sounds like it could be some serious shit.

What lawyer do you know who is loyal to a client? I think he rolls over like a dog. I know I would.

Is a pron star really going to bring down Trump?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/us/politics/michael-cohen-trump-access-hollywood.html

The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, were seeking details on his relationship with the Trump campaign and his efforts to suppress negative information about Mr. Trump, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Prosecutors are interested in whether Mr. Cohen, who had no official role in the 2016 campaign, coordinated with it to quash the release of anything detrimental to it and whether that violated campaign finance laws — a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen.

The warrant executed Monday by the agents was striking in its breadth, according to those people. It demanded documents related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, and to other materials related to secret agreements Mr. Cohen made with women in exchange for them not speaking publicly about sexual encounters with Mr. Trump.

The warrant also covered emails and other documents that could reveal Mr. Cohen’s private communications with Mr. Trump during a tense period in the presidential campaign when Mr. Trump confronted the possibility of embarrassing details of his extramarital affairs. And it delved deeply into Mr. Cohen’s past, including documents about Mr. Cohen’s personal and business finances, including his work as a New York taxi fleet manager.

The additional details the agents were seeking came a day after it was revealed that the authorities sought documents from Mr. Cohen related to payments made to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump, Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star known as Stormy Daniels, as well as information on the role of the publisher of The National Enquirer in silencing the women.

Real Dickheads of The US or something. All I see is petty squabbling, ad hominems, unreasonableness, emotional arguments and logic, clique-like behaviour, above-it-all-ness, etc.

Going into politics must be perfect for people that want to relieve that HS cafeteria environment.

and is you ever happy bruh?

I'm happy all the time, as I'm an analytical dude that actually likes to talk about and debate things of substance, instead of smiling and laughing just to fit in.

My post was a response to "are we gonna talk about," and I was giving my reasons that folks might not be talking about it here. Make sense, or nah?


Plus, y'all ain't trying to talk about the shit I'm into.

> y'all ain't trying to talk about the shit I'm into.

these things being what?

>All I see is petty
>squabbling, ad hominems, unreasonableness, emotional arguments
>and logic, clique-like behaviour, above-it-all-ness, etc.

Politics is just more visible.

>sounds like it could be some serious shit.
>
>What lawyer do you know who is loyal to a client? I think he
>rolls over like a dog. I know I would.
>
>Is a pron star really going to bring down Trump?
>


The porn star's attorney was doing an interview where he said that he was told to hold off on putting out something about the person who threatened Stormy.

Could be connected to Cohen is my guess.

Potential campaign finance violations. And what's the penalty for that? Fines?

Unless there is more dirt on the lawyer, I can't see him flipping.

nothing to see here.

in anything?

he's like a wimpy ray Donavan. I'd be shocked if the one hush payment is the only thing they find. I don't think you can get a warrant like that without strong evidence. who knows but I think it will turn out to be significant. Cohen already kinda sounds like he wants to flip, talking about how nice and professional the FBI was.

but it could be more

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/what-exactly-was-michael-cohen-doing-for-donald-trump/557801/

I wouldn't be shocked if they found something implicating Trump. My guess is they probably did.

Of course, I (we?) have no idea about the overall goal of this. It could be very minor, or it could be a very big piece.

FBI was reported as looking for information around that.
Cohen is the fixer for Trump. He's been catching and killing dirty stories for years.
Wikileaks dumped the Clinton emails 30 minutes after CBS/Washington Post ran with the story.
CBS sat on the story for years and only released minutes before/after the Post broke it.
If the FBI is investigating Russia and authorized to follow up on any crimes they may have discovered during that then this is potentially huge
Because they want to know what was being hidden and was the loose coincidence actually coincidental

https://www.mediaite.com/online/history-will-show-the-media-completely-butchered-coverage-of-the-access-hollywood-tape/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

The most important thing that consumers of the news media need to know is that the machinery of how news is produced is fundamentally broken. The bigger and more sensational a story is, and the more rapidly the story reported, the greater the chance that the reporting of that story will be dramatically screwed up.

While there are many examples of this phenomenon which immediately come to mind, none is more obvious — and yet more oddly ignored — than how the news media handled the infamous “Access Hollywood Tape” from the 2016 election. This goes for how they are still covering the tape today — as the infamous footage suddenly returned to the news with the reports that it played a key role in the FBI raid on President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

The first element of the tape which is greatly bothersome, and yet one which to my knowledge has never been seriously pursued by the big media (mainly because all the major outlets had a large disincentive to do so), is how it was somehow keep quiet until after Trump had safely won the Republican nomination.

Think about how utterly insane it is that, especially in this modern era, such an obvious bombshell could be kept hidden by a media company for more than a year after Trump announced he was running for president of the United States. Billy Bush, the man whose career was obviously damaged far more by the tape than Trump’s was, has said that many people knew about the episode and that the existence of the tape was an open secret within NBC, which owns and produces Access Hollywood.

It is just impossible to believe that the tape not coming out at the start of Trump’s campaign, when logic dictates that it would have blown Trump instantly out of the water (before he was in a position where Republicans had no choice other than to keep backing him against the evil Hillary Clinton), was anything but a highly unethical political decision by someone at NBC. The fact that no one has ever even gotten an answer from NBC about how this could have happened is equally unfathomable and yet, given the news media’s overall incompetence, kind of expected.

Then there is how the media handled the much-delayed release of the tape itself. It is almost as if the word “pussy” made them so giddy with excitement that their heads exploded, causing them to largely ignore the aspect of what Trump said which was most dangerous to him politically. Trump telling Bush that “when you’re a star” you are allowed to “grab…pussy” was, in my opinion, something that could have easily destroyed Trump’s “blue-collar” connection to the white Democrats in the Rust Belt who ended up getting him elected president. Those votes are not bothered by a guy who likes “pussy,” but they are by a guy who thinks he is better, and more entitled, than they are.

There have also been unanswered questions regarding the tape in which the media has been bizarrely uninterested — especially given their investment in the Russia investigation. For instance, the timing of the tape’s release has multiple aspects which are either AMAZING coincidences, or an indication that the real story of the tape is FAR different and more significant than the conventional wisdom currently suggests.

It has always struck me as EXTREMELY odd that it was the Washington Post, not NBC, who first released the tape on Friday Oct. 7, 2016, barely beating NBC which, it should be noted, was clearly ready to go with it immediately after the Post did. I presumed that perhaps NBC wanted this to be the case because it might take some of the focus off why they had not released it during the primaries (and thus chose not to prematurely kill off the media’s Golden Goose which was Trump’s ratings-friendly campaign).

However, there is another aspect of the Post being the outlet which got the big scoop that has always struck me as potentially very significant. The Post’s reporter, David Fahrenthold, has said that he was only made aware of the tape, via an unnamed source, THAT day — which is a clear indication that whomever was trying to get the Post to release it had decided to do so in tremendous haste. After all, if the source had planned it sooner they would have made contact with Fahrenthold well before then because he might have been out of pocket that day.

Why is this timing important? Well, two other significant events happened that day in almost exactly the same time period. That morning, U.S. intelligence released a statement formally accusing Russia of breaking the law in an effort to influence our election. That afternoon, WikiLeaks began releasing emails which were hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Now it is certainly possible that this timing was all coincidental. After all, it was just two days before a huge presidential debate and just one month before the election was over. However, especially now in light of the Cohen raid, there is now plenty of reason to reevaluate what was really going on here.

For instance, what if it was actually someone from the TRUMP team who leaked the tape. At first glance, this seems ludicrous because no one thought that Trump would be anything but greatly harmed by the tape (though he clearly was not). But what if someone in Trump World got wind that the tape was about to be released and decided that stepping all over the Russia news (which would normally have dominated the narrative for the remainder of the campaign) would at least create the least bad outcome for them?

I have always been mystified as to how Steve Bannon was able to plan and coordinate the “Clinton Sex Accuser” press conference for that Sunday before the debate with such incredible quickness. Getting all those women to St. Louis in just ONE day was either an extraordinary act of crisis management, or not how things really went down.

Even if this admittedly somewhat wild theory is not accurate, there is still the issue of how Russia-linked WikiLeaks knew to start releasing the Clinton emails at the perfect time to allow Trump to change the subject with remarkable speed. Again, it could be a coincidence, but at a certain point there start to be too many of them for none to be significant.

Because of all of this, I was not at all surprised when we learned that law enforcement and the special counsel’s investigation is interested in the real origins of the “Access Hollywood Tape.” The only real shock is that the news media, strangely, never has been.

will be the key here.

like 50 years from now, if anything still exists, how will people look back at these days

how we gonna explain all this to our grandkids

our watch has been pretty shameful

on topic....

its a heck of a thing: at this point i'm numb. until someone is convicted of something I have a hard time caring because its too much of a storm of crazy

our childhood was full of literal fear of nuclear war popping off at any second (i could see missile silos as I went to school as a kid) and THIS time-frame has less hope for the future than then for me

not to Eeyore it all up, but *shrug*, its easier for me to focus on the non-horrible stuff (my kids, my fam, trying to help people in real and tangible ways)

nah.. that really happened?

Who the hell will follow Trump? The Rock?

s'crazy man

*SLURPS COFFEE SLOWLY*

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg
http://Tupreme.com

but if return to traditional politics after this dumb as President...

shit will look like a gotdamn circus. Especially when using a political lense to view it.

Porn actress
grab em by the p####
i could shoot someone in the face and not lose a vote

makes me think this is big also.

roger stone also, I think there are a lot more shoes to drop but Trump is going to go crazier and crazier. He definitely wants to fire Mueller.

My guess is ultimately, whatever they find won't be enough to "get him". He's had 35 years to oil his machine (pause) to the point where he knows how to avoid and evade prosecution.

https://www.axios.com/preview-of-exclusive-abc-interview-with-james-comey-1523413777-c6002b59-9545-4329-9734-92ffcc70cfef.html

or something else

I knew nothing about him before 2016. What he do?

Meanwhile he let America know that one candidate was maybe under investigation when both were and one was under multiple.
Meanwhile he self chose to break protocol
And now his ho ass is on a book tour and popping up on twitter trying to tell people how to do right
Fuck him.

Like they must have had airtight evidence something was going on to mess with the sacrosanct attorney-client privilege.

Also weird how not defiant Cohen has been after the raid. Dude thanked the FBI for being nice!!!



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

the steps and levels required for a approval. they're not giving the go ahead on this without major evidence.

It's Twitter so I can't vouch for any of this. Take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway...he said he's seen only a handful of attorneys have their office raided. And all of those attorneys went to prison.

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg
http://Tupreme.com

political and business



They got his ass

The search warrant federal prosecutors served to Michael Cohen this week requests, among other things, all communications between Cohen and A.M.I. executives David Pecker and Dylan Howard (who oversee the National Enquirer and other titles).

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/us/politics/trump-national-enquirer-american-media.html#click=https://t.co/RhgOtRDqf5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/trumps-allies-worry-that-federal-investigators-may-have-seized-recordings-made-by-his-attorney/2018/04/12/16d6345a-3e89-11e8-912d-16c9e9b37800_story.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-poised-pardon-scooter-libby-dick-cheneys/story?id=54433032

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/deputy-ag-rod-rosenstein-tells-confidantes-he-prepared-be-fired-n865596

.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/13/rnc-deputy-finance-chair-broidy-resigns-522867

If there's enough collateral damage as result of this Trump investigation, now I fully believe Trump will seek ways to impede and eventually stop the investigation.

Perhaps that's just me being cynical, but now I'm officially worried.

I don't think it's going to work. If he's successful in shutting down the investigation I think we will start to see some crazy leaks, but I think if he fires Mueller it will be to his own detriment. I still think Trump is going down, but he would prefer to burn the whole country down before he admits to doing anything wrong.

>If there's enough collateral damage as result of this Trump
>investigation, now I fully believe Trump will seek ways to
>impede and eventually stop the investigation.
>
>Perhaps that's just me being cynical, but now I'm officially
>worried.


White House building case to fire Rosenstein

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382993-white-house-telling-allies-to-attack-rosenstein-on-tv-to-build-case


Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein tells confidants he is prepared to be fired

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/deputy-ag-rod-rosenstein-tells-confidantes-he-prepared-be-fired-n865596

if theyre already uncovering cohen/broidy shit...imagine what they will uncover once they actually start pouring through the seized cohen evidence.

broidy was already convicted of public corruption and bribery. which i guess makes him a great choice to help overlook rnc money lol.

jeff sessions also got his federal prosecutor appointment recommendations from broidy.

the republican party is basically a criminal organization operating at the highest levels of government in broad daylight.

on Malaysian state investment fund.

But apparently it was all above board because:
>>
"Chris Clark of Latham & Watkins LLP, on behalf of Broidy and Rosenzweig told the WSJ in a statement that at no time did "anyone acting on their behalf, discuss Mr. Low's case with President Trump, any member of his staff, or anyone at the U.S. Department of Justice.""
>>

Then what hell were they gonna pay him for? lol
I'm in the wrong line of work smh

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/03/1mdb-trump-ally-elliot-broidy-tries-to-get-75-million-to-end-us-probe.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/383054-dem-lawmaker-ill-introduce-impeachment-article-if-trump-fires-rosenstein

for a while before the raid. he has been under a grand jury investigation for *months*.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/cohen-under-criminal-investigation

with the information obtained from those warrants...they were already in possession of evidence to shoot down the client-attorney privilege claim cohens attorneys tried to make.

these dudes aint playing around.

remember when the dossier first leaked and claimed cohen made a trip to prague in 2016 to meet with a russian official on behalf of trump?

and cohen flat out denied ever being in prague in his life?
https://twitter.com/MichaelCohen212/status/818991277685567489

and cohen sued buzzfeed for posting the dossier with the supposedly false claim?
https://twitter.com/TPM/status/951074617644535808

yeah...uhmm...he was in prague during the timeline mentioned in the dossier
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/984929194588164098


steele/dossier looking impeccable.

trump called him earlier today.
https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/984902803314368513

he blew off a court appearance and was smoking cigars on some scorsese shit later.
https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/984911333878530049

dude is involved in 2 concurrent investigations (prague/russia is mueller and money/corruption is sdny). so i dont know if trump would have to pardon him twice or what. but i think he gets pre-pardoned early on and affects each investigation (or even kills the sdny one outright).

>trump called him earlier today.
>https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/984902803314368513
>
>he blew off a court appearance and was smoking cigars on some
>scorsese shit later.
>https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/984911333878530049
>
>dude is involved in 2 concurrent investigations (prague/russia
>is mueller and money/corruption is sdny). so i dont know if
>trump would have to pardon him twice or what. but i think he
>gets pre-pardoned early on and affects each investigation (or
>even kills the sdny one outright).


A pardon removes a persons fifth amendment. So if Cohen is subpoenaed to testify he can't invoke his fifth amendment right to not testify against himself but he could then testify against Trump, right?

at least thats how i understand it based on limited research of trump pardon scenarios. but maybe someone can clarify.

if he gets pre-pardoned for the sdny case then im not sure what that means for the pursuit of the evidence in that case. like can they legally continue to pour through it, is that evidence or the already-processed evidence legally admissible in another case, etc.

Does Trump have to define the charges for which Cohen is being preemptively pardoned?

If not, surely Trump cannot pardon a person for ANY federal charges for which they might be charged? Like, if Cohen is found to be conspiring to commit terrorist acts, etc.? Or murder?

blanket pardons cover any and all crimes that may have been committed.

ford gave a blanket pardon to nixon. it covered even crimes that may arise in addition to the ones that they brought forth articles of impeachment for.

If so, he wouldn’t be able to pardon those crimes. Also, it’s more evidence of obstruction. Things are going to get wild.

trump/sessions actually appointed a temporary acting us attorney to head up that district (until formally nominated and confirmed by senate). giulianis old law partner. but he rightfully recused himself from the cohen investigation.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/984943090296410113

the lawyer keith davidson was the previous attorney for *both* stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. two women who were paid hush money before the election.

odd coincidence: keith davidson was also the attorney for the woman that rnc deputy finance chair elliott broidy and michael cohen paid hush money to and elliott resigned over.

how much you wanna bet there are other women out there who just happened to be represented by keith davidson and coerced into signing nda agreements for hush money? this shit sounds like some coordinated extortion scheme.

'I can shoot someone and get away with it' (c) Trump

We could have video of Putin stuffing stacks of money into Trump's pockets while discussing how the election was rigged and still nothing will happen. Trump will just fire any and everyone that stands in his way and pardon crooks.

He got elected for a reason. The ones who voted for him are fact deniers and are ride or die (i.e. bring out guns and go to war) if anything happens where Trump is legally removed from office.

Trump is protected by every branch of the government and right wing media. The right wing media owns most media.

Trump is in a position to bring the whole country down, and will do it, to clear his name. He will not lose! (c)Puffy

I really want to be wrong.

how long until trump claims bias like the mexican-american judge curiel?

https://twitter.com/JeffreyGuterman/status/985940058334220293

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-cohens-third-client-is-sean-hannity

LMAO, can't make this shit up.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Da7T_qTW4AEhQcj.jpg

To me, saying 45 is POTUS is the same as saying
Kim Kardashian is POTUS or
The Situation is POTUS

I'm here for the shits and giggles (even though ain't a damm thing funny about this presidency)
but does this fuck hannity in any way
or will it be another "fake news" by the "failing NY times"
aka nothing to see here

The dumbest people are the ones who are witnessing
all this and remain hardcore supporters.

Think of all the loyal Sean Hannity viewers who really
believe he is bringing them balanced news and
objective takes.

'did we learn anything new?'*wink wink*

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/985959434269741056

shep and hannity hate each other lol.
shep recently called hannity out for being a trump propagandist.

lol @ that court reporter taking the scenic route to get to the hannity reveal then rushing on to something else.

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOJM3kZDix4


this plus the reporter talking made it feel like I was in a damn montage about the presidency turning a corner

https://twitter.com/IAStartingLine/status/985970888062455809

hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny for years.
trained to be a playboy bunny.

and to top it all off...she presided over the wedding of george soros.
https://www.nbcnews.com/businessmain/soros-marry-third-time-three-day-new-york-celebration-4B11219170
"Kimba Wood, a federal judge, will perform the non-denominational ceremony, which will be attended by members of the couple's families, including his five children, a source familiar with the arrangements told Reuters."

sometimes the conspiracy theories write themselves lol.

trumpkins are gonna go crazy over this.

(she was nominated to her current federal bench by ronald reagan but we know that doesnt matter)

i legit have no idea what George Soros even looks like

the only time i ever even hear liberals talk about george soros is when they're talking about conservatives talking about george soros.

>the only time i ever even hear liberals talk about george
>soros is when they're talking about conservatives talking
>about george soros.

I don't.

Soros is just the liberal version of them. Everyone side needs its super villain to hate.

Sheldon Adleson too

you basically only see soros in alt right memes.

they are an entire political party unto themselves.

like buying entire state governments, peeling away democracy, attacking civil rights, pushing to change the constitution to install a true oligarchy, etc.

you dont even need a conspiracy theory to cast them in a villainous light.

soros basically just gives a few million to social justice organizations and does relatively middle of the pack lobbying and the right invented an entire political fantasy world around him.

soros might spend like $20 mil in a presidential election year. koch brothers network will spend around $1 billion.

they arent even in the same realm in the dark money era.

but ol boy hasn't looked it up.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

down to their organization names, supported politicians, current/past operatives, etc.

meanwhile nobody can list any specific political activity for soros based in reality.

and perception.

They are both used as rhetorical devices

just because you're uneducated as fuck doesn't mean "both sides are the same"

The things the Koch brothers have done aren't a conspiracy theory or even a secret.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

https://i.imgur.com/c7c8aDx.jpg

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/sean-hannity/558272/

Hannity's show and FNC are officially state tv.

--

Trump and Hannity usually speak several times a week, according to people familiar with their relationship. The Fox News host, whose show averages more than 3 million viewers daily, is one of the few people who gets patched immediately to Trump. The two men review news stories and aspects of Hannity’s show, and occasionally debate specifics about whatever the president is considering typing out on Twitter. There have also been times when Trump has assessed the merits of various White House aides with Hannity.

The frequency of Hannity’s contact with Trump means that “he basically has a desk in the place,” one presidential adviser said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hannitys-rising-role-in-trumps-world-he-basically-has-a-desk-in-the-place/2018/04/17/e2483018-4260-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c595bda2c20b

So it makes sense.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cohen-would-turn-against-president-if-charged-counselor-warned-trump-1524093151?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

Cohen Would Turn Against President if Charged, Counselor Warned Trump

Former prosecutor Jay Goldberg says he cautioned president that his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, could be compelled to cooperate with prosecutors

By Joe Palazzolo, Michael Rothfeld and Michael Siconolfi
Updated April 18, 2018 10:29 p.m. ET


One of President Donald Trump’s longtime legal advisers said he warned the president in a phone call Friday that Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and close friend, would turn against the president and cooperate with federal prosecutors if faced with criminal charges.

Mr. Trump made the call seeking advice from Jay Goldberg, who represented Mr. Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s. Mr. Goldberg said he cautioned the president not to trust Mr. Cohen. On a scale of 100 to 1, where 100 is fully protecting the president, Mr. Cohen “isn’t even a 1,” he said he told Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cohen is under criminal investigation for potential bank fraud and campaign-finance violations. FBI agents raided Mr. Cohen’s home, hotel and office last week, seeking documents about, among other things, a $130,000 payment he made in October 2016 to a former adult-film actress to prevent her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in 2006, The Wall Street Journal previously reported, citing people familiar with the matter.​Messrs. Trump and Cohen deny such an encounter occurred.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Cohen committed bank fraud in using a home-equity line of credit to pay the former porn star for her silence, as well as potential campaign-finance violations related to the payment, the people said.

“Michael will never stand up ” if charged by the government, Mr. Goldberg said he cautioned the president.

Neither Mr. Cohen, who hasn’t been charged, nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment. The White House confirmed the phone call of Messrs. Trump and Goldberg.

The 15-minute discussion between the two men provides an inside peek at the president’s efforts to seek guidance amid the rapidly escalating developments involving Mr. Cohen. Mr. Goldberg is one of several longtime advisers Mr. Trump has reached out to as he and his legal team try to assess the potential fallout from the criminal investigation of Mr. Cohen and devise a response.

Mr. Goldberg said the volume of correspondence taken and the potential pressure the government can bring to bear on Mr. Cohen to testify put the president in more potential peril from the Cohen matter than from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mr. Mueller is examining whether members of Mr. Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russians to affect the 2016 election. Russia officials have denied meddling in the election, and Mr. Trump has denied any collusion took place.

Messrs. Trump and Cohen have publicly supported each other. Mr. Goldberg said Mr. Trump told him on Friday that Mr. Cohen is “very strong.” For his part, Mr. Cohen this month tweeted: “I will always protect our @POTUS.”

In the call, Mr. Goldberg, a former prosecutor who represented Mr. Trump in divorce and real-estate matters, said he told the president Mr. Cohen could even agree to wear a wire and try to record conversations with Mr. Trump. “You have to be alert,” Mr. Goldberg said he told the president. “I don’t care what Michael says.”

Mr. Goldberg recalled the conversation in a two-hour interview in his apartment on New York’s Upper East Side Wednesday, emphasizing that he didn’t believe Mr. Trump had broken the law.

Speaking from his experience as a prosecutor, he said even hardened organized-crime figures flip under pressure from the government. “The mob was broken by Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano caving in out of the prospect of a jail sentence,” Mr. Goldberg said.

Mr. Goldberg provided fresh details about the search warrants executed against Mr. Cohen, which he said he learned after recent conversations with Mr. Trump and his lawyer, Ty Cobb. Mr. Cohen faces scrutiny over his payment to the former adult-movie star Stephanie Clifford for her silence, as well as his taxi business, according to people familiar with the matter.

On April 9, six agents showed up at Mr. Cohen’s suite at the Loews Regency Hotel on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, where he is staying temporarily while his home is renovated, with a warrant, Mr. Goldberg said. The agents “were perfect gentlemen,” but their guns were visible, he said. They also went to Mr. Cohen’s office at law firm Squire Patton Boggs in Rockefeller Center, where they gathered his files and placed them in cartons in a truck, Mr. Goldberg said.

Representatives for the FBI and Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Mr. Goldberg’s legal career has included stints as an acting U.S. attorney in Indiana, a special attorney to the Justice Department in Washington, and an assistant district attorney in New York.

Mr. Goldberg said he warned Mr. Trump in the Friday call against submitting to an interview with Mr. Mueller’s team, telling him “talking is a certain trap,” adding: “Don’t ever do it.”

Prompted by the president for his advice, he also said he recommended Mr. Trump fire Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mr. Mueller.

Mr. Goldberg, who is 85 years old and has practiced law for more than five decades, said he suggested that Mr. Trump add a well-known New York lawyer to his legal team. Mr. Goldberg declined to name the lawyer, but a person familiar with the matter said it was Frederick Hafetz, a former chief of the criminal division of the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.

Mr. Hafetz confirmed receiving a call on the matter from Mr. Goldberg but said he wasn’t interested in joining Mr. Trump’s legal team.

Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Mr. Cobb, sent Mr. Goldberg an email Friday thanking him for “importuning Fred” and for providing a legal citation that Mr. Goldberg thought might be helpful to challenge the government’s use of records collected with the search warrants executed against Mr. Cohen, according to a copy of the email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

A White House official said that following the call with Mr. Goldberg, the president was “complimentary” about his former lawyer and relayed the suggestions to his legal team on hiring Mr. Hafetz and other matters. The president asked Mr. Cobb to call Mr. Goldberg “as a courtesy,” the official said. Neither Mr. Hafetz nor Mr. Goldberg are expected to join the legal team, the official said.

—Rebecca Ballhaus and Erica Orden contributed to this article.

It's gonna be hilarious when Cohen becomes a well-known soprano.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/987124828594417665

this dude is wild lol.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/politics/trump-michael-cohen.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/stormy-danielss-former-lawyer-said-to-be-cooperating-with-federal-probe-of-michael-cohen/2018/04/20/3011745e-44ae-11e8-baaf-8b3c5a3da888_story.html

remember how i said this whole thing might expose a shakedown scheme where cohen used another lawyer (keith davidson) to rep women who were involved with cohen clients (trump, broidy, maybe hannity) and press them into taking nda settlements for cohen clients?

this could be the opening of that can of worms.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/22/michael-cohen-sean-hannity-property-real-estate-ben-carson-hud

Michael Cohen case shines light on Sean Hannity's property empire

Fox News host who said Trump’s fixer ‘knows real estate’ has a portfolio that includes support from Department of Housing and Urban Development, a fact he did not mention when interviewing secretary Ben Carson last year

Jon Swaine
Sun 22 Apr 2018 18.31 EDT

When Sean Hannity was named in court this week as a client of Donald Trump’s embattled legal fixer Michael Cohen, the Fox News host insisted their discussions had been limited to the subject of buying property.

“I’ve said many times on my radio show: I hate the stock market, I prefer real estate. Michael knows real estate,” Hannity said on television, a few hours after the dramatic hearing in Manhattan, where Cohen is under criminal investigation.

Hannity’s chosen investment strategy is confirmed by thousands of pages of public records reviewed by the Guardian, which detail a real estate portfolio of remarkable scale that has not previously been reported.

The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them.

Dozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages. Before and after then, Hannity sharply criticised Barack Obama for the US foreclosure rate. In January 2016, Hannity said there were “millions more Americans suffering under this president” partly because of foreclosures.

Hannity, 56, also amassed part of his property collection with support from the US Department for Housing and Urban Development (Hud), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, on his television show last year.

Christopher Reeves, Hannity’s real estate attorney, said in an email he would “struggle to find any relevance” in Hannity’s property holdings, which he said were highly confidential.

“I doubt you would find it very surprising that most people prefer to keep their legal and personal financial issues private,” said Reeves. “Mr Hannity is no different.”

Spokespeople for Hud and Fox News declined to comment on the record.

The real estate holdings linked to Hannity are spread across more than 20 shell companies formed in Georgia. Each of the companies uses a variant of the same name, which combines the initials of Hannity’s children. Public records show the companies have bought up dozens of properties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont.

Among the most valuable are two large apartment complexes in Georgia that Hannity bought in 2014 for $22.7m. The developments are in the cities of Perry and Brunswick, which have higher poverty rates and lower median incomes than the US averages. One- and two-bedroom units in Hannity‍‍‍’s apartment complexes are available to rent for $735 to $1,065 per month, according to brochures.

The Georgia purchases were funded with mortgages for $17.9m that Hannity obtained with help from Hud, which insured the loans under a program created as part of the National Housing Act. The loans, first guaranteed under the Obama administration, were recently increased by $5m with renewed support from Carson’s department.

Hannity, who is reportedly paid $36m per year for his television and radio shows, was criticised this week following Cohen’s court hearing, after it became clear he had defended Cohen and Trump on the air without disclosing that he also consulted Cohen for legal services.

He also declined to note his financial interest when he hosted Carson on Fox News last June for a discussion about Hud and housing. Hannity praised privatisation plans pushed by Trump and Carson.

“I know you’ve done a good job,” Hannity told Carson.

Hannity complained during the discussion that home ownership in the US was at a 51-year low – a false claim he has made several times on air – and criticised the state of public housing.

“I like the idea of them owning the place,” Hannity said of people who receive housing assistance. “Well, that’s the real ideal,” said Carson.

The shell companies used to buy the properties are registered to the offices of Henssler Financial, a wealth management firm outside Atlanta. Bill Lako, a principal at the firm, has appeared on Hannity’s radio show as an expert on money issues.

Lako recently wrote an article for the show’s website berating Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating ties between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, without noting his ties to Hannity. He did not respond to an email.

When Lako appeared on Hannity’s radio show last month, Hannity disclosed that he was a Henssler client. He joked to Lako that the company took him on as a “charity case” when he worked in Georgia, but “now I’m the best client you have”.

The Georgia mortgages supported by Hud were guaranteed as part of a program aimed at protecting investors such as Hannity who buy rental apartment buildings. The government promises to cover losses if borrowers default on their mortgages. Borrowers pay an insurance premium to Hud in return. Bigger loan guarantees are available if the building houses low-income families.

Paperwork relating to the agreements with Hud, which was filed to county authorities, named Hannity as the principal of the shell companies used to buy the apartment complexes and to borrow the funds. Hannity personally signed several of the documents. A Hud source said Hannity was identified in non-public filings as the 100% owner of the apartment complexes.

Late last month, Hannity’s mortgages were replaced with loans for $22.9m that were rewritten with Carson’s Hud and a new bank. There was no indication that Carson was personally involved in the process. Carson does, however, have the authority to allow Hannity from 2019 to convert the rental complexes into condominiums for sale, which could be lucrative for the television host.

The shell companies used to buy the properties are limited liability companies (LLCs). Like in most states, they are not required to disclose their owners to Georgia regulators. LLCs are popular among well-known figures such as Hannity who wish to keep their business arrangements private.

But the Guardian obtained records in which Hannity signed deeds and other documents on behalf of four of the LLCs, sometimes being named as principal or manager. Four more of the shell companies have owned properties in which public records say Hannity or members of his family have lived.

Hannity also uses a separate company with a similar name to handle contracts relating to his syndicated radio show, according to records filed in two federal court cases. Georgia records say Hannity was chief executive, chief financial officer and secretary of this company before Lako took over the titles during 2016.

In other cases, only the relevant LLC’s name and a contact at Henssler Financial were identified in the real estate paperwork, meaning that it could not be confirmed whether Hannity was the hidden owner.

The list of properties bought by the Hannity-linked companies includes multimillion-dollar homes used by Hannity. It also features single-family units priced as low as $50,000 in relatively poor suburbs. In at least two cases, batches of homes were bought simultaneously at a discount, after they were repossessed by banks from their previous owners in foreclosure proceedings.

The entire portfolio connected to Hannity comprises at least 877 residential units, which were bought for a total of just under $89m. Another seven properties bought by the companies over recent years have subsequently been sold on for more than $4m, according to public records.

When Hannity this week stressed that his business relationship with Cohen related to real estate, he pointedly denied that it involved any financial settlements with other people.

Cohen previously arranged for a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic actor known as Stormy Daniels, who alleged she had sex with Trump. Cohen also helped Elliott Broidy, a prominent Republican fundraiser, pay $1.6m to a woman who said she had become pregnant during an affair.

Hannity said he had only “occasional brief conversations” with Cohen. He made varying statements about whether Cohen was compensated, initially stating that he had not been billed but later saying: “I might have handed him 10 bucks.”

In footage unearthed this week that was broadcast on Fox News in January last year, Hannity mentioned having discussed an unidentified $2bn property venture in Dubai with Cohen.

“I said, ‘I’m interested in that deal myself,’” said Hannity.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/apr/24/sean-hannity-real-estate-property-dealer-jeff-brock-fraud-foreclosures

There you go: NY prosecutors cite Trump comments on Fox this am that Cohen did “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work as reason to expedite review of seized documents

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dbtzdi8XUAAN-sG.jpg

https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/989511498681782272

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/feds-tapped-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-s-phones-n871011

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/us/politics/michael-cohen-trump-tape.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

Giuliani confirmed the existence of the tape and said Trump did nothing wrong lol. I would guess there will be more Trump tapes to come.

>Giuliani confirmed the existence of the tape and said Trump
>did nothing wrong lol. I would guess there will be more Trump
>tapes to come.

Trump can NEVER do anything wrong, like Hillary could never do anything right .

and something about Cohen being funded by Soros and MS13

Record everything.

Especially when the person in question is a pathological liar. Someone will do a complete 180 with no warning, and you need to keep the receipts to protect yourself (and prove that you're not crazy)

BREAKING: There isn’t just one audio file in the Michael Cohen matter.

There are at least 12, and prosecutors got them on Friday - when the Times story ran on one of them.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Diz5clMV4AAqm8T.jpg

https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1021465489703350272

Cohen told Trump about his plans to set up a company and finance the purchase of the rights from American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer.

"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker.

Trump interrupts Cohen asking, "What financing?" according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, "We'll have to pay." Trump is heard saying "pay with cash" but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, "no, no" but it is not clear what is said next.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/politics/michael-cohen-donald-trump-tape/index.html

Guiliani responds: He's lied all his life. He's not credible.

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1022652557716533248?s=09

I'm watching him on CNN. I wouldn't want him to represent me in traffic court

maybe he feels closer to Rudy because of the NY thing, and maybe he still sees Rudy as respected. The 9/11 guy who cleaned up the streets

This was the story of the week a couple months ago. Nobody would represent him unless he agreed to stop tweeting about the cases. I think Rudy was just the most famous guy who would agree not to take his smartphone away.

brought on originally to help negotiate a deal with mueller because he has previous experience with the doj (and longstanding fbi ny connects).

dude just kinda morphed into the de facto legal pr spinster like jay sekulow before him.