REPORT: FBI Was Looking for Information on ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape in Cohen’s Office
“The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
This is completely insane.
According to a report in The New York Times, the FBI raided the office of Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in search of records, “related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women.”
And that’s not even the worst of it.
SCOOP: FBI agents sought all records related to “Access Hollywood” tape when they raided office of Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen. Agents wanted evidence of whether Cohen suppressed damaging info on Trump during campaign. w/@maggieNYT and @mattapuzzo https://t.co/E9gzyuczV9
— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) April 11, 2018
From the NYT report:
The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, according to three people who have been briefed on the contents of a federal search warrant.
The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign…” So he was doing his job. Got it.
It is not clear what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played regarding the tape, which was made public a month before the election. But the fact that the agents were seeking documents related to the tape reveals a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen that is being led by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
The disclosure comes a day after it was revealed that the authorities also sought documents from Mr. Cohen related to payments made to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump, Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford, as well as information on the role of the publisher of The National Enquirer in silencing the women.
The new details from the warrant reveal that prosecutors are keenly interested in Mr. Cohen’s unofficial role in the Trump campaign. And they help explain why Mr. Trump was furious about the raid. People close to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen regard the warrant as an attempt by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to pry into Mr. Trump’s personal life — using other prosecutors as his proxy.
None of this has to do with the Trump team’s alleged collusion with Russian agents, that, after 18 months of investigating, Mueller and his crack team have been unable to prove exists.
Professor Jacobson:
If true, more evidence that Mueller investigation and his outsourcing to friends in SDNY is a political take down attempt on Trump https://t.co/M2F11CpIF9
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) April 11, 2018
Truly astounding statement from NY Times Editorial Board – Here's question for it: If you have nothing to hide, will you agree not to assert attorney-client privilege in litigations against NY Times? https://t.co/FjZs4brjRw
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) April 11, 2018
Professor has said repeatedly that Mueller appears to be stepping well outside of bounds in search of process crimes unrelated to the purpose of the investigation. This story does nothing to rebut his argument.
Tuesday it was made public that the U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District was recused from the investigation.
And today (Wednesday) it was reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee will likely vote on legislation making it damned near impossible for Trump to can Mueller (if he chooses to do so).
“The bill also creates a 10-day window within which a special counsel can seek judicial review of the firing. If it is determined that the special counsel was not, in fact, fired for good cause, then he would be reinstated. In the interim, it would ensure that the special counsel’s staff and investigative materials are preserved,” reports the NYT.
This stinks to high heaven. All of it.
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Any republican who voted in favour of any legislation needs to be targeted and removed from office!
For clarity by targeting i mean to be voted out of office. Just in case our mentally challenged liberals aren’t able to run 2 or more brain cells together and work this out themselves.
You said it!
America Lovers are tired of all the BIG LIES from the Department of F.I.B.
The legislation is grand-standing and virtue posturing. As legislation it needs either Trump’s signature (hah) or a 2/3 override of a Trump veto. I don’t think the sponsors have that, but if they do let’s see — and let them have the consequences.
We all know that the Mueller investigation has been, from day one, an attempt by the Deep State to stage it’s version of a “constitutional coup” to remove Trump. What I don’t get is why remove me when you could have suborned him. I point out —
— Trump hobnobbed with a lot of these folks in the past (remember, Bill and Hillary went to the wedding of Trump and Melania in 2006)
— Trump gave money to all sorts of causes in the past
— Trump has a lot of principles that are some flexible (to his credit, he has other principles that aren’t)
— Trump is a man who wants to do business. That’s his approach. He’s tough and abrasive but he gets things done. The Deep State should like that if they could channel it.
So I confess I don’t get the motivation to get Trump, other than the sheer spite and anger of seeing their chosen queen go down in an election that they all thought she’d win.
So I don’t see this ending well — either the Deep State gets Trump or they fail and in doing so drag the country into a near civil war.
How does this in any way help Mueller build a case of any kind against Trump, or any of his associates?
Is it illegal to “suppress” information?
What is going on here?
If this is true, what sanctions may be applied to Mueller for breaking a/c privilege frivolously?
It doesn’t.
You are operating under the same misunderstanding that a significant number of Republicans are.
Everything makes absolute perfect sense when you understand that Mueller’s goal is not, and never has been, to secure an actual criminal conviction.
His goal is to discredit and remove Trump. He actively DOES NOT CARE whether he can actually get a criminal conviction.
When you understand that, you understand his actions.
Nothing that Mueller finds in this BS search of his lawyer’s communications would ever hold up in criminal court – but he DOESN’T CARE.
This bullshit about Stormy Daniels, the tape, and alleged campaign finance improprieties is nothing but a poor excuse for him to seize all communications between Trump and his lawyer, search for ANYTHING that he can leak to Democrats and the press, and browbeat Republicans into going along with impeachment.
That’s Mueller’s goal. When you understand that is his goal, everything makes complete sense.
Right, but my questions get to the overt abuse Mueller appears to be engaging in here.
I absolutely agree that Mueller’s job is to get Trump. Full stop.
But he can’t just raid everyone who may have been in contact with Trump, or Trump’s associates throughout time.
I am waiting for Onion parody stories “Mueller raids Norman Lear’s house for All In The Family reruns” or similar.
He will continue to do whatever he wants until Sessions finally summons the testicular fortitude to get off his ass and reign him in, or until Trump finally has had enough and fires Sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller.
Mueller is not going to stop, EVER, until Trump has been removed.
Exactly so. Rosenstein isn’t willing to rein Mueller and his Merry Band in, as evidenced by his post-facto authorization of a raid which had nothing to do with the campaign or election, but everything to do with trying to squeeze a possible witness into cooperation by going after issues from years before 2016.
Sessions could rouse himself from his recusal now that the “investigation” has expanded far beyond the issue of Russian collusion with the Trump Campaign, but he won’t. Trump needs to replace Sessions with another already confirmed person who could step into the AG’s job on day one and would not need to recuse him/herself from taking over supervision of Mueller from Rosenstein. No need to fire Rosenstein (right away anyhow), and definitely stay away from firing Mueller, just bring him to rein and control his investigation.
It doesn’t do anything.
This is a coup attempt.
The fox in the hen-house is Sessions.
Sessions is now in an extremely perilous position.
Mueller did not “raid” Cohen’s properties. He made a referral to the SDNY. THEY served Cohen with warrants or a warrant.
Sure Rags.
He raided Cohen’s hotel room, office, and I believe his home.
Raided. You don’t do that to lawyers and break the privilege.
Sure. I have a bridge that I’m looking to sell – are you interested?
Oh? Maybe someone can call in a favor with your county’s DA and have your house raided.
1. It’s reasonable to suppose they did so at his behest, or are colluding with him. Your assumption of good faith on his part is questionable, given the suspicious way he’s behaved ever since his appointment, starting — as Prof J and Andrew McCarthy both pointed out — with his hiring of a ridiculous number of lawyers.
2. Fine, so tell me what conceivable interest the SDNY could have in the Access Hollywood tape.
Apparently a distinction without a difference. According to reports the referral was made from Mueller’s Merry Band through Rosenstein to the SDNY. The US Attorney for SDNY recused himself from the action and (the First Criminal Assisant??) took over supervision of Search Warrant service. According to reports I’ve read, Mueller’s Merry Band intend to keep involved in, if not control of, the outcome of the Warrant’s search.
And now we are hearing that a raid was necessary in an attorney-client privilege situation where all efforts short of a raid were to be undertaken absent strong indications that the target would destroy evidence if given the chance. And the now reported ostensible reason for the raid was a search for evidence of Cohen attempting to “suppress” evidence of actions which would damage Trump’s reputation. I’m not sure what part of the US Code makes that a felony violation worthy of such a drastic action as concurrent raids on multiple locations (involving a fairly sizeable law enforcement asset commitment, but I guess SDNY Federal LE personnel haven’t much of anything more important to do than searching far and wide for the “goods” on sleazy Trump womanizing).
Perhaps Mueller should investigate the suppression of that photograph of a beaming St. Obama the Infallible, rubbing shoulders with vile anti-Semite and hate-monger, Louis Farrakhan, taken prior to his first presidential run.
He should raid the LA Times for the Rashid Khalidi tape. Or have the relevant US Attorney in CA do it.
When will the FBI target the media for suppressing damaging information on HRC’s health?? That’s both her mental and physical health btw.
Or the LA Times infamous Obama tape? How about that reporter who hid the photos of Obama, Farakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus?
Oh, chump change, chump change. What about Obama for suppressing his birth certificate, college records, passport info, etc!!!
He did not suppress any of those things, he simply didn’t release them, because no presidential candidate does, and none before him was ever even asked to. You’d have a better case going after Trump for “suppressing” his tax returns, which for better or for worse a tradition has grown up that they should be released.
I think that was just a sarcastic post. At least I hope that is the case.
They’ll do that on the same day they go after Obama’s suppressed Occidental and Columbia applications, on which he most likely claimed to be Kenya-born, just as he later did on his publisher’s author’s bio for decades.
Hang on…whats the Senate judiciary committee??? How can they pass legislation that’s not voted on by congress and the Senate????
Bills begin in committee. If a bill passes the committee vote, they head to the floor for debate, provided there are enough votes to begin discussion on the bill. More here: https://www.house.gov/the-house-explained/the-legislative-process
And THEN if the bill passes in both the Senate and the House, it goes to the President for signature. I don’t know who Graham and the other RINOs supporting this piece of nonsense are virtue signalling, I really don’t.
Remember the Russian sanctions bill from last year. That was carefully passed with a veto proof UniParty Majority.
Be interesting to see who actually votes for this in the senate! And then people need to start working on getting ride of those Democrat Republicans.
Problem is, there will be more than enough Democrat Republicans to get this passed. Question is…are there enough fools foolish enough to put their name to a veto proof vote?
BS. It was passed with a genuine bipartisan majority because it had genuine bipartisan support — as well as near universal support in the country.
“Bi-Partisan: See UniParty.”
Cuckhouse’s Dictionary
Using the ugly non-word “cuck” automatically discredits anything you have to say. Go jump in the lake.
Have you no familiarity with Schoolhouse Rock cartoons from the late 70s/early 80s (at least that is when our children were watching them)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyeJ55o3El0
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the decay of our culture, but man, it sure looks like every part of our government is thoroughly corrupt from top to bottom – to the point now of being beyond saving through ordinary means.
I am utterly sick of this investigation, of Mueller, Rosenstein, the DOJ, the FBI, all of it. I’d like to see the democrats and Hillary try to survive this type of broad, investigative scrutiny (yeah, right), but we all know that it will never happen.
I’d settle for someone doing more than just a tinker’s dam investigation of DOJ and the FBI, but that’s not going to go anywhere either.
Bottom line: I’m just sick and tired of the whole blasted thing.
This is a bull crap excuse to go after Stormy Daniels stuff, and yet claim it had something to do with the campaign.
In any case, a raid on the attorney’s house for this reason isn’t warranted.
This, This is what they Got. A ribald private locker room conversation with, of all RINOS, a Bush.
In other words, Nothing.
So we are back to the Access H-wood tapes?????
If this investigation was a band it would be…Classic Rock!!!
“How’s everybody doin’????”
“This was a big hit for us back in the day….something called….Access Hollywood”!!!!!!!!!
Is there something on Trump’s copy of Access Hollywood tape that is different from the copy Access Hollywood has and the outtakes? So now “vulgar” comments about women is a Federal offense? Are we in Saudi Arabia with religious police? Expect leaks to satisfy our curiosity.
Bob,
This is a coup attempt, as blatant as any that happened in any banana republic.
Time to accelerate the ‘argument’ into action.
What do you have in mind?
Follow the left’s example:
List of political action committees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_action_committees
Trump should be having rally after rally after rally after rally.
Time for the rest of us to rejoin the Tea Party and get involved:
https://www.teapartypatriots.org/
Mark Levine’s point of a Convention of States comes to mind… no… it is not a Constitutional rewrite in total, just selected points that are predetermined. Totally constitutional but imagine the screams, disinformation and pushback by the states, politicians and business types that are at risk for losing power.
This is needed anyway, but this push to reform and being totally within the law would be a trip point if sabotage attempted. This is about the only scenario I even think of that fits within legal bounds as truly defensive. I do not know if there are enough elected officials that could rally around this but there is strength in numbers for such a convention to be empowered. Any conflict stemming from this would bring in the world some to stabilize and some to destabilize the country.
The demise of the integrity of the country will accelerate as debt climbs and the country is regionally fragmented.. but most will go with the plunge trying to maintain as much comfort as possible. Chinese as a first language will be tough for anyone over 5 to succeed…unless you have grown up with it.
This potential mess has been studied for sure… I would love to hear what the options are.
I wonder how long any of the items taken from Cohen will remain undisclosed. Well, other than the things already leaked. Seeing it’s the Times already bringing up a new avenue of what was supposedly sought, which means nothing, it shows itself to be a smear campaign, allowing yet again tons of plays of the video. I read somewhere that the judge used had ties to Hillary, but I don’t know if that is true or not. It wouldn’t shock me.
This is in part to punish those who dared not elect the Queen. The media has lost it’s collective mind, the Democrats rarely displayed having much of one. It is to keep repeating the mantras negating Trump, and it is having an effect.
If they can’t get a coup through impeachment, they will get one by hamstringing him, and making people hate him through the continuous attacks in the media. He is up against those who don’t really care about the laws or Constitution, if they have to bury a few people’s careers to keep pushing their brand of hate, they are perfectly OK with that, and will probably have Soros giving them support for life. They don’t care if the “correct” President craps on the Constitution, weaponized the FBI, IRS, State Department, and just about every other agency he could.
In the end, if they win, or even if they lose, our country is serious decline and will probably not survive as we know it. So, they ultimately win.
Unless the goal is to break up the country, they will not win. Make no mistake, if this country continues on its present path, there are States that will not tolerate it, and they will secede. Who will stop them? So long as they don’t provoke the federal government with the injudicious use of force (such as the attack on Ft. Sumter), and because there is no overarching cause (such a slavery/abolition) that would rally American forces to attack former fellow Americans, the prospect of the use of force to keep them in line is difficult to perceive. This country is headed for a break up. If the Left wins, it will be a victory over parts of what was once “the United States of America.” Other parts may come out greater for their secession, certainly greater as independent countries or as federations than they are now as part of this cesspool.
You have finally gotten it. This is designed to destroy thix country.
The Progressive/Liberal Establishment has been pushing for that since the 1930s. They supported the international communists. They worked against equal rights. They worked to destroy the family based black American culture. They worked to disarm the populous. They worked to destroy the national economy. The worked to destroy the overarching American culture by balkinizing the populous and importing undocumented aliens. Now that the despicable middle class has risen up and sent the signal that they are not going to take it anymore, by electing Donald Trump, these groups have simply stepped up their game. They are desperate and are making no attempt to hide their goals.
There is a very good chance that this country will be destroyed, not by outsiders but by the Progressives. They are not leaving the middle class any alternative.
populous: having a large population; densely populated.
populace: the people living in a particular country or area.
I’ve seen this use of the wrong word in multiple comments you’ve written, and I am willing to believe that some computer auto-spell trickery is responsible for the error. I nearly always agree with the substance of your remarks and am sorry to focus on a common vocabulary error, but I actually am an honest-to-pete paid member of the grammar police and find the recurring substitution of “populous” for “populace” distracting. Not a criticism of you and your thinking — I just want you to look your best.
For that matter … “Pete” should be capitalized.
“I wonder how long any of the items taken from Cohen will remain undisclosed.”
*GASP!* How dare you imply that the neutral arbitrators of justice at the SDNY would even *think* of taking a full confiscation of every paper the FBI could grab out of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer’s storage and leak any of it to the media!
We have been *assured* by Very Important People that only the most pure of heart lawyers that they will carefully pick through this several tons of paper and exclude anything that might even possibly be innocent Lawyer/Client communication and return it to the source without any convenient copies being made and sent to every reporter on their phone address lists.
Seriously now, Cohen was Trump’s lawyer for many years, and the amount of dirt in those stacks of paper must have given Mueller itchy fingers for a whole year now. Now that he’s passed this hot potato over to the SDNY, he can watch the leaks with clean hands and tut-tut over the news stories while polishing his Halo of Pure Innocence.
I just wonder how much (and in what coin) he’s going to be paid. A think tank chair? A law professorship where he doesn’t have to lecture? A multi-million dollar book advance for a book that sells a few hundred copies?
Sure are a lot of people getting all wee-weed up over a NYT report.
I thought those are always fake news…
This may very well be fake. I believe nothing in the NY Times without independent corroboration.
As you prove daily, lies work on idiots.
TheFineReport.com | April 11, 2018 at 6:08 pm
The ny slimes caught lying again.
Is there any point in taking that rag any more seriously than Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad Bob?
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/comical-ali-baghdad-bob
I rest my case, idiot.
No, people are just concerned about how petty and untrustworthy our nation’s respected agencies have become. Funny, you don’t see that. And it took someone without a law degree to spell it out for you. But I guess that’s okay when you’re just bent without any objective legal prowess.
You BELIEVE things I don’t.
I know the law. You don’t.
I’ve posted several times that the attorney/client privilege is NOT sacrosanct, and is subject to the fraud/crime exception.
The idea that there is nothing behind this action by the SDNY but the Access Hollywood tapes is literally insane.
You are free to be insane.
The states will not be allowed to leave. We fought a War over that and 600,000 lives were destroyed, one could say we haven’t gotten past it yet.
There will be a war , how it shapes out I don’t know
The parallels with 1861 are weak.
For one thing, in those days the US had a Republican Party which was willing to fight for something.
Another thing. For all practical purposes, there are no actual state militias. The North fought with a contingent of federal troops that was vastly outnumbered by state units. A partial list of units at Gettysburg: 19th Indiana, 24th Michigan, 6th Wisconsin, 76th New York, 56th Pennsylvania, 16th Maine, 13th Massachusetts, 13th Vermont, 5th New Hampshire, 27th Connecticut, 1st Minnesota, 4th Ohio, 2nd Delaware with a host of other state units, with a sprinkling of nits that said 4th United States, Battery K or other federal identifiers. For the south- every unit was a state unit. There was no Confederate Army per se.
The FBI has already shown it will fire upon U.S. citizens. Along with city police forces and some state police. Don’t think the U.S. Army is going to go along with that, and the USAF isn’t going to be strafing and bombing U.S. states. And most county sheriffs aren’t going to be firing on the people who elected them. A U.S. civil was today would likely be short and nasty, and most casualties would be in large Democrat cities which would suddenly find themselves without power, food, and running water.
I see no reason to believe a word of it.
The story is the sort of thing which I’d expect to appeal to high-school intellects. In other words, it has the fingerprints of NYT-level propaganda all over it. The Times has been operating at Guardian or Mother Jones levels for at least a decade, and this smells like more of the same.
Man, this is just incredible how low they’ll stoop to get him outta office.
How is suppressing bad publicity a crime ,unless threats of unlawful behavior or actual unlawful behavior was involved?? and we should have already heard that info
They violated attorney client privilege over locker room talk? And what lawyer or any supporter doesn’t seek to suppress damaging information? This has Wisconsin John doe tactics all over it.
Exactly.
John Doe appears to be a blueprint for Mueller.
I was thinking that same thing last night. Seems A LOT like Wisconsin.
I don’t seem to recall any no knock raids on Obama’s Attorney for his birth certificate, college transcripts, callee records as a foreign student from Indonesia, nor his ties to the Communist party. Perhaps I was in a Coma?
They keep saying that it’s like Nixon, it’s nothing like Nixon. No crime defined, they make it up as they go along. This is for all the marbles, whether elections matter or don’t. Coup is not too strong a word as the loser of the election, hounded by real criminal acts remains unscathed. What amazes me is does Trump have another attorney or is it Cohen, who is neutered, and dinners with Dershowitz? Rambling but this happening on a different plane.
I don’t get it. What conceivable interest could Mueller or the FBI have in the Access Hollywood tape? What law might conceivably have been broken in relation to it?