Donald Trump Presidency discussion thread III

Mumha

everlast75 wrote: »

Berman's recusal warrants further investigation in due course. There was no need to, unless he believed there was sufficient reason. It was highly unusual but got glossed over because of the bigger story.

I would disagree with your contention, it would have been a huge issue if he hadn't recused. Given the circumstances of Preet Bharrara's firing, Berman was personally interviewed by Trump in advance of his selection. There was no way he should have anything to do with it.

Mumha

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Very impressive woman. Actually, all three were very good, Ari asking informed questions.

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe was watching the next segment

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/986013360230748161

Patser

Patser wrote: »

Jaysus, you learn a new word every day. I'll have to find a way to drop kakistocracy into every day conversation. Perfect summation of Trump's rule.




https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

i thought it was a joke about kekistan tbh.

20Cent wrote: »

The pizzagate crew have a new twist to the story. Too disgusting/mad to post here but does show the level on delusion amongst the trump faithful and how much they hate democrats.

Ah go on, I never feel clean if I have to go dig it out myself. :P

Professor Moriarty

Mumha wrote: »

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe was watching the next segment

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/986013360230748161

Yeah I watched a bit of that. Perhaps he's shown poor judgement but Comey came across as honourable. He certainly didn't look like a man who was lying.

everlast75

Mumha wrote: »

I would disagree with your contention, it would have been a huge issue if he hadn't recused. Given the circumstances of Preet Bharrara's firing, Berman was personally interviewed by Trump in advance of his selection. There was no way he should have anything to do with it.

Not according to Andrew Torrez, lawyer on the opening arguments. He could be wrong but he said even though DJT interviewed him, there was zero obvious reasons to recuse, which made him ponder on less obvious ones...

Mumha

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Yeah I watched a bit of that. Perhaps he's shown poor judgement but Comey came across as honourable. He certainly didn't look like a man who was lying.

Unless you're the most rabid Trumper, no one questions Comey's veracity. His weakness is his self-belief, which is supreme. His recall is amazing but displays an inability to admit he might be wrong.

Tribe followed up his tweet about Ari,

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/986015315346821120

Professor Moriarty

Mumha wrote: »

Unless you're the most rabid Trumper, no one questions Comey's veracity. His weakness is his self-belief, which is supreme. His recall is amazing but displays an inability to admit he might be wrong.

Tribe followed up his tweet about Ari,

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/986015315346821120

Praise indeed for Ari. He's right, Comey overstepped the mark and politicised his investigations when there was no need. This undermines his story and gives The Donald an opportunity to throw mud and to quote Dems while doing so.

rosser44

Originally Posted by 2 Scoops
Another day another over hyped bombshell

https://twitter.com/KyungLahCNN/stat...63940965302272

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Why did Cohen name him as a client?

As mentioned above the really juicy bit is that Cohens lawyers argued every which way to hold back the name, including offering to write it down for the judge to see.

But the judge directed them to speak the name. And they said Sean Hannity.

To have been in that courtroom......





On a serious note this is disastrous for all involved. If the Assange angle checks out and Hannity is linked to Russian intelligence what kind of time would he be looking at?

20Cent

Deleted User wrote: »

i thought it was a joke about kekistan tbh.


Ah go on, I never feel clean if I have to go dig it out myself. :P

The NYPD have found a video on Anthony Weiners laptop

that has Hilary and her aid killing an underage girl. They cut off her face and wear it as a mask. They also removed her blood so they can drink it it themselves to get adrenochrome a chemical that kids release when in pain but has wonderful healing powers (Hilary was really sick during the election but is fine now, think this came from Monsters INC). Cops were puking watching it and others sent to hospital in shock. The video is on the "dark web". Downloading it is illegal and you will be arrested if you try.

#HRCVideo loads believing it.

Mumha

everlast75 wrote: »

Not according to Andrew Torrez, lawyer on the opening arguments. He could be wrong but he said even though DJT interviewed him, there was zero obvious reasons to recuse, which made him ponder on less obvious ones...

Preet Bharara (who should know) was talking about it and had no problem with it. I suspect it may be on foot of Berman speaking with Mueller, when the Cohen case was passed over to SDNY.

mcmoustache

jobbridge4life wrote: »

So you literally chose your username in honour of Trump...



Tribute queen.

I predict a third account closure since the Donal Trump threads started followed by a new account "But Hillary"ing a few days later.

mcmoustache

2 Scoops wrote: »

Another day another over hyped bombshell

https://twitter.com/KyungLahCNN/status/985963940965302272

Is this person willing to make this claim in a way that it trumps(if you'll pardon the pun) a statement made under oath under penalty of perjury?


I think it's time to start pounding that table.

BabyCheeses

I wonder why Cohen only has 3 client, isn't that unusual? 2/3 of them involved covering up something to do with a woman. 1/3 is still unknown but Cohen appears to have a speciality.

Peregrinus

BabyCheeses wrote: »

I wonder why Cohen only has 3 client, isn't that unusual? 2/3 of them involved covering up something to do with a woman. 1/3 is still unknown but Cohen appears to have a speciality.

Cohen was in-house counsel at the Trump Organisation until about a year ago, when he resigned and went back into private practice. His principal client continued to be Donald Trump, and the move back into private practice may have been part of a restructuring to separate Trump's personal affairs from those of the Trump Organisation. It's an even money bet that his other clients were introduced to him by or through Donald Trump.

There's a wider, but still small, circle of people to whom Cohan has provided "“strategic advice and business consulting”, rather than traditional legal advice, presumably with the hope that if some of the things he is advising and consulting on mature to the point where legal services are needed, he'll get the gig.

Essentially, Cohen gets to schmooze with lots of people who schmooze with Trump, and when some of those people find themselves in need of, ah, sensitive advice, Cohen's is a name that will leap to their minds.

amandstu

BabyCheeses wrote: »

I wonder why Cohen only has 3 client, isn't that unusual? 2/3 of them involved covering up something to do with a woman. 1/3 is still unknown but Cohen appears to have a speciality.

Going by what Ms Daniels has claimed he may also have a sideline in physical intimidation if that is what might be inferred by "we can make your life hell in many different ways " which she claims to believe he told her over the phone.

jooksavage

Hannity. This is... too perfect. :-) When HBO or Netflix dramatise the Trump Story, its at points like this audiences will begin to question the improbable plot twists.

jooksavage

Just seen that Hannity foolishly denied, on radio, that he was a client of Cohens. That means their conversations are not protected by attonrney-client privilege. Oops.

Peregrinus

jooksavage wrote: »

Just seen that Hannity foolishly denied, on radio, that he was a client of Cohens. That means their conversations are not protected by attonrney-client privilege. Oops.

That may not be a problem for Hannity, since whatever it was that he spoke Cohen about may be innocuous.

If Hannity is denying that Cohen ever acted professionally for him, he is almost certainly doing so knowing that he is thereby abandoning any chance of claiming that his dealings with Hannity are privileged. So the probable explanation is that there is nothing there that Hannity feels he needs to conceal.

spacecoyote

Peregrinus wrote: »

That may not be a problem for Hannity, since whatever it was that he spoke Cohen about may be innocuous.

If Hannity is denying that Cohen ever acted professionally for him, he is almost certainly doing so knowing that he is thereby abandoning any chance of claiming that his dealings with Hannity are privileged. So the probable explanation is that there is nothing there that Hannity feels he needs to conceal.

So on the flipside, does that hurt Cohen. If Hannity is not a client then has Cohen lied in court?

Peregrinus

spacecoyote wrote: »

So on the flipside, does that hurt Cohen. If Hannity is not a client then has Cohen lied in court?

Presumably Cohen honestly believed that Hannity was a client; why else would he name him when he was clearly reluctant to do so? So I don't think Cohen has lied about this. There might be poor professional standards or poor professional practice involved if the relationship is so vague and/or so badly documented that it's unclear if it's a client relationship, and Cohen thinks one thing while Hannity thinks another.

Of course, you should consider the possiblity that if anyone is lying here, it's Hannity. His earliest statements, from what I read, were to the effect that he has had “occasional discussions with [Cohen] for his input and perspective”, that assumes they are confidential and covered by client confidentiality, and that he has paid modest sums for Cohen's advice. None of the discussions “ever, ever involved a matter between [Hannity] and a third party”, but that wouldn't preclude Hannity being a client, the discussions constituting legal advice, and the discussions being privileged. He now seems to have abandoned that.

Tldr; At fist, Hannity seemed to be trying to suggest that he was was enough of a client to to be able to assert privilege if necessary, but not so much of a client that you should imagine that he might be in any way tainted by the sulphurous miasma that emanates from Cohen. But perhaps he has now been advised that he cannot successfully ride both of these horses at the same time, and he had decided his best course is to plump for "Me, a client of Cohen's? Certainly not!"

jooksavage

Peregrinus wrote: »

That may not be a problem for Hannity, since whatever it was that he spoke Cohen about may be innocuous.

If Hannity is denying that Cohen ever acted professionally for him, he is almost certainly doing so knowing that he is thereby abandoning any chance of claiming that his dealings with Hannity are privileged. So the probable explanation is that there is nothing there that Hannity feels he needs to conceal.

Unfortunately that probably is the case. At this stage, absolutely nothing would surprise me though. Whatever happens, it is extremely unusual for this guy to spend an entire week condemning the Cohen raid (he slandered Mueller by describing him as a crime-boss) and never once mention the fact the the subject of that raid is his own attorney. At best, thats very fishy. He cant claim Cohen wasnt his attorney on one hand and then claim attorney-client privilege on the other, as he's currently doing. If nothing else, it means he'll have to tone down the Mueller-gestapo comparisons.

Water John

One suspects it may come down as, that he was a client. He admits, giving Cohen the odd ten bucks. That is payment for advice. That moves it, a good bit along the line, to being a contract.

Peregrinus

Water John wrote: »

One suspects it may come down as, that he was a client. He admits, giving Cohen the odd ten bucks. That is payment for advice. That moves it, a good bit along the line, to being a contract.

Just because Hannity had a contract with Cohen doesn't mean that it was a contract for professional legal services. Cohen has told the court that he has three clients, plus a wider (but still quite small) circle of people to whom he provided business advice and consultancy services, but not legal advice or representation. The wider circle are not clients and cannot claim privilege.

Obviously this can be a slightly blurry line, and Hannity seems minded to argue that he falls on the other side of it. But the fundamental point is sound; not everybody who has a contract with Cohen, or who makes a payment to Cohen, is necessarily a client of Cohen's. It depends on what the contract or payment is for.

jooksavage

Peregrinus wrote: »

Just because Hannity had a contract with Cohen doesn't mean that it was a contract for professional legal services. Cohen has told the court that he has three clients, plus a wider (but still quite small) circle of people to whom he provided business advice and consultancy services, but not legal advice or representation. The wider circle are not clients and cannot claim privilege.

Obviously this can be a slightly blurry line, and Hannity seems minded to argue that he falls on the other side of it. But the fundamental point is sound; not everybody who has a contract with Cohen, or who makes a payment to Cohen, is necessarily a client of Cohen's. It depends on what the contract or payment is for.

The only thing is none of that wider circle were named as "clients". Hannity made up 33% of what Cohen himself considered clients and, while hardly the toast of the NY legal trade, as a lawyer, he's probably in a better position than Hannity to decide if Hannity is a client or not.

The problem is there is always these kind of amusing sideshows that detratct from a bigger scandal thats happening in plain sight: Trump is, again, INEXPLICABLY refusing to sign off on sanctions against Russia. Because this stuff is happening in broad daylight its somehow inadmissable as evidence of at least some kind of collusion.

Captain Obvious

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Why did Cohen name him as a client?

My theory is that every time they had a conversation about something dodgy Cohen asked for a dollar as payment to make the conversation privileged. Hannity thought this was just a good way to make a conversation safe from prying feds, not realising Cohen was keeping records of everything they spoke about and did.

VinLieger

Captain Obvious wrote: »

My theory is that every time they had a conversation about something dodgy Cohen asked for a dollar as payment to make the conversation privileged. Hannity thought this was just a good way to make a conversation safe from prying feds, not realising Cohen was keeping records of everything they spoke about and did.

I'd love to be in the room when Hannity's real lawyers get to hear what he's been up to with cohen et al

Oafley Jones

Water John wrote: »

One suspects it may come down as, that he was a client. He admits, giving Cohen the odd ten bucks. That is payment for advice. That moves it, a good bit along the line, to being a contract.

Breaking Bad has a lot to answer for.

Peregrinus

Captain Obvious wrote: »

My theory is that every time they had a conversation about something dodgy Cohen asked for a dollar as payment to make the conversation privileged. Hannity thought this was just a good way to make a conversation safe from prying feds, not realising Cohen was keeping records of everything they spoke about and did.

Simply making a payment of a dollar (or indeed of a larger amount) does not make a conversation privileged. Conversely, not making a payment does not mean that it is not privileged. It does not matter at all whether the lawyers is paid, or how much; all that matters is whether a lawyer-client relationship exists. Payment is irrelevant to that question.

Plus, if Hannity imagined that the plan was to characterise the relationship as a lawyer/client one in order to be able to invoke privilege, it's very unlikely that he thought that no note or record would be made. If you want at the outset to position yourself so that your relationship looks lawyery-clienty, then obviously you are going to do all the usual lawyery-clienty things, which includes keeping a file, keeping correspondence, documenting meetings and conversations, etc.

No, the simple explanation here is:

(a) Cohen named Hannity as a client either because he genuinely considers Hannity as a client or because he thinks the point is arguable but he wants to give Hannity the option of at least trying to claim privilege;

(b) Hannity was initially undecided whether it would be more damaging to him to acknowledge being Cohen's client and possibly have the benefit of privilege or deny being a client and abandon any claim to privilege, and at first he tried to have an each way bet;

(c) he has now realised (or been advised) that he can't have the each-way bet and, forced to choose one, he reckons not being a client and not claiming privilege is going to be less damaging to him than taking the opposite course.

Zubeneschamali

Peregrinus wrote: »

If Hannity is denying that Cohen ever acted professionally for him, he is almost certainly doing so knowing that he is thereby abandoning any chance of claiming that his dealings with Hannity are privileged. So the probable explanation is that there is nothing there that Hannity feels he needs to conceal.

Another possible explanation is that none of these people are very bright.

everlast75

Did I mention that I am delighted Sean Hannity was named in Court proceedings as a Client (1 of a mere 3!) of a "lawyer" under federal investigation, along with such high brow company as Donald "grab her by the *****" and Elliot Broidy, a man who paid $1.6 million in hush money to a girl he got pregnant who then went on to have an abortion?

What a good day to be alive..