cohen, michael bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">bak 1119</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">not putting in reports he may cave (no coop agree, but pled guilty and stated trump broke law)</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 3 23</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) called out House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) because he had no plans to investigate abuses at the Justice Department during the Trump administration.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At an Oversight hearing on Tuesday, Democrats argued that a rules package offered by Republicans was "cut and pasted" from the "right-wing echo chamber" and that it was full of "racist tropes."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I've been concerned about the weaponization of the federal government program," Cohen said. "And I think it was pretty clear during the previous administration, [former Trump attorney] <b>Michael Cohen went to jail for doing what Donald Trump asked him to do. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-campaign-case-dead-a03b35429340d997593f049885331035" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Donald Trump was called Individual 1</a>. He didn't go to jail. He didn't even go to jail when the administration changed, and Merrick Garland came in."</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Cohen recalled that Trump's former attorney was forced to return to jail when he tried to write a book about the ordeal.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>"It's come out; it was the Justice Department that did that," he continued. "Could we go, Mr. Chair, back into those issues and look at the weaponization that occurred during the Trump [administration], particularly that Michael Cohen incident?</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, Jordan said he only remembered the falsehoods Michael Cohen allegedly said during his testimony before Congress.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"But you do remember he went to jail?" Cohen asked.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"I remember that too," Jordan confirmed.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"And they put him back in when he was going to publish a book because they wanted him to not comment on it, and you do remember that when they put him back in jail, they put him in <b>solitary confinement?"</b> Cohen pressed.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"I don't recall the details," Jordan said.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"Should we not be able to study that because you don't know it?" the Tennessee Democrat wondered. "That's weaponization!"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Jordan, however, changed the subject and accused Democrats of "targeting parents."</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"My Chairman, it's my time; I'm going to reclaim it," Cohen said.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"But you asked me a question," Jordan protested.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"That's not the answer," Cohen explained.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"You may not like — that's my answer!"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Jordan exclaimed. "You may not like it, but I<b>'m allowed to give the answer I want to give."</b></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I'm all for parents, but that's not the issue," Cohen snapped. "The issue is the weaponization of the Justice Department that happened under Trump like never before in our country's history."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Republicans have <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government-soviet-union-us-republican-party-federal-bureau-of-investigation-281edb25e6bba9caee833b70fc005752" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">vowed to investigate</a> the so-called weaponization of the federal government by Democrats, corporations, and the "deep state."<strong /></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-weaponization/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch the video below from the House Oversight Committee.</font></a></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">=</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">biz insider 1 23</font></p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">gOP Rep. George Santos appears to have closer ties to Russian oligarchs than previously reported, according to an exclusive report from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/16/george-santos-andrew-intrater-columbus-nova/" target="blank" rel="noopener nofollow" data-analytics-module="body_link" data-analytics-post-depth="40" data-uri="c5821cf6cc57db8dfabd63ffa1dff813" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; text-underline-offset: 2px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">The Washington Post</a> published Monday. </span></p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Russian businessman Andrew Intrater and his wife donated $5,800 to a campaign committee for Santos and gave thousands more in campaign contributions since 2020, the paper reported, citing federal election data —signaling a closer financial relationship to Russian money than he previously described when he ran for office. </span></p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Intrater is the cousin of businessman Viktor Vekselberg — one of the Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the US after the country's invasion of Ukraine last February — and Intrater's investment firm, Columbus Nova, also has ties to the billionaire.  </span></p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif;">The embattled New York congressman, who has come under scrutiny for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/george-santos-workhorse-who-has-lived-honest-life-2023-1" data-analytics-module="body_link" rel="" data-analytics-post-depth="60" data-uri="3bef36fff9a5b331fcf0a47ea4a5e543" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); text-underline-offset: 2px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">reportedly lying</a> about his multiple parts of biography, has said he "embellished" some of his background and signaled he will not step down. Still, there are growing calls from Democrats for him to resign and the lawmaker is facing a House ethics process.  the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Post also reported that Intrater also gave "hundreds of thousands" of dollars to Harbor City Capitol, </span>an investment firm Santos worked for before running for Congress that was accused of running a <b>Ponzi scheme</b>, according to <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/sec-charges-harbor-city-capital-ponzi-scheme-jonathan-maroney-fraud-2021-4-1030353550" data-analytics-module="body_link" rel="" data-analytics-post-depth="80" data-uri="e953422565c3a4bdb0b1333a4119a640" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); outline: none; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; text-underline-offset: 2px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">a filing</a> from the Securities and Exchange Commission. </p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Santos also claimed that Columbus Nova was his "client" while working for Harbor City Capitol to find new investors in 2020, the paper reported. However, in video footage obtained by The Post, Santos stated to potential investors who asked about other investors in a construction project, "You might know who they are," suggesting Columbus Nova. </p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Intrater is also a known associate of former-Trump attorney </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Michael Cohen as well, Insider <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-phone-calls-texts-andrew-intrater-viktor-vekselberg-2019-5" data-analytics-module="body_link" rel="" data-analytics-post-depth="100" data-uri="6578f67a8f6a17aeac9ff54f94ccec24" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; text-underline-offset: 2px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">previously reported</a>. Intrater, who was cited in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, donated $250,000 to Trump's inaugural committee</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and Columbus Nova </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-cohen-payments-put-spotlight-on-new-york-investment-firm-linked-to-russian-billionaire/2018/05/20/8a5eb570-59df-11e8-8836-a4a123c359ab_story.html?utm_term=.c76440ae2332" rel=" nofollow" data-analytics-module="body_link" data-analytics-post-depth="100" data-uri="b33bf7511048a7943545f4bc81d95bc3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-decoration-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-weight: bold; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; text-underline-offset: 2px; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s;">paid Cohen approximately $500,000</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> in consulting fees between January and August 2017. </span></p><p style="margin: 2.15rem 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17); font-family: TiemposTextWeb, Georgia, Times, serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Representatives for Santos, Intrater and Columbus Nova did not immediately return Insider's request for comment. </p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">nyt
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sept 21 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wASHINGTON —<b> The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them,</b> one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.</font></div><div><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them</b> and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.</b></font></p></div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-8atqhb"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And he elevates particular details — for example, emphasizing that the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company-payments.html" title="" style="">same business account</a> that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New Yor</span>k.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Previously a mafia and Enron prosecutor and then a lawyer at the F.B.I. for Mr. Mueller, who was the bureau’s director for 12 years, Mr. Weissmann ran one of three major units for the special counsel’s office. His “Team M” prosecuted Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for numerous financial crimes. The goal was to flip him and learn whatever he knew about any Trump campaign links to Russia.</span></p><div class="css-16l7vy9" data-testid="inline-message" aria-live="polite"><div class="css-1od6ynp"><div class="css-16858bh"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Mr. Manafort had worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, and the investigation uncovered ties by his business partner<b>, Konstantin V. Kilimnik</b>, to Russian intelligence. The book builds toward investigators’ discovery that Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, who flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Manafort during the campaign, asking whether Mr. Trump would permit a peace plan for Russia to essentially take over all of eastern Ukraine.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">But while admitting this much, Mr. Manafort — seeing the dangle of a potential pardon from Mr. Trump — refused to cooperate further. Investigators did not obtain any final puzzle pieces and lacked the evidence to charge anyone in the campaign with a criminal conspiracy involving Russia’s covert electoral assistance.</font></p></div></div><div class="css-8atqhb"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“It would seem to require significant audacity — or else, leverage — for another nation to even put such a request before a presidential candidate,” Mr. Weissmann wrote of Mr. Kilimnik’s request. “This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, monumentally disconcerting: Namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return?”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Mr. Weissmann explained the significance of Mr. Manafort’s interactions with Mr. Kilimnik — also a major focus of <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/politics/senate-intelligence-russian-interference-report.html" title="">a recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report</a>, which explicitly labeled Mr. Kilimnik a Russian intelligence agent — more clearly than the Mueller report did.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Mueller had strictly forbidden leaks, and the special counsel team took extraordinary care to protect the high-profile, high-stakes investigation, Mr. Weissmann wrote. They kept window blind slats tilted at an angle to keep out prying eyes, shutting out natural light. They concocted an “almost comically elaborate and surreal” plan to sneak in “through the many hidden arteries of the courthouse” to obtain a grand jury indictment without tipping off reporters.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And worried about the possibility that Mr. Trump would fire them and the Justice Department would then seal off or destroy their evidence, the Mueller team members packed their numerous applications to judges for search warrants with extensive, up-to-date details about their investigation — ensuring they backed up their work beyond the reach of the executive branch.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ty Cobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, also privately promised to be a “canary in the coal mine” and provide a heads up if Mr. Trump was going to fire the special counsel team, according to Mr. Weissmann. In an email, Mr. Cobb wrote that he “never made the commitment” described by Mr. Weissmann.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investigation played out against the backdrop of regular vilification of the Mueller team by Mr. Trump and his allies like Fox News’s Sean Hannity — who turned out to be in regular contact with Mr. Manafort cooking up a “smear campaign” over text messages. Mr. Weissmann, a major target, wrote that such “ad hominem” insinuations of bias appealed to emotion rather than reason.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I am a registered Democrat,” he wrote. “Does this make Paul <b>Manafort</b> or any of the other 32 people our office charged any less guilty? Did Russia not attack our democracy and disrupt our election with its self-described online information warfare operation? Which facts that we alleged in our various indictments — and to which many of those we indicted, including Manafort, would plead guilty — did our attackers believe were invented as a result of our alleged bias as ‘angry Democrats?’”</font></p></div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-8atqhb"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump’s allies have recently <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcenany-calls-out-press-mueller-phone-wiping" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank">pointed with alarm</a> to documents showing that cellphones issued to Mr. Mueller’s team were erased during the investigation; Mr. Weissmann twice entered an incorrect passcode too often, triggering a security measure that erased his phone. In an interview, he portrayed the concerns as a “tempest in a teapot” and said his understanding was that all emails and other such data from phones were backed up. He called on the Justice Department to release information about the special counsel’s data backup system.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also wrote that he is not “anti-Trump” but rather “pro the rule of law.” Still, the distinction is less than clear in a book that also portrays Mr. Trump as a liar and a dangerous demagogue trying “to peel the world around him away from the rule of law — away from reason itself — and mold it to accommodate his desire for unchecked power.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann was equally scathing about Attorney General William P. Barr, calling him an enabler and likening <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/mueller-report-barr-judge-walton.html" title="">his misleading letter</a> last spring <a class="css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/mueller-report-william-barr-excerpts.html" title="">about the then-still-secret Mueller report</a> as a betrayal and “gut punch.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also criticized colleagues, portraying the special counsel team as divided between aggressive investigators like him, the F.B.I. special agent Omer Meisel and the prosecutor Jeannie Rhee — who headed “Team R,” which investigated Russian issues other than those centered on Manafort — and far more risk-averse law enforcement officials like Mr. Zebley who pulled punches.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one episode in 2017, the Mueller team issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank for information about Mr. Manafort’s income in Ukraine. Deutsche Bank had also lent large sums to the Trump Organization, and the White House somehow found out about the still-secret subpoenas — though not their focus. The White House demanded to know what investigators were doing, and Mr. Mueller authorized Mr. Zebley to tell the White House that they had not been seeking Mr. Trump’s financial information.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“At that point, any financial investigation of Trump was put on hold,” Mr. Weissmann writes. “That is, we backed down — the issue was simply too incendiary; the risk, too severe.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The book provides many other examples of concessions large and small. Investigators did not try to question Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who had spoken in the lobby to a delegation of Russians who came to Trump Tower in June 2016 to meet with campaign leaders who had been promised that they were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.</font></p></div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-8atqhb"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press — <em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0">look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter </em>— and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the special counsel’s office once and for all,” he wrote.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, they did not subpoena the Trump Organization for emails about its efforts to develop a Trump-branded building in Moscow, which were active deep into the 2016 campaign.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they did not immunize Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., a step that would have prevented him from being able to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about matters like the Trump Tower meeting. Bound by grand-jury secrecy rules, Mr. Weissmann did not come out and say whether Donald Trump Jr. was threatened with or actually issued a subpoena and used his right against self-incrimination to repel it.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann laid much of the blame for what he saw as a pattern of timidity on Mr. Zebley, portraying him as a primary decision maker. “Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann acknowledged, but did not clearly address, concerns that the aging Mr. Mueller had lost a step, both declaring that he was capable of making the tough decisions despite “speculative concerns” about his health but also describing him in one scene as looking drained and worn down by his years of grueling public service.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Mr. Zebley obtained Mr. Mueller’s sanction for many of his cautious directives, in one striking episode, Mr. Zebley appeared in Mr. Weissmann’s telling to have unilaterally agreed — without Mr. Mueller’s knowledge — to a request by the office of the deputy attorney general overseeing them, Rod J. Rosenstein, not to coordinate with state prosecutors “as it would undermine the president’s pardon power.”</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two other former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed the account. Mr. Rosenstein did not decline any request to share information with state prosecutors, a person familiar with his thinking wrote in an email.</font></p></div><aside class="css-ew4tgv" aria-label="companion column" /></div><div class="css-8atqhb"><div class="css-1fanzo5 StoryBodyCompanionColumn"><div class="css-53u6y8"><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another person familiar with how the special counsel’s office interacted with Mr. Rosenstein’s office denied that there had been any agreement about sharing evidence with or withholding it from state prosecutors, and said Mr. Zebley had consulted with Mr. Mueller on every material decision.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the failure to subpoena Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller was determined to avoid “any public disagreements” with Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Weissmann wrote. Because the special counsel regulations required telling Congress about any instance in which Mr. Rosenstein overruled him, Mr. Mueller never actually proposed subpoenaing Mr. Trump, instead coyly asking what Mr. Rosenstein’s reaction would be. Mr. Rosenstein just kept demurring.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the end, Mr. Weissmann said in an interview, the caution was more justified early on to avoid provoking Mr. Trump into firing them before they could get going. But he and Ms. Rhee, among others, believed the office should have been willing to be more aggressive later on, after they had learned much of what Russia had done and had already used indictments to drag it into public view.</font></p><p class="css-158dogj evys1bk0"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We would have subpoenaed the president after he refused our accommodations, even if that risked us being fired,” he wrote. “It just didn’t sit right. We were left feeling like we had let down the American public, who were counting on us to give it our all.”</font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company-payments.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company-payments.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div><b>Firm Tied to Russian Oligarch Made Payments to <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Michael Cohen</span></b></div><div>Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s lawyer and fixer. His shell company received payments from a firm linked to a Russian oligarch, as well as corporations with business before the Trump administration.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>By Mike McIntire, Ben Protess and Jim Rutenberg</div><div>
</div><div>    <b>May 8, 2018</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Mr. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Cohen, </span>President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions adding up to at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch. A lawyer for Columbus Nova, in a statement on Tuesday, described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Other transactions described in the financial records include hundreds of thousands of dollars Mr. Cohen received from Fortune 500 companies with business before the Trump administration, as well as smaller amounts he paid for luxury expenses like a Mercedes-Benz and private club dues.</div><div>
</div><div><b>References to the transactions first appeared in a document posted to Twitter on Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star who was paid $130,000 by Essential Consultants to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump.</b> The lawyer’s seven-page document, titled “Preliminary Report of Findings,” does not explain the source of his information but describes in detail dates, dollar amounts and parties involved in various dealings by Mr. Cohen and his company. <b>Most of the transactions involved two banks: First Republic Bank and City National Bank.</b></div><div>
</div><div><b>The Times’s review of financial records confirmed much of what was in Mr. Avenatti’s report. In addition, a review of documents and interviews shed additional light on Mr. Cohen’s dealings with the company connected to Mr. Vekselberg, who was stopped and questioned at an airport earlier this year by investigators for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.</b></div><div>
</div><div>[ImageViktor Vekselberg, left, the Russian oligarch, with Marat Khusnullin, deputy mayor of Moscow, before the inauguration ceremony of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this week.]</div><div>
</div><div>Taken together, The Times’s findings and Mr. Avenatti’s report offer the most detailed picture yet on Mr. Cohen’s business dealings and financial entanglements in the run-up to the election and its aftermath. F<b>ederal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Mr. Cohen for possible bank fraud and election-law violations, among other matters, according to people briefed on the investigation. Stephen Ryan, a lawyer representing Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, is suing Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump to break her nondisclosure agreement related to the $130,000.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It is unclear whether that or any of the other transactions were improper, but Mr. Avenatti has asserted that Mr. Cohen’s use of<b> Essential Consultants </b>potentially violated banking laws. The financial records indicate that at least some of the money that passed through Essential Consultants was from sources and in amounts that were inconsistent with the company’s stated purpose.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Mr. Cohen also used the company to collect $250,000 after arranging payments in 2017 and 2018 by a major Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, to a former Playboy model he allegedly impregnated, according to news reports last month.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among the other payments to Mr. Cohen’s company described in the financial records were four for $99,980 each between October and January by Novartis Investments S.A.R.L., a subsidiary of <b>Novartis,</b> the multinational pharmaceutical giant based in Switzerland. <b>Novartis — whose chief executive was among 15 business leaders invited to dinner with Mr. Trump at the World Economic Forum in January — spent more than $10 million on lobbying in Washington last year and frequently seeks approvals from federal drug regulators</b>. Novartis said in a statement that its agreement with Essential Consultants had expired.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In addition,<b> Korea Aerospace Industries </b>paid Mr. Cohen’s company $150,000 last November, according to the records. The company, an aircraft manufacturer, has teamed with the American defense contractor Lockheed Martin in competing for a multibillion-dollar contract to provide trainer jets for the United States Air Force that is expected to be awarded this year. A representative for Korea Aerospace declined to comment.</div><div>
</div><div><b>How Michael Cohen Is Connected to a Russian Oligarch</b></div><div>
</div><div>Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s lawyer and longtime fixer, met with a Russian oligarch at Trump Tower to discuss Russia and was later paid by a company connected to him.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>AT&T </b>made four payments totaling $200,000 between October 2017 and January 2018, according to the documents. AT&T, whose proposed merger with Time Warner is pending before the Justice Department, issued a statement on Tuesday evening confirming that it made payments to Mr. Cohen’s firm.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration,” the statement said. “They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The payments by Columbus Nova occurred between January and August of last year.<b> Andrew Intrater, the company’s American chief executive and Mr. Vekselberg’s cousin, donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration</b>, campaign finance records show. He and Mr. Vekselberg attended the event together and met with Mr. Cohen there, according to a person briefed on the matter. Columbus Nova retained him as a consultant soon afterward.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The consulting deal was worth $1 million and was supposed to last for a year, according to documents reviewed by The Times. But Columbus Nova decided to end the agreement midway through after it yielded a few investment ideas but no actual deals.</div><div>
</div><div>A person close to Mr. Intrater said that the executive had no idea Essential Consultants was used for the separate payment to Ms. Clifford, and that he hired a number of other consultants at the time for similar prices.</div><div>
</div><div>“Columbus Nova is an investment management company solely owned and controlled by Americans,” said Richard Owens, a lawyer for Mr. Intrater and Columbus Nova, adding that Mr. Vekselberg has never owned the firm. “After the inauguration, the firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures.</div><div>
</div><div>“Reports today that Viktor Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Michael Cohen are false. The claim that Viktor Vekselberg was involved in or provided any funding for Columbus Nova’s engagement of Michael Cohen is patently untrue,” Mr. Owens said. “<b>Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else outside of Columbus Nova was involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A lawyer for Mr. Vekselberg did not respond to a request for comment.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>In addition to questioning Mr. Vekselberg, Mr. Mueller’s investigators have also interviewed Mr. Intrater, though there is no indication that either man is suspected of wrongdoing, T</b>he Times reported last week.</div><div>
</div><div>The person close to Mr. Intrater said that he was encouraged to attend the inauguration by an American friend, unrelated to Mr. Cohen, and that he had wanted to use the trip as an opportunity to meet with business associates in Washington.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Mr. Vekselberg has invested in Columbus Nova’s private equity funds through his sprawling Russian-based conglomerate, the Renova Group, which operates in the energy sector and elsewhere. Mr. Vekselberg was one of seven Kremlin-linked oligarchs hit with sanctions in April by the Trump administration, which also imposed the penalties on the Renova Group.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Renova has had a financial relationship with VTB, one of the largest state-owned banks in Russia,</b> according to documents that were part of the “Panama Papers” leak of files from an offshore law firm. The documents show that Mr. Vekselberg’s companies received at least $350 million in loans or investments from VTB and a subsidiary, VTB Capital. The current state of the debt is unclear, though one document suggests it was discharged in 2010.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mr. Cohen created Essential Consultants in <b>Delaware</b> less than two weeks before he completed his deal with Ms. Clifford, who is now contesting her contract with Mr. Cohen as invalid.</span> Mr. Cohen initially said he paid her out of his own pocket by way of a home equity line of credit.</div><div>
</div><div><b>But last week, former Mayor Rudolph W.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Giuliani </span>of New York said that Mr. Trump had reimbursed Mr. Cohen through several $35,000 monthly transactions that amounted to more than $400,000 —<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> covering the payment to Ms. Clifford and, he said, other “incidental expenses.”</span></b></div><div>
</div><div>
</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">9/20 book</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9/20 cohen says he does not think trump was launder $ (except all russian olig $ was putin's?) bogus fla mansion deal</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmmn, if he really had goods, he would risk jail? cohem says trump did not want to win, just cultivate russian $ = putin</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/fbi-is-sitting-on-classified-intelligence-that-could-destroy-trump-ex-agent-peter-strzok/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/fbi-is-sitting-on-classified-intelligence-that-could-destroy-trump-ex-agent-peter-strzok/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former FBI agent Peter Strzok says he could have destroyed President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, but he was not willing to violate his oath by revealing classified intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Strzok — who has become a favorite target of the president and his Republican allies — told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that <b>he could have destroyed Trump’s campaign with classified information the administration was still hiding from the public.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Absolutely there are things that are not known that would still be damaging,” Strzok said. “The decision to release that is up to the administration. You’ve seen them declassify material, which unsurprisingly tends to all be helpful to President Trump. There’s a lot of material that simply is classified and that I can’t talk about, but it’s there.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The American public has a right to know it, but that is a decision for the administration to do. I can’t go declassifying information,” he added. “I’m going to honor my oath to both the office that I held, as well as the security clearance that I held. That information, the American public deserves it, and the administration, frankly, deserves to have that known, as well."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b>strzok said the FBI knew Trump was lying in 2016 when he denied having financial interests in Russia, but he said the president’s entanglement went much deeper than negotiating a high-rise tower in Moscow.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“If you look at the scope of his businesses relationship to Russia, going back decades,” Strzok said. “If you look at the statement by one of his sons about the disproportionate amount of Russian holdings that represented the Trump financial assets, all of these things speak to an ability of Russian interests, of illicit interests, to hold him under their sway and get him to do things that, frankly, we can’t explain.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Why isn’t he speaking out against Russia placing the bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan?” he added. “Why isn’t he pushing back against, as you mentioned, the attempted assassination of [Alexei] Navalny? Why is he talking about withdrawing from NATO, from withdrawing 11,000 troops from Germany? The list goes on and on and on. None of these things are in America’s interest, most, if not all, are in Russia’s. It begs the question, why is he doing this? My answer, what I believe is, because there is leverage Russia holds over him that is causing him to act in his rather than America’s national security interest.”</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/shocking-details-from-michael-cohen-tell-all-book-revealed-after-washington-post-obtained-a-copy">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/shocking-details-from-michael-cohen-tell-all-book-revealed-after-washington-post-obtained-a-copy</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“On Russia, Cohen writes that the cause behind Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin is simpler than many of his critics assume. Above all, he writes, Trump loves money — and <b>he wrongly identified Putin as ‘the richest man in the world by a multiple,’” the newspaper reported. “Trump loved Putin, Cohen wrote, because the Russian leader had the ability ‘to take over an entire nation and run it like it was his personal company — like the Trump Organization, in fact.’”</b></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“According to Cohen, Trump’s sycophantic praise of the Russian leader during the 2016 campaign began as a way to suck up and ensure access to the oligarch’s money after he lost the election. But he claims Trump came to understand that Putin’s hatred of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, dating to her support for the 2011 protest movement in Russia, could also help Trump amass more power in the United States,” the newspaper reported.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also gave details on the plans for Trump Tower Russia — and says Ivanka Trump was intimately involved.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Cohen says the Trump Tower plans called for a 120-story building in Red Square, including 30 floors devoted to a five-star hotel with an Ivanka Trump-branded spa and Trump restaurants, and 230 high-end condominiums for Russian oligarchs and leaders,” <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Post</em> reported. “Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who is now a senior White House adviser, even selected the proposed tower’s high-end finishes, Cohen writes.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also gave salacious details about attending a sex show in Las Vegas.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Cohen details a tawdry 2013 visit to a Las Vegas club, the Act, with Trump and Aras and Emin <b>Agalarov </b>— a Russian father-and-son oligarch duo. Cohen asserts that the group watched a debauched strip show that included one performer who simulated urinating on another performer, who pretended to drink it,” the newspaper reported. “Trump’s reaction to the show, Cohen writes, was ‘disbelief and delight.’”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump also reportedly apartheid-era South Africa, ridiculued his evangelical supporters, and offered shared his thoughts on Cohen’s then-15-year-old.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Look at that piece of *ss,” Trump reportedly said. “I would love some of that.”..? no twt</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">an 820  put back in jail during covid to stop book</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/i-know-where-the-skeletons-are-buried-michael-cohen-releases-blistering-excerpt-from-his-tell-all-book-about-trump/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/i-know-where-the-skeletons-are-buried-michael-cohen-releases-blistering-excerpt-from-his-tell-all-book-about-trump/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/treasure-trove-of-mueller-memos-shows-trump-benefited-the-russians-beyond-their-wildest-expectations/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/treasure-trove-of-mueller-memos-shows-trump-benefited-the-russians-beyond-their-wildest-expectations/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Sunday morning, an MSNBC “AM Joy” panel took up the release of a batch of memos from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that were released on Saturday that shed light on even more connections between aides to the president and Russian officials.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reviewing the documents obtained by <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Buzzfeed News</a>, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said Russia lucked out with Trump as a presidential candidate...</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many docs</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE MUELLER MEMOS</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Mueller Report’s Secret Memos</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed News sued the US government to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. We have published the first installment, with revelations about the Ukraine conspiracy theory, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and more.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted on November 2, 2019, at 12:08 p.m. ET</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Paul Manafort was pushing the unfounded conspiracy theory — now part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump — that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails as early as 2016.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, "had to keep Trump out of the messaging related to Russia” in preparation for his testimony to Congress under oath and that the false testimony was "not his idea."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Top Trump campaign aide Rick Gates said the campaign was “very happy” when a foreign government helped release the hacked DNC emails.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>These are some of the revelations that BuzzFeed News pried loose after pursuing five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits</b> for all the subpoenas and search warrants that then–special counsel Robert Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Read the documents here.]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to a court order, the Justice Department released the first installment of documents: hundreds of pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The documents revealed Saturday, known as “302 reports,” are summaries of interviews with former White House official and Trump campaign manager Stephen Bannon, Cohen, Gates, and more</b>. They are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, the email hack during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Trump's associates’ handling of the special counsel’s investigation.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller’s 448-page report last March was the most hotly anticipated prosecutorial document in a generation, laying out the evidence of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry. The report, however, reflected only a small fraction of the billions of primary-source documents that the government claims Mueller’s team may have amassed over the course of its two-year investigation.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[We want your help! If you see something in these memos, you can email reporter Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com or reach us securely at tips.buzzfeed.com.]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those documents are a crucial national legacy, a key to understanding this important chapter in American history. But the public has not been allowed to see any of them. Until now.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Some takeaways from the memos:</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort was pushing the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC as early as 2016</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an April 2018 interview with the special counsel’s office, Rick Gates, who had served as deputy Trump campaign chair and had long been Paul Manafort’s right hand, told investigators that after the campaign learned the DNC had been hacked, Manafort pushed the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had orchestrated the attack. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s persisted in right-wing circles, even after the US Intelligence Community concluded Russia was involved, and one that Trump brought up in his July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a written memorandum of the July call released by the White House, Trump at one point says to Zelensky, “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more on this.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 14:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Michael Cohen "had to keep Trump out of the messaging related to Russia"</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents reveal how Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer who spent years in his inner circle, worked through how to talk about issues related to Trump and Russia.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In preparation for his testimony to Congress, "Cohen's message had several components," according to notes of his FBI interview. "COHEN has to keep TRUMP out of the messaging related to Russia and keep TRUMP out of the Russia conversation." He also told investigators that any false testimony was "not his idea."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen told Congress in February, “In his way, he was telling me to lie,” about concealing negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress about when discussions related to the Trump Tower Moscow deal had ended.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 77:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen also "learned the message to have the Russia investigations end early from discussions with TRUMP, SEKULOW" and a third person whose name is redacted.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 74:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Gates said the Trump campaign was "very happy" about the release of hacked DNC emails</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chair, told Mueller’s team in late 2018 that the release of the hacked emails “offered a mode of deflection for the campaign after a sink in polling numbers following Trump's comments about Ted Cruz's father at the end of the Republican National Convention.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in June 2016 that the group had an upcoming email leak related to Hillary Clinton. After that, Manafort instructed Gates to “periodically call” someone whose name is redacted from the documents “to check in on where the information was and when it would be coming,” Gates told the FBI.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Trump was generally frustrated Clinton's missing emails had not been found,” Gates also told investigators.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more and view the relevant documents.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>After the hacked DNC emails, Trump told Gates that "more leaks were coming"</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after the Democratic National Convention in 2016 — which came right after Russian hackers stole DNC emails, throwing the party into disarray — Trump and Gates, a top campaign aide, were riding in a car from Trump Tower in Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump told Gates that "more leaks were coming."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it came to the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia to influence the election, Mueller's report, released in April, found that no charges were warranted, but that there is still information he did not know.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” Mueller wrote about a conspiracy with Russia, “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 42:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bannon told the FBI that Jared Kushner vacationed with a Russian oligarch</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bannon told FBI investigators that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were on vacation in Croatia with a “Russian billionaire” in August 2016 — appearing to confirm a long-suspected and long-denied connection between Trump world and a Russian oligarch.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Messages between Bannon and an unnamed individual with a Breitbart domain email address — exchanged in July 2017, one month before Bannon was fired from his position as White House chief strategist —<b> revealed that they were hoping to leverage this information against Kushner. </b>Bannon cofounded the far-right Breitbart and rejoined it in August 2017.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The messages and information were documented as part of an interview with then–special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, and were revealed by BuzzFeed News for the first time Saturday.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Representatives for Kushner and Ivanka Trump didn’t immediately return requests for comment.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a Feb. 14, 2018, interview with the special counsel’s office, Bannon said that Kushner had been on vacation with a Russian oligarch when he took over the Trump campaign in August 2016.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the documents released Saturday, Bannon told investigators that Kushner had been in Croatia with the unnamed Russian billionaire,<b> Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, </b>and the Russian’s girlfriend, whom Bannon said his sources in the intelligence community found to be “questionable.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 109:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kushner and his family’s Croatian vacation in August 2016 was widely covered in the media. Throughout the trip, Deng was photographed with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, who also shared a picture of herself and Deng in the country’s capital city on her Instagram account.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deng didn’t immediately return a request for comment.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon referenced Kushner’s vacation in an email dated July 24, 2017, to an individual with a Breitbart domain email address whose name has been redacted. Bannon appeared to indicate that the information, if reported and confirmed, could be valuable against Kushner, his rival for power in the Trump administration.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He was on ‘vacation’ off the coast of Croatia with a Russian billionaire when I took over the campaign,” Bannon wrote.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“How do we prove that?” The unnamed person replied. “That’s game set match.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 178:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The same day as these emails, Bannon exchanged messages with someone at Breitbart about a Guardian story reporting that Kushner secured a real estate deal with another Soviet-born oligarch.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Don’t touch yet,” Bannon said.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“k this is big though isn’t it? It’s the ball game…” the Breitbart person responded.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“All and everything,” Bannon replied.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 179:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Manafort was advising the Trump campaign up until days before the election</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon’s emails show that Manafort was still advising the Trump campaign three days before the Nov. 8, 2016 election — despite having been fired in August — and said the campaign needed to hide that fact.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort emailed Kushner on Nov. 5 and wrote that he was “feeling really good about our prospects on Tuesday.” He said that he was focused “on preserving the victory” and had sent Kushner “a memo deal[ing] with this concern.” Manafort wrote that he had sent the memo to Reince Priebus, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump's former chief of staff, and “briefed Rick Gates and Hannity.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kushner forwarded the email to Bannon the same day and asked him what he thought.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We need to avoid this guy like the plague,” Bannon said in an email to Kushner dated Nov. 5. “Paul is nice guy but can’t let word get out he is advising us.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“They are going to try to say the Russians worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 238:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Page 29, Rick Gates's 302:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates said Trump's "Russia if you're listening" line was an "ad lib." He was referring to Trump's comment, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," at a July 27, 2016, press conference in Florida. He was urging Russian hackers to work to find emails belonging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates also said that he recalled "staff meeting conversations about 'someone out there has to have the missing emails.'"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Related document:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Trump associate sent Bannon a bizarre debate tactic</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump supporter and associate Ted Malloch emailed Bannon before the first debate and said Trump should start by handing Hillary Clinton a "Writ of Indictment."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his associates by that time had led "lock her up" chants at his rallies at the Republican National Convention. And he told Clinton during the second debate she'd "be in jail" if he became president over her email controversy.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 230:</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><div class="header-standard header-classic single-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> cell phone signal obtained by Eastern European intelligence suggests that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was near Prague during the summer of 2016. The cell phone records were first reported…</font></h3><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-style: italic; letter-spacing: 1px;" /></div><div class="post-entry blockquote-style-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 33px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="inner-post-entry entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cell phone signal obtained by Eastern European intelligence suggests that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was near Prague during the summer of 2016.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cell phone records were first <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/investigations/article219016820.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported by McClatchy on Thursday</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, “Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.”</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.</font></p><div class="p3_8" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.</font></p></div></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although President Donald Trump has referred to the dossier as a “pile of garbage,” much of it has been authenticated by news and intelligence services.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cell phone signal intelligence has reportedly been shared with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the entire McClatchy report <a href="https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/investigations/article219016820.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">here</a>.</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">6 flippers</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...<strong>1. Rick Gates</strong></font></div><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rick Gates not only spent many years as Manafort’s business partner—he was also a campaign aid for Trump in 2016. And when Gates was pulled into the investigation of Robert Mueller (former FBI director from 2001-2013 and now special counsel for the U.S. Justice Department) into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and related matters, he agreed to flip on Manafort in exchange for a more lenient sentence. Gates was the federal government’s star witness in Manafort’s recent trial in Alexandria, Virginia, offering <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/here-are-8-strangest-and-most-shocking-moments-manafort-trial-theres-tears-your" style="text-decoration-line: none;">extensive testimony</a> on the bank fraud and tax evasion Manafort was accused of. Gates was instrumental in Manafort being convicted of eight of the 18 charges he was hit with—and Manafort, according to juror Paula Duncan, would have been convicted of all 18 had a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/politics/paul-manafort-juror-paula-duncan/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">lone juror</a> not been a holdout on the ten charges that Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. David Pecker</font></strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">American Media publishes the National Enquirer, which has been a bastion of trash “journalism” since 1926.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Back in the 1930s, the Enquirer published pro-fascist anti-Semitic propaganda and vilified Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency—although in the 1970s and 1980s, it was better known for goofy accounts of Americans encountering zombies or being kidnapped by flying saucers.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Pecker was a major supporter of Trump’s 2016 campaign, publishing a series of over-the-top anti-Hillary Clinton articles—and in the 1990s, he had promoted Trump’s business interests by published the quarterly magazine Trump Style. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that in 2015 and 2016, Pecker and American Media had a “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/24/ronan-farrow-intv-catch-and-kill-national-enquirer-trump-stories-safe-new-yorker-sot-newday-vpx.cnn" style="text-decoration-line: none;">catch and kill</a>” agreement with Cohen, meaning that the Enquirer would purchase exclusive rights to negative stories about Trump but wouldn’t publish them. According to federal prosecutors, Pecker offered, in August 2015, to help Cohen find negative stories about Trump’s relationships with women and kill the stories.</span></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Dylan Howard</font></strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Federal prosecutors allege that in June 2016, Pecker and Howard contacted Cohen to inform him that McDougal was trying to sell them a story about her alleged affair with Trump in 2006/2007—and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cohen asked them to purchase the story and agreed to reimburse American Media. In August 2016, American Media agreed to pay McDougal $150,000 for the story, and Cohen created a <b>dummy corporation</b> called Resolution Consultants in order to purchase the story from American Media for $125,000. Now, with Howard <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/trump-investigation-grants-australian-journalist-dylan-howard-immunity-20180824-p4zzhb.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">agreeing to cooperate</a> with federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> it’s in his best interests to be as forthcoming as possible about his dealings with Cohen during the Trump campaign. </span></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. Michael Flynn</font></strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s leading propagandists at Fox News, has been promoting a <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/21/sean-hannity-promotes-mike-flynn-s-legal-defense-fund/221049" style="text-decoration-line: none;">legal defense fund</a> for Michael Flynn—and Flynn, who advised the Trump campaign on national security matters in 2016 and briefly served as the Trump administration’s national security advisor in 2017, has had plenty of legal troubles. In December 2017, Flynn—who has been cooperating with Mueller’s team in his Russia-related investigation—pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his December 2016 conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak. Flynn accepted, inappropriately, tens of thousands of dollars from <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-paid-mike-flynn-45k-moscow-speech-documents-show-n734506" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Russian interests</a>.   </font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. George Papadopoulos</font></strong></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When George Papadopoulos (a foreign policy advisor on Trump’s 2016 campaign) flipped and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team, he pled guilty to having lied to investigators in their Russia-related probe—and Mueller has recommended a <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/17/papadopoulous-mueller-sentencing-trump-campaign-russia-787835" style="text-decoration-line: none;">six-month prison sentence</a>, which the former FBI director considers lenient in light of the circumstances. Mueller’s office has asserted that Papadopoulos lied about “critical facts in an investigation of national importance after having been explicitly warned that lying to the FBI was a federal offense.”</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-michael-cohen">https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-michael-cohen</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b> to understand how Michael Cohen</b> arrived in those precincts, you need to venture across New York City’s East River. There, in a Queens warehouse district in the shadows of an elevated No. 7 subway line, is a taxi garage that used to house his law practice. The office area in the front is painted a garish taxicab-yellow, with posters of hockey players on the wall and a framed photo of the late Hasidic rabbi Menachem Schneerson. Cohen practiced law there and invested in the once-lucrative medallions that grant New York cabs the right to operate.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or you could drive 45 minutes deep into Brooklyn, near where Gravesend turns into Brighton Beach. There, in a desolate stretch near a shuttered podiatrist’s office, you’d find a medical office. According to previously unexamined records, Cohen incorporated a business there in 2002 that was involved in large quantities of medical claims. Separately, he represented more than 100 plaintiffs who claimed they were injured in auto collisions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York prosecutors were investigating what Fortune magazine called possibly “the largest organized insurance-fraud ring in U.S. history.” That fraud resulted in hundreds of criminal prosecutions for staging car accidents to collect insurance payments. Cohen was not implicated in the fraud.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A distinctive pattern emerged early in Cohen’s career, according to an examination by WNYC and ProPublica for the “<a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/trumpinc" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">Trump, Inc.</a>” podcast: <b>Many of the people who crossed paths with Cohen when he worked in Queens and Brooklyn were disciplined, disbarred, accused or convicted of crimes.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
He and his attorneys did not respond to a lengthy set of questions emailed to them. Cohen’s lawyers have stated that he has done nothing improper.Cohen, 51, has always emerged unscathed — until now. Last week, his Rockefeller Center office was raided by federal agents, as were his home, hotel room, safety deposit box and two cellphones. Cohen is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. According to court papers, investigators are examining whether he committed fraud and showed a “lack of truthfulness.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen has attained national attention as the man who paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her alleged affair with Trump secret. He also negotiated a $1.6 million settlement with a woman impregnated by Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy. (Cohen’s attorney told a judge on Monday that his only three legal clients over the past 15 months were Trump, Broidy and talk-show host Sean Hannity.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen has for decades had close personal and professional relationships with many citizens of the former Soviet Union. He ended up as point men on Trump’s deals there and also turned up in the notorious Russia “dossier.” He has routinely been described as an indispensable man to Donald Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One indicator of that, according to The New York Times: President Trump is more agitated by what those New York prosecutors may find in Cohen’s files than he is by the wide-ranging investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Cohen, it seems, may hold some crucial secrets. What’s more surprising, perhaps, is the path he took to get to that point.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Cohen grew up in the Five Towns area of Long Island, New York, a heavily Jewish enclave. His father was a surgeon, according to media reports, and Cohen enjoyed a top-tier education, graduating from the private Lawrence Woodmere Academy, then moving on to American University.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From there, it seems, Cohen’s educational trajectory turned in a different direction. He attended the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law in Michigan, which, InsideHigherEd.com once wrote, “is known for admitting students other law schools would not touch.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1992, after law school, he returned to his home region and landed a job working for a personal injury attorney named Melvyn Estrin, who had an office on lower Broadway in Manhattan.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Estrin was the first in a series of colleagues who would run afoul of authorities. </b>Within three years of Cohen’s arrival, Estrin was charged with bribing insurance adjusters to inflate damage estimates and expedite claims. He later pleaded guilty. Cohen was never implicated in any of the misdeeds. Estrin did not respond to a request for comment. He is still practicing law.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen continued to use Estrin’s address on legal filings as late as 1999, but he added several new addresses during this period, including 22-05 43rd Ave., in Long Island City, Queens — the taxi garage. It was the headquarters of the New York branch of the empire of Simon Garber, a Soviet emigre who also has had cab companies in Chicago and Moscow. Charismatic and silver-haired, Garber released <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCbJRvYPn7s" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">kitschy TV-style advertisements</a>, in Russian, for his company.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the years, Garber has been convicted of assault in New York, arrested for battery in Miami and pleaded guilty in New Jersey to charges of criminal mischief involving him breaking into three neighbors’ homes, shattering glass doors, smearing blood all over and taking a shower. In Chicago, his taxi fleet included wrecked vehicles with illegally laundered titles.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Garber did not respond to a request for comment. (Two other attorneys had offices inside Garber’s offices in the early 2000s. One was forced to resign from the bar after he was accused of not turning money over to a client. The other was disbarred, in part for trying to steal money from the first lawyer.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1994 Cohen married Laura Shusterman, who was born in the Soviet Union. Her father, also a taxi entrepreneur, pleaded guilty to a felony, conspiracy to defraud the IRS, the year before.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By the late 1990s, records show, Cohen had begun acquiring taxi medallions, </b>licenses required by the City of New York to operate a yellow cab. The number of medallions has been strictly controlled for decades. Before the advent of services like Uber, they were particularly valuable, with their price peaking at over $1 million in 2014.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
Starting around 2000, Cohen was involved in scores of car insurance lawsuits, often on behalf of plaintiffs who claimed to have been injured in auto collisions and were seeking judgments to cover purported medical expenses.Cohen co-owned some of the medallions with his wife, and indeed, his family and business relationships sometimes overlapped. Filings show his father-in-law once made a loan to Garber. And in 2001, Cohen borrowed money for one of his taxi companies, Golden Child Cab Corp., from one of the men convicted with Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, in the fraud against the IRS.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At this time, a wave of staged auto accidents, involving immigrants from the former Soviet Union who claimed to have been hurt, had led prosecutors to open a massive investigation. They dubbed it Operation Boris, an acronym for Big Organized Russian Insurance Scam. The prosecutorial push resulted in hundreds of convictions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen also drew up incorporation papers for at least three medical practices and three medical billing companies. One company Cohen registered in 2002, Avex Medical Care PRC, sued insurance companies nearly 300 times. The plaintiffs lawyer in almost all of these cases was David Katz, who was disbarred later for professional misconduct.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The doctor who owned Avex was charged in 2003 with criminal insurance fraud connected with another medical business; the charge was dismissed. He’s now practicing medicine in New Jersey.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Dr. Zhanna Kanevsky, the principal of Life Quality Medical, a clinic business that Cohen incorporated in 2002, surrendered her medical license after pleading guilty to writing phony prescriptions for 100,000 oxycodone and other pills.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once again, Cohen was never charged.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In the early 2000s, Trump and Cohen became connected, fittingly, through real estate. </b>Cohen started to transfer the wealth he’d gained from taxi medallions and insurance lawsuits to apartments in Trump buildings. Along with his parents, his in-laws, and Simon Garber, Cohen acquired eight units in Trump Palace, Trump Park Avenue, and Trump World Plaza. The man who operated out of a Queens taxi garage now owned apartments alongside the likes of Sophia Loren and Harrison Ford.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Cohen also began to show political ambitions. In 2003, he ran for City Council on Manhattan’s Upper East Side as a Republican. Even people close to his campaign weren’t sure why he ran.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His own campaign biography provided few answers — or rather, disparate ones. He claimed at the time to own 200 taxi medallions, to be a member of the Friars Club, an avid stamp collector, and a member of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Inspector General advisory board.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen lost the City Council race, but his donor list provides a snapshot of his network. He received contributions from his father, his father-in-law, and Bruce Winston, a son of the jeweler Harry Winston. A New York Republican with knowledge of Cohen’s 2003 campaign said Cohen told him then that he was Harry Winston’s in-house counsel at the time. The company says Cohen was never an employee.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court papers show Cohen was one of the lawyers who helped Bruce Winston, and his daughter, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, in a legal action challenging<b> Deutsche Bank’s</b>conduct as trustee of Harry Winston’s estate. Their petition failed. (For her part, Wolkoff, a friend of Melania Trump’s, later became the highest-paid contractor for Donald Trump’s inauguration, taking in an eye-popping $26 million, and sparking a backlash.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s unclear when Cohen and Trump first met, but the two were publicly linked in February 2007. The New York Post published an <a href="https://nypost.com/2007/02/22/upping-the-ante/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">article</a> then about an attorney who was purchasing large numbers of apartments in Trump buildings. “Trump properties are solid investments,” Cohen told the Post. Trump returned the compliment, declaring Cohen to be a wise investor. “Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market,” he told the Post. “He has invested in my buildings because he likes to make money — and he does.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three months later, Cohen became an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, with the same job title as Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen was never a traditional in-house lawyer for Trump. He has been described as both a “fixer” and a “dealmaker” — and it seems he embraced both roles. “He did jobs for Donald that no one else would do,” said one person who worked with Cohen, “especially not a lawyer. He did a lot of these jobs.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, even after Cohen had joined the Trump Organization, he harbored personal political dreams. In 2010, Cohen mounted a second unsuccessful campaign, this time for the New York state Senate. Among his donors in that race were shipping magnate Oleg Mitnik and tobacco tycoon and New York real estate man Howard Lorber, one of Donald Trump’s closest friends.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At a Trump Tower press conference in early 2011, Cohen took the public stage as an international dealmaker. “Seven months ago, at the request of a dear friend of mine from <b>Georgia, Giorgi Rtskhiladze,</b> I traveled to the Republic of Georgia to explore several real estate opportunities on behalf of Mr. Trump,” Cohen said in his unmistakable Long Island accent. He then introduced Trump and the then-president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili. Cohen continued to expand his role within the Trump universe. It had become simultaneously global, national and highly local. The Trump Organization’s business model had shifted, from building high-end Manhattan properties to scoping for international licensing deals, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Cohen, along with Trump’s adult children, headed up this effort.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ostensible purpose of the press conference was to talk up a planned tower in the city of Batumi, on the Black Sea coast. But most of the questions centered on Donald Trump’s possible run for president.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Months earlier, Michael Cohen had helped set up a website called shouldtrumprun.com with the Long Island law firm Gerstman Schwartz & Malito. (David Schwartz is a longtime Cohen friend and attorney who made several television appearances on Cohen’s behalf when the Stormy Daniels news broke.) Cohen also traveled to Iowa to explore the political terrain.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shouldtrumprun.com was billed as independent of Trump; otherwise Trump would have had to file papers with the Federal Election Commission on his own behalf. At the press conference, Trump was peppered with political questions. “Could you comment on the kind of feedback or what you took from the feedback from Mr. Cohen’s Iowa trip,” one reporter asked. “You could ask Mr. Cohen. You can speak to him,” Trump replied.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But she pressed. “Are you encouraged by anything that you saw or read out of that? Trump couldn’t resist. “Well,” he said, “I mean the response has been amazing, actually.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Another response: A complaint was filed with the Federal Election Commission, alleging Trump had accepted “excessive or impermissible contributions from the Trump Organization, LLC” because shouldtrumprun.com was set up by an employee: Michael Cohen.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Trump and Cohen were cleared of wrongdoing. One of the two commissioners who signed off on the ruling was <b>Donald McGahn</b>. McGahn later became Trump’s White House counsel.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s another piece of public work that Cohen was involved in that further shows the close links among Trump, Cohen, and the attorney David Schwartz. During the same time period of the Georgia deal and shouldtrumprun.com, Schwartz and Cohen were both working on a project called Trump on the Ocean, which aimed to construct a massive catering hall in the popular Jones Beach State Park on Long Island.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump was so keen on this project that, unusually even for him, he called four governors and a state comptroller to lobby for it, according to former state officials. In at least one of the calls, he cited his generous donations as a reason to get the clearances he needed to move forward.  </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump put Cohen in charge of the negotiations. But some state officials balked at what they saw as an attempt to commercialize a state park, and Trump’s insistence that the state override its fire code so he could build a kitchen in the basement.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lobbying was contentious, said Judith Enck, the top environmental advisr for Govs. Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson (and later the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency for the New York region), who was involved in the negotiations. “That was not a typical discussion with a business that was trying to do business with the state of New York. It was aggressive,” Enck said. “There were efforts to go around me to get a better outcome in the discussion … I recall it as you know one of the most unpleasant experiences I had in the governor’s office.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Misery, perhaps, for a government official — but triumph for Trump, Cohen and Schwartz. They got permission to begin construction. “GREAT JOB!” Trump wrote in a note to Schwartz. “I will hire your firm again!”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alas, it was all for naught in the end. Months later, the tail of Superstorm Sandy inundated Jones Beach and Trump walked away from the project.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three years later, when Trump made a run for the White House, Cohen continued to serve both as promoter and dealmaker. He frequently appeared on TV as a Trump surrogate, though he had no official campaign position. In one interview in the summer of 2016, Cohen refused to acknowledge that polls strongly favored Hillary Clinton. He badgered CNN anchor Brianna Keilar when she referred to Trump’s then-dismal poll numbers. “Says who?” Cohen shot back. “What polls?” The anchor, seemingly mystified, answered, “All of them?” The clip went viral.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen’s truculent tendencies were also on display a year before that interview when he threatened Daily Beast reporter Tim Mak. Mak had resurfaced an old accusation made by Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, during their divorce proceedings, that Trump had raped her. (She later withdrew the allegation.) “I’m warning you,” Mak says Cohen told him, “tread very fucking lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Behind the scenes, Cohen was still attempting to make deals for Trump in the former Soviet Union. Cohen drafted a letter of intent with a Moscow investment company to build Trump World Tower Moscow.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen’s partner in the deal was Felix Sater, a Trump associate who had been convicted of assault and securities fraud and had widely reported connections to the Russian mob. “Let’s make this happen and build a Trump Moscow,” Sater wrote in an email to Cohen. “And possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone commerce and business are much better and more practical than politics.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In another email, Sater wrote, “Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it.” In a statement issued last summer, Cohen called this “puffery” and said Sater was prone to colorful language and salesmanship.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen’s activities drew the attention of Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was assembling raw intelligence on the Trump campaign for a private client (ultimately paid for by the Clinton campaign). The resulting collection of documents has become known as “the dossier.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Steele’s memo included the assertion that Cohen met with Russian contacts in Prague</b> after damaging news emerged about Trump’s former campaign manager and an aide. “The overall objective had been ‘sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connection could be fully established or proven,’” Steele wrote in a memo dated Oct. 19, 2016.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In statements and court documents, Cohen has vociferously denied ever visiting Prague, even dispensing photos of his passport, with no Czech stamps visible, as putative proof. Cohen has filed two defamation lawsuits over the release of the dossier. But now McClatchy has reported that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen was in Prague in late summer 2016.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> (And the photographic “proof” Cohen offered may turn out to be moot, according to the McClatchy article, since he reportedly entered the Czech Republic from Germany, which would not have required him to pass through immigration or customs.)</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One thing that Cohen does not dispute: In October 2016, he was involved in fixing another problem, this time by paying $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels. Cohen asserts he did this on his own, with money he obtained from a home equity line of credit.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When FBI agents searched Cohen’s offices on April 9, 2018, they were seeking evidence relating to the Stormy Daniels payment. They were also, according to the Washington Post, sifting through business records relating to Cohen’s taxi medallions. There may still be answers to be found in Queens.</font></p><aside class="promo large left" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.625rem 0px; padding: 1rem 120.188px; border-width: 1px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(216, 214, 211); border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(216, 214, 211); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; float: none; clear: left; width: 808.125px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 0.5rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;">See the Series:  </font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/series/trump-inc">https://www.propublica.org/series/trump-inc</a></font></h3></aside></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><p class="yiv0165278452headline3" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color" style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://rawstory.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=80b42ecc21f29763320aceb90&id=1bae644758&e=4da1f92934" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Lanny Davis Explains Why Helsinki Was a 'Significant Turning Point’ in Michael Cohen's Decision to Turn on Trump</font></a></p><p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Travis Gettys, Raw Story</font></p></div><div><p style="padding: 5px 0px; margin: 5px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="padding: 5px 0px; margin: 5px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-allies-plan-lift-russian-sanctions-was-hatched-early-2016-campaign-report">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-allies-plan-lift-russian-sanctions-was-hatched-early-2016-campaign-report</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>new report from <em>McClatchy</em> reveals that a plan President Donald Trump's allies worked on that would have ceded Crimea to Russia and lifted key sanctions against the country was developed much earlier than has previously reported — in the beginning days of 2016.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This places the origination of the plan during the opening stage of Trump's run for the presidency, before he clinched the nomination and before there were any revelations about Russia's attempts to interfere in the election and support Trump's candidacy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>McClatchy</em> notes that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the plan as part of his probe into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump associates.  Though it's not clear there's a direct relationship with this plan, another incident during the 2016 <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/12/04/568310790/2016-rnc-delegate-trump-directed-change-to-party-platform-on-ukraine-support" style="text-decoration-line: none;">election</a> may be relevant: a mysterious change in the Republican National Committee's party platform to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine following the invasion of Russia.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><em>McClatchy</em> learned new details of the plan from Andrii Artemenko, a former Ukrainian politician. He says he worked on the plan with former GOP Rep. <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ex-congressman-russia-ties-may-be-missing-piece-mueller-investigation-report" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Curt Weldon</a> of Pennsylvania,</b> who has recently come under suspicion for his ties to both Trump and Russian business interests. Alexander Rovt, a prominent figure in New York real estate, was also reportedly involved.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This plan eventually ended up in the hands of Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer and former attorney.</b> Trump's former business associate Felix Sater was also involved. Cohen has previously said that he gave the plan to Trump's ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn, though he has changed his story on that front multiple times.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the plan was first reported on in the <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/ex-congressman-russia-ties-may-be-missing-piece-mueller-investigation-report" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><em>New York Times</em></a>, it appears to have fizzled out.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Artemenko says that, based on his interviews with Mueller, he believes Cohen is among the targets of the Russia investigation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="padding: 5px 0px; margin: 5px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/ivanka-trump-facilitated-contact-between-michael-cohen-and-russian-offering-facilitate-trump-putin">https://www.alternet.org/ivanka-trump-facilitated-contact-between-michael-cohen-and-russian-offering-facilitate-trump-putin</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller and congressional investigators tasked with probing the 2016 presidential election have questioned witnesses about contact between Donald Trump’s daughter <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/ivanka-trump-putin-moscow-meeting-michael-cohen-tower?utm_term=.mikxmNmL0#.gnnz9k924" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ivanka Trump and a Russian contact offering to “expedite a Trump tower in Moscow,”</a> BuzzFeed News reports.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to BuzzFeed, </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ivanka Trump “connected her father’s personal lawyer,” Michael Cohen, with Russian athlete Dmitry Klokov, </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“who offered to introduce Donald Trump to [Vladimir] Putin to facilitate a 100-story Trump tower in Moscow.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Cohen is under investigation in the Southern District of New York for bank fraud, among other alleged crimes.</span></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/michael-cohen-met-russian-oligarch-and-top-inauguration-donor-trump-tower-during-transition">https://www.alternet.org/michael-cohen-met-russian-oligarch-and-top-inauguration-donor-trump-tower-during-transition</a></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch who was recently questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller, met with Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen in Trump Tower during the transition, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/25/politics/viktor-vekselberg-trump-tower-michael-cohen-meeting/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to video footage</a> that aired Friday on CNN.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The footage, taken at the lobby of Trump Tower during the presidential transition, shows Veskelberg and his cousin, Michael Intrater, entering an elevator on the ground floor of Trump Tower in New York. A source told CNN the pair met with Cohen to discuss “improving US-Russia relations.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vekselberg heads the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate, an Intrater runs Columbus Nova, a subsidiary of Renova. As CNN notes, in January 2017, Columbus Nova paid Cohen $580,000 for consulting work.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">TRMS: artemko gave ukraine plan tio m cohen who said he gave it to flynn but also said not? 5/18</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...E<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ven before the appointment of Mueller as special counsel in May 2017, FBI agents investigating Russia’s interference in the election learned that Cohen was in frequent contact with foreign individuals about Trump Moscow — and that some of these individuals had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling, according to two FBI agents.</span></font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That is new," Maddow said Thursday night. "That is new information that adds a whole new dimension to the Trump Tower Moscow story that had been kept secret for a very long time, and then diminished, and we were all told it was nothing. And now it turns out that it was more than nothing, the FBI was interested in it. and it involved people who were part of the 2016 election meddling by the Russian government."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The direct ties between a key member of the Trump's orbit and the efforts to disrupt American democracy would seem to suggest a plausible path for some sort of "collusion" to have occurred and also completely contradicts any number of denials from the president and his allies of any connections to Russia.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/columbus-nova-russian-oligarch-michael-cohen-trump-lawyer-marc-kasowitz">https://www.propublica.org/article/columbus-nova-russian-oligarch-michael-cohen-trump-lawyer-marc-kasowitz</a>

pro publ

that the same shell company that Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer for Donald Trump, had used to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/politics/michael-cohen-shell-company-payments.html">had also received about $500,000</a> in 2017 from a firm linked to a Russian oligarch set off a frenzy of commentary on Twitter and cable TV.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the heart of the story is an investment firm called Columbus Nova, which has close links to Renova Group, a conglomerate founded by Russian billionaire <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/viktor-vekselberg/">Viktor Vekselberg</a>. A Columbus Nova spokesman has said the payments to Cohen were for unspecified investment consulting.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now there’s a new wrinkle: Another longtime Trump personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, also represented Columbus Nova in recent years in a commercial case. A spokesman for Kasowitz said the case settled in early 2017.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As ProPublica <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance">reported</a> last year, Cohen spent a short period in February 2017 working at the offices of Kasowitz Benson Torres in midtown Manhattan, alarming several lawyers at the firm who worried about the brash attorney’s reputation. That was at the beginning of the period, between January and August 2017, when Columbus Nova made its payments to Cohen.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance">told ProPublica</a> last year that he used Kasowitz’s offices “because we were working on several matters together after the inauguration.” Both he and Kasowitz have declined to specify what they collaborated on.</font></p><aside class="promo small right"><h3><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read More</font></h3><div class="story-entry"><div class="lead-art"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="aspect-3-2" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance">
</a></font></div><div class="description"><h3 class="hed"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-russia-lawyer-marc-kasowitz-alcohol-security-clearance">Trump’s Russia Lawyer Isn’t Seeking Security Clearance, And May Have Trouble Getting One</a></font></h3><h4 class="dek"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colleagues say Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s attorney on the Russia investigation, has struggled with alcohol abuse and engaged in behavior that left employees uncomfortable.</font></h4></div></div></aside><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Columbus Nova spokesman said that the investment firm was not introduced to Cohen by Kasowitz. The spokesman said Kasowitz worked on only one commercial matter for Columbus Nova and that it was a coincidence that the firm had used two lawyers who also represent Trump.</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked whether any of Cohen’s brief time at the Kasowitz offices related to matters for Columbus Nova, Renova, or Vekselberg, a Kasowitz spokesman said “no.” The spokesman added, “The firm did not do any substantive work with Michael Cohen after he left the Trump Organization.” Cohen resigned from the Trump Organization in January 2017.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Any work Cohen did with Kasowitz in 2017 could take on new relevance since the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office last month. Kasowitz, who was Trump’s lead lawyer in the Russia investigation for a brief period last year, has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/john-dowd-resigns-trump-lawyer.html">reportedly</a> still been involved in advising the president in the case.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kasowitz continues to represent Trump in other matters. That includes a suit by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who claims Trump defamed her by calling her a liar after she asserted that he had made unwanted sexual advances. Kasowitz Benson Torres specializes in commercial litigation and has represented many large U.S. and foreign companies.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kasowitz’s work for Columbus Nova stretches back to at least 2010 in related cases filed <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4454843-650478-2010-CONCORD-CAPITAL-MANAGE-v-CONCORD.html">in New York</a> and Illinois. In Illinois, Fifth Third Bank sued Columbus Nova and several affiliated entities, alleging that they had <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4454966-Illinois-Columbus-Nova-case-amended-complaint.html#document/p4">caused</a> the bank to lose tens of millions of dollars on loans to a life insurance financing program that was “permeated … by fraud and embezzlement.” In the New York case, Kasowitz and three other attorneys at his firm <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4454843-650478-2010-CONCORD-CAPITAL-MANAGE-v-CONCORD.html">filed</a> a separate suit alleging that it was Fifth Third Bank that had committed fraud and caused losses.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The name of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180422181855/http:/www.columbusnova.com/andrew_intrater.html">Andrew Intrater</a>, the CEO of Columbus Nova and the cousin of Vekselberg, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4454966-Illinois-Columbus-Nova-case-amended-complaint.html#document/p3">comes up</a> repeatedly in the litigation.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kasowitz’s spokesman said the litigation settled in 2017. The terms do not appear to be public.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The firm represented Nina Investments LLC and its affiliates, Santa Maria Overseas, Ltd., Columbus Nova Investments IV, Ltd., and Renova U.S. Management LLC, in a commercial litigation with Fifth Third Bank, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, over a failed investment in a company called Concord Capital Management, LLC,” the Kasowitz spokesman said. “The litigation was commenced in 2010 and settled in early 2017.”</font></p><aside class="newsletter small left"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesman for Renova, Andrey Shtorkh, told ProPublica that he is not familiar with Kasowitz. He described Renova Group as a client of Columbus Nova. However, Renova’s website <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170302202700/http:/www.renova.ru/en/about/">previously described</a> Columbus Nova as one of its holdings. Columbus Nova’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180422181855/http:/www.columbusnova.com/andrew_intrater.html">website</a> previously described itself “as the US investment vehicle for the Renova Group.”</font></aside><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vekselberg was among those <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm0338">hit with</a> <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-renova/u-s-sanctions-on-vekselberg-have-1-5-2-billion-assets-frozen-sources-idUSKBN1HS0FB">sanctions</a> last month by the Trump administration in response to “malign activity around the globe” by the Russian government. The New York Times subsequently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/viktor-vekselberg-mueller-investigation.html">reported that Vekselberg was questioned</a> by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with the payments from Columbus Nova, Cohen also received payments from corporations including AT&T and Novartis. AT&T <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/08/media/att-michael-cohen-consulting-payments/index.html">said</a> it hired Cohen “to provide insights into understanding the new administration.” ProPublica <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-vietnam-casino">recently reported</a> that Kasowitz used his access to the Trump administration to help another client, a New York investor, with a casino in Vietnam.</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
LAT 

the early days of President Trump's administration, Trump had a friend in AT&T Inc. Chief Executive Randall Stephenson.</font><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The telecom executive described himself as one of Trump's "biggest defenders on public policy." He met with the president-elect at Trump Tower and talked about all the jobs that the largest U.S. phone company would create. Stephenson also praised Trump to investors, saying the president would usher in a new era of corporate tax relief and fewer regulations.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And as it turned out, AT&T's relationship with the fledgling administration went deeper. The carrier acknowledged Tuesday that it hired a firm founded by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, seeking "insights" on how the unorthodox president would govern. It also wanted guidance on how Trump would respond to its plan to acquire Time Warner Inc., according to a person briefed on the matter.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AT&T said it cut ties with Cohen's firm in December, shortly after receiving word that the administration would try to block its Time Warner deal — a move that Stephenson described at the time as "a big curve ball."</font></p><div class="desktop-nativo mobile-yieldmo inline-ad-arrow "><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question now is whether AT&T's payments were an attempt to influence Trump's views on the Time Warner deal or just research on a new and idiosyncratic administration. In addition to seeking guidance on the Time Warner transaction, the carrier also asked for information on tax reform and net neutrality policies, said the person familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations were private.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="header" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><h5 class="heavy-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stormy Daniels</font></h5></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The relationship came to light Tuesday, when AT&T was cited by attorney Michael Avenatti as one of the parties that made payments to Cohen's firm. Avenatti is representing Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, who was paid $130,000 by Cohen just before the 2016 presidential election not to discuss an alleged tryst with Trump.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Larry Solomon, a spokesman for AT&T, confirmed the relationship Tuesday.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It "was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration," he said in an email. "They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017."</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It isn't clear why AT&T would use Cohen, considering that he was a personal lawyer to Trump and not in the administration.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="header" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><h5 class="heavy-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia allegations</font></h5></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The acknowledgment pulls AT&T into a rapidly unfolding legal saga involving the president, his lawyer and alleged ties to Russia. Avenatti also alleged that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-cohen-russia-vekselberg-20180508-story.html" target="blank">a company connected to a Russian oligarch</a> sent $500,000 last year to Cohen's business.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Essential Consultants is a Delaware limited-liability company started by Cohen</b>, and it has been identified as the source of the hush payment to Daniels.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen wouldn't have had to register as a lobbyist unless he spent 20% of the time he devoted to AT&T on efforts to influence the federal government while having at least two contacts with one or more high-ranking government officials, including members of Congress, their staff or administration officials.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="header" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><h5 class="heavy-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AT&T’s payments</font></h5></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AT&T, based in Dallas, made four payments of $50,000 apiece around the end of last year, according to Avenatti. But the company's statement that the consulting arrangement started in early 2017 suggests there may have been other payments.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The carrier announced just before the election that it would acquire Time Warner, embarking on a "vertical merger" that would bind entertainment and news content with AT&T's network infrastructure. There were reasons for concern about the deal: Trump regularly criticized Time Warner's CNN unit on the campaign trail and threatened to derail any merger.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But AT&T and Time Warner weren't competitors, so Stephenson assumed the deal wouldn't be opposed on antitrust grounds.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We were obviously surprised when the government decided to try and block the merger," he said during a conference call in January. "It is a classic vertical merger between two companies that don't even compete with one another. With 50 years of legal precedent, it's the type of business combination that the government has consistently approved with appropriate conditions."</font></p></div></div><div data-type="header" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><h5 class="heavy-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Courtroom battle</font></h5></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Justice Department's fight against the merger ultimately proved fierce. The two sides are just now <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-att-trial-closing-arguments-20180430-story.html" target="_blank">wrapping up a six-week courtroom battle</a> over it.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The companies and the government have filed hundreds of pages of post-trial documents, and U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington is weighing whether to bless the $85-billion deal or block it. He plans to announce his decision June 12.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Critics have spent years accusing Hillary Clinton of making policy decisions during her time as secretary of State based on the interests of corporate and foreign government donors to the Clinton Foundation, especially to the Clinton Global Initiative.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and other Republicans alleged during the 2016 campaign that Clinton's decisions as president would be swayed by donors who had spent years cultivating influence through the foundation — and by paying her to speak during the two years between her departure from the Obama administration and the start of her campaign.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clinton and her team insisted that efforts to avoid conflicts of interest were made at the State Department and that further steps would be taken if she was elected.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="header" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><h5 class="heavy-text"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other companies</font></h5></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, other firms have also transferred funds to Cohen's firm, according to Avenatti's summary. They include <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Novartis</span> Investments SARL, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical maker Novartis AG, which made four payments totaling $399,920 in the same four-month span as AT&T.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Novartis spokesman said that he was looking into the issue but added that any agreements with Essential were entered into before the arrival of the company's current CEO in February and have expired.</font></p></div></div><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><div class=" card-content "><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There also was a $150,000 payment in November 2017 from Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd., a manufacturer of aircraft, including jets, helicopters and unmanned vehicles, according to the summary.</font></span></p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></span></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></span></font></font></font></font></font><div data-type="text" class="card collection-item"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font><div class=" card-content "><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Korea Aerospace, which is seeking to sell its planes in the United States, hired Cohen's entity for advice on local accounting standards and sent a single payment of $150,000 when the work was completed, a spokesman said Wednesday, adding that the contract was legal.</font></span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p></div></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/trumps-personal-attorney-michael-cohen-once-bragged-he-was-part-russian-mob-report">https://www.alternet.org/trumps-personal-attorney-michael-cohen-once-bragged-he-was-part-russian-mob-report</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to the </span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Journal</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, longtime friend Gregory Ehrlich recalled that he had invited Cohen to his wedding and was amused when he he overheard the attorney bragging to another guest that he affiliated with  the Russian mob. Ehrlich, who has since broken off ties with Cohen, admitted that he was skeptical of the boast.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trumps-relentless-fixer-many-mysterious-doings-michael-cohen">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trumps-relentless-fixer-many-mysterious-doings-michael-cohen</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-history-libel-and-defamation-lawsuits-silence-critics" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-history-libel-and-defamation-lawsuits-silence-critics</a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b> Trump has vowed to seek revenge on BuzzFeed for <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.hbWjOVoBo#.jo4VnOzxz" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">publishing the Steele Dossier</a> almost a year ago. Now, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is suing BuzzFeed for defamation.</b></font></p><div id="TeadsNative" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed stands by its decision to publish the dossier. Katie Rayford, a BuzzFeed spokesperson, told AlterNet: "The dossier is, and continues to be, the subject of active investigations by Congress and intelligence agencies. It was presented to two successive presidents, and has been described in detail by news outlets around the world. Its interest to the public is obvious. This is not the first time Trump's personal lawyer has attacked the free press, and we look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court."</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trump loves both suing and threatening lawsuits over any perceived slight, whether it’s an artist who depicted the president nude with a micropenis, or an analyst who (correctly) predicted the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino would fail. The president has a long history of using bogus claims of libel and defamation to bully opponents and tie them up in court. The American Bar Association has called him a "libel bully," but was afraid to make the claim public because its lawyers feared Trump might sue in retaliation. There’s even a nifty online counter tracking the number of hours since Trump last threatened a journalist or critic. According to the makers of the counter, he’s threatened to sue at least 45 times since the 1980s.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As outrageous as some of Trump’s claims are, being sued for defamation or libel is no laughing matter. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, not to mention the opportunity cost of time spent in court, plus the emotional strain and reputation damage that can occur during a complicated lawsuit. For someone as powerful as Trump, who can hand these burdens off to someone else, lawsuits are an easy way to threaten anyone who challenges him.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here are some of the least credible and most obnoxious lawsuits Trump has followed through on in an effort to silence his opponents.</b></font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. The Chicago Tribune</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 1984, Trump sued Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Gapp for a staggering $500 million after the writer mocked a proposed Trump building in the New York financial district. Gapp called the building plan unrealistic and “one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city”—and Trump was not having it.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case was tossed out by a particularly sardonic judge, whose full statement is a delight to read. In Gapp’s defense, the building design was totally silly, as you can see below.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005, Trump sued his own biographer, Timothy O’Brien, for writing in TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald that the real estate mogul was worth only $150 to $250 million. Trump insisted he was worth at least $5 billion, and took the case to court. Seriously. A judge ultimately dismissed the case. After he lost, Trump bragged to the Washington Post: "I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees but they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make [O’Brien’s] life miserable, which I’m happy about."</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Miss USA contestant Sheena Monnin </font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, pageant contestant Sheena Monnin complained on Facebook that the Miss USA contest Trump oversaw was "fraudulent," "trashy" and "rigged.” Trump sued her for $5 million in response and won an arbitration award. Trump attorney Michael Cohen later bragged that he and Trump had “destroyed” Monnin’s life.  </font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. The Daily Beast</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s team sued the Daily Beast in 2015 after it published an article about Ivana Trump’s accusations of rape against her ex-husband. On that occasion, attorney Cohen, who headed many of these lawsuits, made it perfectly clear that the suit was intended to punish anyone who smeared Trump’s name.  </font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen told the Daily Beast. “So I’m warning you, tread very f---ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f---ing disgusting. You understand me?”</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up…for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet…you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he said.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Union workers at Trump Hotel Las Vegas</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2015, Trump sued the Culinary Union and Bartenders Union at his own Las Vegas hotel for printing “misleading” flyers that suggested Trump himself did not stay at Trump Hotel Las Vegas because the rooms weren’t luxurious enough. At the time, employees at the hotel were in the midst of efforts to unionize.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A union spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter: "This lawsuit is an effort to distract from the unionizing effort...There are over 500 workers who are fighting for justice and respect at the Trump Hotel Las Vegas.”</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">6. Univision</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump's long and well-publicized feud with Univision has resulted in threats of several lawsuits, including one against programming chief Alberto Ciurana for posting an Instagram with Trump’s face spliced next to Dylann Roof’s. So basically, Trump threatened to sue over a meme calling out his blatant racism.</font></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's no wonder Univision's lawyers called Trump "thin-skinned" in response. Their memorandum to dismiss the suit nails Trump's tactics of intimidation perfectly: "There is a rich irony to Trump’s cry that he is the target of an effort to 'suppress [his] right to free speech,' when it is Trump himself—a candidate for president—who is attempting to invoke the coercive power of the courts to punish a citizen’s speech."</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LAT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin-top="margin-top" px="px" background-color="background-color" style="margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> House Intelligence Committee issued seven subpoenas Wednesday, ramping up its investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and into whether names of <a id="PEBSL000163" title="Donald Trump" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/donald-trump-PEBSL000163-topic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">President Trump</a>’s associates were improperly revealed in classified intelligence reports.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Subpoenas went to Trump’s former national security advisor, </span><a id="PEGPF00206" title="Michael Flynn" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/unrest-conflicts-war/defense/michael-flynn-PEGPF00206-topic.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Flynn</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, and to the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">president’s longtime personal attorney, <a id="PEPLT001217" title="Michael Cohen" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/michael-cohen-PEPLT001217-topic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Cohen</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The </span><a id="ORGOV0000134" title="U.S. Senate" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/government/u.s.-senate-ORGOV0000134-topic.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">Senate</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Intelligence Committee and a federal grand jury in Virginia also have issued subpoenas for Flynn’s business records.</span></font></b></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color" style="margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement, the House committee said it had issued subpoenas seeking “testimony, personal documents and business records” from Flynn and Cohen. It also approved subpoenas for the Flynn Intel Group LLC and for Michael D. Cohen & Associates PC.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color" style="margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We hope and expect that anyone called to testify or provide documents will comply with that request, so that we may gain all the information within the scope of our investigation. We will continue to pursue this investigation wherever the facts may lead,” Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), the committee chairman, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the ranking member, said in a statement.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergey Gorkov</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A graduate of the FSB’s finishing school for spies, Gorkov heads Vnesheconombank, Russia’s state-owned development bank</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—effectively Putin’s slush fund. With its board seeded with Kremlin ministers, including Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, the bank was the majority lender for the Sochi Olympics, has helped Russia gain financial power in Ukraine, and is currently under US sanctions because of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In December 2016, Gorkov attended a meeting with Jared Kushner brokered by Kislyak—after which Gorkov appears to have gone directly to meet with Putin.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Felix Sater</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This Russian American businessman (and onetime FBI informant) has quite the rap sheet, including prison time for stabbing a man with the stem of a margarita glass and a guilty plea in a Mafia-linked racketeering case. Though Trump claimed in a 2013 deposition that he wouldn’t know Sater if they were in the same room, the pair in fact worked together on a variety of projects, including a potential Moscow hotel. Once a managing partner of Bayrock Group, a real estate firm with offices in Trump Tower and alleged organized crime ties, Sater reportedly worked as a senior adviser to Trump in 2010, with a Trump Organization email address and business card. In January,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Sater met with Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Andrii Artemenko, </b>a pro-Putin Ukrainian lawmaker, to discuss a “peace plan” for Ukraine and Russia.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrii Artemenko</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Currently facing an inquiry by Ukrainian prosecutors into possible treason over his collaboration with Trump associates on the Russia-friendly peace plan, the Ukrainian parliament member claims to have evidence of corruption that could oust his country’s current pro-European president. Artemenko has spent time in prison on embezzlement charges (eventually dropped) that he says were politically motivated.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tevfik Arif</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Kazakh founder of the<b> Bayrock</b> real estate firm was formerly a USSR commerce official. He hired Sater, who by 2005 became Bayrock’s managing partner; subsequently, the firm entered into deals with Trump to develop various hotel and condo projects. In 2010, Bayrock’s former finance director sued the company (but not Trump) over one of those joint ventures, the Trump SoHo, calling the building “a Russian mob project” financed with mysterious cash from Kazakhstan and Russia.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Victor Podobnyy</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At a January 2013 energy conference in New York, Podobnyy met future Trump adviser Carter Page. At the time, Podobnyy was a clandestine Russian intelligence agent working under diplomatic cover in Russia’s UN delegation.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> For the next five months, Page met with, emailed, and provided documents to Podobnyy about the energy business, believing that Podobnyy’s UN position would help him broker deals in Russia. All the while, Podobnyy and one of his colleagues attempted to recruit Page as an asset. In 2015, Podobnyy was busted by the FBI for being an unregistered agent of a foreign government, along with two other Russians, but avoided arrest and prosecution because of his diplomatic immunity.</span></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ntbcw gary cohn GS
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">some false alarm mixup indignat response?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">early on?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">recall some early charge slid off? name confusion? russians?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/who-hell-michael-cohen-everything-you-were-afraid-ask-about-suddenly-important-person">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/who-hell-michael-cohen-everything-you-were-afraid-ask-about-suddenly-important-person</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">humor</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">this <a href="http://www.salon.com/topic/who-in-the-hell-is/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brand new, hastily conceived premise</a>, Salon will use the otherwise unlimited space of the site to profile a person in the news who has until recently lived largely under the radar. And by under the radar, we mean above gratuitous satire.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FULL NAME: Michael D – What you, a cop?</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OCCUPATION: Personal lawyer for Donald Trump. Spokesman for Donald Trump. Spokesman for Donald Trump Spokesman.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">POLITICAL AFFILIATION:</font></p><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1984-2002, Democratic Party</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2002-2004, Republican Party</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2004-2017, Democratic Party</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2017- present, Republican Party</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 2005, Druid</font></li></ul><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen was unable to vote for Trump in the 2016 New York primary because he was still a registered Democrat. Instead of identification, he tried unsuccessfully to convince the supervisor at his polling place he was an ultra-conservative Republican by presenting a receipt from Chick-Fil-A.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EDUCATION: American University (BA); Western Michigan Law School and Pro Shop (JD); Phil’s Shyster Factory (foreman/dean).</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRE-LAW LIFE: Cohen grew up on Long Island (exit on Sunrise Highway unknown), the son of a nurse and a surgeon. His father was a Holocaust survivor until Steve Bannon broke the news to him that it never happened. Cohen observes some Orthodox Jewish traditions, which means from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday he has a gentile turn on his lights and the machine that launders money.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HEY, AREN’T YOU LIKE, YOU KNOW, THAT GUY? Cohen has been compared to Tom Hayden, the consigliere for the Corleone Family in “The Godfather.” One slight difference: The Corleones were more transparent with their business dealings and finances.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen has also been referred to as Trump’s “pit bull” for both his overly aggressive defense of his boss and the fact he twice had to wear a cone around his neck to prevent himself from biting his stitches.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump currently is using three personal lawyers to deal with the various investigations for which he is not under investigation.</b> Ask anyone. Legal experts believe he will need to retain two more lawyers and go for the nickel defense.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ATTORNEY-CLIENT PREVALENCE:<b> Cohen recently hired D.C.-based Stephen Ryan to represent him in his upcoming testimony before both the House and Senate Intelligence Committee investigations into Russia and the 2016 elections</b>. He took on Ryan only after he fired himself as his own counsel over a billing dispute.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen will be asked to provide information on any communications he had with people connected to the Russian government. As of now, all we know is that last January he met with Ukrainian opposition politicians <b>Andrey Artemenko and Felix Sater</b> at the Loews Regency in Manhattan. Artemenko and Sater were staying at the Loews special “Sanctions Lifted!” rate of $229/night, plus free backchannel wi-fi and continental breakfast (your choice of continent).</font></p><div data-toggle-group="story-14784835" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The three allegedly discussed a plan to have forces withdraw from the Ukraine in exchange for Crimea being leased to Russia for 50 or 100 years. (NOTE: The 100-year lease includes free wi-fi, no breakfast; 50-year lease, dial-up only.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of the meeting, Cohen was given a written proposal in a sealed envelope, which he delivered to then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. So, once and for all, that should end all the utter nonsense and irresponsible reporting about Flynn being a target for blackmail by a hostile foreign power.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRESIDENT TRUMP ON MICHAEL COHEN: “Good guy. He’s a good guy. And he works for me. And if you’ve noticed, because a lot of people have pointed this out, I only have good guys working for me. I don’t like if they’re taller than me. You can be a good guy. You can be the best guy. You can be above reproach, or what I like to call above above reproach. Whatever is on the shelf above the shelf above reproach. But you really shouldn’t be taller than me. A lot of people, the kind of people who say these things, say that’s why I had to get rid of Comey. He was taller than me. You see this guy? He should be in the circus. Maybe he’ll have the time now. Seriously, call the Ringlings. Call the DuSoleils. That, that is the grandstanding I was talking about. What was he trying to prove? You don’t have to be that tall to serve the people. So, I really had no choice. Now, Michael Cohen, I had a choice. I like choice. It’s called freedom. I’m very big on that. He’s my lawyer. That was my choice. I could get rid of him tomorrow. Freedom. Maybe it’s not the right time, should I tell you? I’m seriously thinking of adding a solar-powered attorney. Solar. Solar. I don’t know exactly how that would work, but I do know it would pay for itself. I have a couple of guys on it. Good guys. I think they’re both about 5-11.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">KENYA BE MORE SPECIFIC? In 2011, at the height of Trump’s birtherism, Cohen said, “I am certain President Obama was born in Hawaii. I really am.” Unfortunately, it was in answer to the question “Would you like to hear about tonight’s specials?”</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">
</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">grim ends under “mysterious” circumstances.  These include the lethal spritz of polonium 210 that killed Russian secret police defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006; the shooting of journalist and Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment that same year; a dose of rare Himalayan plant poison for banker and Putin nemesis Alexander Perepilichny in London in 2012; a fusillade that felled opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow in 2015; and four fatal bullets this March for refugee whistleblower Denis Voronenkov on a Kiev sidewalk, which Ukraine has denounced as “an act of state terrorism.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmn</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://news.fark.com/newdata/news?ad=2796262&bl=83097&ag=20&st=20&ct=adpreview&out=1</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://crooksandliars.com/2017/03/eighth-russian-connected-trump-found-dead" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://crooksandliars.com/2017/03/eighth-russian-connected-trump-found-dead</a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... hard out there for a potentially compromising conduit between Trump and Vladmir Putin.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This one strikes particularly close to home. Alex Oronov was found dead, according to a Facebook post by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/andvicart/posts/1882173455395351" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Andrii Artemenko</a>, an Ukrainian MP. Oronov was apparently quite successful in agribusiness. He had an interest in an ethanol business set up by Michael and Bryan Cohen in the Ukraine. Michael Cohen is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-russia-ukraine-peace-plan-2017-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Donald Trump's attorney</a>. Bryan, in addition to being Michael's brother, is <a href="http://www.pressreader.com/ukraine/kyiv-post/20170224/281629600043454" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Oronov's son-in-law</a>. With Artemenko and others, Oronov had organized a "peace plan," which was described by The New York Times as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-russia.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">back-channel opportunity</a> for the Trump administration:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 20px 0px 19px; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 4px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: initial; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-image: initial; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Mr. Flynn is gone, having been caught lying about his own discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. But the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it:</span><b> Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; </b><span style="font-weight: inherit;">and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager </span><b>Paul Manafort.</b></span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[..]</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mr. Trump has confounded Democrats and Republicans alike with his repeated praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, and his desire to forge an American-Russian alliance. While there is nothing illegal about such unofficial efforts, a proposal that seems to tip toward Russian interests may set off alarms.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[..]</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the proposal contains more than just a peace plan. </span><span style="font-weight: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, who sees himself as a Trump-style leader of a future Ukraine, claims to have evidence — “names of companies, wire transfers” — showing corruption by the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that could help oust him. And Mr. Artemenko said he had received encouragement for his plans from top aides to Mr. Putin.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A lot of people will call me a Russian agent, a U.S. agent, a C.I.A. agent,” Mr. Artemenko said. “But how can you find a good solution between our countries if we do not talk?”</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oh yeah, I'm sure this is completely altruistic on the part of Artemenko.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Artemenko's announcement of Oronov's passing does not include a cause of death (as best as I can tell from Facebook's translation app), but does point a finger at the stress brought on by The New York Times article to being too much for Oronov to bear. I'm sure it could be natural causes, but there is a disturbingly significant number of suspicious deaths surrounding Trump and Putin. And remember, even if the official cause of death is something like a heart attack, that doesn't mean <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-strange-case-of-the-russian-diplomat-who-got-his-head-sm?utm_term=.jsn5N7xOz#.kcJG1nvDB" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">his head wasn't bashed in</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because that's the kind of thing that happens in Soviet....er, <em style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump's</em> America.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(h/t to <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-development-on-the-michael-cohen-peace-plan-meeting" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Josh Marshall</a>, who offers this <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Occam's Razor theory </a>of what appears to be a snowballing story.)</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Th<span style="box-sizing: inherit;">ere have been public reports of Trump’s real estate transactions with oligarchs, but there’s been no coherent look at all of the individuals involved and their political ties. From </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/donald-trump-2016-russian-ties-214116" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.politico.com="www.politico.com" magazine="magazine" story="story" donald-trump-2016-russian-ties-214116="donald-trump-2016-russian-ties-214116" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">Dmitry Rybolovlev</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Dmitry Rybolovlev</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">, the Russian billionaire who bought a Florida mansion in 2008 from Trump for $95-million, to </span><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.ft.com="www.ft.com" content="content" dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923="dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">Viktor Khrapunov</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Viktor Khrapunov</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">, the former energy minister of Kazakhstan who bought condos in 2013 at the Trump Soho who was later accused of money laundering, to </span><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" abcnews.go.com="abcnews.go.com" politics="Politics" us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims="us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims" story="story" id="45019603" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">Sergei Millian</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Sergei Millian</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">, the head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce who is </span><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" abcnews.go.com="abcnews.go.com" politics="Politics" us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims="us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims" story="story" id="45019603" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">said to be a source in the Trump dossier and who claims to have had a formal agreement with the Trump Organization to serve Trump’s Russian real estate clients, a claim disputed by the Trump Organization</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">said to be a source in the Trump dossier and who claims to have had a formal agreement with the Trump Organization to serve Trump’s Russian real estate clients, a claim disputed by the Trump Organization</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</span></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of Trump’s advisers do have close ties to Russia, but, so far, nothing has come out that links his campaign staff to the hacking. But there are many threads to follow.</font></span></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">From the admission by Stone that he communicated online with Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who claims to have penetrated the DNC, to </span><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/russian-hacking-trump/510689/" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.theatlantic.com="www.theatlantic.com" international="international" archive="archive" russian-hacking-trump="russian-hacking-trump" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">allegations by Trump associates</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">allegations by Trump associates</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> that the hacking investigation is red herring, a ruse created by U.S. intelligence to blame Russia for cyber espionage, the story is bewildering and bizarre. So who knew what and when, and what is the truth? It remains to be seen.</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not in dispute that members of Trump’s campaign staff were in contact with Russians in the lead up to the election and in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. What’s unclear is the substance of those contacts. How many staffers met with Russians and why?</font></span></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">There’s nothing to suggest that Trump has ever met Putin. Trump invited Putin to Miss Universe  2013 in Moscow, but </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-21/the-day-trump-came-to-moscow-oligarchs-miss-universe-and-nobu" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.bloomberg.com="www.bloomberg.com" news="news" articles="articles" the-day-trump-came-to-moscow-oligarchs-miss-universe-and-nobu="the-day-trump-came-to-moscow-oligarchs-miss-universe-and-nobu" lnid="lnid" putin="Putin" sent="sent" his="his" regrets="regrets" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Putin sent his regrets</a> </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">― and a carved wooden box ― to Trump instead. Trump has long admired the Russian leader. He sent out </span><a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/347191326112112640?lang=en" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" twitter.com="twitter.com" realdonaldtrump="realdonaldtrump" status="status" lnid="lnid" lang="en"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">a tweet</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">a tweet</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> before Miss Universe, asking if Putin would be his “new best friend,” and he </span><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/447191888630927360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" twitter.com="twitter.com" realdonaldtrump="realDonaldTrump" status="status" ref_src="twsrc%5Etfw" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">wrote admiringly</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">wrote admiringly</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> of Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Trump famously praised Putin in the run up to the presidential election, at one point </span><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/trump-putin-timeline" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.motherjones.com="www.motherjones.com" politics="politics" trump-putin-timeline="trump-putin-timeline" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">saying</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">saying</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">, “he has been a leader far more than our president has been.”</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">There’s also nothing to suggest any direct communication between Trump and Putin during the campaign. The person with the closest ties to both of them is probably Aras Agalarov, the Russian oligarch who hosted the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013. Agalarov, a billionaire and real estate developer in Moscow, </span><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-493946.html" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" vladimir-putin-donald-trump-493946.html="vladimir-putin-donald-trump-493946.html" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">made a deal that year</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">made a deal that year</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> with Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Agalarov has also been recognized for his service to Russia. During </span><a href="http://crocusgroup.com/press-center/news/752/" rel="nofollow" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" crocusgroup.com="crocusgroup.com" press-center="press-center" news="news" lnid="lnid"><span font-weight="font-weight" quot="quot">a public award ceremony</span>"}}" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">a public award ceremony</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"> at the Kremlin in 2013, Putin personally praised Agalarov. If there’s anyone who understands the precise nature of any connection between Trump and Putin, it’s likely to be him.</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, did Russian interference influence the results of the U.S. election? That might seem outlandish, but with all the other questions about Trump and Russia, it’s imprudent not to ask. Just as it’s essential to be open to the possibility that Trump’s Russia connections add up to nothing.</font></span></p></div><div class="content-list-component text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 715px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abbie VanSickle is a reporter with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley.</font></em></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></em></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></em></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-basic-questions-about-trump-and-russia_us_58ced25de4b0ec9d29dcd601">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-basic-questions-about-trump-and-russia_us_58ced25de4b0ec9d29dcd601</a>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tpm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">we've discussed before, at some point in the earliest years of the new century Trump properties became a go-to place for people from the former Soviet Union to buy real estate. Some were citizens of those countries, others were American immigrants. We've already </span><a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/says-who-piecing-together-the-michael-cohen-story" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">noted how</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/says-who-piecing-together-the-michael-cohen-story" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;"> Trump lawyer Michael Cohen first came to Trump's attention</a> because he and his extended family from Ukraine was buying up a lot of units in Trump properties in New York and Florida. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What this article makes clear is that there were a lot of Michael Cohen type families buying Trump properties in bulk. At least for this part of the tale, Cohen's is a microcosm of this larger story.</span></font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few nuggets.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></p><blockquote droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; border-left: 5px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; margin-block-start: 1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” says Debra Stotts, a sales agent who filled up the tower. The very top floors went unsold for years, but a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states, a Bloomberg investigation shows.</font></blockquote><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then there's this ...<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></p><blockquote droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; border-left: 5px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 0px 0px 0px 15px; margin-block-start: 1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant, issued mortgages to buyers of multimillion-dollar apartments in World Tower. It’s highly unusual for individuals to issue formal mortgages for U.S. luxury real estate, and the tower loans are the only ones Kislin ever made in New York, public records show.</font><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost two decades earlier, Kislin had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit. “I gave him 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” says Kislin, now 82. “He never gave me any trouble.” He says the televisions were for the Commodore Hotel, which Trump had bought in 1976 with Hyatt Corp.</font></p></blockquote><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later we learn that Kislin opened his electronics store with Tamir Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia who in a matter of years went from hardscrabble cabbie to oil baron and real estate magnate. He later went into business with Trump as, among other deals, a partner on the Trump Soho development project. Later we read this: "Investigated by the FBI in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia, Kislin was never charged, and he maintains his innocence."</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you read the piece, the anecdotes follow a standard pattern. Fabulously wealthy immigrant or national from the former Soviet Union either sets up shop in a Trump property, purchases one or helps finance one. Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, who bought on the 79th floor, is one example. They almost all seem to be under some kind of investigation for money laundering or mob ties. Usually they're never charged. Sometimes they're gunned down in mafia assassinations. As Trump himself might say, there's something going on.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nektalov was, ironically, shot to death on 6th Avenue, less than a year after his purchase. He was reportedly cooperating with authorities at the time of his death.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is only so much we can piece together without access to Trump's internal business records. As I've noted before, the great bulk of what we do know about these ventures comes from lawsuits when things went south. (Much of what we know about Trump Soho comes to us that way.) What does seem clear though is that what began as Trump being a go to place for Russian and former Soviet Union money wanting to buy up individual apartment units and luxury homes was shifting in the middle of the last decade to much larger investments to fund the building projects themselves.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Soho is the emblematic example. As we've discussed, it's funded mainly with capital from the former Soviet Union, the origins of which were in some cases hard to figure out even to the people organizing the construction. We also see some of the same people who earlier show up around the unit purchases suddenly reappearing as major investors in the building projects themselves. In the case of Trump Soho, the project was a collaboration of Trump, Felix Sater's Bayrock and Tamir Sapir.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is clearly what Donald Trump Jr was referring to in 2008 when <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">he told a real estate conference</a> that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The jagged progression of Russian political economy over the last quarter century combined with Trump's own near-death financial experiences in the 1990s came together to build an enduring partnership by the first years of the 21st century.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many people look at this arc of growing dependency on money from the former Soviet Union and look for that moment when Trump becomes so dependent on money from Russia that he's forced to cut a deal with Vladimir Putin; or perhaps his business partners catch him in a compromising situation and then he's owned by nefarious forces in Russia. I do not rule out the possibility that some less lurid version of one of these scenarios did happen. But what many of us see as the smoke, which must somewhere lead to fire, is actually the story itself. The smoke is the story! Or to put it differently, the deep business ties provide a compelling explanation and I think likely sufficient explanation of Trump's persistent coziness and affection with top figures in Russia and Russian geopolitical interests.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's abundantly clear that from the early aughts through recent years, Trump became highly dependent on money from the former Soviet Union - mainly Russia and Ukraine but also Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan and other states. Many of the figures in his orbit were at least in the business of shepherding money out of those countries into New York real estate. In many or most cases the FBI and the DOJ suspected them of money laundering and ties to organized crime.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We tend to think like the people we surround ourselves with. Our priorities and sense of right and wrong and much else are shaped by our own self-interest, how we make our living, how we survive. This isn't conspiracy, it's human nature. This is especially so for someone like Donald Trump whose ideas, philosophies, sense of right and wrong, likes and dislikes are so immediately and unreflectively tied to self-interest. Trump's increasing association with and dependence on this milieu is a strong explanation of his persistent and difficult to explain embrace of Putin, Russia and Russia's geopolitical interests in Europe. This is what I described in my <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">"innocent explanation"</a> post from earlier this month.</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We can also see the impact of the Crimea crisis of 2014 - which is the fulcrum of so much of the Trump/Russia story. If Trump had been getting a substantial amount of his buyers and investors from Russia, the imposition of sanctions in 2014 created a major obstacle to his way of doing business. (The big dip in the global oil market likely had a similar impact.) Remember, what's bad for Trump is wrong. That's the rule of thumb. Not just bad for Trump but wrong, stupid, terrible. And it wasn't just bad for Trump, it was clearly a very bad development for many people in his business orbit. Bad for Trump, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends, Bad! Bad for Trump's friends who keep the money flowing, Especially Bad!</font></p><p droid="Droid" serif="serif" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I don't deny that we may eventually find a needle in this haystack. There are parts of the story which remain difficult to piece together based on what I've called this "<a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-innocent-explanation" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">innocent explanation</a>." There are so many sleazy characters, so many connections to figures in the Russian criminal underworld that I'm sure there are at least a few sub-needles there. But haystack itself is a very, very big story.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>