Ask yourself this: assuming this is, as the Boing Boinger who posted this piece suggests, proof that Cohen was in Prague at that time. Assume even, should you wish, that he was there meeting with Russian cutouts directly or indirectly connected to one or more Russian govt intel orgs, say GRU, or FSB, whatever, and therefore back to Putin: how would this come up in a trial of Trump? Or, for that matter, impeachment?
The answer is that, unless and until it was confirmed INDEPENDENTLY of the compromised potential government witness Michael Cohen, it wouldn’t play ANY part in such a case. If you don’t see that, that you clearly have no idea at all as to how our court system works. And if you think it wouldn’t be relentlessly attacked by the Republican majority in the Senate during the trial of a bill of impeachment, then you clearly don’t understand McConnell or the Republican Senate majority leadership, under the whip of Trump and his base, which base is now almost indistinguishable from the GOP voter base.
All this story accomplishes - a story which I have a LOT of trouble accepting as both subjective truth and objectively accurate - serves to accomplish, both now and if raised in either of those contexts - is to advance the interests of those who would attack the credibility of Cohen personally, and indirectly and/or by inference the Mueller OSC team.
You’re saying it would be impossible for a court to be influenced by mechanical phone records and government witness testimony?
Of course, I don’t know how much weight they’d give it, but I think it’s more than none.
Court decisions are influenced by individual testimony all the time. That is how they frequently work. Even from “compromised” witnesses.
Importantly, " the credibility of Cohen personally" is a decidedly contextual thing for anybody. Everybody agrees he’s lied about some things, some times. A court will give weight to some of his evidence based on their own judgment of its plausibility, in context, with or even without independent confirmation.
(And of course, they would need the mechanical records, for there to be mechanical records)
Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. This adds one more piece to the growing mountain of evidence that Trump and his campaign were widely compromised by Russia, and the administration’s continued denials of key events in regards to Russia were flat-out lies. Whether members of Congress choose to consider that evidence is not the responsibility of the news organization reporting it.
The idea that the press should cease reporting on such stories unless they have evidence that would be unassailable in a court of law is nonsensical. The media’s job is to keep the public informed while following best practices for making sure their reporting reflects the objective truth as best they can determine it. Thus far, McClatchy has maintained a good reputation for following said practices.
We don’t know that though. I’m sorry for being such an insufferable bitch about this, but it isn’t even a close call. We know almost nothing about the cell phone evidence. The people who wrote the story know almost nothing about it. Not even their sources have seen it.
The same goes for the intercepts. Even if we assume they exist, has anyone checked to make sure they aren’t the same thing Steele based his original report on? We don’t know. Has anyone checked to make sure they aren’t intercepts of Steele’s source talking to Steele? We don’t know!
If you think that kind of dog-chasing-its-tail farce sounds far-fetched then oh boy do I have a fun story about the airport chaos of Christmas 2003 for you.
The news sources they rely on are not reporting such things. Thus, they don’t even know about the initial testimony putting Cohen there, let alone this new corroborating evidence.
I’m sorry you’re sorry.
I’m sorry we’re not right now cutting to the phone call scene in Dr. Strangelove where President Merkin Muffley is trying to conduct as serious a conversation as any human can ever imagine having to with a Russian premier who’s three sheets to the wind.
I’m sorry for ‘pulling rank’ as it were.
Here’s the deal: Mueller and we don’t need for Cohen to be in Prague in August 2016 in order to establish contact between then candidate Trump and agents of the Putin lead Russian intel establishment. Indeed, Mueller can prove, Cohen admits, and it’s been independently corroborated that Cohen was actually IN MOSCOW earlier in 2016, May into June, there on behalf of Trump to meet with Putin or his aides. Indeed, it’s an indisputably established fact that Cohen spoke with, among other high level Putin aides, Putin’s appointments secretary, from Cohen and Trump’s perspective in order to advance the Moscow Trump Tower project.
So start with this: no such Prague meeting involving Cohen is even remotely necessary to establish that contact.
Now, since we KNOW that Cohen has admitted to all that, what possible reason do you or does any posit for Cohen failing to confirm being Prague, an entirely different city and in an entirely different country than Putin runs, for basically the same thing as he’s already been to Moscow for, unless it’s true that he just wasn’t in Prague. It’s an UNNECESSARY detail. It’s a red herring. it’s totally superfluous to the conspiracy to defraud the US of a fair presidential election that Mueller is prosecuting.
But it gets worse: once Cohen has admitted all the really bad stuff, including really bad stuff, criminal stuff, that he did in acting as a agent or fixer or crooked lawyer for Trump, AND THEN denies the Prague thing, all the Prague thing serves to accomplish is to knock down Cohen’s crediibilty.
Now ask yourself this: who is the ONE SINGLE PERSON MOST INTERESTED in knocking down Cohen’s cred? The answer is obvious. This whole b.s. about cell phone pings in Prague implicating Cohen being there aims simply to knock down Cohen and secondarily to continue the Trump side effort of claiming the entire Mueller investigation is completely based on supposed lies contained in the items of intel gathered up by Christopher Steele. It’s a pro-Trump disinformation project.
