There was always something starkly different about the scandal involving the President of the United States of America and the porn star, Stephanie Clifford, alias Stormy Daniels. Donald J. Trump, who had sounded off big time at the allegations of sixteen other women ranging from sexual assault to “inappropriate conduct”, didn’t say a word about Stormy for months - no tweets, no nothing.
Trump who gives anyone who looks at him skew “the full treatment” gave Stormy a wide berth. With all the legal problems that El Presidente was facing it was not unreasonable to ignore this relatively minor litigation. But obviously Trump’s uncharacteristic disciplined almost silence had to be indicative of the fact that the lawsuit could open the floodgates of the workings of Trump Inc. It had to be a situation fraught with danger for him to listen to the customary legal advice to keep mum.
Everything changed after his long time fixer Michael Cohen was raided. Panic set in the Trump camp with a vengeance. The questions Mueller wanted to ask Trump were leaked. The fact that the Special Counsel had threatened a subpoena was shared and there was a dramatic shuffle of the legal team with exits and entries. It took the arrival of his new lead attorney, the formerly discarded Rudi Giuliani, who had been taken out of moth balls, to really set the new bizarre policy in place. It was foot flat on the accelerator to go on the offensive, regardless of any discernible strategy.
The Cohen raid had changed Trump’s world to what had happened before it and after it i.e. - “Before Cohen raid”, (BC) and “After Cohen raid”(AC).
WHERE THE STORMY STORY WAS AT PRIOR TO THE COHEN RAID (BC)
The Trump/Daniels scene had been simmering on line for years and then it broke into real time when the Wall Street Journal, on January 18, ran the story that Ms. Daniels had been paid $130, 000 by Michael Cohen, Trump’s fixer, to shut up about the alleged one night stand with the President in 2006. The whole thing stank to high heaven. The deal was facilitated through a newly minted limited liability company. The parties were a Peggy Petersen, (Daniels) and a David Dennison, (Trump). Trump and Cohen were in combination known as “Essential Consultants”. Although the cat was long out of the bag about the liaison, Cohen obtained a temporary restraining order to get Daniels to maintain her silence. Stormy, with her new slick lawyer, wanted out of the agreement so as to tell the world what the world already knew. The argument was that The Donald had not signed or initialed the pages of the contract. That argument was really a bit thin as was the supposed purpose of the Stormy litigation - to release Ms. Daniels from her silence, which she had already broken. The Cohen/Trump axis countersued Stormy for twenty - million dollars for breaking the original contract.
Meanwhile the Donald claimed total ignorance of the payment arrangement and when confronted with whether he knew about it referred the matter to his lawyer Michael Cohen.The only time the President faltered from his silence was when he couldn’t resist having a go at Stormy’s claim that she had been threatened, in 2011, to keep quiet. She accompanied her revelation with a sketch of the intimidator. Trump tweeted, “A sketch years later about a non existent man. A total con job. Playing the Fake News Media for fools which they know they are”. Daniels immediately followed that up with a suit for defamation. Included in the latter was Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen.
Stormy became a bit of a folk hero and the darling of the left and womanhood. She had unflinchingly taken on the biggest misogynist and xenophobe of our time. She opened a legal fund which hit $300,000 within a few days. She was cheered on by the late night hosts including Jimmy Kimmel who claimed that it was an act of patriotism to support her.
There were no flies on her new attorney, Michael Avenatti, as he kept the story going, being interviewed left right and center - really mainly left and center. Central to Avenatti’s beef was the origin of the $130,000. Where had come it from? Did it constitute a campaign violation? Was bank fraud involved? Stormy too was doing the rounds reaching the pinnacle of fame/notoriety when she was featured on Sixty Minutes and gaining a rating of well over twenty million viewers. More to the point was that was a few million more than David Dennison, a. k. a. Donald Trump, had garnered in his appearance on the prestigious forum.
All was quiet on the Trump tweet front till Michael Cohen got raided by the Feds. The Daniel’s litigation was put on hold by the judge as Cohen maintained that he would have to plead the Fifth Amendment as not to potentially incriminate himself in probable criminal indictments. The irresistible assumption was that there was something illegal about the Cohen transaction with Stormy and that had to relate to the money. And money was one of the issues the raid was about.
The raid on Cohen shook Trump and the WhiteHouse to its foundations as to what the Feds might learn from Trump’s Consiglieri. Suddenly Stormy, her lawyer and their questions as to the money source took on a new meaning. It was then that Rudi Giuliani, hero of 9/11/01, although G-d knows why, was brought back from the dead to save the day. We were about to enter the AC period.
ENTER GIULIANI HERALDING THE NEW AFTER COHEN RAID (AC) PHASE.
The entry of the new hot shot attorney Mayor Rudi Giuliani, (“call me 9/11”), months after the cause celebre began, signaled changes in the Trump strategy, principally that they were going on the offensive. He would smear Mueller as a scoundrel and characterize the Feds in the Cohen raid as being stormtroopers. In a demented fashion Rudi blew Trump’s story that he knew nothing about Stormy’s payment claiming that Trump had paid Cohen back. Rudi claimed to a flabbergasted Hannity of Fox News that the payment did not constitute a campaign violation. He could reassure Hannity of that!
Rudi’s three day rampage was initially supported by Trump who then later backtracked confiding that Rudi was not up to speed with the facts. Notwithstanding that minor detail Trump was thrilled with his new lawyer even as he ranted on and on - “Cohen was a good guy, the country would go mad if Mueller wanted to interview Ivanka and that it was okay to subpoena Jared as he was “disposable”.
In his attempt to clean up his initial mess Rudi waded even deeper in the swamp. He didn’t care if his client lied to the Press as that was “political” not “criminal”. Giuliani continued that what Cohen effected was routine lawyering - he did that type of thing for his clients too - namely pay off women to shut up. He thundered on that the $130,000 was a “nuisance payment”. “People don’t go away if it is a meritorious claim” he argued. He added that Cohen may have paid off other women for Trump.
There was obvious ambivalence in the Trump camp on how to deal with Cohen who obviously has to be leaning towards turning. The Consiglieri had indicated that he knew who was behind the vicious story attacking him in the Trump ally's National Enquirer. So Rudi went from Cohen is a good guy, to that he moaned about not being reimbursed about the Daniels payments to denying that he had said that Cohen had complained.
The real message in this three day disaster was that Trump was going to take Mueller on. Rudi conceded that Trump might plead the Fifth Amendment, so as not to incriminate himself, if subpoenaed by Mueller. On its face that tactic is a political disaster. He also argued that The President does not legally have to respond to a subpoena.
After all this kefafel the ever ready Michael Avenatti pounced on the Giuliani demented bluster, “I can’t believe that that actually just happened. We have just witnessed by Rudi Giuliani one of the worst TV appearances any attorney has made for a client”.
A send up that depicted the fact that the lunatics had taken over the WhiteHouse asylum was featured on Saturday Night Live with an all star cast depicting, Donald, Rudi, Cohen , FBI Agents listening in and Stormy Daniels starring as Stormy Daniels. Within one day close on six million hits were made on the Youtube replays. Every major media outlet ran excerpts.
THE MEANING OF THE AC PERIOD
So Stormy and her lawyer finally achieved what they had been trying to do from the get go - get Trump involved. Avenatti in one of his more fanciful claims argued that Cohen would never have been raided had it not been for the porn star’s persistence and litigation. Cohen had been under investigation for months so that Mueller’s team had been onto him wayback. The question is what is there in the Cohen raid and its link up with Stormy that resulted in this WhiteHouse bedlam? What drove Trump to change direction so dramatically and bring in this passé deranged bull in a china shop to lead his defense? What created the AC era?
There is little doubt that Trump fears that Cohen can open up his financial set up and his relationship with the Russians. Contemporaneously with this bohaai is the Washington Post story that Trump, who had proudly stated that his fortune was made on debt and borrowing has spent four hundred million dollars in cash on his latest property ventures. It is also has been alleged that he has been losing a ton of money on most of them. All in all that is one helluva lot of cash to have lying around. Add that to the fact that the Russian oligarchs have been laundering money all over the show, reputedly in real estate, and you have enough to encourage speculation.
As far as the Stormy link up with Cohen and money are concerned Rudi would have you believe that the fear was that this could be a campaign finance violation which he assured us that it wasn’t. Trump couldn’t care less about a campaign finance violation which would result in a fine in the distant future. He would not threaten to plead the Fifth, which is what he says only the Mob does, over that minor infringement. It has to be something bigger. The link could be that he does not want the trail of the “nuisance payment” of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars traced. The stage has finally been reached where he needs to go, unequivocally, on the offensive and declare once again that this a “political witch hunt” and a “hoax”.
Axing Mueller is going to be really tough. His immediate supervisor Deputy Attorney General, Rosenstein has publicly stated that he is not going to be extorted. Rosenstein has the public backing of the Attorney General Jeff Sessons. There is a bipartisan motion in the Senate to protect Mueller which Senate Majority Leader McConnell won’t bring to the floor as he says it is not necessary, What would his response be if it becomes necessary? Even that jellyfish Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, has stated again and again that Mueller must be allowed to do his job. Public opinion is overwhelmingly in favor of Mueller completing his investigation.
So the tack is a Hail Mary from the new quarterback Rudi Giuliani who has to execute a hatchet job on Mueller. Trump can then take the Fifth as he could argue that he could never get a fair hearing from this corrupt crew. It is unlikely that the strategy has been thought through in detail but what’s new? The ever diminishing inner circle has to be hoping that Trump will once again defy the laws of political gravity, get his candidates nominated and romp home in the midterm elections.
So hold onto your seats as the dysfunctional Trump WhiteHouse is pushed closer and closer to the wall. One outcome is for sure, Trump will not surrender regardless of the carnage to those closest to him and the Republican Party. While Cohen and the Cohen/Stormy money trail may be the final straw to break open the Trump saga they could not have emerged in a vacuum. There have been months of solid investigation by the Mueller team whose professionalism has not been cowed by a torrent of threats and smears. The nation will owe them and the media a massive debt. Jefferson maintained that if he had to choose between newspapers and government his preference would be for newspapers. Democracy is fragile and history is strewn with examples where powerful demagogues smashed it to smithereens.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Gluliani will not last long for two reasons: Trump will not tolerate the fact that someone else is sucking the publicity oxygen that rightly belongs to him. Secondly, even Trump will recognize that Giuliani has made his survival that much more difficult.
Meanwhile as a diversion The Donald can start World War Three
No comments:
Post a Comment