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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2018 16:32:19 GMT -5
I cannot possibly imagine what would be more entertaining than this, and since (unbelievably enough) it involves the POTUS, it's also important to our nation, hard as that is to believe. Seriously, it is -- given the legal aspects, this could potentially bring him down or contribute to it. It is not simply about whether he cheated on his wife with an adult film star (of course he did). It's that Avenatti has Trump and Cohen each backed into a legal corner that will pretty much certainly destroy Cohen, and has potential to do yuuuuge damage to Trump.
I turned down dinner plans to watch it, myself, and I almost never watch TV. But I guess to each his own.
ETA:
I'll also note that 60 Minutes is a serious show. This isn't going to be tabloid television. This is real news, as hard as that may be to swallow.
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Post by Amadan on Mar 25, 2018 17:07:01 GMT -5
I cannot possibly imagine what would be more entertaining than this, and since (unbelievably enough) it involves the POTUS, it's also important to our nation, hard as that is to believe. Seriously, it is -- given the legal aspects, this could potentially bring him down or contribute to it. It is not simply about whether he cheated on his wife with an adult film star (of course he did). It's that Avenatti has Trump and Cohen each backed into a legal corner that will pretty much certainly destroy Cohen, and has potential to do yuuuuge damage to Trump. I turned down dinner plans to watch it, myself, and I almost never watch TV. But I guess to each his own. ETA: I'll also note that 60 Minutes is a serious show. This isn't going to be tabloid television. This is real news, as hard as that may be to swallow. I don't watch TV except Netflix. I am looking forward to the after-action reports. I think you're kidding yourself at this point if you believe anything is going to bring down Trump, though. Really, what is she going to say that will suddenly cause a bunch of Trump supporters to abandon him?
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Post by michaelw on Mar 25, 2018 17:18:10 GMT -5
I think you're kidding yourself at this point if you believe anything is going to bring down Trump, though. Really, what is she going to say that will suddenly cause a bunch of Trump supporters to abandon him? LOL, exactly. Stormy: "We actually had sex again just last night." Trump supporter: "But did you see his State of the Union address, where he talked about family values? Good stuff." Stormy: "And then he gave me the nuclear codes." Trump supporter: "Locker room talk."
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2018 17:52:14 GMT -5
As always, it is not the sex. I know no one gives a shit about the sex. (That said, it's been implied there may be video...). As is usually the case, it is the coverup. It's the NDA, the events leading up to to NDA (rumor has it there were threats), the payoff, the events since the NDA became known, the arbitration, lawsuit, etc. If you have not been following the implications of this legal stuff, I'll do a 'splainer at some point when I have time.
But the sex is the least of it. Cohen is going to lose his law license -- I pretty much guarantee it. And while I agree Trump's hard core supporters won't desert him even if he rapes a baby and eats it alive, I think he's got himself into a serious legal snarl here, and it's opened the door to an extra world of trouble he really didn't need.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2018 18:16:00 GMT -5
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Post by michaelw on Mar 25, 2018 18:18:24 GMT -5
But the sex is the least of it. That's why I threw in the bit about the nuclear codes.
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Post by Christine on Mar 25, 2018 21:15:54 GMT -5
It was rather anti-climatic, imo.
My favorite part was when Trevor Potter (former FEC chairman) was shown typing on his computer with two fingers of one hand, with a voiceover by Anderson: "Potter says the agency's investigations often take a long time."
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Post by prozyan on Mar 25, 2018 22:01:19 GMT -5
It was rather anti-climatic, imo. I agree. It was rather on par with Maddow "releasing" Trump's tax returns.
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Post by Christine on Mar 25, 2018 22:09:01 GMT -5
It was rather anti-climatic, imo. I agree. It was rather on par with Maddow "releasing" Trump's tax returns. Agree, with the caveat that for accountants certain people, Maddow's stunt was much more evil.
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Post by Don on Mar 26, 2018 4:57:54 GMT -5
Another Geraldo Vault moment in the annals of history?
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 26, 2018 6:55:25 GMT -5
I rather enjoyed this exchange: Ewwwwwww.... Now that's a visual I did not need gathering like fungus in my head, but at least we know what will happen when Vladimir Putin comes by to visit, rips off his shirt, oils up his pecs and rolls up a Time magazine and commands Donald to "bend over." This is all very ridiculous and in reality, not all that important when compared to a warmongering shitheel like John Bolton whispering in the waxy ears of Drumpf. Stormy Daniels is probably not going to bring 45's presidency crashing down in a ball of noxious flames, but the total humiliation of the skeevy bastard is exquisite. It's spring and the schadenfreude is in full bloom.
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Post by Vince524 on Mar 26, 2018 11:49:11 GMT -5
I'm a little in the dark here understanding the illegality of this. I get the sleaze factor.
If a private citizen pays another private citizen money to not speak up about something that either did or didn't happen (In theory, a person can be accused of having an affair and it's easier to just pay hush money if you're in a sensitive job even if it's not true. I think Trump has less than 0 credibility here, but let's just stay neutral for now.)
So if I worked for a charity that required an image of me being wholesome, or if I were a public figure who lets say privately had an open marriage, but my brand was built on being a wholesome couple with my wife (Clearly not Trump) I might be willing to pay, and that's a private transaction and legal. I suppose one could argue it's blackmail from the other side, especially if not true, but let's not worry about that aspect for now.
Now, if I worked for a company and I used company funds, that's different, but what I use my own money for is between me, God and my wife. (Who would skin me alive. Slowly.)
But in politics, if I used campaign money, clearly that's illegal.
But if I use my own money before I legally declare? Is that still illegal? Is there a time frame? If I talked about running back in 2016 because I couldn't believe our choices were Clinton or Trump, but I didn't officially launch until the next presidential election, am I bound by campaign laws, or do they only kick in once I file paperwork and declare?
Of course, the whole think of the lawyer paying is so it doesn't have Trumps paw prints on it, which is bull, but I'm just trying to understand the exact lines here.
Edwards would have had to pay with campaign money, right?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2018 12:23:54 GMT -5
I'm drowning in work today and just don't have time to thrash all this through at the moment, so this is a quickie --
Edwards' situation is different from Trump's in a couple very important respects --
(1) timing. Trump's payoff was made immediately prior to the actual election, and just after the explosion regarding the Access Hollywood tape -- and the thing he was trying to hush up had happened a decade earlier. Edward's payoff was made many months before the election (he never was the Democratic nominee) and involved more recent behavior.
(2) motivation. Edwards' wife was dying from breast cancer. Arguably, Edwards had a strong motivation to conceal his mistress and love child from Elizabeth -and given the timing, hiding the affair from her might have been a much stronger motivation than the election. At any rate, it's quite understandable that the jury might have doubt about whether this was the motivation.
Given that everyone, including Melania, was well aware that Trump was no choirboy, and given that Trump had not bothered trying to pay off Stormy at any prior time during the last decade, it's difficult to see how there could be any other motivation for his payment than to prevent it from swaying the election. (if it were hiding the affair from his wife, the payoff would surely have come some time earlier.) Coming on top of the Access Hollywood tape, in the last crucial weeks of the election, Stormy's revelations could well have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
Edwards' incident did in fact break the back of his campaign -- which brings us to a third crucial difference -- Edwards isn't president.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2018 12:45:57 GMT -5
Some other important factors here:
(1) it is increasingly looking like Trump may have had more such payoffs. Stormy's lawyer says so, and come on, does anyone not think that's credible? And even more importantly --
(2) Stormy claims that Trump's goons threatened her. And she is not the first or the only one to claim this (I'll provide cites later) -- several people, both other women he's slept with and people who ran afoul of Trump in business dealings have claimed that Trump goons threatened them. (To those of us who've been following his business career for an extended period of time, this comes as no surprise at all. I'm confident there's plenty of dirt there, financial and otherwise.)
That's some serious shit there -- it is not the shrug that some people are making it to be. If Trump made a practice of using his power and money like a mob boss to silence people with threats who might otherwise have spoken against him -- that's a fucking problem.
You can bet that Mueller will be looking into this -- both financially and otherwise. This is not going to be he-said-she-said, and Stormy isn't going to be the only one. Bet on it.
Stormy wisely declined to answer about whether she has evidence, but she did go way out of her way to say she would immediately recognize the goon who threatened her in that parking lot "if he walked in the door right now." Anderson Cooper didn't ask her, and she didn't say, whether she in fact knows who it was, but if I were a betting woman? I'll bet she and her lawyer DO now know who it was.
Another thing -- for those of us who've been closely following the Stormy story, the 60 Minutes episode didn't add all that much to our knowledge. But a few points:
1) LOTS of people have not been following closely, and that 60 minutes interview will be the first time they're hearing some of this.
2) It was very, very clear that Stormy and her lawyer have some evidence and info they are not currently disclosing to the public.
3) Stormy came across very well -- she comes across as infinitely more credible than Trump himself. She's quite well-spoken and articulate, and will make an excellent witness. I believe her. And her lawyer --- oh, she definitely picks lawyers better than Trump does. Cohen is a pathetic pitbull. This guy is the genuine article.
4) Heh -- she waved a couple of red capes at Trump. She said she never found him attractive (that's a direct goad to his outsized ego), and her account of the spanking incident was quite amusing and I guarantee will be humiliating to Trump.
Some of you might be unimpressed, but I personally think this is not going away -- I think this is the beginning of an exposure of some illicit mob tactics on the part of Trump and his lackeys as well as the campaign finance thing. This is way past some extramarital canoodling. Time will tell if I'm right.
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 26, 2018 15:05:24 GMT -5
I'm a little in the dark here understanding the illegality of this. I get the sleaze factor. If a private citizen pays another private citizen money to not speak up about something that either did or didn't happen (In theory, a person can be accused of having an affair and it's easier to just pay hush money if you're in a sensitive job even if it's not true. I think Trump has less than 0 credibility here, but let's just stay neutral for now.) So if I worked for a charity that required an image of me being wholesome, or if I were a public figure who lets say privately had an open marriage, but my brand was built on being a wholesome couple with my wife (Clearly not Trump) I might be willing to pay, and that's a private transaction and legal. I suppose one could argue it's blackmail from the other side, especially if not true, but let's not worry about that aspect for now. Now, if I worked for a company and I used company funds, that's different, but what I use my own money for is between me, God and my wife. (Who would skin me alive. Slowly.) But in politics, if I used campaign money, clearly that's illegal. But if I use my own money before I legally declare? Is that still illegal? Is there a time frame? If I talked about running back in 2016 because I couldn't believe our choices were Clinton or Trump, but I didn't officially launch until the next presidential election, am I bound by campaign laws, or do they only kick in once I file paperwork and declare? Of course, the whole think of the lawyer paying is so it doesn't have Trumps paw prints on it, which is bull, but I'm just trying to understand the exact lines here. Edwards would have had to pay with campaign money, right? Edwards? John Edwards? Or do you mean Michael Cohen? Moving on to the legalities Team Trump has to contend with le affaire Stormy.
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