Feds find Cohen had tapes!

OMG, it's déjà vu all over again.     The uber-vain Richard Nixon wanted to memorialize his presidency, so he had a sound-activated tape machine running all the time.    Well, it did him in, as the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities subpoenaed those tapes.

And lo--lesson not learned--Trump's attorney Michael Cohen kept recordings for the same reason.  Now the Feds have the recordings.  When the Feds raided Cohen's office pursuant to a warrant issued by a US Federal District Judge, they took all the computer equipment, which contained the recordings.  OH MY, when will they ever learn?  

HOT AiR wrote:Lordy: Michael Cohen Kept Tapes?

ALLAHPUNDITPosted at 10:01 pm on April 12, 2018

All I can think of is that Bill Pullman ransom scene in “Ruthless People.” This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.



Why would a lawyer, especially a lawyer who might have reason to believe his activities were criminal, keep a recording of anything unless it’s necessary? The impression left by this WaPo story is that Cohen did it almost out of force of habit, a “just in case” sort of thing. Needless to say, any recording of a non-client is non-privileged.

I remind you again: Even recordings of conversations between Cohen and a client (assuming they exist) aren’t necessarily privileged. They’re privileged if they involve legal advice and don’t have involve a crime or fraud in which Cohen was participating. Imagine the universe of information outside those parameters that might be in the FBI’s hands now.

A question to bear in mind as you read is why anyone in Cohen’s orbit would be leaking this to a newspaper. The story’s going to set off a white-knuckle panic in anyone who’s ever had a private conversation with him. And it’s conceivable that Cohen stored the recordings somewhere secret such that the FBI had no knowledge of them — until now. My best guess as to the reason for the leak is that people who knew that Cohen kept tapes simply cannot believe this is happening and that the tapes are now likely in an FBI office somewhere. They had a “holy sh*t” moment and couldn’t resist sharing it with the media.

“It was his standard practice to do it,” [a Cohen associate] said…

Cohen wanted his business calls on tape so he could use them later as leverage, one person said. Cohen frequently noted that under New York law, only one party had to consent to the taping of a conversation, this person added.

During the 2016 race, Cohen — who did not have a formal role on the campaign — had a reputation among campaign staff as someone to avoid, in part because he was believed to be secretly taping conversations.

In one instance, Cohen played a recording of a conversation he had with someone else to a Trump campaign official to demonstrate that he was in a position to challenge that person’s veracity if necessary, an associate recalled.

The source who said it was Cohen’s “standard practice” to make recordings claims that Cohen “often” played them for him. He has firsthand knowledge of their existence, or so he says; this isn’t a “someone told someone who told me” thing.

It may not have been leverage over business partners alone that drove Cohen to keep the recordings. As noted in the excerpts, even people on the campaign were leery of him. He may have been keeping tabs on Trump’s own personnel and presenting him with audio evidence of what they were up to behind closed doors. That’s speculation but it would be in keeping with Cohen’s role as top crony and “fixer”/enforcer. If there was disloyalty within the ranks, he’d logically be one of the people tasked with sniffing it out and bringing evidence back to the boss. For all we know it may have been an institutional habit: Trump himself has claimed at times in the past to have recorded private conversations, most famously with James Comey. When pressed for details he always ends up denying it. But he has to deny it, whether it’s true or not. Making secret tapes to gain leverage over people in unguarded moments only works if they truly are unguarded, which they wouldn’t be if they had reason to believe they were being recorded.

The best-case scenario here (apart from the possibility that all of WaPo’s sources are lying) is that Cohen destroyed the recordings as soon as he no longer had a use for them. Any recording of a non-client could presumably be destroyed at will. Client recordings may be trickier since usually lawyers are required to retain records for a period of time, but Trump would doubtless say that he gave Cohen permission long ago to destroy audio of any conversation they had. As long as Cohen wasn’t caught destroying them after a prosecutor or the FBI inquired about them, I assume he’d be fine. One wrinkle, though: WaPo says that Cohen would “store the conversations using digital files,” raising the possibility that he “destroyed” them simply by deleting them. As every computer user should know, though, that won’t do it. Unless you overwrite your entire hard drive with new data, the “deleted” data (or pieces of it) is still there in the shadows, capable of being recovered. How thorough do you suppose Cohen was in getting rid of it?
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/12/lordy-michael-cohen-kept-tapes/

Is this a conspiracy of the dumbest administration ever?  Win the presidency...lift the sanctions, take the money!!    OMG almighty.

Below I have presented a collection of "You're so stupid..." jokes:

You’re so stupid…you sent me a fax with a stamp on it!

You’re so stupid…you thought a quarterback was a refund!

You’re so stupid…you tried to put M&M’s in alphabetical order!

You’re so stupid…you thought Boyz II Men was a day care center!

You’re so stupid…you thought Eartha Kitt was a set of garden tools! (not that many kids know who Eartha Kitt is, she’s a singer)

You’re so stupid…you thought General Motors was in the Army!

You’re so stupid…you thought Meow Mix was a CD for cats!

You’re so stupid…you thought TuPac Shakur was a Jewish holiday!

You’re so stupid…under “education” on job applications you put “Hooked on Phonics”!

You’re so stupid…you tried to drown a fish!

You’re so stupid…you tripped over the cordless phone!

You’re so stupid…you stared at the orange juice carton because it said “concentrate”!

You’re so stupid…you got stabbed in a shoot out!

You’re so stupid…you asked me to meet you at the corner of “WALK” and “DON’T WALK”!

You’re so stupid…they had to burn down the school to get you out of 3rd grade!

You’re so stupid…on applications that say “Sign Here” you put “Libra!”

You’re so stupid…at the bottom of the application where it says “sign here”… you put “Sagittarius.”

You’re so stupid…you asked for a price check at the Dollar Store!

You’re so stupid…it takes you 3 hours to watch “60 Minutes!”

You’re so stupid…you studied for a blood test and failed!

You’re so stupid…you tried to buy tokens to get on to “Soul Train!”

You’re so stupid…when you saw under 17 not admitted at the movies you went out and got 16 friends!

You’re so stupid…when you heard 90% of accidents happen at home you moved!

You’re so stupid…you think Taco Bell is the Mexican phone company!

You’re so stupid…you think Taco Bell is where you pay your phone bill.

You’re so stupid…when you missed the #44 bus you took the #22 bus twice instead!

You’re so stupid…when the sign said Airport Left you turned around and went home!

You’re so stupid…you climbed over a glass wall to see what was on the other side!

You’re so stupid…you sold your car for gas money!

You’re so stupid…you got trapped in a grocery store and starved to death.

You’re so stupid…you sat on the TV and watched the couch.

You’re so stupid…you called me to get my phone number.

You’re so stupid…you put lipstick on your forehead because you wanted to make up your mind.

You’re so stupid…if I gave you a penny for your thoughts, I’d get change back.

You’re so stupid…they had to burn the school down to get you out of third grade.

You’re so stupid…you took a ruler to bed to see how long you slept.

You’re so stupid…if you spoke your mind, you’d probably be speechless.

You’re so stupid…you got locked in a mattress store and slept on the floor.

You’re so stupid…you jumped off a cliff to see if the wings on your maxi pads would make you fly!

You’re so stupid…you locked yourself in a bathroom and pissed in your pants.

You’re so stupid…you tried to kill a bird by throwing it off a cliff.

You’re so stupid…you asked someone how to spell “TV.”

You’re so stupid…you bought a solar-powered flashlight.

You’re so stupid…you looked in the lake and saw a reflection of yourself, jumped in, and tried to save yourself from drowning.

You’re so stupid…you grabbed a bowl when I said it was chilly outside.

You’re so stupid…you left me a voicemail by screaming into my mailbox.

You’re so stupid…you went to the beach to surf the internet.

You’re so stupid…you stuck a phone up your ass to make a booty call.

You’re so stupid…you went to get a ladder when you heard drinks were on the house.

You’re so stupid…you went to the library to find Facebook.

You’re so stupid…you went to the dentist to get your Bluetooth fixed.

You’re so stupid…you sprayed a tree with Axe body spray and thought it would fall down.

You’re so stupid…you tried to climb Mountain Dew.

You’re so stupid…when you took a survey that asked you your sex you put in “M, F, and sometimes Wednesday”

You’re so stupid…you bought tickets to Xbox Live.

You’re so stupid…you went to Babies R Us and asked where the babies were.

You’re so stupid…you fell up a flight of stairs.

You’re so stupid…when your TV got stolen, you chased the robber shouting “You forgot the remote!”

You’re so stupid…you made an appointment with Dr. Pepper.

You’re so stupid…you returned a doughnut because it had a hole in it.

You’re so stupid…when you were in court, the Judge said “Order” and you said “Fries and a Coke, please.”

You’re so stupid…it took you an hour to make one minute rice.

You’re so stupid…you got fired from a blow job.

You’re so stupid…you got hit by a cup and told the police you got mugged.

You’re so stupid…you stood on a chair to raise your IQ.

You’re so stupid…you had to ask what the number was for “9-1-1.”

You’re so stupid…when you saw the “On Air” sign you said, “Let’s go down, I’m afraid of heights.”

You’re so stupid…when a zombie said it wanted brains, it walked right past you.

You’re so stupid…you went to a pipe company looking for YouTube.

You’re so stupid…when people said you killed the vibe, you went to the police and said “Arrest me, I’m a murderer.”

You’re so stupid…you stood on a chair to raise your IQ.

You’re so stupid…when you saw a nickel, you said “I’m going to give this to Jefferson!”

You’re so stupid…when someone gives you a piece of paper with ‘please turn over’ written on both sides, it’ll keep you busy for hours.

You’re so stupid…you put a quarter in each ear and thought you were listening to 50 Cent.

You’re so stupid…you bought Norton antivirus when you had a cold.

GIVE THE BAG TO BOZO AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!