Aug 232018
 
 August 23, 2018  Posted by at 1:35 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Gustave Caillebotte Young man by his window 1875

 

If there’s one thing that is exposed in the sorry not-so-fairy tale of former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, it’s that Washington is a city run by fixers. Who often make substantial amounts of money. Many though by no means all, start out as lawyers and figure out that let’s say ‘the edges of what’s legal’ can be quite profitable.

And it helps to know when one steps across that edge, so having attended law school is a bonus. Not so much to stop when stepping across the edge, but to raise one’s fees. There’s a lot of dough waiting at the edge of the law. None of this should surprise any thinking person. Manafort and Cohen are people who think in millions, with an easy few hundred grand thrown in here and there.

But sometimes the fixers happen to come under scrutiny of the law, like when they get entangled in a Special Counsel investigation. Both Manafort and Cohen now rue the day they became involved with Trump, or rather, the day he was elected president and solicited much more severe scrutiny.

Would either ever have been accused of what they face today had Trump lost to Hillary? It’s not too likely. They just gambled and lost. But there are many more just like them who will never be charged with anything. Still, a new fixer name has popped up the last few days who may, down the line, not be so lucky.

 

And that’s not even because Lanny Davis is a registered foreign agent for Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US government. After all, both Manafort and Cohen have their contacts in that part of the world. Manafort made tens of millions advising then-president Yanukovich in the Ukraine before the US coup dethroned the latter. Cohen’s wife is Ukrainian-American.

Lanny Davis is a lawyer, special counsel even, for the Clintons. Has been for years. Which makes it kind of curious that Michael Cohen would pick him to become his legal representation. But that’s not all Davis is involved in. Like any true fixer, he has his hands in more cookie jars than fit in the average kitchen. Glenn Greenwald wrote this in August 2009 about the health care debate:

 

Lanny Davis Disease

After Tom Daschle was selected to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief health care adviser, Matt Taibbi wrote: “In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle.” One could easily have added: “And then there’s Lanny Davis.” Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a “political analyst” and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: “I agree with whoever pays me.”

It’s genuinely difficult to recall any instance where he publicly defended someone who hadn’t, at some point, hired and shuffled money to him. Yesterday, he published a new piece simultaneously in The Hill and Politico – solemnly warning that extremists on the Far Left and Far Right are jointly destroying democracy with their conduct in the health care debate and urging “the vast center-left and center-right of this country to speak up and call them out equally” – that vividly illustrates the limitless whoring behavior which shapes Washington generally and specifically drives virtually every word out of Lanny Davis’ mouth.

Davis’ history is as long and consistent as it is sleazy. He was recently hired by Honduran oligarchs opposed to that country’s democratically elected left-wing President and promptly became the chief advocate of the military coup which forcibly removed the President from office. He became an emphatic defender of the Israeli war on Gaza after he was named by the right-wing The Israel Project to be its “Senior Advisor and Spokesperson.” He has been the chief public defender for Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and the Clintons, all of whom have engaged his paid services.

And as NYU History Professor Greg Grandin just documented: “Recently, Davis has been hired by corporations to derail the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize, all the while touting himself as a “pro-labor liberal.” Davis was also the chief U.S. lobbyist of the military dictatorship in Pakistan in the late 90s and played an important role in strengthening relations between then President Bill Clinton and de facto president General Perez Musharraf.”

There’s much more in that article, but you get the drift. And now Davis, the Clinton fixer, is Michael Cohen’s lawyer. The fixer defending a fixer. So who pays the bill? Well, ostensibly no-one, because Davis started a Go Fund Me campaign where people can donate so Cohen “can tell people the truth about Trump”. The goal is $500,000. Which goes to .. Lanny Davis.

On TV yesterday he apparently promoted a wrong URL, which was promptly picked up by someone else who had it redirect to the Trump campaign. Even fixers screw up, right? Still, there’s already well over $100,000 donated for Cohen Davis. But why $500,000? One of the accusations against Cohen concerns lying to a bank for a $20 million loan. He bought an apartment not long ago for $6.7 million. He owned multiple apartments in Trump buildings.

Did he lose everything when Robert Mueller et al raided his office, home and hotel room on April 9 2018? Were all his assets frozen? Possibly. What we do know is that he ‘expected’ the Trump campaign to pay for his legal fees. Which they declined. Or rather, as Fortune reported in June: “The Trump campaign has given some money to Cohen to help cover legal expenses for the Russia investigation. To date, though, it has not offered financial assistance in the investigation of his business practices.”

It seems safe to assume that’s the point where Cohen turned, or was turned, to Lanny Davis. From a full decade of being Trump’s fixer to being fixed by the Clintons’ fixer. That’s a big move. It raises a number of questions: why did Trump not pay Cohen’s legal fees? This is 2 months after the raid on the man’s office, home, hotel room, in which huge amounts of files and disks etc. were seized.

Second question: if Lanny Davis only now sets up a Go Fund Me campaign, who’s been paying him over the past 2 months? Did Cohen sell assets, or is someone else involved?

Anyway, so Davis goes on TV with big words about how Cohen will tell all about Trump -provided people donate half a million- and adding “I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the oval office. And [Cohen] has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump.”

Oh, and that “the turning point for his client’s attitude toward Trump was the Helsinki summit in July 2018 which caused him to doubt Trump’s loyalty to the U.S.” That, to my little brain, doesn’t sound like something that would come from Cohen. That sounds more like a political point the likes of which Cohen has never made. That’s plain old Russiagate.

 

But anyway. So Lanny Davis, fixer of fixers and presidents, goes on a talk-show tour last night and what do you think happens? He walks back just about everything he’s said the previous day. Aaron Maté made a list in this Twitter thread:

 

 

Is Michael Cohen sure he wants this guy as his lawyer? Is he watching this stuff?

If Cohen and Manafort have broken laws, they should be punished for it. The same goes for all other Trump campers, including the Donald. But it would be good if people realize that Cohen and Manafort are not some kind of stand-alone examples, that they are instead the norm in Washington. And Moscow, and Brussels, London, everywhere there’s a concentration of power. In all these places, and probably more so in DC, there are these folks specializing in the edge of the law.

What do you think will happen when someone of the stature of Bob Mueller spends 18 months investigating the Clintons and their fixers? Perhaps the events of the past few days won’t bring such a 2nd Special Counsel any closer, but by the same token they might do just that. Offense is the best defense.

I don’t know, we don’t know, what monsters Trump has swept under his luxurious carpets. But we do know that those are not the only monsters in Washington. Meanwhile, the Steele dossier that was used to start the entire Mueller remains just about entirely unverified. The Russian collusion meme he was tasked with investigating has so far come up empty.

That he would find something if he tried hard enough was obvious from the start. That is both dangerous in that the mandate of a Special Counsel should be limited lest it becomes endless and veers off the reasons it was initiated, as well as in the risk that it can easily turn into a party-political tool to hurt one’s opponent while one’s own dirt remains unscrutinized.

In the end, I can draw only one conclusion: there are so many sharks and squids swimming in the swamp that either it should be expanded or the existing one should be cleaned up and depopulated. So bring it: investigate the FBI, the Clintons, and fixers like Lanny Davis and Michael Avenatti, the same way the Trump camp has been.

Because if you don’t do that, you can only possibly end up in an even bigger mess. You can’t drain half a swamp.

 

 

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  • #42517

    Gustave Caillebotte Young man by his window 1875   If there’s one thing that is exposed in the sorry not-so-fairy tale of former Trump aides Paul
    [See the full post at: Fixers]

    #42519
    zerosum
    Participant

    Second question: if Lanny Davis only now sets up a Go Fund Me campaign, who’s been paying him over the past 2 months? Did Cohen sell assets, or is someone else involved?

    I got a third question

    Bob Mueller and his team – Are they working for free? A Go Fund Me?

    #42522

    IIRC latest count for Mueller was $80-90 million. That’s a while back

    #42523
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Got them!!!

    Manafort on a 10 year old tax evasion, back when he was working with Podesta, Cohen on a 5 year old taxi medallion case.

    That’ll show ’em. Hey wait, no collusion? No connection to Russia at all? Still the people, Podesta, Manafort, Davis, all working with the Clinton State Dept in Ukraine and to sell 20% of U.S. Uranium to Russia Russia Russia?

    So where does the Donald fit into this? They illegally, and in violation of 500 year precedent, raided his lawyer’s offices on a fishing expedition, and found…taxi medallions, not related to the Trump empire? What gives? And that charge itself is tenuous, since the raid could easily be overturned, but it was meant to let them know what dirt was going on, which they could then back-corroborate (which is itself illegal) using non-warrant sources.

    Okay, but this proves campaign payoffs, right? Um…you might want to sit down. Cohen pled to a number of charges to avoid his other crimes, but pleading to a crime does not prove that crime. Normally, this might not matter, it should be easy to prove, but in this case, what was the allegation? Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, paid Clifford hush money to stay quiet. Okay, is that illegal? No, only if he used the bank account of campaign contributions to do so. But for the love of God, why would he? Trump is a multi-billionaire, Cohen no doubt has connections to Trump bank accounts, and if nothing else would leave a paper trail to the campaign instead of a quiet, personal bank account. Even if Cohen did, all Trump has to do is say he mismanaged campaign funds, and therefore is innocent, although again, I don’t see why it would ever have happened in the first place. In fact, I believe he said it didn’t. So if he used his own money to run some aspect of his own douchebag life and empire, the crime is…?

    And this is the best they can do??? They’ve had 3 years and $90 Million dollars with a prosecutor well-known for fabricating evidence and covering it up. …That’s not just talk, the U.S. government had to pay $30 Million in reparations to several men Mueller railroaded, and those admissions almost never happen. With Davis getting his false allegations in the headlines, then retracting them. Where do they think that will get them? Trump voters already don’t believe CNN, and Democratic voters already do. The allegations, without any legal weight to press with, are just feel-good tissue, some projected lights, changing nothing, not even the election. I’m baffled. You could find better felonies on any contractor or small trucker anywhere in America. Are they too chicken to plant evidence, tamper with testimony, and arrest the guy’s family, like prosecutors usually do? Ask Martin Armstrong if I’m kidding.

    So surprisingly, these are unexpectedly weak results. Still, I stand corrected on Manafort; needless to say, the professional attorney who studied the jury was right, and I, having not extensively researched the case, was wrong. However, he was guilty, so that’s sort of a correct result. Question is, are they going to now prosecute Podesta and the other 5,000 tax-evading election-riggers, like Davis, out on K Street? I don’t think so. If they want to start a GoFundMe for those mass arrests, believe me, I’ll donate.

    #42524
    seychelles
    Participant

    Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a “political analyst” and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: “I agree with whoever pays me.”

    The distilled essence of Zioglobalist “situational ethics.”

    #42525
    Mr. Jones
    Participant

    Dr. D said

    And this is the best they can do??? They’ve had 3 years and $90 Million dollars with a prosecutor well-known for fabricating evidence and covering it up.

    Source?

    Investigating money laundering and collusion cases are some of the most difficult cases for investigators to unwind. I’d say this is money and time well spent thus far. Can we not let this play out and then judge? I’m all for investigating any and all white collar crime. Please go look at the Clinton’s next…

    #42527
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    I have no doubt there is a coup attempt by the Globalist Overclass to push out Donald Trump. Two of his fixers have been convicted. But, Putsch Participants have lied to Congress. Since his Presidency is on the line, why hasn’t he appointed a Special Counsel to investigate John Brennan, James Comey, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok and Christopher Steele? Perhaps it is because Fox News and White House staffers avoid mentioning his Presidential powers. The President thinks Jeff Sessions has to do it. I do not see a peaceful transfer of power like 1974 when President Nixon resigned. Donald Trump loves campaign appearances. There have been no troop withdrawals. The Saudis are paying for the Occupation of Eastern Syria. The military hasn’t turned against him which would be the only way to get enough Republicans to reach the 2/3 impeachment vote in the Senate.

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