Here's everything DOJ has cleared Cohen to testify about:

[kpete]

Important cause it tells us what DOJ is likely done with.

Link to tweet

[vlyons]

1. sweet sweet sweet

Sweeter than the first ripe peach of Spring. Sweeter than a redbud tree in bloom. Sweeter than a baby's smile.

[Tetrachloride]

2. This menu is as good as my chef's.

[Sneederbunk]

31. Looks good but how will it taste?

[pdsimdars]

3. I guess the can of worms has been officially opened. Yippeeeeee!

[George II]

7. Ugh, you follow up a post about the menu of a guy's chef with one about a can of worms??

[Kurt V.]

4. There are other ways. this loose lipped mf needs to be in jail now! what is wrong with ppl?

[BigmanPigman]

5. Most are related to his finances.

New York State can also prosecute tRump if he gets pardoned by Pence or isn't indicted while in office. These are the crimes he is most worried about...Mueller and Congress are crossing his "red line". I am sure they are terrified of his threat.

[ananda]

6. Wow

I didn't think the DOJ would be so harsh.

Good

[WheelWalker]

8. A veritable buffet served up for public enjoyment.

[ailsagirl]

9. Yummy

[yankeepants]

10. Ugh. Can we please stop refering to him as "the president"?

It makes me queasy.

[UniteFightBack]

26. I know that is one of my pet peeves. nt

[fierywoman]

11. I think I'm gonna need a Costco sized bag of popcorn.

[Hekate]

14. I brought extra butter to share

[fierywoman]

15. (heh-heh-heh ... !)

[fascisthunter]

12. ok

We served enough to see a bunch of billionaires and their sycophants pretend to earn their positions of power.

[certainot]

13. the first item could include questions about paying limbaugh

to help him win the primaries - because limbaugh did help trump with every day excuses and attacks on his critics, while dissing the GOP establishment and rubio bush for being immigrant friendly.

[hughee99]

16. Paying Limbaugh is illegal why?

I think the investigation will appear more credible if they look into actual crimes.

[BobTheSubgenius]

18. Perhaps it will be used to bolster their contentions,

in that it is part of a pattern of behavior?

[hughee99]

19. Paying people for support is standard for politics.

It would be like suggesting a candidate talking with big money donors (“sometimes called buying access when discussing opponents”) shows a pattern of behavior.

If it looks like the committees goal is to make trump look sleazy instead of finding actual crimes, they’ll lose the PR battle and anything they do come up with will be easily dismissed.

[certainot]

21. discrediting limbaugh as a trump servant is the best thing dems could do to get gop sen to impeach

as top political correctness cop for 1500 radio stations limbaugh's endorsement is worth $5BIL/yr that's why they made sure he got huge contracts

at $1000/hr x 1200 stations x 15 hrs a day = about $5BIL - most of it policed by limbaugh listeners who wait in vain on hold for years and then call local hosts to make sure they don't challenge the limbaugh lies and ignorance

he's the real leader of the republican party. those senators are afraid of him - not trump

[hughee99]

24. Discrediting Limbaugh would be great, but if that looks like the goal

If a congressional investigation into the presidents criminal activity, many people will just see it as a politically motivated investigation.

[certainot]

32. it ties into what sam nunberg said - that the trump team studied talk radio in 2014

that was the same year the indicted russians were working in the country, same year a russian troll explained they that they got topics to write about.....

the russian trolls were't going to make everything up - they could, and did, piggyback 30 years of talk radio repetition. that was clear.

From “Operation Trump”, by Gabriel Sherman New York Magazine, April 3, 2016:

“Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall. “We either have borders or we don’t,” Trump told the faithful who flocked to the annual CPAC conference in 2014.”

In a Washington Post piece a Russian talked about working for a trolling operation in late 2014.

"You got a list of topics to write about."

Questions media and Democrats investigating Trump could to ask Cohen and Nunberg:

did Trump himself ask you to do that?
if not, who?
if it was Roger Stone, did he give any indication he had done this before?
how do you know Trump was getting your reports?
who, in what states, were you asked to listen to? (did they match some of the states the Russians targeted?)
did you include Limbaugh’s daily transcripts in your analysis?
what were you asked to listen for?
in what form did they want your reports? Paragraphs, lists, talking points, topics?
who did you give those reports to?
who ended up with your reports?
did it get further analysis after yours?
did the analysis leave the Trump organization?
was there any mention of Russian involvement?
was there any mention of social media coordination?
who paid for that listening?
how, in what form were you paid?

[hughee99]

37. Again, lots of interesting information, nothing that appears to be criminal.

We can go around and around in this, but I think we simply have a difference of opinion on the purpose of congressional investigations.

[certainot]

39. if nunberg was asked to listen to radio in particular states and those states were targeted by kreml

kremlin trolls it's about russia so not part of the public hearing but is it part of an obstruction case if limbaugh and hannity are coordinating with trump to attack mueller?

the nunes memo was released just before the limbaugh show start that day - for that purpose, so he got the right spin going for other media.

no big deal - GOP has been coordinating with limbaugh for 30 years but what if trump has been feeding him stuff before it becomes public in order to allow him to inoculate the base on bad news for instance?

and whether it's 'technically' appropriate or not there is a huge upside merely pointing out the trump/talk radio symbiosis, since liberals in particular, in ignoring it, continue to basically study fish without water. getting media on limbaugh hannity re russia and trump payola would pay big dividends dividing the trump base and helping the con senators vote for impeachment

[certainot]

23. see below please - all they have to do is ask one Q about trump paying limbaugh/hannity and the

media would finally take talk radio seriously - and whole alternate reality and 2 years of screaming about the deep state would go down the drain.

it would be a lot easier to get 66 senators if the cons were't afraid of limbaugh and the base any more

[certainot]

20. limbaugh has to look neutral - he makes or breaks GOP candidates - it would start a bidding war for

his endorsement if he was for sale and there'd be no reason for primaries

he's supposed to make his living from advertising and syndication and be 'neutral'

if it is discovered that trump paid him the bush rubio voters and a hell of a lot of others regretting this disaster would get really pissed off. he supported trump while trying not to and that's why trump beat the big money establishment candidates with 'less' money. since the election he has basically been working for trump.

he leads 1500 stations from his 600. at $1000/hr that 1200 stations x 15 hrs/day supporting trump are worth about $5BIL - basically free

i imagine it would be illegal campaign spending too. cohen might know and it would be a huge missed opportunity for dems not to ask about it. i'll bet the hannity /cohen relationship wasn't about hiding a hannity affair - it was about real estate and hopefully they'll find out it was payment for his services

and from what we know of trump there's a real likelihood he could have gotten laundered money

and to discredit limbaugh like that would destroy the republican party and the base that trump/limbaugh use to intimidate GOP senators. that would make it a hell of a lot easier to get trump out with senate impeachment or any other method.

here are a few egs of when putin may have been using limbaugh and the talk radio monopoly he's point man for - whether he knew it or not:

2008 - Manafort using Limbaugh to force McCain to pick Palin

Paul Manafort was McCain’s 2008 campaign cochair. This was right after Limbaugh seems to have broken with or was breaking with the GOP establishment. It was also about the time Breitbart started horning in on the MIC-friendly Drudge report that had been feeding talk radio for many previous years. Blue dress, etc.

McCain was thinking about Pawlenty and even Lieberman. Limbaugh still wouldn’t support McCain, a looming disaster for the GOP convention. Minutes before the start of the Limbaugh show on the Friday before the GOP convention, Aug 29, McCain publicly announced Palin and Limbaugh immediately used the announcement to finally support McCain. The announcement was timed for Limbaugh’s show and he was ready. Did he have prior knowledge of it? At that time Alaska Gov Palin was being courted by Russians re oil and gas.

Steve Schmidt felt responsible for convincing McCain to pick Palin but Russian Paul Manafort was there too. Schmidt could have been the last straw, talking up Palin to McCain because he felt that’s what the (talk radio) base wanted, even if Manafort had pushed Palin also.


2009 Climategate from Russian-hacked emails

In 2009 Limbaugh started the “Climategate” hoax based on Russian-hacked emails, a development timed to sabotage Obama at the Copenhagen climate talks a week later. Every year we delay on global warming is worth billions to Putin, not just the Kochs. I believe East Anglia researchers were hacked on a Thursday and by the next Monday the emails had been taken out of context and the material given to Limbaugh for the start of his show. That was one of the few times I had ever heard Limbaugh give so many hours straight to one issue. He said it was proof that global warming was a hoax and I heard Trump repeat that at least once in the last couple of years.

Was Limbaugh paid for that?


2011 Defaulting on the Debt

In 2011 Limbaugh spent 2 months trying to get Republicans to force the US to default, something Putin would enjoy more that any US billionaire.


2012 Benghazi

Many of the Trump/Russian-related material used in trolling re Hillary Clinton came out of the 2012 Benghazi ‘embassy’ attack. Talk radio did the heavy lifting repetition re emails, etc. that ties into all this crap we’re dealing with now.

One of the lies talk radio spread required head of PR for the US marines to make a public rebuttal. Until then it was all over national and local talk radio — that Obama and Clinton had prohibited US marines guarding US embassies from carrying live ammo. They were basically encouraging attacks on US embassies. Where did that particular story originate?

The entire Hillary email issue related to her using a private server because she knew Republicans would try to get her private emails and leak selected items to Limbaugh etc.

There are many other RW talk radio campaigns the last ten years that would have benefited the Kremlin.


Why not Kremlin callers?

Calls to national talkers can reach millions.

Since Republican radio has been shown to use paid callers, why not Kremlin callers instead of Heritage Foundation callers? Automated call screening software might be programmed to advance calls from GOP think tanks. That might be easy to hack but it wouldn’t be a surprise to find out that a Russian company makes good call screening software at a great price…..

Callers play an important part in keeping local talk radio hosts in line with Limbaugh, prompting topics, and suggesting lies, scandals, and violence.

Are Euopean talk shows using such call screener software? Brazillian? Mexican?

Were British talk shows getting callers from Russia re Brexit?


Kremlin emailing US talk shows?

And the other day the local blowhard read an email from a ‘listener’ who cheered the shutdown, saying government workers were lazy scammers.

How many other local blowhards in states all over the country read the same email, and did it come from the White House, a GOP think tank, or maybe even the Kremlin.

That is the problem of ignoring RW radio.


NOW

The main defense of Trump on the new allegations that the FBI was investigating him will happen on talk radio led by Limbaugh. The groundwork attack on the “deep state” has already been laid down in the base and started right after inauguration — all this was anticipated and the base has been inoculated and supplied with ammunition for denial.

The story from Limbaugh is that President Obama and the “deep state” did all this to protect the ‘criminal’ Hillary Clinton, who commissioned for the Steele Dossier to be made up, and all sorts of other crap.

That propaganda will continue to pollute jury pools and intimidate and enable media, judges, and politicians of both parties.

Discrediting it, or at least giving the media something to look into, will go a long way to fixing things.

[hughee99]

22. That's a long post but nowhere in it did you explain HOW paying

Limbaugh was actually illegal, Andersen not even sure if that happened. I will say that if anything comes down to Cohen’s word against anyone else’s word, no one is going to get in trouble with the law. Once you get someone to plead guilty to lying, it’s tough to turn around and call them credible. I have no doubt Cohen has plenty of embarrassing things about Trump to say. If he’s going to make any claims of illegality on Trump’s part, and is allowed to talk about it, that means Mueller chose not to follow up on it (likely because he knows it won’t hold up).

Honestly, I’ll be surprised if he testifies at all before the Mueller report comes out, though.

[certainot]

25. as i said, the importance is not about legality, but it would have been a campaign expenditure and

they would have wanted to hide it.

for one thing there would be no reason for primaries because the candidates would be running against limbaugh - a non-starter

if mueller's thorough as they say he'll probably find that too, hopefully, and you'll see media come out of the woodwork to blast the asshole who's been shitting on the liberal media for 30 years while hiding behind call screeners and the dittohead/teabag/trump-base army of screamers

[hughee99]

36. If you are going to do this using a congressional investigation,

The importance should be legality. Otherwise it’s one of those politically motivated investigations we all agreed were bad when the republicans were in control.

[certainot]

40. democrats have spent 30 years getting our asses kicked because of ignoring talk radio and

now there's significant circumstantial evidence that it was a component of russian coordination and of the russian interference and trump collusion - ignoring that possibility is serious legal and political malpractice

[hughee99]

41. If Mueller presents significant evidence of coordination and

Collusion between the Trump and Russia, I’m all for it. If he doesn’t, starting up a whole new investigation to try to prove the same claims is going to look politically motivated.

[BobTheSubgenius]

17. When you say "likely done with."

I take that to mean items of which the DOJ already has good corroboration.

[Claritie Pixie]

27. Wow! That's quite a list! We're going to learn a lot.

[empedocles]

28. This is really great. The title lead me to think Onion joke.

[lark]

29. So, basically everything besides foreign countries.

Still that leaves tons of room for the serially criminal drumpf crimes to be explored. Can't wait until Monday, hope the hearing is over before I go to my yoga class.

[Leghorn21]

34. Oh I'm so confused, lark, I thought he was testifying twice, but now it's three times:

Cohen’s Tuesday interview with Senate investigators will be his first of three appearances on Capitol Hill next week. On Wednesday, Cohen is set to appear before the House Oversight Committee in a public hearing that is expected to focus on his work forthe president, including the payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who alleged that they had had affairs with Trump. The next day, he is scheduled to attend a closed-door interview with the House Intelligence Committee.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/21/michael-cohen-testify-senate-intel-panel-1179118

...and Monday doesn’t seem to be one of the days, so you needn’t worry about tomorrow!?

He’s appearing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

(Right? I think I have this right
Finally!!)

[Leghorn21]

30. I'm too math-sad to count the hours, but 10:30am ET, Wednesday, February 27, 2019 can't get here

soon enough

LORDY

[dem4decades]

33. I won't be near a TV, where can I listen to it on my phone?

[procon]

35. How much of this will be public testimony vs

Cohen and the committee locked away in a secure room ?

[badhair77]

38. I have a lunch meeting and later an appointment with my accountant.

I hate missing this testimony. Maybe I’ll cancel the lunch meeting - too many trumpers there anyway.