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you've changed characters, Joe. Cohen and Manafort are two different people. Cohen plead guilty to 8 out of 18 charges AFTER the jury came back with their decision as part of a plea deal. He was the only person you were referencing in post 11996 and that i directly quoted.
Manafort could be tried as a foreign agent trying to infiltrate our government, but that's doesn't fit the narrative.
And I dont understand what hole you think I'm digging. I'm just looking at it all objectively -- without all the CNN bias.
But lest us never forget Flynn. Who, if you remember, is the most important news story of 2017.
Cohen pleaded guilty to ALL felony 8 counts. No jury involved.
Manafort pleaded innocent to ALL 18 felony counts and was found guilty on 8 and a mistrial on the remaining 10.
Are you trying to imply Cohen, after seeing the Manafort jury return it's verdicts suddenly, within minutes decided to plead guilty??? That's a stretch.
And because you asked, Flynn's sentencing has been rescheduled for a 3rd time and looks to be happening in late September. Just in time for the mid-terms.
I don't know why you keep dragging Flynn into this. Not being sarcastic (well, the image to follow is), but in all seriousness apart from that, I really do not understand the relevance, nor why you seem to fascinated by him. In the grand scheme of things, Flynn is a very small fish.
Because, And I've told you like 100 times now. Savington poked his head in here and claimed that everyone in the world thinks it's a HUGE deal.
here's the convo:
Do you think Trump will pardon him? Pay his leagal bills?
Prosecutor Brandon L. Van Grack said in court that “a very senior member of the transition team directed” Flynn to contact the Russian ambassador at one point. At another, Flynn “called a senior official of the Trump team at Mar-a-Lago” to discuss a United Nations resolution that Flynn talked about with Kislyak.
Originally Posted by braineack
who cares about this?
Originally Posted by Savington
Everyone who is left of you on the political spectrum cares about this.
(So literally everyone)
Originally Posted by braineack
because it finally gives you something to feel good about after your fake Russian story failed to deliver?
:few unrelated posts later:
Originally Posted by braineack
Still waiting for a good answer on why you or "everyone left of me" cares about this.
:few unrelated posts later:
Originally Posted by braineack
...still waiting for why anyone cares. I'll even accept: DERP BECAUSE RUSSIA DERP.
:few unrelated posts later:
Originally Posted by braineack
So, no one can give me a good reason EVERYONE IN THE WORLD cares about Flynn?
It's almost like you liberals get boners over nothing very easily...
I don't think there's any "could" about it. He has already been indicted on this charge, and I posted the court docket in my last message.
I was talking about the public court of opinion. Everyone is assuming this means Trump knew about Manafort's connection to "Russia" and set it an elaborate scheme in an effort to win the election via a few dank memes.
Are you trying to imply Cohen, after seeing the Manafort jury return it's verdicts suddenly, within minutes decided to plead guilty??? That's a stretch.
yeah, now im getting myself all confused with it all.
Fact remains, it was a plea deal and means little. so there was campaign finance violation, so what? welcome to every campaign ever...
this just in: athletes do drugs to perform better.
Knowing that his liberal colleagues couldn’t rule any of the genders out of order without undermining the logic of transgender ideology, Lyons introduced each as a separate amendment to the bill the evening of July 31, each requiring 10 minutes of debate and three minutes to vote on.
Six hours in, Lyons had only filed 35 of the amendments, at which point House leadership realized he was running out the clock and there wasn’t enough time before the midnight deadline to pass both the bill and the other legislation on the docket. At 10:45 p.m., they withdrew the bill.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team was one holdout juror away from winning a conviction against Paul Manafort on all 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, juror Paula Duncan told Fox News in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
...
Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller’s team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case.
“Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn’t have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump,” Duncan said of the special counsel’s case, which she separately described as a “witch hunt to try to find Russian collusion,” borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more than 100 times.
“Something that went through my mind is, this should have been a tax audit,” Duncan said, sympathizing with the foundation of the Manafort defense team’s argument.
Tax fraud, bank fraud in Virginia. Tax fraud and bank fraud.
And what the prosecution kept bringing up is all his nice suits and he spent money frivolously and whatever. That's what they got him on; tax fraud and bank fraud. Minutes later Michael Cohen. What's he found guilty of or what does he admit guilt to? Tax fraud, bank fraud, and campaign finance. Campaign finance violations.
So, two of the three the exact same thing as Paul Manafort: Tax fraud, bank fraud. Now consider how the media are treating these two guys, because they pled guilty to basically the same things. They were found guilty and pled guilty to basically the same things. Cohen actually pled guilty to another crime, which is campaign finance violations.
How do they treat them? Manafort is a vicious horrible monster. Cohen, all of a sudden people are getting a strange new respect for Michael Cohen, aren't they?
He is free. He is liberated. He's gonna take down the president.
No, he's a crook. He's a crook. If Manafort’s a crook, he's a crook.
The difference is that the left thinks that Cohen's testimony is going to hurt Trump and Manafort’s isn't because Manafort took it like a man and Michael Cohen is a dirty little rat, but we'll see. We'll see what effect that has.
So okay, what did Cohen plead guilty to? Cohen pled guilty to tax fraud, five counts of it. Between 2012 and 2016, he made false statements to a bank a couple of years ago. Unlawful campaign contribution in 2016. Excessive campaign contribution 2016, and that's what the media are focusing on.
Before we get into the specifics too much on these guys, I do want to point out campaign finance laws are mostly nonsense and anti-constitutional. These are laws that say you can only contribute so much to a candidate. You can only spend money this way. You can only spend money that way. Those laws limit your political speech. They limit your freedom of speech.
Money is speech in politics. The poster that you're holding up in politics is a political expression. It's a manifestation of your free speech and that poster ain't free. It costs money to buy the markers and to buy the poster board and to hold it up. There it costs money, it costs time. Same thing with campaign commercials. Same thing with flyers. Same thing with a website. Same thing with busses. The same thing with all of that.
This political speech costs money because we live in a real world and campaigns are tangible things. Campaign finance laws are mostly nonsense, mostly arbitrary. Many of them have been struck down by the Supreme Court. The-McCain Feingold campaign finance law was famously struck down in the Citizens United decision and it doesn't make any sense to have these laws because people are gonna spend money on politics.
Big politics attracts big money. Surprisingly not as much money as you would think. You'd consider – you'd think these presidential campaigns are so consequential they'd cost 5 billion to 7 billion dollars. No way. More or less than that, but if there's a limit, let's say there's a federal limit of $5,000, you can spend on a candidate. Those candidates’ backers are still going to spend money on them. They're just gonna find other ways to spend it. They're gonna spend it in super PACs. That's been one consequence of recent years. They're gonna spend it in little backchannels. They're gonna use straw donations. They're gonna have family members donate money, even though it's really just their own personal money. This is how they got Dinesh D'Souza.
Dinesh D'Souza had to go to the slammer and hang out with murderers and rapists because he funneled some money to his friend Wendy Long, who was never going to win a race anyway.
So, I think those laws, in general, are ridiculous. That said, they are the laws. So, it's very easy for prosecutors to get you on campaign finance the laws. The laws are very obscure and if you violate them in any way, they can really nail you.
Federal prosecutors have reportedly granted immunity to David Pecker, the chief executive and chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, in the ongoing Michael Cohen investigation.
As part of the deal, Pecker agreed to provide information to prosecutors related to payments made to two alleged one-time sexual partners of President Donald Trump ― former Playboy model Karen McDougal and **** actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels ― in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. Cohen and AMI allegedly helped coordinate both payments.
Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, pleaded guilty earlier this week to two counts of violating federal campaign finance laws as a result of his role in the payments but said he did so at Trump’s direction. Because of the deal with prosecutors, Pecker will reportedly avoid criminal charges, as will chief content officer Dylan Howard.
Federal court documents filed in New York this week related to Cohen’s various misdeeds did not directly cite Pecker or AMI by name. But previous reporting made clear they were referred to as “Chairman-1” and “Corporation-1,” respectively. In the documents, prosecutors laid out the alleged efforts of Pecker and Howard to help Cohen “suppress” stories that might have otherwise hurt Trump on Election Day.
Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.
Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.
“As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.
The meeting, the Facebook official wrote, will have a three-part agenda: each company will present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations; there will be a discussion period for problems each company faces; and a talk about whether such a meeting should become a regular occurrence.
The ultra-right:"Cohen and Manafort are innocent!"
Neutral observer:"Huh? They were literally just convicted of (sizable list of felonies.)"
The ultra-right:"Yeah, but not of colluding with Russia!"
Neutral observer:"Manafort hasn't been tried on that count yet, and Cohen hasn't been accused of it. Manafort will be prosecuted on that charge at a separate trial in DC later this year."