Ok, so if you’ve been under a rock, trapped in a 24 hour World of Warcraft raid or otherwise sleeping semi-comatose after a late night Sushi and hot sake binge you might not know that Trump’s new “legal eagle” Rudolph Giuliani just hit the Trump defense strategy with a series of exploding whale harpoons.
And the explosions are still going off, one after another after another.
Starting with the fact that Donald Trump actually paid Michael Cohen BACK for the $130,000 in hush money that went to Stephanie Clifford who is also known as porn star “Stormy Daniels.”
And after that it got worse.
In Giuliani’s world there was “never any basis” for the Mueller investigation because “there was no collusion” which skateboards right past the graveyard of multiple guilty pleas that Mueller has received and specific motions they’ve made in the Manafort case that link that investigation directly to Russian involvement in the election including the meeting he attended in June 2016 with Don Jr and Jared Kushner to deal with a Russian lawyer who has now admitted that she is an informant for the Kremlin.
Just agreeing to have that meeting is “collusion” Rudy. The fact that the didn’t report the claim that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary to the FBI and then left this meeting off of their SF-86 Security form shows that they had a conscience of guilt and may have violated federal law.
Former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Morning Joe that the Russians gained 4 advantages as a result of the Veselnitskaya meeting. 1) That the Trump campaign was “willing to deal” 2) That they would accepted information on Hillary Clinton that had the “provenance of the Russians.” 3) That they wouldn’t go to the Feds even though they were illegally offering information and 4) they got a Kompromat downpayment since the Trumpsters didn’t report the meeting, they could then use the threat of outing them as leverage.
None of that is any good.
And despite Don Jr’s claims that there “was no follow up” on the meeting CNN has reported that there was. Dems on House Intel have pointed out that Don jr. may have lied under oath when he claimed there was “no followup” on the Veselnitskaya meeting because they found emails from her to the Trump campaign asking again about the future status of the Magnitsky Act, and another email from Rob Goldston who had arranged the meeting, to Trump’s assistance Rhona Graff — which was a contact suggested by Don Jr. — that includes a document by Aras Agalarov about the Magnitsky Act which Rhona forwarded to Steve Bannon.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, told CNN's Jim Sciutto on Friday that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya reached out to the Trump family after the election with a request to follow up on efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 Russian sanctions the US enacted over human rights abuses.
Veselnitskaya was the Russian lawyer at the center of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton but instead Veselnitskaya focused on the repeal of the sanctions.
"Clearly, there's an expectation there on the Russian side that they may now have success with the Magnitsky Act, given that the prior meeting and communications dealt with the offer of help," Schiff said. "It certainly seems like the Russians were ready for payback."
So that’s also bad.
Here are some of the other issues that Giuliani generated.
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He says that Trump paid Cohen back his $130,000 through his retainer fees for $35,000 plus enough for taxes and a bonus and that means there’s no “campaign finance” problem, but that’s not how campaign finance law works — that would still be a violation by the size of an “in kind” contribution, by the fact they didn’t report it, plus potentially money laundering and fraud.
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He says that he won’t allow Trump to be interviewed for more than 2-3 hours because Hillary was only interview for 3 hours and he doesn’t want Trump “treated worse than her” when this has nothing to do with her case and if they get a subpoena that “limit” won’t matter.
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He says that the NY FBI who raided Cohen’s office were “Stormtroopers” — wait, didn't they use to work for Giuliani?
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He says that Trump fired Comey because he wouldn’t publicly exonerate him as being part of the Russia investigation [but technically that wasn’t up to him, it was up to Dana Boente at the time — and that also means that the Rosenstein letter was just an excuse, and again we’re back to obstruction.].
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He claims Sessions and Rosenstein should order the investigation “Over” [Because why When they have a pending trial against Manafort and 13 outstanding indictments against various Russians?]
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He says Cohen hardly did any “legal work” for Trump. [So what’s the retainer for because if it isn’t for legal work THAT’S FRAUD and how are they still claiming Attorney-Client privilege for something Cohen wasn’t doing?]
After Hannity, Giuliani went on Fox and Friends and dropped a few more bombs as if he hadn’t already done enough damage.
The response to all that has been something.
Stormy Daniel’s lawyer Michael Avenatti responded to Giuliani about the payback to Cohen: “That’s a felony.” He also went on Stephen Colbert showing the payment receipt made to Daniels and points out that it was made from First Republic Bank in San Francisco which indicates that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra would have jurisdiction over it and Trump can’t pardon someone charged with a State crime.
..
Notice most of these complaints about Giuliani and Trump are now coming from Fox News!
Oh and by the way the only member of Trump’s legal team who had a security clearance was John Dowd so none of them are now cleared to even review the background data behind Mueller’s 49 questions for Trump.
According to two people familiar with the situation who spoke with Bloomberg, Trump’s former lawyer John Dowd — who resigned over disputes with the rest of the legal team about whether Trump should sit for an interview with Mueller — was the only lawyer on the team who had a security clearance.
Jay Sekulow replaced Dowd as the head of the legal team, but is still waiting for his security clearance to be approved, Bloomberg reported. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer who processes requests from Mueller’s team, has a security clearance, but his role dictates that he represents the office of the presidency, not Trump himself. Cobb has not been involved in discussions with Mueller about a potential presidential interview, according to Bloomberg.
If Trump agrees to an interview, his lawyers would need a security clearance to discuss some questions that Mueller plans to ask Trump, namely a meeting that Trump had with Russian officials the day after he fired his former FBI director James Comey.
Ty Cobb has now left the Trump defense team only to be replaced by Giuliani — who’s gone totally rogue — and Elliot Emmet Flood. The fact here is that Trump had simply paid the money to Daniels himself — without going through Cohen — and had reported to the FEC it would have been legal. But he didn't do that and now Giuliani has put him personally on the hook for Criminal Campaign Finance violations.
Having a campaign contributor donate money to help hide his girlfriend/mistress from the Press is exactly why John Edwards was prosecuted, and Trump should know that because he’s claimed the National Enquirer should have gotten a Pulitzer for that story. So how stupid is this guy, really?
The staff in the White House had no idea this was coming and felt blind-sided according to the WaPo.
The disclosure by Giuliani was viewed by some White House advisers as a misstep.
“Everyone in Trump world will see this as a total unforced error and further affirmation that hiring Rudy wasn’t the best idea,” said one presidential adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the internal dynamics.
However, Giuliani told The Post that he and Trump discussed the fact that he planned to disclose that Trump reimbursed Cohen.
“Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said. “Sure, sure. He was well aware that at some point when I saw the opportunity, I was going to get this over with.”
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Robert Costa, one of the reporters behind that story for the Post, also reported on Wednesday night that Giuliani had spoken with the president shortly after his Hannity interview. According to Costa, Giuliani told him that the president was “very pleased” with his performance on Fox News and that he does not expect to be fired.
Giuliani went on a similar damage control mission with The Wall Street Journal after his Fox News appearance.
This is flat out disaster for Trump and the sad part for him is he obviously doesn’t even know it yet.