NYT’s Limited Understanding of Trump’s “Tactics for Avoiding a Crisis Like the One He Now Faces”
There’s a funny passage in the 2,800-word NYT piece contrasting how Trump has managed Michael Cohen and Allen Weisselberg.
Initially sympathetic, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen a “good man” and the search “a disgraceful situation.” He also called Mr. Cohen with a message — stay strong — and the Trump Organization paid for Mr. Cohen’s main lawyer.
But Mr. Trump’s advisers were concerned about witness tampering accusations and he stopped reaching out. Their relationship soon soured.
NYT claims — apparently intending this to be a serious explanation — that Trump stopped trying to buy Cohen’s silence with a pardon and payments for a lawyer because of concerns about witness tampering.
I mean, I’m sure some of NYT’s sources claimed that. But given the amount of witness tampering Trump continued to engage in — publicly and privately — after leaving Cohen to fend for himself, the explanation is not remotely credible.
A far, far more likely explanation — one that is also more consistent with other aspects of NYT’s story — is that Trump and his attorneys intervened in the privilege review of phone content seized from Michael Cohen to conduct a risk assessment. (NYT says it relied on court records to tell this story, but they don’t mention that Trump abandoned Cohen only after getting access to what had been seized and why.) What Trump’s team saw before them in both the seized materials and the warrants used to seize Cohen’s devices may have led Trump to conclude, first, that Cohen had already showed signs of betrayal, by secretly recording the phone call over which they planned the hush payments to Karen McDougal.
Mr. Cohen’s lawyers discovered the recording as part of their review of the seized materials and shared it with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, according to the three people briefed on the matter.
“Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation, and we are sensitive to that,” Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said in a statement. “But suffice it to say that when the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. Any attempt at spin cannot change what is on the tape.”
NYT (including Maggie Haberman, who was also part of this story) was the first to break that story, and did so in the days after Cohen hired Lanny Davis, but it is not mentioned here.
Perhaps more importantly, Trump would have gotten a misleading sense from reviewing seized materials that Cohen was only being actively investigated for the taxi medallions and the hush payment.
That warrant may have led Trump to sincerely believe that prosecutors were only looking at the hush payment and business-related crimes, as he claimed on Fox News.
When Mr. Trump called into one of his favorite television shows, “Fox & Friends,” a few weeks after the search, he distanced himself from Mr. Cohen, who he said had handled just “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work, adding: “From what I understand, they’re looking at his businesses.”
“I’m not involved,” Mr. Trump added three times.
The warrants against Cohen built on each other and so built on the Mueller investigation, as I laid out here and here. But the warrant overtly tied to the April 2018 seizure didn’t mention other aspects of the investigation that might have made Trump more cautious about hanging Cohen out to dry, had he seen them.
Trump would not have known that Robert Mueller had succeeded in doing something SDNY does not seem to have done: accessed Cohen’s Trump Organization emails from Microsoft, thereby discovering documents regarding Trump’s ties to Russia that Trump Org had withheld from subpoena responses. Trump would not have known, then, that Mueller had established that Cohen told Congress a false story to cover up Trump’s own lies about Russia. That led to the first damning testimony from Cohen about Trump: That on his behalf, Cohen had contacted the Kremlin during the 2016 election and then lied to cover it up.
Plus, if Trump used the privilege review as a means to assess risk, it was based on a faulty assumption, an assumption mirrored in the NYT story.
NYT ties Cohen’s import as a witness to the crimes for which Cohen was investigated personally, even focusing exclusively on the hush payment and ignoring the lies about Russia. In a description of the damage Cohen’s congressional testimony did to Trump, NYT suggests that damage was limited to the hush payment, the thing that Trump allegedly engaged in financial fraud to cover up (predictably, NYT doesn’t mention the financial fraud alleged in the cover-up, just the cover-up).
When he pleaded guilty to federal charges that August, Mr. Cohen pointed the finger at Mr. Trump, saying he had paid the hush money “at the direction of” his former boss — an accusation he is expected to repeat on the witness stand in the Manhattan trial. A spokeswoman for Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, declined to comment.
Before going to prison, Mr. Cohen also appeared before Congress, where he was asked who else had worked on the hush-money deal. His answer: Mr. Weisselberg.
The far more damaging thing Cohen did in that congressional testimony, though, was to tee up the way Trump adjusted his own business valuations he used for his business to maximize his profits. That was the basis for the fraud trial against Trump Org, and if the verdict sticks, it may cost Trump a half billion dollars and, unless he finds a way to cash in on Truth Social, may create follow-on financial problems.
In other words, Trump seems to have imagined Cohen would not find another way of avenging being hung out like he was, and NYT doesn’t include that other way — predicating investigations that threaten Trump Org itself and led to Weisselberg’s twin prosecutions — in their story.
Ultimately, NYT is still telling this story as if the newsworthy bit is Trump’s continued success at cheating the law, what they describe as, “the power and peril of Mr. Trump’s tactics for avoiding a crisis like the one he now faces.”
This “power and peril” pitch makes Trump the hero of the story and Cohen and Weisselberg contestants in a reality show, with Cohen inflating that contest with his wildly premature boast that “the biggest mistake” Trump ever made was not paying for Cohen’s defense and his claim, “I was the first lamb led to the slaughterhouse.”
If NYT weren’t making this a reality show, it might take away different lessons:
- Trump has invested a great deal in using associates and co-conspirators to learn of the criminal investigation into him, with a Joint Defense Agreement incorporating 37 people during the Mueller investigation and $50 million of Republican campaign funds invested instead in paying attorneys who will at a minimum report back on investigative developments. Even with that $50 million investment (and the potential damage it’ll do to GOP fortunes in November), Trump has fewer tools to discover the status of ongoing investigations than he had when Republicans on both Intelligence Communities were using the committee to spy on investigations for him. Yet even with far more access to information than he currently has about ongoing investigations (the two federal cases against Trump are different, because Jack Smith has overproduced discovery), Trump miscalculated with Cohen.
- The risk Cohen posed was not just — as NYT portrays — that he’ll testify against Trump at trial, at this trial. It was that he would disclose information that implicated Trump (and Weisselberg) in new investigations, as he did. As such, one lesson to take away from this, at least for those who don’t have an incentive to make Trump the protagonist of all stories, is that those spurned by Trump know a whole lot of shit about him, and that shit could turn into investigations that implicate the fraud that lies at the core of his persona. John Bolton, Mike Esper, and Mike Pence are all people whom Trump accused of disloyalty who thus far have only shared shit about Trump when prosecutors came asking. That could change.
- As noted, NYT didn’t mention that Trump only turned on Cohen after discovering that prosecutors had obtained a damning recording from his phone. But he’s not the only Trump associate whose own blackmail on Trump was implicated in a criminal investigation. Mueller’s prosecutors were seeking Stone’s notes of all the calls he had with Trump during the 2016 election when they searched his homes (it’s not clear whether they ever found it), the existence to which Steve Bannon was also a witness. Both Stone and Bannon got their pardons, perhaps because they were better able at leveraging dirt on Trump for legal impunity than Cohen was.
- NYT describes the injury to Trump here as, “his long-held fear that prosecutors would flip trusted aides into dangerous witnesses.” That’s just weird. It’s as if NYT hasn’t considered that the real danger is that he’ll do prison time for his crimes. The focus on loyalty rather than truthful testimony is especially odd in a piece that describes that Hope Hicks is likely to testify in Alvin Bragg’s case, who’ll testify with less of the circus and more credibility than Cohen. After all, even Jason Miller, still a top campaign manager for Trump, would be a key witness against Trump in a January 6 trial if he repeated the true description of how the campaign started refusing to support the Big Lie after a period in 2020. Bannon provided damaging testimony in the Roger Stone trial by being held to his prior grand jury testimony, and he remains a MAGAt in good standing.
Sometimes, it’s not disloyalty that can sustain a conviction, it’s truth, even truth from still-loyal associates.
Not for NYT, I guess. In a piece trying to extend this analogy to Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira (the latter of whom, who really does have a colorable claim he didn’t know he was obstructing an investigation, is not similarly situated in my opinion), NYT describes that they were charged for their loyalty, not claims that sound pretty obviously false in the indictment.
Like Mr. Weisselberg, Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira remained loyal, and they are now paying the price: Mr. Smith charged both men not only with obstruction of justice, but also with lying to investigators.
Nauta and De Oliveira got charged, in part, because prosecutors believe they lied to protect Trump because that is a crime, just like it was a crime when Cohen and Stone and Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort did it (Manafort was punished but not charged for those lies). But Nauta, especially, almost certainly got charged because prosecutors still haven’t been able to account for how much Trump intended to steal classified documents when he left the White House and still haven’t been able to account for the stolen classified documents that got flown to Bedminster in 2022. Nauta probably figures it’s a good bet to hope that Trump wins the presidency, ends his prosecution (or pardons him) and rewards him with a sinecure. That’s how having dirt on Trump works! But the prosecution is not over yet, and especially given the likelihood that this won’t go to trial before the election, he may change his mind.
Trump has absolutely succeeded in bolloxing all his criminal cases and may well succeed in delaying all the rest until he can pardon his way out of most of them. But if that effort fails, basic rules of gravity are likely to kick in and Trump will no more be a protagonist than all the other suspected criminals investigated by state and federal authorities.
” John Bolton, Mike Esper, and Mike Pence are all people whom Trump accused of disloyalty who thus far have only shared shit about Trump when prosecutors came asking. That could change.”
This reminds me of Reagan whose Alzheimer’s was covered up until he was out of office.
Mark Esper, not Mike Esper. Former Secty of Defense, sacked by the former president after the 2020 election.
Very helpful article. It should be noted that it was AOC’s excellent questioning of Cohen during his congressional testimony led to the NY fraud investigation.
It was indeed. She was a rookie at the time but hit the ground running.
Yep.
I remember her specific question about false building valuations for insurance policies. I thought that one was brilliant!
In NYC, if a building insurance policy is cancelled and not replaced in 72 hours, the Certificate of Occupancy can be voided — hence the need to vacate the building of its tenants.
That particular hearing only cemented my desire to seize and rip open each and every Trump org golf course resort for forensic auditing.
When AOC explains that taxpayers funded development of the Ferry Point golf course in her district and Trump could keep every dollar made by the course, I nearly levitated. There’s been no investigation into how that deal happened since then that I’m aware of, only the fraud based on devaluation of property.
Trump could have been using a taxpayer-built facility to launder money and five years later we are no closer to know if this may/may not have happened.
The NYT, the supposed newspaper of New York city and state, has done nothing to dig into this line of inquiry. The NYT itself has been used by Trump as one of the tools to avoid “a crisis like the one he now faces.” Should the public not ask if NYT also has a catch-and-kill service like David Pecker’s AMI-National Enquirer did?
The closest NYT gets to digging in: an article about the Saudi LIV-funded women’s 2022 golf tournament to be held at Ferry Point is this single paragraph:
Haberman is on the byline. NYT’s earlier work on the course is little more than, “Look, a Trump course on a landfill!” just weeks before Trump announced his candidacy for 2016.
Compare and contrast that to WaPo’s piece on Ferry Point a few weeks after Trump’s announcement:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/08/25/taxpayers-built-this-new-york-golf-course-trump-reaps-the-rewards/
So many red flags and not a one chased by the news outlet located in and reporting on New York city and state.
In general, some taxpayers funded development, irks me.
When real rich folks and businesses are able to hustle breaks to build in supposedly blight areas, which only become “blight areas” because of declaration by a government official and are in no way “blight”.
Or a decade of real estate tax abatements; what’s the matter with one or two years.
I assumed the Ferry Point deal – no equity stake, operating revenue only – was a kind of revenue farming: prepay the city a lump sum and keep what you make, hoping it’s more than you paid. But if it’s a cash business, which seems likely, Trump wouldn’t be in it for a trickle of cash.
Separately, when public agencies do this kind of deal, where are the laundry list of standards and improvements that should be required of the revenue farmer?
Speaking of forensic auditing, Cory Doctorow has written two books in a proposed longer series of books about a forensic auditor, Martin Hench, Red Team Blues and The Bezzle. Cory is a long-time computer person working, at one poin,t for EFF and explains the technology and the scams very clearly. I’m halfway through The Bezzle which is picking apart the private prison system. Chillingly infuriating.
Imagine John D MacDonald’s Travis McGee series where the hero is Meyer, the brilliant economist built like a bear [assonance has been fun to play with since before Beowulf].
I’m thinking about asking him to do Trmp.
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I think your description understates Cory Doctorow’s significance. He’s primarily a reporter and science fiction writer, who has a special interest in computers and copyrights, but he’s achieved the status of public intellectual.
The NYT has covered for Trump for decades! They are deeply tied into the real estate investment scheme. They made so much from the RE business –going back to the old paper Sunday Times, with the big fat real estate ads.
I don’t like confessing ignorance, but speaking of limited understandings, I have a very limited understanding of what Cohen has and hasn’t told Govt investigators. He has testified at hearings. He pled guilty to some crimes, was sentenced for those crimes, and served some time. But my understanding (again limited) is that he never formally cooperated with investigators/prosecutors. So are there still secrets of public interest regarding Trump, Russia, Ukraine, . . . . that he has kept to himself? This question is important to me as I kinda/sorta see him now as one of the good guys, but I’m still suspicious of him because I don’t think he’s come clean entirely.
Zirc
If Cohen had striking evidence for the disgraced former committing some “light treason”, I can’t imagine he couldn’t have gotten immunity for his involvement. Trump’s doj threw him in solitary for writing a book, so I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have a motive for revenge. My gut feeling is that the well is dry, unless there’s an October surprise in store.
I would also imagine Cohen will be on the receiving end of endless vindictive investigations and tax audits if the out-on-bail candidate returns to office in January 2025, so even from a purely selfish standpoint he should be cooperating extensively.
There is no “treason”, light or otherwise, in or about this Trump cases, and it is silly to reference it. Cohen already has cooperated extensively. Also, immunity for what??? Cohen has been charged and sentenced for everything possible already. Again, this is just silly.
I think “light treason” is an allusion to the travails of the fictional character and patriarch, George Bluth Sr., on the show “Arrested Development”. The hapless character sometimes tried to downplay the severity of his most outrageous and ridiculous crimes as a property developer by saying only that he “might have committed light treason.”
To be fair, I believe that tannenzaepfle was referencing George Bluth’s admission of “light treason” in Arrested Development. “And that’s why you always leave a note!”
Ever since the news came out of the call from Haberman to Cassidy Hutchison’s former attorney Stefan Passantino, I’ve had the suspicion about the role Haberman plays whenever her byline appears in one of these multi-reporter stories.
She’s technically filling the role of a third or fourth bylined reporter and getting a source reaction here or verifying a fact there.
But she’s also there to get a handle on what her colleagues know and then share it with Trump’s team. It’s a similar role to what Passantino himself played.
I doubt she’s careless enough to explicitly sandbag another reporter. But I think she provides enough clues as to the direction of a story to give sources the ability to coordinate a response. She’s like a bridge player who “accidentally” shows cards in her hand, and in doing so gives the other team a lot of insight into not only what she holds, but what her partner has too.
And it goes back well before that. There are multiple instances in Mueller files where Trumpsters were joking about the way they use Maggie.
She works really hard. But she exhibits no ability to bring critical thinking to these stories, and there are several Mueller related stories that are outright wrong, as well as the whole stream of the ones claiming Trump was only under investigation for obstruction.
“She works really hard” but brings no critical thinking: There’s your single-sentence review of Confidence Man. Haberman’s book took the promise of its title and flattened out from there, for hundreds of meticulously researched pages utterly lacking in insight.
For people at her level in any profession, I tend to assume intent. I don’t think you can reach those levels without critical thinking – and critical political thinking – of who wins and loses, in Haberman’s case, by a particular kind of press coverage.
I don’t think I’d say “she exhibits no ability to bring critical thinking to these stories”. After seeing her interviewed numerous times on TV, I’d say she’s nobody’s fool. I think it’s more likely that she’s well aware of the fact that critical thinking simply doesn’t work when you’re interacting with Team Trump. Examples from just this year would be the fact that anyone but Trump would be already have been thrown in jail for attacking Judge Engoron’s clerk, and anyone but Trump would be in jail already for attacking Judge Merchan’s daughter. And anyone but Trump wouldn’t have had their bond reduced in the NY fraud case. And on and on.
Haberman’s reporting may be partly responsible for this, but not by much. For his entire life, it seems like absolutely no one has been willing to treat Trump the way that they would treat anyone else. If you’re Haberman, and that’s your initial working hypothesis, then you don’t look at the facts and ask, “How would anyone else be treated here?” You ask, “How will Trump be treated DIFFERENTLY from everyone else here?”
As to bond reduction in the NY fraud case, Michael Popok of MeidasTouch said last week that he thought the reduction is because the Appeals Court is going to reduce Engeron’s monetary findings. He said that Engeron ignored their previously ordered statute of limitations.
Lol.
Popok has extensive experience and possible connections (in the soiree circuit) with the appellate level judges here, and has been practicing there for decades. I’d at least consider his opinion as a viable possibility.
If we accept that view, however, I must wonder whether Engoron made a mistake here in being too severe. 174 M$ is damaging enough on top of the existing judgments. When combined with the restrictions (note that the appellate court left most of those elements untouched) it’s still going to cause real pain for Defendant-1 with more trials to come. Perhaps Judge Engoron was too enraged to see clearly and stick to things that were appeal-proof in scope.
As EW notes above in the post, Nauta, et al may decide to talk turkey when it becomes apparent that Defendant-1 doesn’t have the scratch or the ability to protect them. The perception of wealth and shamelessness are the two things Defendant-1 can use and both are necessary for him to prevail.
As far as being too severe, until he was walloped with $81 million in Carroll case, nothing got to shut him up about her. Maybe he had bigger fish to go after in other cases after that award to continue bothering about her, or maybe it finally made a dent in his wallet and brain.
And 174 M$ being “damaging enough” on top of the existing judgments, look at collapse of 2008. There was virtually no “damaging” to the perps and those that had absolutely nothing to do with the disaster, taxpayers, had to bail out those that walked free and have done better since then.
And don’t forget, he’s been a criminal all his life and never got charged. And when he did, it was like nothing to him, Trump University, foundation.
From Forbes, “Trump’s collateral to secure the loans was a combination of cash and investment-grade bonds, according to Don Hankey, the chairman of Knight Insurance.”
Obviously $174,000,000 is not “damaging enough”.
I think the circumstance is less that Judge Engoron made a “mistake “- his opinion was detailed, thorough, and well-supported – than it is that the Appellate Division, First Dept, which covers metro NYC and its profusion of wealth, might fundamentally disagree over holding power too much to account.
As I read the judgment, it was the orthodox application of the orthodox rule a defendant should be stripped of gains made from the wrong. It wasn’t a discretionary calculation or general damages.
My interpretation of the Popok video was that his thesis was much more tentatively expressed than you state
1 It is unlikely that $175m plucked out of thin air by the panel
2 the reduction is close to the amount Trump claims was a calculation error ( including by mis-application of the prior appeals) -$285m
3 So there is a chance that the panel of 5 including the chief judge think that there is arguably a flaw in Engoron’s methods of calculation,
a. perhaps including transactions falling outside the scope,
and b. perhaps by eg taking the property tax assessment as valuation of M-a-L rather than some finding as to the open market valuations ( subject to encumbrances and burdens)
and c. otherwise.
Popok’s eponymous firm’s NYC practice seems to specialize in white collar criminal defense of corporations and wealthy white males. I would not assume that makes him an objective observer.
The appeals court does not seem to have picked its much lower bond amount out of thin “error.” But it’s hard to see how a simple misapplication of a formula would gut the damages by two-thirds. It would have to fundamentally disagree with the lower court about how much is too much.
That was pretty much my take when I looked him up.
I think Popok’s WWM defense record makes him a more valid observer than it seems otherwise. This is the kind of WWM white-collar case he would know about extensively in terms of how the NYS system would respond.
In short, if Popok is wrong, the next level will overrule but I suspect the appellate court was looking to ensure no SCOTUS appeal could get traction by removing all interpretation errors.
Accurate as the term “stochastic parrot” (coined by Emily Bender in reference to AI use of LLMs) may be, it’s a pretty good description of Haberman’s work on the Trump beat.
I can’t help wonder if all the research Haberman worked hard to collect for any article on Trump, put through ChatGPT, wouldn’t yield similarly shallow results creating output meeting editorial expectations but not actually conferring newer, deeper knowledge.
Is there such a thing as a crafty stochastic parrot? Thought not. Pity.
Only of infinite improbability, like 100 monkeys coming up with Hamlet.
I think Haberman feels her ultimate clients aren’t the readers of the Times, it’s her sources, and to the extent she writes something critical, it’s due to her sense that it’s for the good of her clients.
It’s a dynamic that was all too obvious in the attitudes of the NBC execs who hired RRM. They weren’t out to inform their audience, they were out to promote a set of sources who fed into RRM. And it’s telling that people like Frank Luntz – who was previously hired by the NY Times – were in the forefront of complaining so loudly about the protests. They weren’t seriously defending RRM as a good source of honest information for audiences. They were defending the vast network of conservative sources and their access to reporters.
The only critical thinking she’s done is about how to look like she’s being objective about Trump while making money doing so. Whether she knows how much of a stooge she is and is just trying to make bank despite that is a good question.
i think i’ve posted this comment or something similar here before:
Haberman is Miller redux.
what is it with the NYT? i agree with rayne, is it a catch-and-kill service?
“The NYT, the supposed newspaper of New York city and state, has done nothing to dig into this line of inquiry. The NYT itself has been used by Trump as one of the tools to avoid “a crisis like the one he now faces.” Should the public not ask if NYT also has a catch-and-kill service like David Pecker’s AMI-National Enquirer did?”
the silence re motivation and questions are deafening!
I think obsessing about these trials happening before the election is wrong. We need to put that energy into reelecting Joe Biden and making sure Trump gets his day in court when the case is ready. Delay can actually work against Trump if he is not reelected. Trump supporters don’t care if he is indicted and will either ignore or disregard any trial and work doubly hard to vote for him. Let’s be patient, let Jack Smith and the legal system do their job. Our job is to vote and get everyone we know to vote. If Trump loses the holdouts could easily see that their best bet is to turn on Trump, as Marcy pointed out. That would up the odds of a Trump conviction. The media’s job is to uncover as much of the truth as possible and stop writing about it as if it is all a game or reality show that has no real effect on the fate of our democracy and their continued ability to do their jobs.
The timing of the trials changes the calculus for anyone who’s deciding whether or not to flip, though. If the trial is pushed to after the election, then your decision is easy: Wait to see if Trump gets elected, in which case the trial is going to go away.
If the trial happens before the election, then you have to decide whether or not to flip BEFORE you know if Trump will be President and able to bail you out. That’s a VERY different calculation.
“Ultimately, NYT is still telling this story as if the newsworthy bit is Trump’s continued success at cheating the law, what they describe as, ‘the power and peril of Mr. Trump’s tactics for avoiding a crisis like the one he now faces.’ ”
I read this NYT’s piece as a implimentation of the disinfo narrative of “the victim.” Most of their Trump coverage tends to lean into disinfo narrative tactics disguised as news coverage.
The NYT continues its addiction to pro-Trump news coverage. In a world where Trump controls the entire GOP, it may be worried about four years worth of access, but I think its owners just agree with him.
Story I read once (sorry I forgot the source) is that NYT published its first story about Trmp moving into the Manhattan real estate market as a personality puff piece pitched to it by John Barron, the name he used as his own PR rep.
Check with David Cay Johnson if you wish to verify the veracity.
I know a guy who knows a guy.
David Cay Johnston is a well-known commodity, thanks.
Judy Klemesrud wrote about Trmp on Nov. 1, 1976 in a long profile the paper put on its “second front.”
“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth ‘more than $200 million.’ ”
The article talked about possible, if not probable, witness tampering as if were normal practice, with the only criterion being success. What are “carrots”, if not bribes, and “sticks”, if not, intimidation? The carrot approach succeeded with Weisselberg. The stick approach didn’t totally work with Cohen. The timing of the article was interesting – before the Manhattan criminal trial involving Cohen. Maybe NYTimes is just trying to get us used to living in a country run by a mob boss.
It is a misuse of valuable resources to make Dr. Wheeler explain things like this, but apparently at least some NYT writers can’t figure that out on their own …
Don’t give the editors a pass here. They decide what runs and doubtless have made it clear to their staff where the unofficial guardrails are.
That’s equally true for Kristen Welker’s both sides framing of Trump’s, not both parties’, divisiveness. Her producers are probably as much or more at fault than Welker, who still sold the false framing.
Indeed, and it’s curious how quickly she went to the dark side of normalizing MAGA. She wasn’t always this way and it almost (almost!!) makes me miss Chuckles.
Long Slog Lowdown
The buzz, the scoop, the poop, or score,
At times it seems an unnerving chore,
An incessant search and always more
to get down to the unvarnished core.
The crux, the gist, the drift, the thrust,
One day we’ll get beyond nonplussed,
But first there’s fathoms to be sussed
out from reams, once gathering dust.
The clincher, goods, skinny, or dope,
Tries to slip beyond the envelope,
Until it’s wrangled back into scope,
And evolves into another trope.
The upshot, kicker or bottom line,
It’s prickly like a porcupine,
With an ample heap of fresh sunshine,
Democracy might regain some spine.
2/14/21
opined furor rope entrussed
beholden to thy tine august
adorned, affixed, a gore encrust
such spline as thrust so famous
There are two quotes from the article that I believe are worth highlighting. Money can’t buy love, but it can buy silence. Literally.
“Mr. Trump’s company paid Mr. Weisselberg’s legal bills and awarded him a $2 million severance, with a condition: He could not voluntarily cooperate with any law enforcement agency.”
“Mr. Weisselberg is not expected to testify for either side. Although prosecutors have sought his help for years, he has repeatedly rebuffed them,”
Judge Engeron ordered Weisselberg to pay back the one million hush money severance he had received so far.
AG Alvin Bragg interviewed Michael Cohen approximately 65 times, as I recall, to test his credibility. Bragg’s initial skepticism was allayed by the internal consistency of his answers and other markers of truth-telling. I have listened to many hours of Cohen’s podcasts and interviews by others, and I find him credible, as do AG Bragg and Judge Engoron.
My modest claim to fame in my village is that I could almost feel in my bones that we would come to this situation at some point when I observed that Jim Comey left the February 14, 2016 private dinner with tfg and immediately took detailed notes in his car, including direct quotes, typed them up, and gave a copy to an unnamed professor at Columbia Law School. I trained as a volunteer Guardian ad Litem for CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) for children in care of the Worcester Court because of abuse and neglect. I was trained to follow that exact procedure after interviewing a hostile witness, giving a copy of my notes to my supervisor. FBI Director Comey was a skilled and successful prosecutors of Mafia figures in the 1980s–1990s, when it flourished in the NY Metro area.
My suspicions grew when Andrew McCabe was appointed to take his place. McCabe knew his tenure would be short-lived, so he immediately appointed Robert Mueller as a Special Counsel to investigate tfg’s attempted blackmail of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a move that would be difficult to block. FBI Director McCabe also had extensive experience prosecuting Russian Mafia in Brooklyn, across Marine Park from where my in-laws lived. That poisonous colony was pointed out to me numerous times, with a chuckle.
About a year after my initial hunch that something was rotten in DC, I was shocked with the recognition that we really might have a proto-Mafioso president– an electric shock that coursed through my entire body.
I have lived for years as Cassandra, trying to convince others of the truth I saw, mostly by a vision. But amirite?
I believe there’s at least one error in your recollection.
Mueller investigation was created by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Trump and Russian interference.
That jives with my recollection. AG Sessions had recused himself from matters Russian.
xyxyxyxy and others, thanks for the correction. With 2 more seconds of thought, I would have realized that Acting FBI Dir. McCabe could not have appointed a Special Prosecutor, and in 2016. I believe the original idea was McCabe’s. AG Rosenstein seemed to demur for a while. My source: McCabe’s book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump Hardcover” – February 19, 2019.
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Check the date on Comey’s dinner date with Trump. (It was 2017 rather than 2016.)
It was definitely while Trump was POTUS, after Jan. 20 2017.