — when in reality some of them have different destinations other than the U.S. and actually only 200 of them are actually seeking asylum here.
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April 5th —
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Newsweek reports that Rex Tillerson spent $12 Million on “efficiency” consultants on a redesign project inside the State Dept which ultimately failed.
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Twitter claims that they have suspended over 1 Million accounts for promoting violence and terrorism since 2015 average about 270k per year.
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Trump is reported annoyed with the National Security teams disagreement with his plans to pull out of Syria — because it’s a stupid ass idea.
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Trump finally answers a question about Stormy Daniels and claims he didn’t know about the NDA of the $130,000 payment by Michael Cohen. This means that Cohen committed fraud by setting up a deal without informing his own client.
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CNN reports that Trump has floated the idea of replacing Sessions with Pruitt since he used to be Attorney General of Oklahoma and he’s already been confirmed by the Senate.
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Daily Beast reports that Pruitt’s condo SugarDaddy Steven Hart and his lobbying firm have several clients with business before the EPA, including MillerCoors, Rocky Mountain Bottling Co, Cheniere Energy, Black and Decker, Stanley Oil and Gas, Smithfield foods, Coca Cola, American Airlines, Chrysler, General Motors and Ford.
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AP reports that Pruitt’s condo lease agreement had originally had Steven Hart’s name as the landlord on it, but his name was scratched out by hand and his wife Vicky’s name was written in — while Steven is an energy lobbyist who might have conflicts being the landlord for the EPA administrator Vicky is a healthcare lobbyist who wouldn’t have that problem.
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Politico reports that on the day before Manafort was indicted Mueller seized his bank accounts and established wire taps on five of his phones.
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David Gergen tells Anderson Cooper on CNN that Trump attacks on our government institutions and media may lead to the death of democracy as it has in several other countries recently when they were taken over by authoritarian despots.
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McClathy reports that Mueller’s investigators have shown up on the doorsteps of Trump businesses associates armed with subpoenas and asking questions about Michael Cohen.
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Trump decides to triple the tariffs against China to $150 Billion — after they raise their tariffs against U.S. companies. He also literally tosses his prepared statements on tax reform away during a West Virginia rally and instead rails about “Million of Illegal Voters in California” and criticizes all the “rapists” in Mexico when complaining about the migrant caravan from Central America, most of whom are escaping rape and violence in Honduras and seeking legal humanitarian asylum in the U.S. Also the reason their moving as a caravan is for their own safety, and CNN reporters traveling with them ask and they say none of the women have been assaulted, many are traveling with their children and husbands.
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Vanity Fair reports that while partying at Mar-a-Lago with Trump last weekend Sean Hannity dished smack talk about Shep Smith to the gathered crowd to great hilarity.
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Daily Beast has sued the DOJ over their refusal to respond to FOIA requests about the Devin Nunes Memo and their edits and redactions to the Schiff counter memo concerning the Carter Page FISA warrant applications.
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AP reports that Trump has gotten tired of being told “NO” by John Kelly so he’s increasingly leaving him completely out of the loop. WSJ reports that Kelly had wanted to fire Pruitt last week, but Trump has been ignoring him. CNN reports that that’s because he’s been floating the idea of firing Jeff Sessions and replacing him with Pruitt because he used to be Attorney General of Oklahoma and has already been confirmed by the Senate — so no new hearings.
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CBS reports that early in the administration Pruitt had tried to get his security detail to use their emergency sirens and lights to get him out of a DC traffic jam so he could make his dinner reservation and that Eric Weese his lead agent who refused to do so, was removed.
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Politico and others report Pruitt aide Samantha Dravis, the senior counsel and associate administrator of the EPA’s office of policy, submitted her resignation last week.
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CNN reports the Corey Lewandowski unleashed a profane tirade against Democrats during his second interview with House Intel: “I’m not answering your fucking questions.”
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Reuters reports that the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against Jeff Sessions asking a federal court to overturn his December decision to revoke legal guidance designed to protect minorities, the indigent and disabled.
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Sinclair media explains away their Pravda Hostage Videos by saying “Every word on TV News is Scripted” by someone. Boris Ephsteyn also slams Cable News complaints about the Sinclair mass statement, because of course he does.
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CNBC reports that WH Lawyers are meeting with John Bolton over his potential conflicts of interest which of course include his political SuperPAC which funded Cambridge Analytica and his public statements in support of Alexander Torshin’s Russian “Right to Bear Arms” group.
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Homeland Sec. Nielsen says that the National Guard will be deployed to the border “immediately.”
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Thinkprogress reports that Pruitt has had five senior EPA officials who criticized his travel and his 20 person security detail either demoted or removed.
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Maddow reports that Scott Pruitt’s lavish trip to Morocco via Paris where he took 7 staffers and he security detail at the cost of $43,000 also had the additional nugget of having him pitch LNG energy to the Moroccan government which isn’t the EPA Administrator Job, but just so happens to benefit his lobbyist landlord Steven Hart’s client Chenier Energy which also happens to be controlled by Carl Icahn who had helped chose Pruitt for his job at EPA.
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April 6th —
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WaPo reports that Trump complains about Pruitt in private even though he praises him in public. They also report that on his first day in office Trump was annoyed that the military waited until a suspected terrorist was alone and had left the house with his family inside before launching a drone strike “Why did you wait?” [Cuz human decency?]
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The Trump Treasury Dept. finally announces sanctions against 7 Russian Oligarchs including Oleg Deripaska, 12 Russian companies and 17 senior government officials including Alexander Torshin who's being investigated for funneling Russia money into the election through the NRA. Fox and Friends “political consultant” Ainsley Earhardt has to look up “Oligarchy” on her phone live on the air in order to report about the new sanctions.
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CNN reports that Trump campaign foreign policy advisor and former DoD Inspector General Joseph Schmitz had contacted the State Dept and FBI to have them vet, confirm and declassify documents from a dark web sourced called “Patriot” which he believed were copies of Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails. Other sources familiar with the materials stated that they were fakes and may have been posted on the dark web version of Reddit. Schmitz would be fifth Trump affiliated person after Peter W. Smith, Rebeccah Mercer, Alexander Nix and Barbara Leeden’s to make similar attempts to access Hillary's deleted emails via the dark web or Wikileaks.
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Rachel Maddow reports how John Bolton has links both to Cambridge Analytica's stolen personal data which had apparently been used during the 2014 midterm elections in North Carolina … and also had done a video promo for now sanctioned oligarch Alexander Torhsin’s "Right to Bar Arms” group which is verily likely an influence campaign targeting U.S. NRA members and funnelled foreign money into U.S. elections.
- The Guardian reports that between 2011-2013 while Paul Manafort was working for Ukrainian President Yanakovych, he signed off on the stealth media “fake news” project to place articles in the Wall Street Journaland smear then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton through briefings to websites such as Breitbart News.
- Thinkprogress reports that chat logs including members of the White Nationalist Traditional Workers Party (TWP) have been leaked showing that the group specifically planned for violence prior to attending the 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, and that they gloated over the death of Heather Heyer.
- WSJ reports that early in his administration former Economics Czar Gary Cohn had given Trump PowerPoint presentations intended to debunk his inaccurate beliefs that Amazon was dodging taxes and abusing the U.S. Postal Service — but he just chose to ignore them.
- ABC News reports that cooperating witness George Nader has given Mueller information that Erik Prince may have lied to congress about his meeting in the Seychelles Island with Russian financier Kirill Dmitriev which he said was informal, but Nader says was intended to help setup a back-channel line of communication between Trump and Putin.
- GOP Financier Elliot Broidy fails to obtain a TRO against Qatar potentially releasing hacked emails which were stolen from his and his wife account and might expose his efforts to lobby the Trump administration against Qatar and in favor of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
- The Dow drops another 570 points in reaction to Trump’s increased tariff threat against China.
- WaPo reports that on his first day in office Trump had questioned why the Military had waited for a suspected terrorist had been allowed to leave his home with his family inside before a drone strike was launched against him. “Why did you wait?” [Uh, basic human decency perhaps?]
- Reports surface that Pruitt’s landlord had considered him an endless house guest like Kato Kaelin because the lease was only for a few weeks and Pruitt had stayed for months, Eventually they had to change the locks to get him out. Former Ethics Czar Walter Schaub points out that $50-a-night for one room was found to be a fair Air BNB style rate — but Pruitt’s daughter was also staying in the second bedroom for free which would amount to a potentially illegal gift.
- CNN reports that the migrant caravan is now about 500 people only about 200 of whom are planning to travel to the U.S.. This pilgrimage has actually happened every year for the last 5 years in an effort to highlight the violence and inhumane conditions in Honduras and El Salvador.
- Russian Human Rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov claims Putin has “a lot of dirt” on Trump after his 2013 visit to Moscow.
- Roger Stone is interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN. He claims he did nothing wrong with his DMs to Wikileaks but never directly contacted or had dinner with Assange. Flight Boarding passes provided to the DailyCaller tend to back up the claim that he was in West Hollywood the night he emailed Sam Nunberg that he was “dining with Assange” and he only said that to get Nunberg off the phone. He admits to contacting Guccifer 2.0 but basically ignores that that entity has been exposed as a front from the GRU, he continues to say that Randy Credico was a “back channel” for him to Assange, he calls the DNC email hack “alleged” and claims he was poisoned by Pelonium in an effort to frame the Russians, but offers no proof. Van Jones says picking through Stone’s Lies about Lies about Lies is like digging through a pile of bird crap.
- AP reports that Scott Pruitt’s security and travel fees have topped over $3 Million.
- Former Obama national security Sam Vinograd catches Huckabee-Sanders in a lie when she claims that the newly implemented sanctions against Russia oligarchs are about “election meddling” by pointing out that the fine print all relates to Obama’s previous sanction EO’s which were about the annexation of Crimea, not the 2016 Election attacks.
- PETA claims Don Jr should be deported for his hunting.
- 18 companies have pulled their ads from the Laura Ingraham show.
- Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) finally resigns as a result of his sexual harassment scandal.
- Somehow magically Trump’s new tariffs against China manage to completely fail to have an effect on Ivanka’s Clothing Company.
- Axios reports that Trump decided to start his threats of a Trade War with China without having a single deliberative meeting.
- April 7th —
- April 8th —
- April 9th —
- Michael Cohen has his offices raided by the FBI using a no-knock warrant. Documents involving his communications between Cohen and his clients — which include Trump — are seized, but it appears the warrant is in reference to the Stormy Daniels case and is executed through the Southern District of New York after being referred by Robert Mueller and approved by Rosenstein which indicates that this portion of the investigation is new compared to the Russia and money laundering issues and will be handled by the NY U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman not Mueller.
- Huckabee-Sanders defends Trump’s election lies and claims there are a ‘large number” of voter fraud cases when in reality there have only been about a half dozen legitimate cases in California. Jim Acosta also calls her out when she claim Trump has “always been tough on Russia.”
- Mark Zuckerberg meets with Senators prior to his scheduled testimony tomorrow and says that the fake ads on Facebook reached 126 Million Americans.
- Trump insists his impending Trade War with China will ultimately end well for farmers in Trump country. “We’ll make it up to them.”
- Stormy Daniels attorney Mike Avenatti announces that he ha had a sketch artist recreate the image of the person who threatened his client in 2011and that he’ll be releasing it tomorrow. He also renews his request to depose Cohen and Trump.
- CNN reports that Sinclair Broadcast Group has allowed a critical advertisement by a liberal consumer watchdog group Allied Progress which condemns Sinclair for mandating its anchors to read scripted promotional content to run, but it’s also running its own defense before and after the negative ad.
- Newsweek reports that in 1996 on top of criticizing her weight Trump tried to have sex with former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
- Ret. Gen. Mark Hertling humiliates Ivanka Trump after she showed ignorance of federal child nutrition and fitness programs that her own father has short changed by claiming that America “needs to do a better job of promoting physical activity among American children or else risk raising a generation of unhealthy kids.” Hertling responds “Ummm...there’s this thing called the President’s Council on Fitness, Sport, and Nutrition. Been around 60 years. Used to have 25 appointees...I was one of them. @MichelleObama helped & generated momentum in this area. No one is on the Council now. @FitnessGov. Check it out”
- John Bolton shows up for his first day as National Security Advisor but he hasn’t bothered to dissolve his SuperPac’s yet which seems like a screaming Hatch Act violation.
- Newsweek reports that Kushner tried to have Joshua Harris of Apollo Global Management — whose company had loaned his families company $184 Million — appointed as director of OMB a year prior to the loan.
- Tom Arnold says his ex-wife Rosanne and ABC should apologize for her conspiracy theory tweets particularly the ones where she dressed up as a Nazi. “I didn’t know she was like that.”
- Daily Beast reports that the code of ethics for Trump New York Hotel Casino is stronger than what he uses in the WH because the don’t allow the hiring of relatives.
- Shares in Oleg Deripaski giant aluminum company Rusal collapse in the wake his U.S. sanctions against him, pushing him close to default part of his debt.
- San Jose Mercury News reports that Ted Osius, the former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, said he resigned from his post last year after the Trump administration asked him to pressure the Vietnamese government to receive more than 8,000 Vietnamese refugees marked in the U.S. for deportation.
- Todd Brasher the 67 year-old artist who was killed in the Trump Tower fire had been falling on hard financial times and was trying to sell his $2.5 Million apartment, but couldn’t give it away because of the association to Trump.
- A source inside Homeland Security announces that the hack of the Arizona County Election Database during the 2016 election was committed by criminals not the Russian Government as reported by 60 Minutes. [Which could be correct, except FSB is known to use criminal hackers for their own purposes]. Systems in Illinois, Florida and one other state were also detected.
- WaPo reports that Cohen is being investigated for Bank Fraud, Wire Fraud and Campaign Finance violations in relation to his payments to Daniels.
- Trump whines and complains during a National Security Meeting about the Cohen Warrant claiming that the “broke into” his office, [Yeah, I’m thinking that’s what the No-Knock part of the warrant was about] and that it’s a “disgrace” and it’s “an attack on America” and “Mueller Office is the most biased and conflicted group of people” but in fact this raid was setup by Preet Bharara’s successor Geoffrey Berman the current Acting U.S. Attorney for Southern New York. Even if Trump fires Mueller or Berman, this investigation will still go on. “This is a pure and simple Witch Hunt” Trump claims. [Really totally not.]
- April 10th —
- Vanity Fair reports that a friend of Trump claims he understands that John Bolton just might start a war, but he decided to fire H.R. McMaster anyway in order to push the constant news about Stormy Daniels off the air.
- NYTimes reports that the FBI raid of Michael Cohen’s office, home and hotel room besides looking for documents related to the payoff of Stormy Daniels, were also looking for details on the “catch and kill” deal between American Media Inc (AMI) and former playboy playmate Karen McDougal, and Cohen’s collection of Taxi Medallions.
- Meghan McCain on The View responds to the raid on Michael Cohen by calling on Mueller to ‘wrap up’ Russia probe. [Which makes perfect sense since he didn’t conduct this raid, he’s got two pending trials against Paul Manafort still to deal with, 4 more guilty pleas to go to sentencing and 13 pending indictments against Russians outstanding.]
- Rawstory reports some of the greatest hits of Michael Cohen besides the Daniels and McDougal cases.
- Sued a woman after she revealed details of Trump fixing a beauty contest. In 2012, Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin revealed that Trump had fixed the pageant by pre-selecting the finalists.
- Cohen threatened to have a Harvard student expelled over a prank. In 2016, staff of the humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon posed as the student’s student newspaper, The Crimson, and told Trump they were considering endorsing him. They even stole a chair from the Crimson and brought it to Manhattan to pose with the future president. It was all a joke, and Trump’s team responded poorly, with Cohen threatening the students.
- Cohen tried to get $5 million from Bill Maher because of a joke. Neither Michael Cohen or Donald Trump have a very good sense of humor. Which is why they reacted so poorly to Maher demanding that Trump present a valid birth certificate to prove that he’s not the product of his mother having sex with an orangutan, with an offer to write a check for $5 million to the charity of Trump’s choice.
- Cohen sued a man who rented him a 12,000-square-foot vacation home rental for $250,000—far more than he even paid. According to a report in the New York Post, Cohen’s complaints included that the air conditioning was not working to his satisfaction (he had to sleep with the windows open to the ocean breeze) and that the twin beds were too small for Cohen’s son and sisters. While the lawsuit was for $250,000, the total bill for the home in the Hamptons was $150,000. “He ruined my summer!”
- Cohen defended his client by denying the existence of spousal rape… Donald Trump’s first wife has said she felt violated during sex. Ivanka’s mother, Ivana Trump, was married to Trump for 15 years…. In 1989 Donald was angry about a cosmetic procedure and took it out on her by ripping fist fulls of hair out of her head, tearing off her clothes and forcing himself inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months…. Michael Cohen responded to the allegation by denying the existence of spousal rape. “You cannot rape your spouse. And there’s very clear case law,” he told the Daily Beast. [Yes, you can that’s not how the law works, it’s a crime in all 50 states.]
- …and then Cohen threatened a reporter who wrote about the alleged rape. When the Daily Beast’s Brandy Zadrozny and Tim Mark wrote about the alleged rape, they contacted Cohen for comment. He responded by threatening to “mess your life up… for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet.” Cohen implied that he would die for defamation—which never happened. “I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have,”
- Cohen refused to stand up to his boss and boss’ wife Melania on birtherism. Cohen was a longtime Democrat—he voted for Obama and even volunteered for the ill-fated 1988 campaign of Michael Dukakis. And he knows Trump was wrong to accuse Obama of not being born in the United States. “I am certain that the president was born in Hawaii—I really am,” Cohen told ABC News.
- Cohen tried to bully his way out of the fraud lawsuit filed by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Trump maintained he did nothing wrong—until he settled the lawsuit. Cohen, as is his way, started with threats aimed at the Attorney General.