“The thing seems so weird that it invites an inquiry into what you’re doing,” he said. “Lawyers don’t go around giving $130,000 to strangers, benefiting their clients, without billing their clients.”
.. Keith Davidson, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented Ms. Clifford in the 2016 transaction, issued a statement Wednesday declaring that Mr. Cohen had told him at the time that the $130,000 payment was coming from his own funds.
“I represented Stephanie Clifford in the Michael Cohen/Stephanie Clifford transaction,” Mr. Davidson’s statement said. “I read today that Michael Cohen reports that the source of the $130,000 paid to Ms. Clifford was from his own personal funds. That assertion is in complete harmony with what he informed me of at the time of the transaction.”
.. Ms. Clifford believes that Mr. Cohen, in making his statement, has breached a nondisclosure agreement she signed in connection with the payment, releasing her from the confidentiality commitment, according to Gina Rodriguez, her manager. Ms. Clifford, she said, is now offering to sell her story to media outlets so that she can tell her version of events.
.. Last month, Mr. Cohen sent Wall Street Journal reporters a written statement in Ms. Clifford’s name denying that she had had “a sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump or “received hush money from Mr. Trump.” He also issued his own statement saying that Mr. Trump “vehemently denies” any affair with her.
If evidence emerged showing that those statements were false and that Mr. Cohen knew they were false, his role in disseminating them could violate Rule 8.4, several legal ethics specialists said. It prohibits lawyers from engaging “in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”
.. “Lawyers are not allowed to lie,” with some exceptions, said Lisa Lerman, a legal ethics professor at the Catholic University of America, and they are “also not allowed to induce other people to engage in conduct that they are prohibited from.”
But Stephen Gillers, a New York University professor of ethics law, said that in practice, the ethics rule against dishonesty is generally not interpreted so broadly as to cover facilitating a lie to the public or to journalists.
Trump won’t talk to Mueller. Here’s why.
If the president agrees to be interviewed, it seems extremely likely he will lie about something. Not because the interview is unfair or a “perjury trap,” but simply because of the president’s well-documented casual relationship with the truth. The president’s own attorneys reportedly cited their fear that he would lie as a reason to advise him against the interview
.. He has to assume that a president who refuses a consensual interview will not willingly stroll into the grand jury. Trump’s lawyers would likely mount various legal challenges to the subpoena. Although precedent suggests Mueller ultimately would win that battle, there are no guarantees. And it would mean months of delay — even if the case were fast-tracked to the Supreme Court.
.. If the president ultimately did end up in the grand jury, he could then assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself — and Mueller might still be left with nothing. Or the president could testify, and even if it did not go well, he would have delayed the investigation and any possible consequences, perhaps even past the midterm elections. Mueller may well decide he’s better off completing his work without spending significant time and resources
.. Maybe his lawyers will offer to answer written questions as a “compromise,” but those answers will be crafted by the attorneys, cannot be cross-examined and will not put Trump in jeopardy. The president can save face by claiming he was eager to step in the ring mano a mano with Mueller but his lawyers told him he shouldn’t. (You know how lawyers are.)
.. You can hear the interviews now: Republicans on Capitol Hill will say that while it’s “unhelpful” that Trump won’t agree to be interviewed, “on the other hand, there are some serious questions about the fairness of Mueller’s investigation . . . ”
And this is where the sustained attacks on Mueller and the FBI come into play. Trump and his allies will justify his refusal to cooperate or even his taking the Fifth by attacking the legitimacy of the investigation itself. They will claim Trump would not be treated fairly by Mueller and the “deep state” conspiracy that is out to get the president. And if recent history is any guide, this argument will resonate with the president’s base and his allies in right-wing media and Congress.
.. stonewall, delay and attack the investigators — that seems to be the president’s most likely course.
Trump Shows Us the Way
Donald Trump slipped into the Oval Office through a wormhole of confusion about the American identity.
.. We were moving from a white-majority, male-dominated country and manufacturing base to a multicultural, multilateral, globalized, P.C., new energy, new technology world, without taking account of the confusion and anger of older Americans who felt like strangers in a strange land.
.. And we certainly don’t want men like Rob Porter who have punched, kicked, choked and terrorized their wives to be in the president’s inner circle, helping decide which policies, including those that affect women, get emphasized.
.. We don’t want the White House chief of staff to be the sort of person who shields and defends abusers — and then dissembles about it — simply because the abuser is a rare competent staffer. Or a man who labels Dreamers “too lazy to get off their asses” simply because they didn’t apply for legal protections in time.
.. John Kelly served as a character witness not only for Porter, after he didn’t receive security clearance because F.B.I. agents had heard the harrowing tales from his battered ex-wives. Kelly also testified as a character witness for Gen. Robert E. Lee and a former Marine who pleaded guilty to sending inappropriate sexual messages to female subordinates; who drove drunk to an arraignment; and who got charged in Virginia with sex crimes against children.
.. As a more lucid Trump tweeted in 2012 about Rihanna getting back together with Chris Brown, “A beater is always a beater.”
.. We don’t want a president who bends over backward to give the benefit of the doubt to neo-Nazis, wife beaters, pedophiles and sexual predators — or who is a sexual predator himself.
.. We don’t want a president who flips the ordinary equation, out of some puerile sense of grievance, to honor Russia and dishonor the F.B.I.
.. We don’t want a president who is too shallow to read his daily intelligence report and too obsessed with the deep state to deal fairly with our intelligence agencies.
.. We don’t want a president who suggests that Democrats who don’t clap for him are treasonous and who seems more enthralled by authoritarian ways than democratic ones.
.. who loves generals but trashes Gold Star parents
.. who wants the sort of chesty military parade that we mock Kim Jong-un for, a phallic demonstration of overcompensation that would only put more potholes in the D.C. boulevards.
.. one who could be so easily trapped in lies that he can’t even be allowed to talk to an investigator.
.. And, finally, we surely don’t want a president who seeks advice on foreign affairs from Henry Kissinger. Ever. Again.
Thomas Friedman: Everyone Is Going All the Way
It is hard to spend a week in Israel and not come away feeling that Israelis have the wind at their backs.
- They’ve built an awesome high-tech industry
- Regionally, the Arabs and Palestinians have never been weaker
- Israel has never had a more unquestioningly friendly United States.
- Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, asking Israel for nothing in return. The Arab states barely made a peep.
this wind has whetted the appetite of Israel’s settlers and ruling Likud Party to go to extremes
.. the “Likud Party unanimously urged legislators in a nonbinding resolution … to effectively annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, land that Palestinians want for a future state.”
.. Sure, the world would scream “apartheid,” but Israeli rightists shrug that the world will get used to it.
- Nikki Haley will cover for Israel at the U.N.
- Sheldon Adelson will keep Trump and the G.O.P. in line.
- And the Arab regimes, which need Israel to counter Iran, will look the other away.
They think they can annex the West Bank without giving Palestinians citizenship; they’ll just let the Palestinians vote in their own elections.
.. May 17, 1983 .. Israel (backed by the U.S.) imposed virtually all its security demands on a weak Lebanese government, including a framework for normalizing trade and diplomacy.
.. “Going All The Way: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventurers and the War in Lebanon.”
I always loved that title — going all the way. It’s a recurring theme out here, and it almost always ends with a “Thelma and Louise” moment — partners driving over a cliff — and so it did with Israel in 1983.
.. everywhere I look today I see people going all the way.
- I see Republicans trashing two of our most sacred institutions — the F.B.I. and the Justice Department — because these agencies won’t bend to Trump’s will.
- I see Iran controlling four Arab capitals: Damascus, Sana, Baghdad and Beirut.
- I see Hamas still more interested in building tunnels in Gaza to kill Israelis than schools to strengthen Palestinian society.
- I see the crown prince of Saudi Arabia with one hand undertaking hugely important steps —
- moderating Saudi Islam,
- letting women drive and
- opening Saudi society culturally to the world
- and, with the other hand,
- abducting the prime minister of Lebanon,
- buying ridiculously expensive paintings and
- seizing businesses in the name of combating corruption
- I see the Taliban killing 103 people in Kabul by packing an ambulancewith explosives and driving it into a crowd.
I see Houthis, Yemeni warlords, Iranians, Saudis and the U.A.E. all tearing Yemen apart in the name of God knows what.
I see Turkey’s president silencing every critical journalist in his country.
I see the Egyptian and Russian presidents eliminating all serious rivals in their upcoming elections.
I see Bibi Netanyahu trying to derail a corruption investigation by weakening Israel’s justice system, free media and civil society — just like Trump and for the same purposes: to weaken constraints on his arbitrary use of political power.
I see an American president threatening to tear up, or actually tearing up, global agreements he doesn’t like —
the Iran nuclear deal,
Nafta,
the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
the Paris climate accord and
aid to Palestinians and Pakistanis —
but without any clear plan or alternative for the morning after that will improve on the status quo.
Worst of all, I see an America — the world’s strongest guardian of truth, science and democratic norms — now led by a serial liar and norms destroyer, giving license to everyone else to ask, why can’t I?
Can anything stop this epidemic of going all the way? Yes: Mother Nature, human nature and markets. They’ll all push back when no one else will.
.. How so?
Gaza has limited hours of electricity each day.
Result: Gaza’s already inadequate sewage plants are often offline, and waste goes untreated straight into the Mediterranean.
Then the prevailing current washes Gaza’s poop north, where it clogs Israel’s big desalination plant in Ashkelon — which provides 15 percent of Israel’s drinking water
.. In both 2016 and 2017, the Ashkelon plant had to close to clean Gaza’s crud out of its filters. It’s Mother Nature’s way of reminding both that if they try to go all the way, if they shun a healthy interdependence, she’ll poison them both.
.. then out of nowhere Iranians back home start protesting against Suleimani’s overreach; they’re tired of seeing their money spent on Gaza and Syria — not on Iranians. And, just as suddenly, the biggest internet meme in Iran becomes an Iranian woman ripping off her veil and holding it upon the end of a stick.
.. And if you don’t think markets have a way of curing excesses, you didn’t read the top story in The Times.
.. Watch out for
- the market,
- Mother Nature and
- human nature.
.. One is the relentless product of chemistry, biology and physics; one is the balance between greed and fear; and the third is the eternal human quest for freedom and dignity. In the end, they’ll shape the future more than any leader or party who tries going all the way.