The "D" day pool, best guess as to when Trump is out

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Donald's tweets this morning were unhinged, was he pissed at Comey! Today was not a good day for Micheal Cohen, seems they know he was in Prague meeting and russians and hackers, the Steele dossier was right again. He was also involved in a 1.2 million dollar hush money payment for another GOP finance vice chair for a mistress who had an abortion. That would be a major election violation to support the GOP and Trump, Cohen is in very deep trouble and I don't think a Trump pardon would hold up in the SCOTUS and NY state will be on Cohen too. I wonder what they got in the raid on Cohen, Trump is pissed because Trump is worried. He is gonna be turned into America's biggest loser and he knows it, they are not just gonna convict him, they are gonna completely humiliate and break him before they put him away in a supermax, solitary 23/7. He will be raving in a week and the cell will be changed to one with rubber walls, they might even leak the video of him pacing his cell like a caged animal. Donald has pissed off a lot of people and when he falls there will be lots of people who will jump on the cocksucker with both feet.

.He can't stop this even if he burns down the DOJ in Washington and NY. Donald just fell off the cliff and gravity is starting to take hold of him and drag him down at an accelerating rate. He's taking aim at the ground and is about to fire a jetpack to accelerate his plunge earthward. Rod Rosenstein is the ignition switch and he's holding it in his sweaty little hand, getting ready to push the button. Rod is gonna get a great job at a top drawer law firm making many times his government salary and might even have a book and movie deal one day. Not bad for serving your country and taking a bullet for the rule of law. Michael Cohen's biggest problem will be to avoid being cornholed in prison.

Well the war in Syria is starting, wag the dog time. Nato is in the lead on this one with Britain and France pushing it. Trump told them it would be a missle strike by the US a couple of days ago, so the russians and Syrians can clear out. Another 100 million in cruse missiles wasted on empty bases.

 

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Donald Trump's presidency is collapsing
Rex HuppkeContact Reporter


We know President Donald Trump is a strong man, possibly the strongest and most fit president we’ve ever had.

But even his broad shoulders — which many say are the broadest of all the presidential shoulders — can’t carry the weight of the scandals that are presently piling up.

We’re only one year into Trump’s presidency, and we’re already witnessing its entirely predictable collapse.

Consider the news swirling about on Thursday:

Robert Mueller continues to look into whether Trump obstructed justice and whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. And the administration is dealing with other problems, from EPA head Scott Pruitt’s bizarre spending habits to turnover that is unprecedented in American presidential history.

Republican lawmakers are announcing plans to retire — most recently House Speaker Paul Ryan — and the sense in Washington, at least among conservatives, is that rough days are ahead.

This is untenable. Every president winds up embroiled in some form of scandal, maybe even several. But the sheer volume of controversies consuming the Trump White House is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Some may be false, some may be exaggerated, some may be legitimate. But their very existence points to a president whose past should have disqualified him from office and whose temperament consistently leads him to trouble.

If we had President Jeb Bush or President Marco Rubio right now, there would be ample partisan squabbling and quite possibly a minor scandal or two. But I feel confident we wouldn’t have “pee tape” trending on Twitter. We wouldn’t have a special counsel closing in on the president or a series of salacious stories about questionable payoffs for past affairs. We wouldn’t have the home and office of the president’s personal attorney being raided by the FBI.

This is too much for Trump to shoulder and it’s too much for this country to maintain. And there’s a good chance that within moments of this column publishing there will be another scandal, and an hour later five more.

Trump will never admit his presidency is collapsing.

But it is, and fast.

And there’s nothing our strong, tough and staggeringly healthy president can do to slow it down.

 

[greg nr]

Donald Trump's presidency is collapsing
Rex HuppkeContact Reporter


We know President Donald Trump is a strong man, possibly the strongest and most fit president we’ve ever had.

But even his broad shoulders — which many say are the broadest of all the presidential shoulders — can’t carry the weight of the scandals that are presently piling up.

We’re only one year into Trump’s presidency, and we’re already witnessing its entirely predictable collapse.

Consider the news swirling about on Thursday:

Robert Mueller continues to look into whether Trump obstructed justice and whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. And the administration is dealing with other problems, from EPA head Scott Pruitt’s bizarre spending habits to turnover that is unprecedented in American presidential history.

Republican lawmakers are announcing plans to retire — most recently House Speaker Paul Ryan — and the sense in Washington, at least among conservatives, is that rough days are ahead.

This is untenable. Every president winds up embroiled in some form of scandal, maybe even several. But the sheer volume of controversies consuming the Trump White House is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

Some may be false, some may be exaggerated, some may be legitimate. But their very existence points to a president whose past should have disqualified him from office and whose temperament consistently leads him to trouble.

If we had President Jeb Bush or President Marco Rubio right now, there would be ample partisan squabbling and quite possibly a minor scandal or two. But I feel confident we wouldn’t have “pee tape” trending on Twitter. We wouldn’t have a special counsel closing in on the president or a series of salacious stories about questionable payoffs for past affairs. We wouldn’t have the home and office of the president’s personal attorney being raided by the FBI.

This is too much for Trump to shoulder and it’s too much for this country to maintain. And there’s a good chance that within moments of this column publishing there will be another scandal, and an hour later five more.

Trump will never admit his presidency is collapsing.

But it is, and fast.

And there’s nothing our strong, tough and staggeringly healthy president can do to slow it down.

The first two paragraphs of this piece are nauseating. The rest misses the point. Not worth the electrons it took to display.........

 

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The first two paragraphs of this piece are nauseating. The rest misses the point. Not worth the electrons it took to display.........

Electrons is cheap, but I liked the sarcasm of the first couple of lines (I sure as shit hope it was sarcasm), though he did go pretty lightly over the scandals, it would take a book of several volumes to do Donald "justice" when it comes to crime, incompetence, malfeasance and scandal.

Trump's presidency is not collapsing, it's imploding along with Trump!

 

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Monologue: Operation Desert Stormy | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

 

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Michael Cohen’s visiting Prague would be a huge development in the Russia investigation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/04/14/michael-cohen-visiting-prague-would-be-a-huge-development-in-the-russia-investigation/?utm_term=.ceb5e37a5396

McClatchy reported on Friday evening that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has evidence of a trip by President Trump’s personal lawyer to Prague in the late summer of 2016. Overseas travel to non-Russian countries might strike some observers as an incremental — if not unimportant — development in Mueller’s probe. That is not the case. Confirmation that Cohen visited Prague could be quite significant.

A trip to Prague by Cohen was included in the dossier of reports written by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele. Those reports, paid for by an attorney working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, included a broad array of raw intelligence, much of which has not been corroborated and much of which would probably defy easy corroboration, focusing on internal political discussions in the Kremlin.

Cohen’s visiting Prague, though, is concrete. Over the course of three of the dossier’s 17 reports, the claim is outlined — but we hasten to note that these allegations have not been confirmed by The Washington Post.

It suggests that Cohen took over management of the relationship with Russia after campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fired from the campaign in August (because of questions about his relationship with a political party in Ukraine). Cohen is said to have met secretly with people in Prague — possibly at the Russian Center for Science and Culture — in the last week of August or the first of September. He allegedly met with representatives of the Russian government, possibly including officials of the Presidential Administration Legal Department; Oleg Solodukhin (who works with the Russian Center for Science and Culture); or Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of parliament. A planned meeting in Moscow, the dossier alleges, was considered too risky, given that a topic of conversation was how to divert attention from Manafort’s links to Russia and a trip to Moscow by Carter Page in July. Another topic of conversation, according to the dossier: allegedly paying off “Romanian hackers” who had been targeting the Clinton campaign.

There is a lot there — but it hinged on Cohen’s having traveled to Prague. If he was not in Prague, none of this happened. If he visited Prague? Well, then we go a level deeper.

McClatchy notes that there is no evidence of who, if anyone, Cohen met with, but that the time frame was in late August or early September, as the dossier suggests.

More...

 

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I'm surprised! By now I figured that Donald would have tweeted out Rosenstein's firing! I guess when he heard that Rosenstein was at peace with it and "prepared", it took the joy out of it for him. Also I'm pretty sure he was warned by Mitch that this time would be different. If he took out Rosenstein, Mueller and Sessions might act, Mueller and Rosenstein would be before the senate judiciary on monday.

Ya just know that Donald is losing his fucking mind this weekend and all he could manage was a "test" pardon of Scooter Libby, a popular move at the CIA I'm sure! If they don't indict Donald, he will be an unindicted co conspirator for sure and Cohen probably ensnared dozens of more people with his sound recordings. I'm pretty sure the Cohen raid is gonna lead to other raids, warrants, interviews and arrests depending on how extensive the recordings are. There have been reports that there are 30 years of Trump's records there numbering in the millions of pages. Cohen was Trump's mouthpiece and fixer since 2006 so it will cover the russian business for certain.

I think the Cohen raid makes it even more difficult to remove Rosenstein, Mueller or Sessions. Now that the NYC FBI & DOJ offices are involved, the investigations that threaten Trump the most have taken on a life of their own. Firing Mueller or Rosenstein will be of no help at all for removing the biggest hair up Donald's ass right now, Cohen's files and tapes! Imagine if it comes out that Cohen has recordings of Donald doing bad things, if you thought Trump is scared now, just wait...

Somebody got through to Donald that firing Rosenstein might feel good, but it won't help with the raid on Cohen in NYC. That raid must have thrown Donald for a loop, if he had plans of firing someone soon, I'm sure this threw him off his game and back on his heels. He's frightened and confused, his usual state of mind, but the heat has been turned up several notches at once. This week promises to be another stellar performance by the POTUS, we await with baited breath for the coming crisis.

Are ya tired of winning yet? Or are ya tired of Donald?

 

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Will Democrats Win the House? Ask Texas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/sunday/democrats-win-house-texas.html

By Frank Bruni

Opinion Columnist

April 13, 2018
SAN ANTONIO — The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s wish list of House seats to flip from red to blue includes slightly over 100 districts — remember, it’s a wish list — and is chockablock with the usual swing states.

Ohio makes six appearances; Pennsylvania, seven. Wisconsin is present and more promising than ever, with Paul Ryan’s soon-to-be-open spot squarely in Democrats’ sights.

But wait, what’s this? Texas once, Texas twice, Texas five times in all. It reads like a typo. It looks like a delusion. Predominantly Republican and perversely gerrymandered, the Lone Star State is where Democrats send their dreams to die. Only 11 of its 36 House seats are in the party’s hands.

But 2018 is shaping up as a year in which old rules are out the window and everything is up for grabs. Ryan’s planned retirement and the increasing disarray of the Republican Party illustrate that. So does Texas’ emergence as a credible wellspring of Democratic hope.
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Trump Condemns The 'Disgraceful' Raid Of Michael Cohen

Following the raid of his lawyer's office and hotel room, the President called the FBI a wide variety of words like 'disgrace' and... 'disgraceful.'

 

[greg nr]

Still dangerous to be a russian above the first floor. Damn high place phenominon is strong with ruskies......

Russian journalist covering Wagner Group mercenary deaths in Syria dies after falling from balcony

Source: Business Insider

A Russian journalist who wrote about Russian mercenaries in Syria has died from injuries he sustained after falling from a balcony.

Maxim Borodin, 32, died at a hospital on Sunday after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in Yekaterinburg on Thursday, according to the Associated Press and RFERL. The Associated Press reported that it was unclear how Borodin fell, but RFERL reported that officials are considering his death to be a suicide.

Borodin wrote for a news website called Novy Den where he covered crime and corruption, RFERL reported. He recently helped break the story about the deaths of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries from Asbest who were killed in Syria during a fight with the US militar y in February.

Borodin's editor at Novy Den, Polina Rumyantseva, said on Sunday that she doesn't believe he committed suicide, RFERL reported. The Wagner Group has about 2,500 mercenaries in Syria, according to the BBC.

 

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Donald is just hopping about the Cohen raid and is freaking out trying to keep people from looking at the material, good luck with that! Cohen was an RNC vice chair for finance and the RNC has spent 20% of their budget on Trump's legal issues, not including 86% of last months catering budget spent on Trump properties. I figure by the time november comes around Donald will have spent all the RNC's money on legal bills and he hasn't even hired many real expensive lawyers yet! Donald is leading the GOP and the three top people in the finance part of the party are in deep shit.

Cohen is due in court today to answer some difficult questions and I'm sure Donald is intensely interested. They were saying on TV that Cohen might have years of audio recordings, if it was a real thing with him, I'm sure there are a few conversations with Donald recorded, without Donald's knowledge, I'll bet Donald is thinking that way too. I think they just broke open Donald's big vault of secrets and there's a lot to go through. He should be proud that his business genius will be on display for all to see, if he's innocent that is. If he's guilty and a phoney, he'll do what he's doing now, freak out.

Comey says Trump is smart and aware, not senile as many have speculated, just a complete moral and ethical vacuum, emotionally and socially he operates on the level of a lizard. He's shitty as a president, not because of a lack of basic intelligence, but for other reasons that have to do with attentional skills, emotion, character and fitness for office. Donald is a dumb mafia Don specialising in russian money laundering through real estate, who happened to become POTUS. He is also owned by Putin (or thinks he is) and is a traitor, the really surprising thing is how many other traitors there are in the GOP, but then again, they are just con artists too, like Donald.

 

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Trump's lawyers argue against FBI search of Michael Cohen's records in new filing
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/15/politics/michael-cohen-court-filing-trump-lawyers/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's lawyers argued in a new court filing Sunday against the FBI search of Michael Cohen's records, and sided with the former Trump Organization lawyer's legal team to make sure confidentiality to his legal clients hasn't been breached.

The President's attorneys called the federal searches of Cohen's home, office, hotel room and cellphones last Monday "an operation disquieting to lawyers, clients, citizens, and commentators alike."
RELATED: WSJ: Michael Cohen used same company for payment deals for two women
The Sunday night filing places the President directly in opposition to the wishes of one of the most significant US attorney's offices in the Justice Department. Instead, Trump backs his business colleague, who finds himself amid a months-long criminal investigation.
The filing marks the first time the President's legal representatives have waded into an ongoing criminal matter, an unusual but not unheard-of situation for past administrations.
Trump's newly enlisted lawyers from the firm Spears & Imes in New York, who stepped into the case Friday, largely support the same stance as the President's longtime personal attorney, Cohen, who is asking a judge to prevent federal investigators from using information seized without his review.

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THE PRESIDENT IS NOT ABOVE THE LAW
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD APRIL 15, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/15/opinion/editorials/president-above-rule-law.html

“This great nation can tolerate a president who makes mistakes,” declared Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican. “But it cannot tolerate one who makes a mistake and then breaks the law to cover it up.”

No, Mr. Hatch wasn’t talking about Donald Trump. It was 1999, and he was talking about Bill Clinton.

At that time, the American system — and the flawed yet sometimes heroic people their fellow Americans choose to lead them — underwent, and passed, a hard test: The president, his financial dealings and his personal relationships were painstakingly investigated for years. Prosecutors ultimately accused Mr. Clinton of lying under oath, to cover up a sexual affair. The House of Representatives impeached him, but the Senate declined to convict, and Mr. Clinton stayed in office.

The public, which learned in detail about everything investigators believed Mr. Clinton had done wrong, overwhelmingly agreed with the judgment of the Senate. It was a sad and sordid and at times distracting business, but the system worked.

Now Mr. Hatch and his fellow lawmakers may be approaching a harsher and more consequential test. We quote his words not to level some sort of accusation of hypocrisy, but to remind us all of what is at stake.

News reports point to a growing possibility that President Trump may act to cripple or shut down an investigation by the nation’s top law-enforcement agencies into his campaign and administration. Lawmakers need to be preparing now for that possibility because if and when it comes to pass, they will suddenly find themselves on the edge of an abyss, with the Constitution in their hands.

Make no mistake: If Mr. Trump takes such drastic action, he will be striking at the foundation of the American government, attempting to set a precedent that a president, alone among American citizens, is above the law. What can seem now like a political sideshow will instantly become a constitutional crisis, and history will come calling for Mr. Hatch and his colleagues.

For months, investigators have been examining whether Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government to undermine American democracy, and whether the president misused his power by obstructing justice in an effort to end that investigation.

Until the last few weeks, Mr. Trump had shown restraint, by his standards, anyway. He and his lawyers cooperated with investigators. Mr. Trump never tweeted directly about Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and spoke about him publicly only when asked.

Alas, that whiff of higher executive function is gone. Mr. Trump is openly attacking both Mr. Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, appointed by Mr. Trump himself. Mr. Rosenstein is overseeing the Russia investigation and signing off on Mr. Mueller’s actions.

Of course, this president has been known to huff and puff, to bluff and bluster, and he may be doing no more than that now. He may choose not to fire either man. We know he has already twice told his aides he wanted Mr. Mueller fired, only to be talked out of such rash action.

But if the president does move against the investigators, it will be up to Congress to affirm the rule of law, the separation of powers and the American constitutional order. The miserable polarization and partisan anger that have been rising in American life for decades will hit a new crescendo, and that will present congressional Republicans with a heavy burden indeed.

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More on the story above...... "Ok Judge,listen up, this is the potus we are talking about, only we can determine what is privileged. If it proves we are guilty, it's privileged".

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/16/1757379/-Hail-Mary-Trump-s-attorney-seeks-to-go-through-seized-evidence-to-pull-privileged-materials

Donald Trump's attorney seeks to go through seized evidence to pull 'privileged' materials

After months of investigation for bank and wire fraud, last Monday the FBI raided the home, office, hotel room and even the safety deposit box of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney. An unknown number of documents, audio recordings and emails were seized. Prosecutors tapped a “taint team” to go through the evidence to determine what is covered by attorney-client privilege and what can be turned over to the prosecution, an extraordinarily cautious move to protect everyone involved.

Late Sunday night, Donald Trump’s new attorney, Joanna Hendon, asked U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood to grant a highly unusual request—let Michael Cohen pour through it all to pull any evidence they consider to be off-limits due to attorney-client privilege. From the Washington Post:

She added that “the president respectfully requests” that the judge issue an order barring the taint team from conducting an initial review of the seized material and require the government to turn over a copy of that material to Cohen’s lawyers.

Then, the president wants the court to direct Cohen “to identify to the president all seized materials that relate to him in any way and to provide a copy of those materials to him and his counsel,” according to the letter. Any disputes about what material was or wasn’t covered by the attorney-client privilege would then be decided by a judge, under the president’s proposal.

LOL! They want the person under criminal investigation to have the ability to go through the evidence that was lawfully seized in a criminal investigation and keep it from prosecutors under a pinky swear it is covered by attorney-client privilege. On Friday, prosecutors went hard, telling Judge Wood that Michael Cohen may not be a lawyer at all. From CNBC:

But the prosecutors say they have already conducted searches of Cohen's email accounts, "covert until this point," which they say "indicate that Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that zero emails were exchanged with President Trump." [...]

"(1) Cohen did not have an email address associated with the firm; (2) Cohen did not have access to the firm's shared drives or document systems—and vice versa; (3) Cohen's documents were to be kept in a locked filing cabinet; and (4) Cohen did not have access to any of the firm's client files."



Both Michael Cohen and Donald Trump are fighting like hell to keep that evidence from prosecutors. Trump, who claimed to know nothing of the Stormy Daniels payment under investigation, has been lashing out on Twitter.​

 

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Jim Comey appears to be playing the picador here, annoying, distracting and weakening the animal. I'm sure the Cohen raid threw Donald off his firing frenzy and might have saved Rosenstein's job. Comey is distracting him and focusing his attention and anger away from his real problems in NY and with Mueller. He's now got a two headed monster to deal with, Mueller and NY.
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Comey drama: It's the cop against the con man
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/16/opinions/comey-drama-cop-against-the-con-man-opinion-dantonio/index.html
(CNN)Confronted with a con man -- the greatest and most dangerous con man on earth -- James Comey, the ultimate cop, carefully noted every move Donald Trump made. He also took the measure of the President and those he held close. And he monitored his own responses to Trump, which included feelings of alarm and the sense that the country is in peril.

"Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country," the former FBI director told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. "The most important being truth. This President is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president."
In an interview offered as his book "A Higher Loyalty" was about to be released, Comey explained how Trump deployed his usual methods to try to bring him into the alternate reality he had constructed to promote and protect himself. Others had been pulled into this shadowy world, where they shed their morals and became Trump's enablers and co-conspirators.

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[greg nr]

This should get interesting. This is a big "F$%^ You" to the judge.......

Cohen defies court order, refuses to release names of his clients
Source: thinkprogress



A dangerous game.
Judd Legum Apr 16, 2018, 11:30 am

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On Friday, a federal judge ordered Michael Cohen to turn over a list of his clients to the court by 10 a.m Monday morning. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood said she would make the list public since the identities of clients, in most instances, are not protected by attorney-client privilege.

Cohen’s clientele became an issue after the government raided his home, hotel room, and office on April 9th. At the time, Cohen sought a temporary restraining order to prohibit the government from reviewing any of the documents, claiming attorney-client privilege.

This morning, Cohen responded to Judge Wood’s order with a letter filed with the court shortly before the 10 a.m. deadline, in which he declared that he would not provide the names of any clients that weren’t already publicly available.

Cohen said he worked at Estrin & Associates from 1991 to 1995, and had “numerous clients” during that time. From 1996 to 2006, Cohen said he worked in his own private legal practice, serving “hundreds of different clients.” Then, in 2006, Cohen joined Phillips Nizer LLP, where he represented about 15 clients. In all these cases, Cohen declined to disclose the identities of these clients, but claims that the materials seized by the government could include information from this time period.

From 2007 to 2017, Cohen said he only worked for Donald Trump and the Trump organization.

From 2017 to 2018, Cohen said he was back in private practice and had only 10 clients. Seven of those were not legal clients and Cohen didn’t disclose their names. Two of the remaining three clients were Donald Trump and Elliot Broidy. Cohen’s relationship with Broidy was disclosed last week by the Wall Street Journal, which reported that Cohen helped negotiate a $1.6 million hush money agreement between Broidy, a top Trump fundraiser, and a Playboy Playmate who he impregnated.............................................

Cohen refused to reveal the identity of the third legal client because the client “directed Cohen not to reveal the identity publicly.” Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, writes that this client’s matters “are responsive” to the search warrant, but it appears to be a typo. Ryan seems to have forgot to include the word “not.”............................................

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/cohen-defies-court-order-refuses-to-release-names-of-his-clients-61fc4ffd9ad7/