Michael Cohen secretly recorded a 2016 conversation in which he and President Trump discussed paying hush money to a former Playboy model who claims she slept with Trump, the New York Times reported Friday. The FBI is in possession of the recording.
Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, confirmed that the taped conversation about the payments to Karen McDougal occurred. Giuliani told the Times that the brief recording contained no suggestion that Trump has “any knowledge of it in advance” and said it was actually “powerful exculpatory evidence.”
The call reportedly focused on the $150,000 that the National Enquirer’s parent company made to McDougal to “catch and kill” her story about her alleged yearlong 2006 affair with Trump, as well as an additional, previously unreported payment that Cohen planned to make directly to McDougal.
Maggie Haberman, one of the Times reporters who broke the story, said on CNN that Giuliani was trying to argue that Trump instructed Cohen to send the money by check “so that it was done properly, as opposed to cash,” which would not be traceable. That additional payment was never actually sent, Haberman said.
The phone recording was among the huge trove of materials that the FBI seized from Cohen’s Manhattan office in an April raid. Cohen is under criminal investigation in New York for a host of financial dealings, including the payments he doled out during the 2016 campaign to silence women who claimed to have had sexual relationships with Trump.
Those payments could violate federal finance laws.
It has been known for several months that Cohen often taped conversations between himself and others as a way to protect himself and Trump. When the FBi raided his office and residences they seized the devises that Cohen used to make the surreptitious recording . He even bragged about it to friends. Although Cohen has denied recording Trump, apparently, he did.
Despite being Trump’s lawyer at the time, this recording does npt come under attorney/client privilege because the discussion is about a possible crime, violating the campaign finance law.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The first men to walk on the Moon; Viking One lands on Mars; Nazi Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler wounded in an assassination attempt; Mountaineer Edmund Hillary and musician Carlos Santana born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
America is not a melting pot. It is a sizzling cauldron.
The point is that it works at all, not how good it is.
Actually it’s a Scottie moment in that you multiply by 3, double it for the Captain so he looks like a hero when he cuts you back to 75% of your inflated estimate and you wander off muttering “yah kannah brogue the laws of physics.” and stomp off to the holodeck to “prototype” your new Mary Sue AI.
Because it’s just a few whacks with a hammer isn’t it?
At my meeting today I was told I looked a little tired for a guy just off a fairly quiet month at a lake side cabin in the woods. I was a little tired. In the previous 36 hours I’d torn down and packed a setup from operational to bags in a car, driven, moved those into Stars Hollow and set them up, sleep, shower, and show.
I also had Gilmore moments happening. People working, some of them in state. We shall probably not be all together for another month.
Car availability check list. Critical appointments. Leaving preparations and last minute advice, for me the best news was I would not be required to be at Bradley 2 hours before flight time.
So I cooked, as much as you can call boiling water, margarine, and package mix from a standing start, simmering it for 7 minutes (covered) and letting it stand off heat for about 4 minutes. Now would be the time to jazz it up with, like live, jive frozen Broccoli florets instead of boiled Broccolli dust but at the Gilmore’s we’ve never met a vegetable.
No. That’s it. We’ve never met a vegetable.
Nor have we met a spice except salt and pepper and those in moderation. “If the meat is good enough…” said our Depression forebearers and that’s what this came down to, finally. Emily didn’t think much of the pre-cooked chicken strips Richard had bought and torpedoed his idea of this very same dinner because there wasn’t enough left of it to give everyone what she considered sufficient meat (it’s not really gruel if you have the odd eyeball floating in it, then it’s eyeball stew and costs twice as much).
Plan B has exploded in an entertaining way if you like “Meltdowns for 1000, Alex” and since my attendance was required my siblings fled, no doubt laughing up their sleeves. We’ll see when they read the will, that’s all I’m saying.
Anyway, by meticulously following the directions on the package I have arrived at the moment where it’s time to throw in whatever eyeballs you want.
Emily has already chopped her favored chicken to the tiniest possible pieces to notice and has finally and grudgingly attacked the offending poultry on the basis of “people are stupid and don’t care- at least I’ll be rid of it.”
Of course ordering me out of the way gives her agency which is fine, I’m a bad son because everyone knows there is no chance in the world I’m even tasting this. I don’t like chicken, at least the way my family does which is the least flavorful and uninteresting part treated in conventional ways. Chicken thighs are interesting, chicken breasts are not. Tenderized breasts can be used to display sauces, but so can seafood. There is no need for them in Parmigiana, breaded eggplant actually tastes better. Marsala, a sweet wine pan gravy with mushrooms and Maillard, and Française (lemon, butter, white wine, garlic) are about the only exceptions. Française hardly belongs because it’s a classic Scampi taste (more lemon) and a seasoned breadcrumb crust.
Personally? Aglio e Olio works for me. I do not need chunky eyeballs in my pasta though I can make them interesting- Feta, Kalamata, Oregano work for you? ‘Shrooms with that? I’m not really even a vegetarian, just given the choice between meat and potatoes I’m as likely to choose potatoes with cheddar, bacon, broccoli, butter, sour cream, and chives.
Before we get exotic.
I ended up with pre-grilled dogs which suits me fine (more rat!). I was free to do the deep de-brief while others ate. I shut people up with my intimidating awesomeness which is always my private goal.
When I got back my sister was about the first to greet me and she told me this joke about how she pulled a “Trump.” It was a really long and pointless narrative that actually lost focus leading into the “punch line” of how she had used a double negative only to skip a negative and draw the wrong interpretation of her statement of which both interpretations were provably false.
Oops.
See, I would have referenced Rosemary Woods and sneered at the ignorant. It was funny but not hah hah funny because you had to remember the details.
So she tried it again at dinner with the same result, I feel vindicated!
Now I am faced with tomorrow’s dilemmas, which are hopefully less fraught.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Women’s rights activists meet at Seneca Falls; The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays in the U.S. military; Apollo 11 enters lunar orbit; Baseball’s Pete Rose gets jail time; Moscow Olympics begins.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you’re learning you’re not old.
Well it’s the day after the All Star Game (AL 8 – 6 in 10 if you take that as an omen or even if you don’t) and it’s a Travel Day as the Stars rejoin their teams for the next series.
Not that my life is so glamorous but it is full of travel.
As usual blogging will suck and since I’ve upgraded (kinda sorta) my video hookups so that I can transfer any of my 3 video feeds (TV, Desktop, Laptop) to any of my 3 monitors without re-wiring it’s a more complicated setup. Last time was 3 days, but it was also the first time so there was some proof of concept and identifying non-working hardware issues to resolve.
On the other hand I don’t travel without reasons including appointments which will suck up some time I would otherwise allocate to writing.
So I don’t really know how long it will be before I contribute again, but I do know I have to stop doing it now and pack up my equipment. Shouldn’t be but a day or two, could be sooner with luck and a tail wind.
In any event it will be as quickly as possible. I’m headed out from Stars Hollow again in late August, perhaps until Columbus Day. This period will be marked by side trips that will make me more or less available, depending what and where they are. I’ve had to go with the flow this summer as scheduling conflicts have meant it’s difficult to plan long or medium term.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Spanish Civil War begins; Sen. Ted Kennedy’s passenger dies when he drives his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island; South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and musician Ricky Skaggs born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.
It’s true I work with computers but that encompasses a lot of things, some of which I know quite a bit about and others almost nothing.
I must admit that the intricacies of networking and “cloud” computing fall in the latter category, mostly because I have a pronounced philosophical preference for strong peer computing (a model where each individual terminal has a lot of native resources independent of other units and can accomplish any relevant task without assistance) as opposed thin client computing (where local resources are sufficient to connect to centralized, shared devices only).
So I find this interesting from a technical standpoint as it illuminates areas in which I am weak, though I don’t doubt for a moment these feats are possible and plausible. It represents a different paradigm than the one I choose to work in.
(Friday) Robert Mueller published an indictment of 12 officers from the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election, including by hacking into the DNC. The indictment is historically unprecedented in scope and detail. The FBI named-and-shamed two specific GRU units, their commanding officers and 10 subordinate officers while revealing stunning details of Russia’s hacking tradecraft. And a close read of it all shows why Trump’s “DNC didn’t give the server to the FBI” conspiracy theory makes no sense.
First off, CrowdStrike, the company the DNC brought in to initially investigate and remediate the hack, actually shared images of the DNC servers with the FBI. For the purposes of an investigation of this type, images are much more useful than handing over metal and hardware, because they are bit-by-bit copies of a crime scene taken while the crime was going on. Live hard drive and memory snapshots of blinking, powered-on machines in a network reveal significantly more forensic data than some powered-off server removed from a network. It’s the difference between watching a house over time, carefully noting down who comes and goes and when and how, versus handing over a key to a lonely boarded-up building. By physically handing over a server to the FBI as Trump suggested, the DNC would in fact have destroyed evidence. (Besides, there wasn’t just one server, but 140.)
An advanced investigation of an advanced hacking operation requires significantly more than just access to servers. Investigators want access to the attack infrastructure—the equivalent to a chain of getaway cars of a team of burglars. And the latest indictments are rich with details that likely come from intercepting command-and-control boxes (in effect, bugging those getaway cars) and have nothing to do with physical access to the DNC’s servers.
The FBI and Robert Mueller’s investigators discovered when and how specific Russian military officers logged into a control panel on a leased machine in Arizona. They found that the GRU officers secretly surveiled an empoyee of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee all day in real time, including spying on “her individual banking information and other personal topics.” They showed that “Guccifer 2.0,” the supposed lone hacker behind the DNC hack, was in fact managed by a specific GRU unit, and even reconstructed the internet searches made within that unit while a GRU officer with shoddy English skills was drafting the first post as Guccifer 2.0. None of this information could have possibly come from any DNC server.
With help from the broader intelligence community, the FBI was able to piece all these details together into the bigger picture of the GRU’s vast hacking effort. The complexity of high-tempo, high-volume hacking campaigns means that attackers can make myriad mistakes; Mueller’s latest indictments reveal just how successful American investigators have been at exploiting those repeated errors and uncovering more and more information about what Russia did.
The Russian spies, for example, reused a specific account for a virtual private network (a purportedly secure communication link) to register deceptive internet domains for the DNC hack, as well as to post stolen material online under the Guccifer 2.0 front. Cryptocurrency payments—the kind the Russians used to pay for registering the DCLeaks.com site and their VPN—were neither as anonymous nor as secure as the GRU thought they would be. Third-party platforms including Google, Twitter and the link-shortening service Bitly were convenient and reliable for Russian hackers, but they could also be subpoenaed. Mueller’s team did exactly that, reconstructing how, when and how frequently Russian intelligence officers communicated with WikiLeaks, which they used as an outlet for the stolen material. The Russians weren’t even particularly careful: WikiLeaks and the Russians officers, in a major cock-up, encrypted the hacked emails, but did not encrypt the details of their collaboration. And in using a Bitly account to automate the shortened links sent out to targets of their email-phishing scheme, the GRU left an investigative gold mine: a vast target list of more than 10,000 potential victims’ email addresses.
American spies could even watch the Russian spies trying, in vain, to cover their tracks, likely in real time. Indeed, the Russian officers made so many mistakes that it is almost surprising the GRU even tried to be stealthy. The U.S. intelligence community has stunning visibility into GRU hacking operations—not just against the DNC, but against the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DCCC and state election infrastructure. The notion that all this high-resolution visibility hinges on physical access to “the DNC server” defies logic or even a basic understanding of what is actually happening.
The Mueller indictment of GRU officers is so detailed and comprehensive that it represents a major humiliation for what used to be one of the world’s most respected intelligence agencies. One can imagine laughter over at FSB and SVR, Russia’s other intelligence agencies, which are traditionally fierce rivals of GRU.
But in Helsinki, that laughter found a new target, as the president missed Mueller’s brilliant pass and turned it into a major American own goal. Donald Trump managed to bend what should have been an embarrassment for Russia and a firing offense for clumsy spies into an embarrassment for the United States and a punch in the gut of America’s intelligence community.
I’m sorry but I just can’t understand why all the “Very Serious” people in D.C. are saying very serious things about how appallingly serious, and unexpected, and confusing, and WHY DO YOU KEEP WASTING MY TIME PRETENDING THIS IS “NEW” AND DIFFERENT!”
It’s the same impeachable offenses it was January 21st, 2017. Emoluments Clause, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, now we add Treason as if that wasn’t obvious from the beginning. It’s like having a very dim Watson.
Even Rachel engages but soon enough she gets to a summary of developments in the Russian Fraud Against The United States case since the release of Friday’s indictment.
And this is Monday’s venture that has everyone so upset.
Unexpected? I think the reaction is vastly overblown. He didn’t publicly turn over Syria. He’s not sending arms to Ukranian separatists. Technically speaking it’s not a patch on the damage he did just this weekend while helping a little old lady walk her Corgis. If you want a prime example of appalling how about the torpedo he put into the side of May (who had a very bad week indeed) by ignorantly hammerIng her new ‘softer’ Brexit policy.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
TWA Flight 800 explodes; Russia’s royal family executed; Disneyland opens; Nicaragua’s Somoza goes into exile; Apollo and Soyuz link up in space; Baseball’s Ty Cobb and jazz great John Coltrane die.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Hatred, racism, and extremism have no place in this country.
Is today a good day for dinosaur news? Every day is a good day for dinosaur news. They lived then to make us happy now.
In case you don’t quite get the reference, for some years there was a moderately popular chain of Gas Stations owned by Sinclair Oil. Their logo was an Apatosaurus. I’m not sure there is any connection (and am much too lazy to look it up) but broadcast Television is likewise an extinct reptile of enormous size with two pea sized brains because the main one didn’t have the processing power to run the back legs.
If you have spent the last 200 Million years or so liquifying under a rock you might have missed the fact that Sinclair Broadcasting is to TV what IHeartRadio (Clear Channel) is to Radio. They own over 170 local stations covering about 2 thirds of all households in the United States.
Since 2017 they have formally been trying to acquire Tribune Media which only has 42 stations, but many are in metropolitan areas like Chicago and New York City Sinclair doesn’t already have service in.
As if rising from a 66% to 75% monopoly were not enough reason to be alarmed, Sinclair has a Teabagger/Trump Republican editorial policy which includes deliberately broadcasting “Fake News” out of the mouths of hitherto trusted (at least to be attacked by animals and stand outside in bad weather) local newscasters.
The “Fake News” must be covered. There are no exceptions to the policy.
As originally proposed in May 2017, the $3.9 billion deal would see conservative-leaning Sinclair, already the largest U.S. TV station owner, gobble up 42 Tribune stations in key markets like New York and Chicago, adding to its existing footprint of more than 170 stations and giving the company access to nearly three-quarters of U.S. households.
But the regulatory review dragged on for more than a year, as Sinclair revised the deal several times, offering to sell off 21 stations in an effort to gain government approval. Critics took issue with some of the proposed sales, which were so-called sidecar arrangements that would allow Sinclair to keep a stake in the revenue and programming of the spun-off stations, as POLITICO reported on May 30. Another two of the sales would have been to a company with close ties to Sinclair.
Pai said “certain proposed divestitures” were a sticking point for the agency.
“Based on a thorough review of the record, I have serious concerns about the Sinclair/Tribune transaction,” the chairman said in the statement. “The evidence we’ve received suggests that certain station divestitures that have been proposed to the FCC would allow Sinclair to control those stations in practice, even if not in name, in violation of the law.”
FCC officials said one problematic deal was the plan to sell Chicago station WGN to Steven Fader, a Maryland business associate of Sinclair Executive Chairman David Smith who oversees car dealerships. Others that raised alarm were the deals to sell stations in Dallas and Houston to Cunningham Broadcasting, a company with close ties to the Smith family.
The FCC’s decision is a significant blow for Sinclair, which has been been a frequent target for Democrats and liberal groups disturbed by reports that it favors President Donald Trump in its coverage via “must-run” segments pumped to its network of stations.
…
The Washington Post reported Sinclair “gave a disproportionate amount of neutral or favorable coverage to Trump during the campaign” while airing negative stories on Hillary Clinton. That followed POLITICO’s reporting on a boast by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that the president’s campaign had struck a deal with the broadcast group for better media coverage. Sinclair disputed the characterization, saying it was an arrangement for extended sit-down interviews that was offered to both candidates.
Sinclair has also drawn fire for mandating its stations carry conservative content, including regular commentary from former Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn. Earlier this year, the company faced heavy criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others for directing local anchors to read a script on the threat of “fake news,” widely seen as a Trump-style broadside aimed at mainstream press outlets.
Critics ranging from congressional Democrats to Sinclair’s conservative media rivals like Newsmax have warned the Sinclair-Tribune merger would give too much power to a single company to control the airwaves. But Sinclair argued that broadcasters must get bigger to effectively compete in the modern media ecosystem.
Further complicating the merger’s prospects was the legal challenge to the FCC’s decision to reinstate the UHF discount. The discount gives broadcast companies the ability to reach up to 78 percent of U.S. television households without technically violating the 39 percent cap. Judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals expressed skepticism about the decision to bring back the loophole during oral arguments in April.
A simple tie-up would have seen the combined companies reach more than 72 percent of TV households. Under the deal structure Sinclair proposed most recently, with the 21 station sell-offs, the post-merger company would have reached about 59 percent of American TV households before factoring in the UHF discount. Critics said even that scaled-down deal would have given Sinclair an unfairly broad reach in light of the sidecar arrangements freeing the company to maintain close ties with certain divested stations.
