Quote :

".@Novartis has put out an updated statement on Michael Cohen acknowledging the contract was for $100,000 EVERY MONTH for a year. So $1.2m!?!?!"

Lol, totally normal to pay a renowned Health Care expert like Michael Cohen 100k a month. Nothing untoward going on there..

[Edited on May 9, 2018 at 12:19 PM. Reason : Jack of all trades really — real estate, tax accountant and health care ]

5/9/2018 12:07:07 PM

i want eleusis to tell us why this is totally normal

5/9/2018 12:23:31 PM

if anyone isn't up to speed on the connection to this topic:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/05/stormy-cohen-and-the-russians-new-evidence-that-am.html

Quote :

"What about the Russian oligarch? His name is Viktor Vekselberg, and he’s a billionaire, and he’s pals with Putin. He owns a company called Renova that works in the Russian energy sector. Renova owned an American affiliate called Columbus Nova, which is the company that paid Cohen the half a million from January – August 2017. Vekselberg denies that Columbus Nova had anything to do with him, but Columbus Nova was listed on Renova’s website as a client as recently as November 2017. The payments to Cohen began 11 months earlier. Also, Renova is Columbus Nova’s biggest client. Also, Columbus Nova’s owner, Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg’s cousin. It’s worth noting that Vekselberg and his associate Len Blavatnik own about 16% of a Russian aluminum company called RUSAL, which is majority-owned by Oleg Deripaska, Paul Manafort’s former business partner. RUSAL recently got hit with sanctions, but last month the Trump administration singled RUSAL out for possible sanctions relief. Also, according to documents from the Panama Papers offshore investment leak, Renova has a financial relationship with VTB, one of Russia’s largest state-owned banks. The month before Vekselberg’s cousin started giving Cohen money, Jared Kushner met secretly with the head of VTB in Trump Tower. Also, Intrater donated $250,000 to the Trump Inauguration Fund, another $35,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, and in June 2017 he gave $29,600 to the Republican National Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Also, Vekselberg attended Trump’s inauguration. Also, according to the NBC report, Columbus Nova has registered several alt-right internet domains, though those sites currently display an error message. Nothing to see here. Anyway, Columbus Nova told NBC that its payments to Cohen were related to “real estate.” Robert Mueller’s team has already interviewed both Vikelsberg and Intrater about the payments to Cohen."

5/9/2018 1:55:37 PM

Obviously if he took money from a sanctioned firm he’d be in shit.

That said, despite it being obvious quid pro quo, pay for play or whatever term you want to use I believe SCOTUS has ruled unless that money was a direct bribe to a policy change there is little legal liability. Am I wrong?

5/9/2018 2:29:07 PM

Sanctions

5/9/2018 2:39:17 PM

^^ That's what I've been thinking. Cohen isn't a government official and can't actually perform an official act.

Maybe failure to register as a foreign lobbyist?

5/9/2018 2:57:58 PM

^did any of the money come directly through foreign channels? Everything seems to have come through an American company or person so far, even if it's implied that the person making the payments was merely a middleman.

5/9/2018 3:19:09 PM

I also thinking that whether Cohen worked for the Campaign, Trump the business, or Trump the man might make a significant difference on the legality.
Regardless, I’m pretty sure Mueller is on it (he was interviewing Novartis 6 months ago).







We gotta fix our campaign finance laws.

5/9/2018 4:07:38 PM

aren't KAI and Novartis foreign?

5/9/2018 4:12:46 PM

Yes, but ya gotta imagine they routed the money through their US subsidiaries?


We all know that’s bullshit, and the legal questions are probably over my head, but as a general rule I assume that multi-national shell company games are typically legal, since our laws have been written to favor them. The big tell for me is that both those companies admitted, pretty quickly, what went down. Their lawyers have their stories straight already.

5/9/2018 5:21:01 PM

Novartis likely has a US subsidiary they could have passed the money through. Not sure about KAI.

^it's hard to see AT&T getting involved with something like this without being sure it wouldn't come back and bite them in the ass.

[Edited on May 9, 2018 at 5:27 PM. Reason : ^]

5/9/2018 5:26:03 PM

Companies have given money to illegal presidential funds in the past, it wouldn't be new or crazy. AT&T got the FCC to kill net neutrality, that's worth the cost to them.

5/9/2018 8:21:14 PM

^ odd timing that now there's discussion of possibly reviving Net Neutrality

5/9/2018 8:51:39 PM

AT&T couldn't get their Comcast merger through, which was a much bigger issue to them than net neutrality.

5/10/2018 9:26:07 AM

Is there a chance that Cohen was just using his relationship with Trump to get cash? Or do you think this was something directed by Trump?

5/10/2018 9:57:38 AM

little from column A little from column B

5/10/2018 10:06:14 AM

^^^ Time Warner...

I have a hard time believing Trump wouldn’t be getting a cut of that somehow. But I’ve been wrong before..

5/10/2018 10:28:07 AM

Novartis was paying Cohen 4 times the amount they were paying lobbyists. To assume they weren't getting something tangible out of that would be fairly naive

5/10/2018 10:33:57 AM

that's because cohen was selling access

5/10/2018 11:01:12 AM

If you think chump change buys access to a billionaire, then why do you also believe Putin gave up billions of dollars worth of Gazprom shares for access?

5/10/2018 1:34:41 PM

"billionaire", also access to pitch policies vs. controlling foreign and domestic policy of an adversarial nation


do you think this is okay or simply not illegal?

[Edited on May 10, 2018 at 2:03 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2018 2:02:24 PM

Quote :

"Putin gave up billions of dollars worth of Gazpromrosneft shares for access?changing american policy"

So I didn't know they figured out who the sale went to - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/russia-to-buy-back-rosneft-stake-it-sold-2017-06-07

Qatar? Is this right?

Yep, just found a second link: http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-trump-russia-igor-sechin-dossier-2017-1

Quote :

"The company signed a deal on December 7 to sell 19.5% of shares, or roughly $11 billion, to the multinational commodity trader Glencore Plc and Qatar's state-owned wealth fund. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund is Glencore's largest shareholder."

Makes this a hell of a lot more interesting: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/377900-qatar-officials-decline-to-give-kushner-info-to-mueller-probe-report

[Edited on May 10, 2018 at 5:42 PM. Reason : a]

5/10/2018 5:32:24 PM

Also it was only the brokerage fee that was supposed to get funneled through Carter Page, allegedly that’s what the extra 0.5% is, somewhere in the range of $300-$500 million. I’m guessing that got divided up somehow among the organization.


That’s still way more than Novartis paid out, but what ^they^ said.

5/10/2018 6:07:35 PM

no, the claim is that Trump would get 19% of Rosneft, with Carter Page getting the brokerage fee for being the go-between. literally billions in payoff to Trump if you believe it, which cherokee. and dtownral have been spewing as the truth for the last year and a half.


and to answer the previous question, I see nothing illegal about Cohen taking money for consulting companies on how to deal with a man with no political history to make a read off of. The only extremely sketchy thing I've seen about Cohen so far is why he used a home loan for payments from a man that was supposedly paying him huge retainer fees. I'm pretty certain a lawyer is not supposed to mix retainer money in with personal assets.

[Edited on May 10, 2018 at 9:00 PM. Reason : .]

5/10/2018 8:59:29 PM

Quote :

"no, the claim is that Trump would get 19% of Rosneft, with Carter Page getting the brokerage fee for being the go-between. literally billions in payoff to Trump if you believe it, which cherokee. and dtownral have been spewing as the truth for the last year and a half."

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

No, the claim is that 19.5% of Rosneft was exchanged for sanctions relief. "Literally billions in payoff" in exchange for the relief of hundreds of billions in sanctions and economic damage. Pretty reasonable deal. Would it be easier to understand if you offered me $19.50 and in return I saved you $200?

Neither of us have spewed anything as truth other than the fact that there is a perfectly reasonable basis for an investigation and that Trump and his cohorts have lied every step of the way.

You need many years of education regarding reading comprehension.

5/10/2018 10:38:22 PM

^^ The problem is Cohen paid Stormy Daniels, and other potential trump mistresses and RNC mistresses with the money, including an abortion.

That’s definitely grossly unethical, possibly illegal.

5/11/2018 9:42:45 PM

5/12/2018 10:00:09 PM

Quote :

"You need many years of education regarding reading comprehension."

reread what you quoted from me and tell me how that is not the exact same statement as what you made below, "correcting" me. The person I was responding to was trying to claim that the only the brokerage fee and not the 19% stake in Rosneft was the bribe being offered to Trump. My statement was that if Trump was being offered literally billions in bribes from Russia, then how can you think AT&T was bribing him with half a million?

5/14/2018 10:13:09 AM

TIL cohen is trump

5/14/2018 10:14:10 AM

WTF is going on

Here’s how Ice Cube figures in the Trump-Cohen mess
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/qvnpvx/heres-how-ice-cube-figures-in-the-trump-cohen-mess

5/14/2018 5:55:30 PM

The judge ruled that Mueller can prosecute Manafort.

Sorry pedes

5/16/2018 6:13:55 AM

Don, Jr testimony from Senate is out.

He’s the dumbest one. Trump knew all. There 100% was collusion and it’s kind of ridiculous the media doesn’t say Trump is LYING when he says no collusion.

[Edited on May 16, 2018 at 10:28 AM. Reason : Also congressional GOP is complicit ]

5/16/2018 10:28:11 AM

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-used-nra-to-help-trump-in-2016-says-senate-intelligence-committee

Quote :

" "The committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign,” according to a report on the panel’s preliminary findings on Russia and the presidential campaign. The NRA may have been used to “secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the report states."

5/16/2018 1:21:15 PM

indeed.

It's included in the link above, but here are the Senate Judiciary Committee's preliminary findings:

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/b/3/b3e29bc4-8afd-4145-85d9-618dcad4a133/D069EF11DC3784A6D073B097E720572E.2018.05.15-transcript-release-findings-9-am.pdf

5/16/2018 1:27:30 PM

Even more :::

Quote :

"The report also refers to two previous suspicious-activity reports, or sars, that the bank had filed, which documented even larger flows of questionable money into Cohen’s account. Those two reports detail more than three million dollars in additional transactions—triple the amount in the report released last week. Which individuals or corporations were involved remains a mystery. But, according to the official who leaked the report, these sars were absent from the database maintained by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or fincen. The official, who has spent a career in law enforcement, told me, “I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” The official added, “That’s why I came forward.”"

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/missing-files-motivated-the-leak-of-michael-cohens-financial-records/amp?

5/16/2018 7:17:47 PM

https://mic.com/articles/189412/trump-reimbursed-michael-cohen-for-stormy-daniels-hush-money-payment-new-documents-reveal

So why can't he be put away now?

He lied earlier about the payment. Is it only because it when he lied it was not in court?

5/16/2018 8:06:43 PM

pretty much - didn't lie to the feds and didn't commit a crime (that we know of yet)

[Edited on May 16, 2018 at 8:47 PM. Reason : a]

5/16/2018 8:46:05 PM

Even if SARs were removed from FINCEN the respective banks still have records of them.

It’s far more likely that Muellers team knew all of this already and had them classified or temporarily removed as part of the investigation.

Mnuchin is a shitty person but I don’t think he’s a conspiracy crook.

5/17/2018 6:20:25 AM

apparently that would be unprecedented though (although everything about this worst timeline is unprecedented)

5/17/2018 8:56:13 AM

^^I actually think there is a good chance you’re right, but given how them not appearing in the database is considered pretty rare (^), it seems like that might suggest they are pretty significant to an extremely sensitive investigation.

Meaning: Mueller is following the money and it’s leading somewhere, and it’s a big deal.










(which I think a lot of us were assuming anyways)

5/17/2018 9:22:16 AM

https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/trump-moscow-micheal-cohen-felix-sater-campaign

I won’t be able to read this until tonight but posting the link in case anyone else wants to.

5/17/2018 12:45:47 PM

so mueller probably has the missing SARs

[Edited on May 17, 2018 at 3:21 PM. Reason : .]

5/17/2018 3:21:27 PM

Or the leaker could be mistaken about the other SARs.

Deleting SARs to hide financial crimes would be a level of savvy and sophistication well beyond anything Cohen has shown.

5/17/2018 3:49:34 PM

Given the tactic switch to “we are being framed” and “I can’t be indicted anyway” in recent days I suspect some big news is likely to drop in the next few weeks.

5/18/2018 9:42:54 AM

Can someone give me a primer as to what the significance of last nights news was?

MAGA twitter and Greenwald are spiking the football and the other side is doing the same.. I’m confused.

5/19/2018 10:48:10 AM

^
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/19/the-fbi-informant-who-monitored-the-trump-campaign-stefan-halper-oversaw-a-cia-spying-operation-in-the-1980-presidential-election/

5/19/2018 11:31:00 AM

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/mueller-s-team-questioned-witnesses-in-israel-seized-computers-1.6098364

5/19/2018 3:53:35 PM

Walls are closing in and the President is lashing out.

Gonna get ugly.

5/20/2018 1:41:30 PM

Indictments coming

5/20/2018 8:16:35 PM

^^^^ Greenwald seems to be on the precipice of going all in on calling this all a “witch hunt” posting links for calls to end Mueller now this morning.

I get it. He will make bank on going after the FBI/CIA in any situation and the market for that is high right now.

5/21/2018 7:43:00 AM