Michael Cohen Admits Talks for Trump Over Moscow Tower Occurred Well Into Campaign

EmeraldGhost wrote:Yeah.  What's all this incessant talk we've been hearing from the Demos about an impeachable offense?  Where's the impeachable offense?

You're just sayin' this idiotic shit to get me wound up. Well, I got news for ya' buster, it ain't gonna work.

Omm-m-m-m... in with the good air, out with the bad thoughts, bunny rabbits and rainbows. Omm-m-m-m-m...

See, I'm calm as a Buddhist monk now, go ahead, do your worst.

Deus X wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote:Yeah.  What's all this incessant talk we've been hearing from the Demos about an impeachable offense?  Where's the impeachable offense?

You're just sayin' this idiotic shit to get me wound up. Well, I got news for ya' buster, it ain't gonna work.

Omm-m-m-m... in with the good air, out with the bad thoughts, bunny rabbits and rainbows. Omm-m-m-m-m...

See, I'm calm as a Buddhist monk now, go ahead, do your worst.

Okay, Ghandi … now that you've quit yer hyperventilating …. where's the impeachable offense?

(don't set yourself on fire with a can of gasoline though … that's gotta hurt, I don't care who ya are!)

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Deus X wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote:

What's relevant is what Democrats have been yelling from the rooftops to the American public for almost two years Mueller was going to find … to wit:  evidence that Trump was in a conspiracy with Putin to hack the DNC e-mail system and release them to the public via wikileaks …. a crime which, according to Democrats, caused Hillary to lose the election.   (which is kind of a specious claim itself, if you ask me)

You're a fucking liar! What Democrats? Show some evidence of your idiotic assertion.

This is typical cop shit, accuse someone of something then lie your ass off.

Yeah.  What's all this incessant talk we've been hearing from the Demos about an impeachable offense?  Where's the impeachable offense?

http://fortune.com/2018/09/21/donald-trump-lawsuit-investigation-charges-news-update/

Floridatexan wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Deus X wrote:

EmeraldGhost wrote:

What's relevant is what Democrats have been yelling from the rooftops to the American public for almost two years Mueller was going to find … to wit:  evidence that Trump was in a conspiracy with Putin to hack the DNC e-mail system and release them to the public via wikileaks …. a crime which, according to Democrats, caused Hillary to lose the election.   (which is kind of a specious claim itself, if you ask me)

You're a fucking liar! What Democrats? Show some evidence of your idiotic assertion.

This is typical cop shit, accuse someone of something then lie your ass off.

Yeah.  What's all this incessant talk we've been hearing from the Demos about an impeachable offense?  Where's the impeachable offense?

http://fortune.com/2018/09/21/donald-trump-lawsuit-investigation-charges-news-update/

Not quite as long as the "Long List of Republican Sex Offenders" but long enough.

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Deus X wrote:

Why do you keep yammering about that?   It's irrelevant what Mueller was given authority to investigate.  

What's relevant is what Democrats have been yelling from the rooftops to the American public for almost two years Mueller was going to find … to wit:  evidence that Trump was in a conspiracy with Putin to hack the DNC e-mail system and release them to the public via wikileaks …. a crime which, according to Democrats, caused Hillary to lose the election.   (which is kind of a specious claim itself, if you ask me)

So …. where's the beef?  Everybody knew way back during the campaign Trump.org had been trying to do a deal to build a hotel in Moscow.  They never hid that fact.  That's not news.

Here we go, back one more time, Emerald Ghost. Mueller isn't getting these confessions because he has no documentation behind them. Nobody is confessing just because Mueller asked them to. He has e-mails from Jerome Corsi to Roger Stone proving they both knew exactly when the Wikileaks news would come out. Roger stone was in direct contact with the Trump campaign through Paul Manafort. Paul Manafort contacted Don Jr who wrote the e-mail stating how very happy he would be to have the info on Hillary and her e-mails. There were meetings. At one of these meetings, Donald Jr talked on the phone several times to a "blocked" phone number. The POTUS has a blocked number. The Republicans in congress refused to look up the records of that conversation to see exactly who those phone calls were made to. The first thing the Dems will do in January, according to Adam Schiff, is to subpoena those phone records to see who Don Jr was calling.  It is a chain. It isn't a complicated chain and if Mueller didn't have paper documentation or e-mails proving it, you wouldn't be seeing Stone, and Corsi, and Manafort, and the POTUS all acting like they need very badly to piss their pants.
Hell YES, it has to do with Russian collusion, not just with the apartment building that Trump was trying to get financed by a bank that was under US Government sanctions from  the Obama administration at the time. Trump was breaking the llaw even then because the US had said no US businesses could deal with this bank. It's a Russian bank known for money laundering. Trump wanted to borrow money for his building from them. He was planning to give Putin luxury apartments on the top floor of his building in exchange for Putin's help in getting the loan. This is verified fact, not rumor. Once Putin realized how much more he could get from Trump as president, and that the deal might be suspicious to voters, it fell through.  Trump's  a liar, and he's  a thief, and he's also committed treason. Dems aren't in the least bit worried that it can't be proven, only that the Repukes will STILL support him when it's all made clear. Mueller is doing the job that he was commissioned to do, exactly as he was supposed to do it. It's just that when there's so much shit to plow through, it's taking longer than expected.

Yet... we already know for certain that hillary and the dnc though a third party lawyer paid millions (see: campaign finance laws) for russian counterintelligence. Then provided it to the fbi and justice dept without full disclosure... who used it to gain fisa warrants to surveil the opposition campaign... and leaked it to the press. Unless that's part of mueller's findings the whole thing's a sham. Poison fruit.

Democrats got softball interviews and immunities... Republicans got wiretapped, warrants, raids, and federal charges. That's ok though. This will be the new normal and I'm all for transparency and prison for political violators.

bigdog wrote:Here we go, back one more time, Emerald Ghost. Mueller isn't getting these confessions because he has no documentation behind them. Nobody is confessing just because Mueller asked them to. He has e-mails from Jerome Corsi to Roger Stone proving they both knew exactly when the Wikileaks news would come out. Roger stone was in direct contact with the Trump campaign through Paul Manafort. Paul Manafort contacted Don Jr who wrote the e-mail stating how very happy he would be to have the info on Hillary and her e-mails. There were meetings. At one of these meetings, Donald Jr talked on the phone several times to a "blocked" phone number. The POTUS has a blocked number. The Republicans in congress refused to look up the records of that conversation to see exactly who those phone calls were made to. The first thing the Dems will do in January, according to Adam Schiff, is to subpoena those phone records to see who Don Jr was calling.  It is a chain. It isn't a complicated chain and if Mueller didn't have paper documentation or e-mails proving it, you wouldn't be seeing Stone, and Corsi, and Manafort, and the POTUS all acting like they need very badly to piss their pants.
Hell YES, it has to do with Russian collusion, not just with the apartment building that Trump was trying to get financed by a bank that was under US Government sanctions from  the Obama administration at the time. Trump was breaking the llaw even then because the US had said no US businesses could deal with this bank. It's a Russian bank known for money laundering. Trump wanted to borrow money for his building from them. He was planning to give Putin luxury apartments on the top floor of his building in exchange for Putin's help in getting the loan. This is verified fact, not rumor. Once Putin realized how much more he could get from Trump as president, and that the deal might be suspicious to voters, it fell through.  Trump's  a liar, and he's  a thief, and he's also committed treason. Dems aren't in the least bit worried that it can't be proven, only that the Repukes will STILL support him when it's all made clear. Mueller is doing the job that he was commissioned to do, exactly as he was supposed to do it. It's just that when there's so much shit to plow through, it's taking longer than expected.

…. None of the prior “speaking indictments” or the latest information from Corsi or Cohen show that Mueller has made the critical linkage to Trump. It is clear that Trump associates were interested in seeing the WikiLeaks material, as Trump himself stated on the 2016 campaign trail. That is not a crime any more than it was a crime for Clinton campaign investigators to go to Russia to gather dirt on Trump, including information from Russian intelligence. Moreover, an unsuccessful building project in Moscow does not equal a quid pro quo any more than the tens of millions of dollars given to the Clintons, as speaking fees or foundation donations, equaled wrongdoing for Hillary Clinton as head of the State Department. …      

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/419244-what-does-mueller-have-on-trump

If the evidence gathered by Mueller doesn't quite add up to a sure conviction of Trump in a Federal jury trial  (with all the rules and procedure that comes with that) where there would be a vigorous defense (and there would be one - the motions, depositions, etc etc would drag on for years) …. an indictment will not be sought.  I guaran-damn-tee you.   You don't indict a sitting President unless you've got a 100% smoking gun for which there can be no defense.  It won't happen.  People convicted of lying under oath and who have been given special consideration in return for their testimony are not the kind of people any prosecutor wants to put on the stand and rely upon to make their case.  

And no impeachment will be upheld by the Senate without a conviction, you can be sure of that also.

If Mueller can't convict Trump of an offense related to a direct conspiracy with the Russian government, there will be no impeachment and Trump survives to 2020.  And if there's no indictment, his incessant assertions of "witch hunt" get validated in the eyes of the public which enhances his chances of re-election.

And that doesn't constitute any kind of defense of Trump on my part … that's just my view of the political reality.

Nixon

Deus X wrote:Nixon

This ain't 1974 and Trump ain't no Nixon.

Trump would fight it to the end, and then appeal it if convicted … that's why it would be a mistake to indict him without a 100% smoking gun.  And I would be very very surprised if he does have one.  I really doubt it …. we'd have heard about it by now. If not from a Mueller team leak … from somewhere else.

Don't believe me?   Here, read this at The Nation: (a solidly progressive outlet, in case any of ya'll are unawares)

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-mueller-manafort-trump-agenda/

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Deus X wrote:Nixon

This ain't 1974 and Trump ain't no Nixon.

Trump would fight it to the end, and then appeal it if convicted … that's why it would be a mistake to indict him without a 100% smoking gun.  And I would be very very surprised if he does have one.  I really doubt it …. we'd have heard about it by now.  If not from a Mueller team leak … from somewhere else.

Don't believe me?   Here, read this at The Nation: (a solidly progressive outlet, in case any of ya'll are unawares)

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-mueller-manafort-trump-agenda/

And he certainly isn't Gary's Johnson, hero of the glibturd stoners.

EmeraldGhost wrote:

Deus X wrote:Nixon

This ain't 1974 and Trump ain't no Nixon.

Trump would fight it to the end, and then appeal it if convicted …

There is no "appeal" from a guilty verdict of impeachment in the Senate. That's why Nixon resigned rather than face a trial in the Senate--he knew he'd be convicted.

I don't think that's likely in this case right now but, then again, Mueller hasn't finished. It's very possible he'll deliver findings that cause enough Republican Senators to turn against Trump and vote guilty in the Senate.

The "fat lady" is just warming up.

The Mueller investigation doesn't leak. And even without knowing all the particulars, it's completely obvious that Trump conspired against the US and tried to obstruct justice.

Emerald Ghost refuses to accept the links that the Mueller probe has already made between Trump and the Russians .
Just like all the other deniers out there who are secretly Trump lovers but ashamed to admit it.
It's not a matter of IF Mueller will be able to prove these things, he has people in jail already from his investigation and 30 or 40 have been indicted that are overseas and can't be arrested. Go tell Paul Manafort that Mueller hasn't found anything yet. That's if they'll let you into his solitary confinement jail cell.  He's not interested in somebody saying nothing is going to come of the investigation.
The chain is there. There are e-mails to prove it. In January, there will be mass indictments when the Dems send the records from Congressional interviews in which Trump associates can already be proven to have lied to Congress. Adam Schiff says he wants all of them who have perjured themselves to be indicted for lying to Congress. When those lies become convictions, who do you think the lies are going to lead directly to?
You're not dumb Emerald, but you are absolutely not an impartial observer either. Otherwise, you'd understand that what you are waiting for has pretty much already happened. We're just waiting for the official reports. And Dems aren't worried one iota about what they will say. Whoever told you that is a liar.

EmeraldGhost wrote:The Cohen guilty plea doesn’t get him any closer to collusion.

The Mueller investigation remains a “collusion” probe without any collusion. For all of the media’s heavy breathing about Thursday’s news of a Michael Cohen guilty plea, it doesn’t get Mueller any closer to the stated goal of his investigation. On CNN, where its programming is an endless game of anti-Trump gotcha, Jeff Zucker’s puppets recited his mandated talking point that Trump’s fixer “may” have “broken” everything, blah, blah, blah. But the very conjectural character of this feverish chatter indicated the hollowness of the story. If the plea contained any evidence of collusion, the Hillary donors who make up much of Mueller’s staff would surely have leaked it to CNN by now.

One can only laugh at the sheer propagandistic absurdity of CNN’s “timeline” of “possible” Trump-Russian collusion, which naturally still includes the thoroughly debunked claim that Trump’s aides “weakened” the GOP platform to please Putin. It is one of the media’s favorite fables, which was concocted by the Washington Post, with the help of hawkish dingbats and NeverTrumpers. But as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York has shown repeatedly, the platform’s plank on Russia was strengthened, not weakened.

CNN was also rattling on about Trump’s canceled meeting with Putin, turning a development it would normally treat as a positive into a negative — more evidence that Trump is running scared after the Cohen plea! One of its hysterics thought Trump look “worried” today. He didn’t look worried to me. He confidently treated the news for what it is: a manageable political problem, but hardly material for impeachment.

Does anybody outside of the ruling-class bubble really think that the American people will demand Trump be tossed from office based on a Talmudic reading of his pre-presidential statements? Why, he said that he had no deals in Russia! That his lawyer (whom he wanted to fire at one point) sought a deal but didn’t get one doesn’t contradict his campaign statements. But even if it does, who cares (from the vantage point of impeachment)? Good luck getting two-thirds of the Senate to drive him out of office on that one. Of course, the gibbering pundits on CNN fervently hope that Trump may have lied about this matter more recently. But what’s the basis of that hope? Trump’s lawyers say that in his written responses to Mueller he acknowledged that he knew about Cohen’s talks. “The president said there was a proposal, it was discussed with Cohen, there was a nonbinding letter of intent and it didn’t go beyond that,” said Rudy Giuliani.

So what exactly is incriminating for Trump about Cohen’s plea? It establishes that Cohen lied, not Trump. According to Giuliani, Mueller didn’t even ask Trump in written form about the “timing” of his discussions with Cohen. So any inconsistencies on that score don’t appear to expose Trump to any impeachable material. The only reason Mueller even knew about the talks, says Giuliani, is that Trump’s legal team told him about them. “We have provided them with every document about this from the beginning — that’s the only reason they know about it,” he said.

It is not even clear if the talks about a Trump Tower in Moscow spilled over into the general election. According to Cohen, they ended in June before Trump was even certified as the nominee at a convention the media hyped as a possible impediment to his getting that certification. Trump’s explanation that he couldn’t give up his day job, since he didn’t know for certain if he would win the presidency, gave the cheap shot artists at CNN more material to opine wildly off. See, it was all a stunt! CNN trotted out one of the many scummy, opportunistic Trump biographers (all of whom seem to have cots in the green rooms of MSNBC and CNN) to push the non-sequitur that Trump’s maintenance of his business in early 2016 proved he “never” thought he would win. What juvenile dreck. At this late date, after two years of substantial accomplishments from the Trump administration, liberals are still recycling the lame talking point that Trump wasn’t “serious” about winning the White House. If he is such a clown, why do they spend almost every waking minute fulminating about him? For such an allegedly unserious person, they take him very seriously.

Mueller is the ruling class’s battering ram against Trump, but with each fruitless (impeachment-wise) indictment he reveals that he has got nothing. A determined prosecutor, as the saying goes, can indict a ham sandwich. All Mueller got on Thursday was a lawyer full of baloney, on yet another process crime meaningless to Mueller’s actual mandate.

They're going to be eating those words when Mueller comes out w/ the evidence. They forget Flynn has cooperated and hasn't testified yet. He was caught discussing lifting sanctions after Trump was elected. It certainly wasn't w/o Trump's knowledge. Now we know why Trump was going to lift sanctions. To enrich himself w/ a Trump Tower as well as help w/ the election. I'd say that's pretty illegal. Trump is going down.

Here’s why Trump’s proposed Moscow project is even dirtier than it looks

Weirdly, it kind of makes sense that Donald Trump’s supporters on Fox News and elsewhere are brushing off last week’s revelations about the Trump Tower Moscow deal as a “nothingburger.”This article was originally published at SalonThis knee-jerk reaction makes sense because Trump loyalists clearly haven’t been following the ongoing reporting on this story, even though Rupert Murdoch’s own paper, the Wall Street Journal, has been one of many top-shelf publications covering the Trump-Russia saga in granular detail. Simply put: The Red Hats are just now catching up to speed with a story that’s been years in the making. So perhaps their nothingburger meme is just a reflection of being slow on the uptake.
OK, that’s admittedly a generous analysis of what we’re hearing from Trump’s loyalists, especially after it became clear that Trump and his company were engaged in a colossal real estate deal to build what literally would’ve been the tallest building in Russia, with Vladimir Putin as a principal, and that this was negotiated during the same period of time when Putin was engaged in a pervasive military intelligence cyberattack against the United States, with the explicit intention of helping Trump become president.

The most realistic analysis is that Trumpers are being deliberately ignorant about a vast series of crimes with our current president at the center of a nefarious confederacy that could easily be defined as the Trump crime family. This is absolutely a something burger, stacked high with all the fixin’s — and we haven’t really seen the lion’s share of the details yet.

Trump supporters have been belittling the news as just another real estate deal by a real estate mogul: Nothing to see here, they say. This would be not unlike calling the U.S. Civil War just another case of “regional tensions.” They fail to grasp that the president repeatedly lied about his ties to Russia, and that he was doing so because he was obviously trying to keep this deal from being revealed to his Republican voters during the Republican primary season in 2015 and 2016.

Even a cursory glance at the record of denials shows that Trump and his surrogates vehemently rebuffed any and all suggestions about business with Russia, as well as earlier reports about Trump Tower Moscow — now known as the “Moscow Project” — before it was finally tossed to the back burner in June of 2016 (as far as we know). Anyone existing in the real world can see how the deal and its secrecy, then and now, exposed Trump to potential blackmail by the Russian government, which itself faced a series of economically crippling sanctions by the U.S. and our allies. Consequently, Trump was and is beholden to Putin, with the Moscow Project as at least one of the Russian anvils dangling over the president’s head. And we still don’t know whether the Moscow Project is set to be reanimated after Trump finally leaves office. It could be that Trump is carrying a torch for the project until all this blows over.

But it wasn’t just the overall hush-hush nature of the Moscow Project that poses such a threat to American national security. The true smoking gun at the center of the Trump Tower Moscow prong of the Russia story happens to be a Russian bank known as VTB. Those who haven’t been following the day-to-day developments (hello, Red Hats) might not know that 60 percent of VTB is controlled by the Kremlin.

It turns out that one of Trump’s many shady operatives and hangers-on, Felix Sater, a Russian-born New Yorker with an office in Trump Tower, arranged financing for the Moscow Project. The money was to be put up by VTB, and Trump himself signed a letter of intent to build the skyscraper, complete with a spa facility for Ivanka Trump’s brand and a $50 million penthouse for Putin (priorities, priorities).

VTB’s financing appears to have been locked in around October 2015, while Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, was busily deploying its attack against the Democrats and the forthcoming American elections.

What the nothingburger crowd won’t say out loud is that VTB has been subject to American sanctions since July 2014, after Putin invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea in the wake of the Sochi Olympics. Simply put, it’s illegal for any Americans or American corporations, including the Trump Organization, to do business with VTB and other entities under sanction. Trump, Cohen and Sater did it anyway.

No wonder Trump and his people wanted to keep the deal secret. Sanctions were potentially violated, and Putin appears to have been bribed with a $50 million apartment. If that’s a nothingburger, I’d hate to see what an actual burger looks like.

This whole arrangement is amplified by the fact that Trump inexplicably admitted last week that the Moscow Project was a real thing, while also not denying any of the related details. To repeat: Trump confessed to the existence of the deal. The Moscow Project, therefore, isn’t “fake news.” The president has confirmed it.

By way of context, couple Trump’s remarkable confession with the rest of Trump’s links to Russia including financing for various Trump projects; campaign personnel links to Putin and other Russia oligarchs — specifically, convicted hired goons like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn; alleged links between Russian cash and the Trump Soho property; Trump’s direct link to oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, who purchased a moldy Trump property in Palm Beach at a significant markup; and so on — all of which render Trump’s repeated denials intensely laughable. We can expect to hear many more details from Robert Mueller once all this reaches a public conclusion.

Trump is publicly altering American foreign policy toward Russia in order to suit his own financial best interests. But it could be far worse than that. Trump could also be ensnared by Russian kompromat, forcing him to enact policies favorable to Putin and Putin alone (the lifting of sanctions and the penalties in the Magnitsky Act, primarily). Anyone beating the nothingburger meme to death right now isn’t seeing the harrowing big picture — the criminal and national security ramifications of Trump’s ill-advised alliance with a nation whose government is run by thugs, assassins and thieves. If you’re still unconvinced, go ahead and replace every instance of “Trump” in this article with “Obama” and then tell us again how it’s all a big nothingburger.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/heres-trumps-proposed-moscow-project-even-dirtier-looks/?comments=disqus

Trump is publicly altering American foreign policy toward Russia in order to suit his own financial best interests.

Indeed. Trump's entire regime has been one nonstop cavalcade of conflict-of-interest. It's not that I don't think a businessman could be president... I just don't think one who's a complete sociopath should be. Trump has the impulse-control skills of a toddler.

But it could be far worse than that. Trump could also be ensnared by Russian kompromat, forcing him to enact policies favorable to Putin and Putin alone (the lifting of sanctions and the penalties in the Magnitsky Act, primarily).

Putin definitely has something on Trump. I don't know if there's a "pee tape" or something like it, or if it's just Trump's own need to have powerful people he thinks of as "tough" like him, but it's been a constant motivator in his life, and one he has almost no control over. The opinion of powerful people has always been like the chute in a slaughterhouse to Trump, leading him wherever he goes. He likely decided to run for President because Obama made him the butt of a few jokes at a correspondent's dinner. That hurt Trump's fragile ego and he's been lashing out ever since. And Putin was once mistranslated as calling Trump "brilliant" (apparently the word was actually more like "flashy, attention-getting") and Trump fell in right behind Putin like a baby duck. He can't do anything against a powerful guy he thinks "likes" him. Same with Kim. Kim sent him a "nice letter" and so now Kim gets to build all the nuclear launching pads he wants.

It's all a matter of knowing what buttons to push. Trump labels his and has neon signs pointing to 'em. Any dictator or celebrity can get anything they want out of him. Hell, half the reason Trump worked so hard to build up his sham "billionaire" status was so he could hang out with famous people. He needs it. No matter what he does he's always going to be the insecure, ugly little kid who could never please his daddy.

Trump's like an alligator. They're born what they are. They get bigger, but they don't grow.

Every Republicans biggest fear is that the Democrats will treat Trump like Republicans treated Obama.- Tea Pain

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1055659/World-War-3-US-vs-Russia-ukraine-extraordinary-flight-kerch-strait