Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony

BobTheCoward said:
1 2 3 are equally true in a scenario where they failed to connect. The same goes for Trump's deference to Putin. That is easily explained away as either A) reward for helping win the election even if they didn't coordinate or B) the exact behavior Russia expected which motivated them to influence the election in the first place.
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Now address the rest of the post you ignored, regarding Manafort, Stone, and Papadopoulos
 
Cabbage said:
Now address the rest of the post you ignored, regarding Manafort, Stone, and Papadopoulos
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Kilimnik wanted it for his personal benefit. Greek dude was told. But being told something doesn't mean you are engaged in coordination with that person.

Stone is the one least supportive of the case. I freely admit the other stuff so Faris just less likely to be true than alternative explanations (which isn't the standard). The most obvious explanation of Stone's behavior was to find out what wikileaks knew because the campaign didn't know what wikileaks knew, because they were not coordinating with groups that hacked the DNC.
 
WilliamSeger said:
You're not reading carefully. I said "conspiracy to accept a 'thing of value'" which would be a crime if carried through, but again, conspiracy to commit a crime is also a crime even if not carried through.
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Correct.

If you and your buddies are caught planning a bank robbery, you do not have to actually commit the bank robbery in order to have committed a crime. You have already been part of a "conspiracy to commit a crime" (a criminal act in and of itself) by the very act of planning that crime together.
 
Cabbage said:
Now address the rest of the post you ignored, regarding Manafort, Stone, and Papadopoulos
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And I forget the worst one: At least 17 trumpers having over 100 contacts with Russians that they tried to hide and in some cases lied about when asked under oath. That alone justifies the Mueller probe, and it's beyond me how trumpers can know that and keep yammering about a "witch hunt." A much better analogy is that we need to find out where all this smoke is coming from.
 
Cabbage said:
Looks like a deflection to me. I'm more concerned with Manafort's actions, not what Kilimnik wants.



By someone with knowledge, which establishes yet another connection.
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I haven't argued that there wasn't a connection. I argued that the circumstantial evidence so far hasn't eliminated the scenario of the discussions between the two parties never materializing.
 
WilliamSeger said:
And I forget the worst one: At least 17 trumpers having over 100 contacts with Russians that they tried to hide and in some cases lied about when asked under oath. That alone justifies the Mueller probe, and it's beyond me how trumpers can know that and keep yammering about a "witch hunt." A much better analogy is that we need to find out where all this smoke is coming from.
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We were not discussing if the Mueller probe was justified. That is an unrelated goal post.
 
The more I watch parts of Cohen's testimony, particularly with regard to the antics of the Republicans, the more I am dismayed by their failure to take the opportunity they had to ask relevant questions insead of just attacking Cohen for what the world already knew about him. I am not surprised to see Jordan, Meadows and Gosar in the thick of all this stupidity because the are all members of the Freedom Caucus (Jordan is the Chair, and Meadows the immediate past Chair IIRC), so they are Trumpistas to the bitter end. A few of the moderate Republicans asked some genuine questions, but I would have expected more.

Its almost as if Republicans believe that Cohen had engaged in some kind of cunning plan that first, involved spending a decade of his life committing crimes for Trump, and second to the lie about it so that he could spend the next three years of his life in jail, so that he could get a book deal.
 
BobTheCoward said:
I haven't argued that there wasn't a connection. I argued that the circumstantial evidence so far hasn't eliminated the scenario of the discussions between the two parties never materializing.
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And yet the two parties shared polling data (Manafort to Kilimnik) and shared knowledge of email releases (Papadopoulos). Which you excused by a) Kilimnik wanted it, and b) Someone told the Greek dude.

Problem is, even your defense depends on those discussions having materialized.
 
WilliamSeger said:
And I forget the worst one: At least 17 trumpers having over 100 contacts with Russians that they tried to hide and in some cases lied about when asked under oath. That alone justifies the Mueller probe, and it's beyond me how trumpers can know that and keep yammering about a "witch hunt." A much better analogy is that we need to find out where all this smoke is coming from.
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And this is the puzzling bit.

Many of those contacts appear to be perfectly legitimate, and certainly not criminal in nature, or even illegal in and of themselves... so why have they consistently lied about those contacts? Why have they gone to so much trouble to hide them and cover them up?

One possibility (which is admittedly pure speculation on my part) might be that there are criminal acts that Trump and/or his businesses have committed in the past, so that they felt any investigation of Russia contacts could uncover, for example, proof that Trump and his businesses laundered Russian money to allow American companies to deal directly with Russian Banks and businesses in an end-run around sanctions. This money laundering could have taken place through Deutsche Bank. Besides the fact that Deutsche Bank has done this sort of thing before, it would also explain why Trump hit the roof when he heard Deutsche Bank had been raided by the German Police, and then went right through the roof when he found that the SCO and SDNY were trying to get a subpoena for Trumps Deutsche Bank accounts.

IMO, we are only seeing part of the picture and are missing some really big pieces of the puzzle. Its almost like one of those "WASGIJ" puzzles, and we are only seeing the clue-picture on the box.
 
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Cabbage said:
And yet the two parties shared polling data (Manafort to Kilimnik) and shared knowledge of email releases (Papadopoulos). Which you excused by a) Kilimnik wanted it, and b) Someone told the Greek dude.

Problem is, even your defense depends on those discussions having materialized.
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How is that a problem?
 
cantonear1968 said:
You understand that there is nothing in that article which proves Cohen lied about what he knew. Even taken at face value, that this friend can personally confirm his actions, it does not make his testimony untrue. His wife can be threatened and that's why he chose to cooperate about his actions as Trump's fixer.
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Prosecutors are allowed to threaten to charge people for being a criminal.
 
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