Does Anything Matter?
Last night the breaking news slipped out: Michael Cohen was in a meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was informed and gave approval to the June 9th meeting between Trump Campaign officials and known Russian Government representatives to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. He knew and approved before it happened.
OK – I have to do this:
COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION – COLLUSION!!!!!
And even better:
CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY – CONSPIRACY.
There, I feel better. I’ve waited almost two years to say that.
Michael Cohen, who was the trusted personal lawyer for Donald Trump, is looking for an “exit strategy” to avoid jail. He is either cooperating, or going to cooperate, with Federal Prosecutors both in his own case in the Southern District of New York and with the Mueller Team. As former Federal Prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg said, “…he’s joining Team USA.”
Cohen was, to quote Hamilton,“…in the room where it happened…” And, after hearing the tape of Cohen withTrump discussing the shell LLC to pay off former lovers, we now know that Cohen had no problem bugging himself and his clients. So there might even be a tape; there are at least one hundred of them.
The spin has already begun. Rudy Giulani, representing President Trump, has called Cohen a “…known liar that cannot be trusted…” Trump tweeted that he didn’t know about the meeting. The odd thing though, is that Cohen isn’t the one who released the information about “the meeting.” The best we can currently figure, it was the Trump side that slipped it to the media, in fact, to their favorite media – CNN. After over a year and a half of denials, of lies, of possible perjury (Donald Jr’s testimony to Congress that he never informed his father) what’s their strategy?
In the language of nuclear war, this is called a pre-emptive strike. The logic goes this way: Cohen has the information, possibly on tape, and that information will ultimately be revealed, perhaps during a trial. To take the “surprise” value out of the information, and to allow for a concerted effort to destroy Cohen’s reputation and therefore the value of his information, the Trump team decision was to get it out now.
That this strategy implies destroying a trusted employee (Cohen) and throwing both Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner under the “Mueller” bus, shows the absolutely desperate situation of the Trump Team. If the President really did have knowledge and gave approval to this meeting, he probably has committed conspiracy with the Russian government to illegally interfere with the 2016 election. He also may well have engaged in a conspiracy of theft from the DNC and the Clinton campaign, using the stolen emails. If there’s a tape of this meeting, it would be as powerful as the Nixon conversations in the days after the Watergate break-in.
We will soon hear the excuses: every political campaign would do the same thing, or, we didn’t know this was against the law, we were novice politicians, or, we didn’t get anything out of the meeting anyway. This meeting has been characterized as a “bust,” where no information, legal or illegal, was presented. Of course, we only have the word of the participants, Donald Jr and Jared Kushner. Others aren’t talking, yet.
But if the President knew and approved a meeting, with the intent of receiving Clinton dirt from the Russians, it really doesn’t matter what the outcome of the meeting was. If you walk into a bank, pull a gun, and say this is a robbery, whether you get the money or not you have committed a crime.
There’s a great Saturday Night Live sketch of the Lester Holt interview with the President, where Trump says he fired FBI Director Comey because of Russia. Michael Che, playing Holt, stops, looks at the camera, and says “…did I get him, is this all over?”
The answer was that nothing matters.
This isn’t over. It will take months, perhaps years to play out. But if this piece of information is true, then the President will be forced to ask Congress, and the American people if they are willing to accept his actions; actions that are illegal. And then we will find out if anything really does matter.
Is there any hope?
Yes I AM a believer. I remember 1973 – it felt like Watergate would never end. It did – and “right” won our. So I still believe!!
A lot has changed since Watergate. People seem to be more inclined to accept Trump’s behavior as long as they are gaining from the other things they perceive he is doing well.
I agree that many are getting what they want and ignoring the bad (especially Congress). But I hope and expect that Mueller will put such a clear case out that their “blindness” will be cured!!!
Geez I hope you turn out to be correct Dahlman. I have to admit I am suffering from a lack of faith in the American people to work collectively in these matters at the moment.