Let me just say one thing that I think is obvious, but hardly anyone is saying. The Special Counsel’s office has no interest in Michael Cohen, and the simple reason for that is because a) if he wanted to offer a deal to Cohen he would have done that already, b) Mueller’s office voluntarily offloaded the Cohen case to U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York when they really didn’t need too and c) basically nothing Cohen has to say is news to the Special Counsel because they already have Flynn, Gates and Papadopoulos under cooperative deals.
As Lanny Davis laid out last night on Maddow (also on Don Lemon and this morning with John Berman) Michael Cohen very strongly wants to talk to the Special Counsel, but the Counsel hasn’t yet made any attempt to talk to them.
And he won’t. He doesn’t need Michael Cohen.
Cohen when he surrendered for his plea certainly tossed Trump under the bus, backed it up and hit him with it again when he stated that he implemented the plan for illegal campaign finance expenditures for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal was specifically directed by Donald Trump.
As he did last night and this morning Davis has also made multiple hints that Trump had knowledge of “hacking” before the fact, or at least before it was fully revealed that Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileak had access to emails from the DNC, DCCC and Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta.
Yeah, ok, but that’s not news either. Even Omarasa has said that already.
MSNBC’s Katy Tur asked the former White House and Trump campaign staffer whether Donald Trump knew about hacked Democratic emails before they were publicly released during the 2016 — and Omarosa responded, “Absolutely.”
Tur followed up: “He knew what was coming out before WikiLeaks released them?” And Omarosa said, “Yes.” She also claimed that she had been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team but offered no further specifics.
The fact is that Mueller already has Papadopoulos for this info and he’s the original source, more importantly he has all of his emails which indicate that he discussed the “Hillary email dirt” with several members of the campaign including Stephen Miller and Paul Manafort.
Papadopoulos emailed Miller from London on April 25, 2016, after speaking multiple times to a Russian connected to the Kremlin’s ministry of foreign affairs to relay an “open invitation for Trump to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
The following day, Papadopoulos met with “overseas professor” Joseph Mifsud, who told the Trump foreign policy adviser that Russia had “thousands of emails” that he promised would hurt Clinton’s election chances.
Papadopoulos emailed Miller on April 27 to notify him about “interesting messages coming in from Moscow,” the guilty plea shows.
He also emailed Paul Manafort that day to discuss Russia’s interesting in hosting Trump, then the Republican frontrunner.
“Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right,” Papadopoulos told Manafort in the email
So he told Miller, he told Manafort — who in turn very likely told Rick Gates — and he also told Jeff Sessions, because Sessions had told him to “find out everything he could” about the “Clinton dirt.”
The former Trump campaign aide is reported to have told a stranger at a Chicago nightclub that now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions “encouraged” him in 2016 to “find out anything he could about the hacked Hillary Clinton emails,” according to a report from ThinkProgress.
That’s on top of the fact the Trump was informed of everything Papadopoulos was doing from the very start according to Newsweek.
George Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian academic who promised “thousands of emails” that would hurt the Clinton campaign, but the just-reported comments from Politico would be the first time Papadadoulos's work had a direct link to Trump himself, rather than lower-level campaign staffers.
Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, said Papadopoulos told her that Trump called him personally after he was hired to the campaign in March 2016. Trump later met with Papadopoulos one-on-one, when the aide told Trump about his ongoing efforts to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kakaounaki said.
Just remember that it was Gates who already received the “Queen for a Day” deal with Robert Mueller. That offer is now off the table.
Gates has already received the deal that Cohen is looking for. Gates was Manafort’s right hand and directly involved in all the shady criminal shit that he was doing, he was also right there when Papadopoulos was negotiating with Mifsud for those stolen DNC/Podesta emails. In fact, Mueller has already released emails between Manafort and Gates where they specifically discussed sending someone beside Trump himself to talk directly with Putin and his representatives as a result of contact made by Papadopoulos.
“Let[‘]s discuss, We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”
Trump’s entire defense here is that he didn’t know anything. He didn’t meet personally with Papadopoulos and authorize him to reach out to the Russians. He didn’t hear about the “Hillary email dirt” that Papadopoulos was practically emailing EVERYONE about including Manafort, Sessions and Miller.
He was just totally out of the loop?
The fuck he was.
If Cohen thinks telling Mueller he knows that Trump already knew about the hacked emails before they were released by Wikileaks, he pretty much knows that. He has a paper trail of emails and Papadopoulos own public statements that proves that.
Mueller already has what he needs to prove collusion and criminal conspiracy to violate the Logan Act, violate Sanctions on Russia, failure to inform the FBI of a criminal felony by the Russians, violate campaign finance rules by accepting valuable gifts from a foreign state and cover up all this information among all of these people.
He’s got no real use for Cohen, because he’s redundant. He’s got the main course, plus desert. Cohen is an after dinner mint. Tasty, but not filling. Could he use him and the documents gathered by SDNY as cooberation? Sure, that’s possible — but he doesn’t have to offer Cohen anything in order to get that now. He has it all already.
However, that doesn't mean that Congress won’t be very interested with Cohen has to say, particularly the Senate and once Dems win back the House I’m sure Adam Schiff will want to get him under oath. They’ll want to hear all the details of how Trump “directed him” to make the payments to Daniels and McDougal although I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to both Impeach and remove on it’s own. [In a decent world it should be, but we dealing with Senate Republicans here who blocked Merritt Garland for over a year and didn’t bat an eye — so don’t expect “reasonable.”]
Of course, while Cohen is the current shiny object the Trump team will call him a “liar” and “not a good lawyer” who he just happened to keep around for ten years and was vehemently defending when his apartment and officers were raided, but now isn’t anymore.
And then Mueller will finally release his “little report” which will probably confirm with detailed documentation exactly what Cohen will be willingly spilling all over the halls of the Capital.
That’s when everybody can get out the Popcorn!
I don’t think Cohen will have any effect on Mueller, but he might have an effect on Congress by being confirmation for what Mueller will probably bring to the table. I’ve previously said that I didn’t think Mueller alone will be enough to move the nearly a dozen GOP Senators to remove the malignant cancer now at the center of the White House, but Mueller and Cohen combined and acting separately to reach the same conclusion?
Hmm….