MAGA = My Attorney Got Arrested?
This news makes me sad.
From what I understand it’s sending a message to everyone who’s in a legal hot seat because of Trump. “If don’t talk and end up in prison, I’ll pardon you.”
“In 1985, Roper found that 32 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure, or volunteered the wrong answer, when asked, “What is or was the Holocaust?” In responding to surveyors’ questions about the numbers of dead, 25 percent of the respondents in a 1992 Roper poll guessed 2 million Jews or fewer had been killed; 10 percent guessed 20 million; 20 percent chose not to answer. That same year, 38 percent of respondents couldn’t identify Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka as concentration camps—a blooper even more notable, as Shulman writes, because those respondents (unlike the 2018 group) were given three names to jog their memories.”
That’s about the same percentages in the recent NYT report.
“My personal sense is that I didn’t think my contempt for Donald Trump could go lower, but he surprises me each and every day,” she said.
So there’s a hearing related to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and determining which of his records, if any, are subject to attorney-client privilege, etc. During the hearing, Cohen’s attorneys claimed that he had a third client who did not wish to be named publicly. The judge forced them to name the client publicly, and, according to Adam Klansfeld, who is live-tweeting the hearing:
This tweet made me laugh so hard. I’m in tears.
Also SEAN HANNITY!
Just saw that. Cohen named Sean Hannity as his third client while trying to get an injunction against the material discovered by the FBI on his offices last week. Sean Hannity denies being Cohen’s client, though Hannity’s still trying to claim “attorney-client privilege” for their conversations. So one of the two is two:
a) Sean Hannity rallied against an investigation on his talk show without ever disclosing that he is personally affected in that investigation
b) Michael Cohen lied to a judge
Regardless of who’s lying, the fact that one of them has to be lying gives the Government sufficient reason to go through their communications to determine the nature of their relationship, whether an attorney-client privilege existed or not.
This is completely supposition and conjecture on my part, but if Hannity IS Cohen’s client, this raises all kinds of interesting questions…
If Hannity didn’t pay Cohen, or paid him a reduced rate, was this in exchange for positive coverage of Cohen’s other client, namely one Donald J. Trump?
If there was an agreement where Hannity paid Cohen less, or nothing at all as Hannity is claiming, and this was in exchange for positive news coverage of Trump, if this occurred during the 2016 Presidential Election, this could be considered an “in kind” contribution to Trump’s campaign, the same way that Cohen’s $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels is, and would be an FEC/campaign finance violation.
Granted, there are a lot of assumptions in that last paragraph, but if all that turns out to be true, that could open Cohen and Hannity up to the same types of criminal charges that Cohen is potentially facing for the Stormy Daniels payoff.
Sorry to post again, but this gets even more interesting (at least from a wonky legal standpoint):
Donald Trump registered his campaign for the 2020 election on Inauguration Day 2017 with the FEC. So… from January 2017 onward, Trump has technically been a candidate for the 2020 presidential election.
That means that even if Cohen only helped Hannity with the Media Matters Boycott, as Hannity is claiming, and Hannity provided positive coverage for Trump in exchange for reduced or no legal fees, this could still technically qualify as an “in kind” undisclosed contribution, not for the 2016 election, but for the 2020 election!
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_electi_1.html
A relatively concise write up by Schneier on the state and requirements of voting machines from a security perspective.