Michael Cohen, a longtime advocate of Donald trump and a business partner, which the FBI raided and seized documents Monday did not mince words.
“I’m the one who protects the President and family. I’m the one who’ll take a bullet for the President”.
“If somebody does something Mr. trump doesn’t like it, I will do everything in my power to resolve it in favor of Mr. trump. If you do something wrong, I’m coming for you, to grab you by the neck, and I’m not going to let you go till I finish.”
“I warn you, tread very fucking easy, because I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. Do you understand me?”
Cohen is no ordinary lawyer. It is not even just someone sent 130,000 $in bribe to Stormy Daniels. He is a man who did crude and violent threats to protect Donald trump, and called himself the “fix-it Trumps boyfriend.”
But it is much more than that. For nearly a decade, Cohen worked as senior managers in the trump organization. At that time he was a commercial transactions in countries of the former Soviet Union and even tried to trump tower, Moscow why during the presidential campaign.
Cohen also rich investor in his own right, with a taxi medallion by the enterprise and eyebrow-raising real estate portfolio. His family and past financial ties with the Ukrainian business. He is the MP of the Department of Finance of the National Committee of the Republican party. And last year, he was legally representing trump personally.
Now Cohen is the guy who is in very serious legal trouble of their own. The Ministry of justice and the FBI made the unusual move of removing documents from him, though he is a lawyer — lawyer President! This implies, the investigators, in their opinion, evidence of serious violations.
But Cohen so closely with trump as long the President can be in major danger too. Indeed, President trump reacted to news of the raids with a fury, calling it “an attack on our country” and claiming that “many people say” he should be fired Mueller. But to understand why, we need to understand who Michael Cohen is and why it is so important to trump.
Who is Michael Cohen?
Cohen was born in 1966 in long island, new York, the son of an immigrant who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. He had an unusual interest at an early stage, and later tells the new York times that he helped import luxury cars in the USA while studying at the American University. After that, he received a law degree from a little-known Thomas M. Cooley law school in Michigan and was admitted to the new York bar in 1992. After a brief stay at the Law firm, Cohen opened a solo practice.
Around this time, personal life and business interests of both Cohen became deeply enmeshed in a community of Ukrainian immigrants in new York. Both Cohen and his brother Brian married Ukrainian immigrants, and both did business with the fathers of their wives. Cohen and the Ukrainian partners started buying up taxi medallions (the most expensive city-issued permits required to work in a taxi).
Moreover, the Cohen legal representatives of what is called the Ukrainian Fund capital growth, he and two Ukrainian partners have made bad investments in the gaming cruise business, and he tried to show us investors to Finance the Ukrainian company ethanol under the control of the allegedly mob-connected oligarch.
All this seems to have made Cohen a very rich — he owned a fleet of over 200 taxi to 2003 and became a partner in the law firm of Phillips, nizer a few years after that. He dabbled in politics, too: though a longtime Democrat, he switched to the Republican party and became the candidate of the Republican party in the 2003 new races of the Council of York. (His democratic opponent, the future of the Charter school CEO Eva Moskowitz, beat him by 52 percentage points.)
But sometimes a strange incident occurred on the way. At one point, in 1999, Cohen cashed the $350,000 to check out the NHL player wrote as a loan to the Russian women. But the woman received no money, and in a later deposition, Cohen was unable to explain what happened to him, as Anthony Cormier from buzzfeed news (which, together with his colleagues did a lot of work reporting on Cohen’s past business ties) last year.
Cohen has a decade of history with Donald trump
Cohen occurrences in Trumpworld came because he used some of his newfound wealth to buy the trump properties and recommended it to family and business partners to do the same thing in the early 2000-ies. (“Trump properties are solid investments,” he told the new York post.) In the end, he became Treasurer of the Board of trump World Tower in new York, which is how he met Donald trump Jr. and his father in the end.
Cohen was in the right place at the right time. A group of disgruntled owners of the trump world Tower was taken under the control of the Council, and accused trump of financial fraud. That’s when Cohen stepped in to help Mogul. Together, Cohen and trump organized a “coup, which resulted in a confrontation between [trump’s] security and private security guards hired by the disgruntled owners”, later the new York times reported. They won.
Trump was impressed, and soon after, in early 2007, he offered Cohen the job: Executive Vice President and special Advisor to the trump organization. The duties of the task was varied. In the first few years, Cohen will address issues ranging from new project development in Jersey mixed martial arts live events. In 2011, he took a leading role in advising trump about his growing political ambitions, launching a website called “should trump run?” and flies to Iowa to meet with Republican operatives. (Trump not to run for President in 2012.)
Things were going well for Cohen. He has assumed an increasingly significant role in the trump organization, helping to explore potential development projects in Georgia and Kazakhstan. Then he bought four new York properties on a combined $ 11 million and a few years later sold them to various which aggregate $30 million (operations that the former Peter stone and Greg Gordon later flag as strangely lucrative). In early 2015, Cohen laid out a massive $ 58 million to buy a house in the upper East side, the rental, saying that he wanted to convert it into condominiums.
The role of the priest in the beginning of the presidential campaign, trump
In June 2015, trump began his successful run for the presidency, and Cohen still work for the trump organization, became a legal Advisor to the campaign. Very quickly, he made headlines. In July the Daily beast has prepared a story about an old Ivana trump’s deposition in which she said that Donald trump raped her. To answer Cohen’s (false) claims that the law “can’t rape your spouse” according to the law of the state of new York.
In an attempt to stop the story from being printed, he then went on to threaten profanely reporter Tim Mak:
Next month, in August, the Ukrainian steel billionaire Victor Pinchuk reached out through an intermediary and asked the presidential candidate trump will speak at the conference, he takes in Kiev. Trump agreed, but soon Cohen sent word that he would require a donation of $ 150,000 trump Fund in exchange for speaking. Payment in recent years drawn the attention of the special Advisor Robert Mueller, the new York times reported this week.
Then in the fall, Cohen began to explore the possibility of construction of trump tower in Moscow, with longtime business partner, Russian-born Developer Felix safer. “I’ll take Putin for this program, and we get Donald chose” safer email Cohen. “Mate, our boy may become President of the United States and we can design it. I Putin [SIC] the team to buy into it.” (Cohen later say safer was just using “colorful language” and “spiritual man.”)
The American company signed a letter of intent to build in Moscow the tower in October. In December, the Times reports, Cohen saw the news about Putin’s praise trump and sent his old friend (probably safer) “now is the time … Call me.”
Then in mid-January 2016, just a few weeks before Iowa, Cohen even e-mail the press Secretary of Putin, Dmitry Peskov, asked to help with the project. “I hereby request your help,” writes Cohen. “I respectfully ask someone, preferably you, contact me so I can discuss the specifics and arrange meetings with relevant persons”. Cohen said he has not received a response from Peskov and says the company abandoned the project soon after.
The role of the Cohen, cash payments
Throughout the advertising campaign, the most famous state Cohen’s time was his strange August 2016 appearance on TV in which the host of CNN said trump was behind in the polls and Cohen repeatedly asked, “who says?”
But it is his explicit behind-the-scenes work for trump, which has now become so controversial — in particular, its role in the organization of the bribe payments to two women who said they had Affairs with trump.
On 6 August 2016, the former Playboy model Karen Mcdougal signed not
Then in October of 2016 as election day approached, the Director of a porn star/Stormy Daniels threatened to bring her story about the 2006 intercourse with trump. Cohen has come across it before — five years ago, Daniels told his story to in touch magazine, but Cohen threatened litigation and the journal will not publish.
(Daniels now says he was at this time that the man threatened her while she was with her daughter in the Parking lot. He told her: “Leave trump alone,” says: “a beautiful little girl. It would be a shame if something happened to mom”.)
Cohen wanted to keep Daniel quiet. He created a shell company required consultants LTD on October 27, 2016, wired 130,000 dollars on lawyers Daniels. The next day, Daniels and Cohen signed not
Things have changed for Cohen in the last months
Publications trump card-Russia Christopher Steele dossier on buzzfeed news in January 2017 Cohen is back in the national spotlight. Dossier of alleged collusion between a campaign trump and the Russian government to interfere in the elections of 2016 and said Cohen played a key role in this.
However, according to Steele sources on Cohen remain fully confirmed. In addition, Cohen vehemently denied its claims about him— that he went to Prague in August 2016, to meet with Russian officials and showed his passport to journalists their denials, at least for that period of time. He also sued buzzfeed and fusion of GPS (the company pays Clinton campaigns and the dnc to compile a dossier) on the damages of defamation.
Cohen later announced in January 2017 that he would leave the trump organization, but continued to work as a personal trump card of the Prosecutor, in what some observers saw as an attempt to keep his lawyer-client with the new President. He made a “strategic Alliance” with a law and lobbying firm “Squire Patton Boggs”, and Republicans called him a people’s Deputy of the Department of Finance.
But soon after the inauguration of the trump, Cohen made headlines again, on the question of international intrigue. 27 January 2017, Cohen and his colleague Felix safer met Andrey Artemenko, the Pro-Russian Ukrainian MP Cohen, who was known for many years. Artemenko has allegedly given them a proposal for a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia is paired with alleged evidence of corruption, who said that it can be used to discredit the President of Ukraine. There were conflicting reports, Cohen then delivered this document to the White house and then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
And soon there were signs of trouble Cohen. The cost of a new York taxi medallion company fell because of competition from uber and lyft (price decreased from $ 1.3 million in 2014 to below $200,000). New York daily news reported that Cohen and his wife owed more than $ 37,000 dollars in unpaid taxes taxi. Meanwhile, and apparently separately, to check Russia, the investigators of the Congress and the Executive branch clutched in its activities.
Finally, on 12 January 2018, “wall Street Journal” by Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo broke the news that Cohen gave $130,000 payment to Daniels — who opened a whole new world for him as he struggled to get his testimony about what happened and what trump knew about it. And how it all developed, investigators Robert Mueller was to examine the role of Cohen in foreign business deals for the trump organization.
What legal problems Cohen the trump card?
Full specifics of why the Ministry of justice destroyed the office of Cohen and the hotel where he was staying on Monday is not yet known. It is said to be “direction” from Muller in the United States prosecutors based in Manhattan, and ultimately approved by the Deputy General Prosecutor rod Rosenstein.
The times reported that agents were looking for records about money, payments Daniels and MacDougal. The Washington Post reports that Cohen is “under Federal investigation for possible fraud, Bank fraud and violating campaign Finance”. Meanwhile, CNN reports that a warrant even targeted documents Cohen related his taxi medallions.
All this may be completely unrelated to investigation of the Russian conspiracy. On the other hand, if the search needs to be appropriate evidence that the Department of justice can turn his team Muller. And if Cohen ultimately face charges on abstract themes, it’s at least possible that he’ll freak out and offer incriminating information about trump as part of the deal plea deal, he must have any (although he categorically denied that he would ever do such a thing).
What is already clear is the fact that the RAID and seizure of documents from the lawyer — lawyer of the President, no less — is incredibly unusual. Senior officials of the Ministry of justice and judges, judges came to the conclusion that there is no likelihood that Cohen was evidence of a Federal crime that he can’t be trusted to transfer information freely, and that there is reason to believe that Cohen had forfeited his attorney-client privilege by “involvement in crime or fraud,” lawyer Ken writes white.
Team Cohen says that the relationship between Cohen and trump card were seized. And, accordingly, trump responded with panic and anxiety — suggesting that he is incredibly bothered to focus on Cohen, and by doing that it is very vague.
Sourse: vox.com
