MULTI-UPDATES: Michael Cohen In A Nutshell

Mark Penn begins his latest, and typically excellent, article with the following trenchant observation:

After bilking corporations out of millions of dollars for "insight" into his client, failing to pay his taxes, trying to entrap his client, and pleading guilty to lying to Congress, now-disbarred attorney Michael Cohen took his best shots at President Donald Trump, calling him a liar and a cheat. The testimony brought Congress to a new low after years of dead-end investigations of supposed Russia-Trump conspiracies.

It may be worthwhile to briefly review how we got to this point, and what the Cohen angle is really about.

Like just about everything else in the Russia Hoax, and as nearly as anyone can tell, Michael Cohen's travails began with the infamous Steele "dossier." When she wasn't honing her mid-life ham radio hobbyist skills, Nellie Ohr--former CIA analyst and wife of Bruce Ohr, a high DoJ official and (yes) FBI informant--browsed through NSA databases on behalf of Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS, in search of opposition research information regarding anyone associated with Trump. Courtesy of James Comey and the FBI, who made their access to NSA databases freely available to Nellie and Fusion GPS.

In early summer of 2016, as the campaign season was heating up, Nellie discovered that a Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague. Whether or not Nellie really assumed that the world only contained one Michael Cohen who might travel to Prague we cannot say for sure. However, by fall of 2016 the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Trump and his campaign was in need of a refreshed narrative, due to the fact that none of the original subjects were any longer with the Trump campaign. Either assuming for no apparent reason that only one Michael Cohen existed or, more likely, figuring that the coincidence of names was close enough for government work, the FBI and Chris Steele wove a new narrative about Cohen as the go between Trump and his masters in Moscow. And that was crucial to obtaining the first FISA:

UPDATED: More Re McCabe's Coup Plotting And Blame Shifting

I have to admit that I am, at times, puzzled by sundance at CTH. I give him full credit--he's done yeoman work on the Russia Hoax and other issues that I've taken full advantage of. And I'm certainly not alone in that regard. On the other hand, at other times he seems oddly tone deaf in analysis, and that seems to crop up in particular with regard to legal matters. I assume that reflects on his source(s).

For example, when the first information on McCabe's upcoming 60 Minutes interview was released sundance immediately proclaimed it some sort of legal strategic masterstroke--a view I found baffling, because I thought it was a bonehead move born of desperation:

The McCabe interview is, to me, remarkable. I can only assume that he knows he's going to jail and wants to be sure he won't be the only one. The actual effect of his previous leaks and now this interview is to completely out the Russia Hoax as--a hoax, from beginning to end. That may not be his or 60 Minutes' intent, but it will be the reality. 

By now, we've all seen that McCabe's camp realizes they've screwed up, big time. As I predicted, the general commentariat has quickly realized the enormity of his admissions, and McCabe is desperately attempting to backpedal--a maneuver that usually leads to a fall. In his case, another fall. Monica Showalter at American Thinker captures that:

Crossfire Hurricane: The Theory Of The Case

For those of us who try to follow developments in the Russia Hoax it's easy to get bogged down in the details and lose sight of the big picture: what I call the "theory of the case." Every investigation needs a guiding theory, even a hoax investigation, and a solid grasp of that overall case theory is a big help in coming to grips with the big picture.

To arrive at the overall theory driving the Russia Hoax it's useful to look at two aspects together: first, the Carter Page FISA, and second, Rod Rosenstein's letter authorizing the Special Counsel.

We've all heard the criticism of Rosenstein's authorization letter: it fails, the critics say, to cite a criminal violation, and so the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel is illegitimate because the regulations governing the appointment of a Special Counsel require that a criminal violation be stated. But like so many things we think we know, this turns out not to be true at all.

For starters, the regulations only state that the Attorney General (or, in our case, the Acting AG) has to "determine[] that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted"--it doesn't state that the actual criminal violation has to be named. I agree that the presumption must be that no investigation should be initiated without some specific criminal statute in view. Moreover, it's natural and fair that the subject of an investigation should know what he's being investigated for, and just as natural that the investigator should like to keep the subject in the dark about as much as possible. What would be a reasonable sounding explanation for refusing to cite a criminal statute? The reason is right there in Rosenstein's letter:

The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James B. Comey in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on March 20, 2017 ...

UPDATED: Regarding the Cohen Plea Deal

Lots will be said in the coming days about the Michael Cohen plea deal, in which--against all the evidence--Cohen claims to have committed a crime in coordination with Donald Trump. The plea deal was engineered by a non-trial lawyer: Clinton consigliere Lanny Davis. To understand what's going on here I can do no better than recommend the latest article by another (former) Clinton insider, pollster Mark Penn: Cohen's plea deal is prosecutor's attempt to set up Trump. Here are two excerpt that speak volumes about the Establishment and about the entire Mueller operation:

Contrast what is going on here with the treatment of the millions of dollars paid to a Democratic law firm which, in turn, paid out money to political research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele without listing them on any campaign expenditure form — despite crystal-clear laws and regulations that the ultimate beneficiaries of the funds must be listed. This rule was even tightened recently. There is no question that hiring spies to do oppo research in Russia is a campaign expenditure, and yet, no prosecutorial raids have been sprung on the law firm, Fusion GPS or Steele. Reason: It does not “get” Trump.

...

These investigations, essentially based on an opposition-funded dossier, were never anything other than an attempt to push into a corner as many Trump aides and family members as possible and shake them down until they could get close enough to Trump to try to take him down. That’s why so many of his aides, lawyers, and actions in the campaign and in the White House have undergone hour-by-hour scrutiny to find anything that could be colored into a crime, leaving far behind the original Russia-collusion theory as the fake pretext it was. Paying for nondisclosure agreements for perfectly legal activities is not a crime, not a campaign contribution as commonly understood or ruled upon by the FEC — and squeezing guilty pleas out of vulnerable witnesses does not change those facts.

UPDATES:

Some things you just really can't make up. Lanny Davis, the Clinton consigliere leading the latest charge to overturn the election of Donald Trump--the alleged Putin puppet--is himself the registered foreign agent for Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US government. Further, Davis is also saying that 13 of the dossier claims about Michael Cohen are "false" and that Cohen "has never been to Prague in his life." (via Daily Caller)

And Jeff Carlson at themarketswork.com has pulled up an February 17, 2012 article in The Guardian, Obama, Facebook and the Power of Friendship: the 2012 Data Election. The article describes what appears to be an "in kind" campaign contribution from Facebook to the Obama Campaign:

Facebook is also being seen as a source of invaluable data on voters. The re-election team, Obama for America, will be inviting its supporters to log on to the campaign website via Facebook, thus allowing the campaign to access their personal data and add it to the central data store – the largest, most detailed and potentially most powerful in the history of political campaigns. If 2008 was all about social media, 2012 is destined to become the "data election".

As Carlson points out:

At the time, this news was greeted with glowing acclaim over the sophistication of Obama’s digital campaign. Obama’s Election Team apparently had full access to Facebook’s data. Republicans did not.

Yes, that really does look like an "in kind" campaign contribution, unlike the Trump hush money. Would anyone like to guesstimate the value of Facebook's in kind contribution? Or when a prosecutor will be looking into this?