Grasswire2
Grasswire2's Journal"Cohen won't accept a pardon"
[link:https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/22/michael-cohen-trump-lanny-davis-helsinki-791359|
President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will "under no circumstances" accept a pardon from his former boss, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Wednesday.
Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Manhattan federal court to violating campaign finance laws during the 2016 campaign, including making hush-money payments to two women who claim they had affairs with the president. Cohen implicated the president in his guilty plea, telling the court that he made those payments "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."
Asked whether his client would seek a pardon from the president, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said "the answer is definitively no" during an appearance on CNN Wednesday morning.
"His answer would be no, I do not want a pardon from this man," Davis said. "Under no circumstances, since he came to the judgment after Mr. Trump's election to the presidency of the United States that his suitability is a serious risk to our country. And certainly after Helsinki, creates serious questions about his loyalty to our country."
Davis was a fixture on Wednesday morning's TV news programs, sitting for at least five interviews that aired before 9 a.m., including all three network morning shows — NBC's "Today," ABC's "Good Morning America" and "CBS This Morning."
Abramson on possibility of Manafort pardon....
[link:https://screenshots.firefox.com/g20n6tfT0Rk22zC3/twitter.com|
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
1h1 hour ago
My take on the legality of a Manafort pardon: when Cohen revealed that Trump knew of and approved Manafort—and others—meeting with Russian agents to get stolen Clinton materials 3+ weeks ago, it made Trump an unindicted Manafort co-conspirator. POTUS can't pardon co-conspirators.
Christopher Steele almost got lost in today's news blitz....
[link:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/21/author-of-trump-russia-dossier-wins-libel-case-in-us-court-christopher-steele|
The former MI6 officer Christopher Steele has won a legal battle in the United States against three Russian oligarchs who sued him over allegations made in his dossier about the Trump campaign and its links with Moscow.
The oligarchs – Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan – claimed that Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, defamed them in the dossier, which was leaked and published in early 2017. The Russians own stakes in Moscow-based Alfa Bank. All are billionaires.
On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs’ case thrown out. Epstein did not determine whether the dossier – which Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed as “fake” – was “accurate or not accurate”.
But the judge concluded that it was covered by the US first amendment, which protects free speech. He ruled that the oligarchs had failed to prove a key part of their case: that Steele knew that some information in the dossier was inaccurate, and had acted “with reckless disregard as to its falsity”.
Seth Abramson on the day's news...
Seth Abramson
?Verified account @SethAbramson
8m8 minutes ago
It's too much to hope for, but the idea of a Cohen plea and a Manafort guilty verdict on the same day is like a hot fudge sundae sitting on a rainbow.
Top Democrats Seek Information On Bolton's Security Clearance
Source: Seth Abramson Twitter Feed.
https://screenshots.firefox.com/g6FhOyobUDMEF1uB/twitter.com
Read more: https://democrats-oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/top-democrats-seek-information-on-bolton-s-security-clearance-after-revelation
WSJ: Military Faces A Sweeping Turnover Among Upper Commanders (could be an ominous sign)
"The changes, which include commanders for the Middle East and Europe, will mark the administration’s largest imprint on military leadership thus far. The personnel moves stand to affect top officers overseeing conflicts in the Middle East, U.S. policy to counter Russia, the detention center on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as stealth operations globally"
[link:https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-faces-a-sweeping-turnover-among-upper-commanders-1534700301?redirect=amp#click=https://t.co/TCnoEcoPXn|
Are you ready to rumble?
I'm hoping for a week ahead that will be very bumpy for those under investigation.
Many things are shaking and breaking.
A Manafort verdict.
Cohen indictment?
Papadapoulous reneging on his plea?
Will Trump turn over some military operations to Erik Prince?
Will the Kavanaugh papers be released?
What receipts will Omarosa drop?
Will McGahn be the object of scorn by Trump now?
Lordy, Lordy....
I hope the Washington press corps has caught some sleep this weekend.
An Oregon history professor tweeted about Trump conservatism and his Twitter feed blew up.
The Oregonian did a very interesting and thoughtful interview with the professor Seth Cotlar about the incident. I'll post the link to the twitter feed below, but many of the messages are inserted into the interview, as well.
[link:https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/08/536bdf03c34178/oregon-history-professor-spark.html?utm_campaign=theoregonian_sf&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social|
Here was his original tweet:
1. I would love to read a sympathetic (yet critical) essay that assessed a central claim made by Never Trumpers like @davidfrum--that conservatism today is an embarrassing bastardization of what conservatism once was.
BOOM!
]https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1028680484786597888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1028680484786597888&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fpolicy-and-politics%2F2018%2F8%2F13%2F17683416%2Ftrump-republican-party-conservatives-seth-cotlar
Conservative publication Town Hall makes the case for sticking with Trump
Here's why:
"He fights."
The first two paragraphs:
"We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same.
This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob."
Next come many paragraphs about the righteousness and moral authority, "collegiality and dignity" of their cause, with plenty of attacks on the left, projecting their offenses against the social contract onto Dems. The author makes the argument that Trump is using the Saul Alinsky playbook against the Left -- a new twist!
The author believes that the left has been waging asymetric war for sixty years, but this is the first time the right has had a fighter. And that's why they are keeping him.
Lots of insight here. I won't post the link unless someone asks for it.
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