Russia Investigation Heating Up

[Androidpk]

So aside from Mueller's investigation there is another FBI investigation into Trump's inner circle.

[time4fun]

The FBI raided Michael Cohen's office today.

The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

“Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” said Stephen Ryan, his lawyer. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/u...?smid=pl-share

"The payments to Ms. Clifford are only one of many topics being investigated, according to a person briefed on the search."

Wow. Seems like this probably came as a result of the recent Trump Org subpoena.

I wonder if Mueller is trying to get him to flip? Given Cohen was involved in the Trump Moscow deal, and he shows up in the dossier- I have a hard time believing Mueller's team doesn't care what happens next. I'm guessing he had to refer this to another division because what they found probably doesn't directly relate to his mandate.

(Edited because I just realized that I've read several plea agreements that were struck between multiple agencies)

[Androidpk]

Even if he doesn't flip it's likely he just became a witness in Mueller's investigation. Is he going to fall on the sword for Trump again?

[time4fun]

Even if he doesn't flip it's likely he just became a witness in Mueller's investigation. Is he going to fall on the sword for Trump again?

Cohen isn't going to agree to be a cooperative witness unless he gets something out of it. He could just plead the 5th all day long. This raid was done dramatically and in broad daylight for a reason- they're trying to pressure him into cooperating.

Or they're trying to scare someone else perhaps.

[Parkbandit]

So.... still no collusion?

Shocked.

[time4fun]

Risky Political Prediction Time. We're getting to that point where we can start issuing our risky (i.e. based on woefully incomplete information) predictions.

What's your risky prediction about the investigation?

There are a lot of assumptions being made in this prediction, so there's a LOT of room for error. But here's my risky prediction:

1) Mueller has determined that DoJ guidelines prevent him from indicting a sitting President. He will issue a factual obstruction report without any direct conclusions but which clearly, implicitly leads to one conclusion: that Trump obstructed justice. The report will include some discussion of the fact that DoJ guidelines prevent indictment of a sitting President.

2) There will be no charges related to Russia/Collusion against Manafort or any of Trump's family until after the obstruction report comes out. Mueller is well aware of Trump's Pardon power- which is why the charges against Flynn, Mueller, and Gates have all been for financial crimes and lying to the FBI. Pardoning them for these crimes would look terrible.

3) Manafort is using every legal strategy in the book to stall his cases right now because he's waiting for a Trump Pardon. Trump is waiting until Mueller's office adds Russia/Collusion charges to his indictments before issuing a Pardon. The plan is to argue that since this is a "politically motivated witch hunt", they are bogus charges- though Mueller's financial crimes indictments seriously- and intentionally- undercut any arguments that Manafort is somehow an "innocent victim" in all of this.

3) The obstruction report will come out this summer and will mention the fact that Trump had Dowd offer a pardon to Manafort and Flynn as an example of Federal witness tampering (which is one of the classic examples of obstruction). Once he has listed that as an example of Trump's obstruction, it becomes politically very dangerous to start issuing Pardons to people who are serious targets in the investigation, and Mueller has actually made it legally dangerous at that point too.

4) Realizing he's not going to get a Pardon, Manafort will immediately flip and provide damning evidence against someone or someoneS of consequence in the Russia/Collusion investigation.

5) Then the Russia/Collusion-related indictments will start coming out



It would explain the following-
-Why Gates and Flynn both got the plea deal of a lifetime (you don't get that unless you have something of very high value to offer- given the severity of their potential crimes)
-Why Manafort refuses to work out a plea deal with Mueller
-Why Mueller is planning on issuing a separate obstruction report relatively quickly (according to reporting anyway)
-Why Mueller is planning on issuing an interim report at all
-Why there are no indictments directly related to Russia/Collusion as of yet (except against Russian nationals)



Big Risks-

-Mueller may very well decide after interviewing Trump that he can't prove corrupt intent

-Mueller may actually be releasing an early "interim" report because the obstruction investigation was actually a separate investigation from Russia/Collusion. Meaning it's not actually an interim report at all

-Trump may decide to fire Mueller instead of interviewing with him, or he may decide to preemptively Pardon Manafort (though it would look terrible to give a blanket Pardon to anything related to illegal activity involving Russia/Collusion activities without having specific allegations to argue against)

-Reporting may be inaccurate on a number of fronts- including the interim report, the Gates plea deal, Manafort waiting for a Pardon, Dowd having dangled a Pardon in front of Flynn and Manafort, etc.

-Manafort may genuinely be holding out because he has no information on Russia/Collusion to offer. (Though this is made less likely by the reporting on the terms of Gates's plea deal)

[Gelston]

Look at all this time and effort she puts into formatting her PC posts.

[time4fun]

Look at all this time and effort she puts into formatting her PC posts.

Habit from work

[Androidpk]

I think Kushner, Don jr, Stone, Assange and Cohen will be charged with an assortment of crimes. The obstruction report is going to finger Trump.

[time4fun]

I think Kushner, Don jr, Stone, Assange and Cohen will be charged with an assortment of crimes. The obstruction report is going to finger Trump.

Come on, you can be more specific than that!

This is supposed to be your risky prediction. The one that you know carries a lot of chances to be wrong because you're missing so much information, and because it's so far out.

The fun is in trying to find explanations that connect all of the dots.