Robert Mueller’s Desperate and Phony Manafort-Cohen Blitz: Time To Organize

by Barbara Boyd

[Print version of this article]

Aug. 22—For anyone thinking that the war against Robert Mueller is won and they can afford to not get out and organize their friends and neighbors to vote on Election Day, Tuesday, November 6th, the events of August 21, 2018, should have been a strong wakeup call, a hard kick in the rear end. Paul Manafort was convicted on eight counts of tax and bank fraud by a jury in Alexandria, Virginia. Donald Trump’s long-time personal attorney, Michael Cohen, entered a guilty plea the same afternoon to a variety of tax and bank fraud counts as well as pleading to two Federal Election Campaign Act counts for payments he said he made at the direction of candidate Trump to silence two women claiming they had affairs with Donald Trump.

While the press goes wild in celebration and RESIST gloats, there is only one answer to this witch hunt: Get out, Get active, campaign on the LaRouche program to secure the future, mobilize a vote which will stun them all on November 6th. As we have said, again, and again, November 6th is a definitive day for the history of our country. With Donald Trump, great things are possible. If the insane Democrats triumph, the future gets very dark indeed. The various horrors of the Bush/Obama years and worse, will rise again, in full and awful bloom.

Paul Manafort: Low-Hanging Fruit

Paul Manafort committed a cardinal sin when he continued to support Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine against the 2014 British/American/neo-nazi coup which installed a corrupt puppet government in that country as part of a regime change operation aimed directly at Vladimir Putin and Russia. Ever since, he has been targeted in the way that people get targeted by their weaknesses when they cross an arrogant, imperial power. As Lyndon LaRouche once said, there are really three ways—sex, family, money—by which people are corrupted, three major vehicles for compromising otherwise decent human beings.

The weaponizing of laws, the only way Robert Mueller has ever practiced, provides a fourth means—attack targets ruthlessly and selectively, let them stare at a sentence involving decades in prison. In typical Robert Mueller fashion, the Mueller indictment was overcharged; it exposed Manafort to 305 years in prison. Another indictment, involving the same conduct, but different crimes, is scheduled for trial in Washington, D.C. next month.

As Federal Judge T.S. Ellis commented, this prosecution has only one purpose: to terrorize Manafort into “singing” against Trump in order to save his own skin, to engage in the desperate acts by which witnesses “compose” rather than tell the truth. The pedestrian tax fraud and bank fraud charges implicate the types of things many in the D.C. lobbyist culture, with foreign clients in such locales as Israel, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia, engage in every day to minimize their taxes. It is the type of crime generally either settled with fines or with low jail sentences.

The difference is that Manafort had a target painted on his back from 2014 forward, and became an obsession for Mueller, who is establishing “credibility” by gathering easy scalps. The Manafort case had been under investigation and Justice Department lawyers were already active long before Robert Mueller ever became Special Counsel. Obama’s Justice Department investigated Manafort’s fairly notorious financial escapades and did nothing. The apparent balk was at the fact that numerous prominent Democratic Party lobbyists—including Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman—were involved in the same Ukrainian lobbying activities and similar schemes.

With the effort to neutralize the results of the 2016 election, the case was revived, inclusive of information provided directly by Ukrainian intelligence agencies. Mueller picked up the already largely prepared case. It was the equivalent of “low hanging fruit.” The Washington, D.C. indictment against Manafort involves a new and fairly unprecedented construction of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violations of which are generally handled civilly. Mueller has referred the other lobbyists involved in Manafort’s Ukraine activities, including Tony Podesta, to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York where many believe their transgressions will, again, be buried.

Michael Cohen: Not a Good Lawyer

Michael Cohen’s law office files were rifled by FBI agents and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York in a stunning April raid which made national news and caused most sane individuals to ask whether it was safe now in the United States to ever tell a lawyer anything. Cohen apparently engaged in some very sketchy activities involving his taxi business and sought to exploit his former relation with the President after the campaign ended to make tons and tons of money in what appears to be a flaky influence peddling scheme. But, prosecutors really weren’t all that interested in these transgressions. The headline here is that the lawyers in the Southern District of New York—many of whom are very bitter about Trump firing their former boss, U.S. Attorney and James Comey crony, Preet Bharara—want a role in framing the President.

If Cohen wanted out from under years in prison, he had to provide something against Trump. It turns out that Cohen had been taping his conversations with Trump, a violation of the most fundamental ethical obligations of a lawyer. Obviously terrified by his legal exposure, Cohen announced months ago that he was breaking with the President at the behest of his family and seeking a deal.

Cohen hired Clinton family lawyer Lanny Davis to orchestrate the deal. Davis’ fawning loyalty to Hillary Clinton is legendary. His subservient and grandiose email correspondence with her, released in the various legal proceedings concerning her illegal email server, has been described, even in the liberal press, as “cringe-worthy.” Davis is also a completely devoted “third way” Democrat, beloved of the likes of Tony Blair and Joe Lieberman.

In his plea deal, Cohen backs the salacious and disgusting allegations of flat-out “porn star” and “exotic dancer,” Stormy Daniels, and another woman, Karen McDougal, whose alleged sexual encounters with Donald Trump occurred years ago. These ladies, assisted by genuine scumbag lawyer and former Rahm Emanuel underling, Michael Avenatti, and the national news media, have been running a campaign for months, insisting that “hush money” paid to the two women by Cohen violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), and was a crime directed by Donald Trump.

Pursuit of these charges by the out-of-control Justice Department follows the complete failure of a similar case conducted by the DOJ against former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. Edwards was charged with FECA violations for arranging for hush money to be paid to hide an affair. A North Carolina jury acquitted him or otherwise hung on the counts in his indictment, which was almost universally seen, at the time, as a major abuse of prosecutorial power by Barack Obama’s Justice Department. Most experienced legal observers do not believe that what Trump is alleged to have done is even a crime under the FECA.

So, are you really prepared to stand by and see a President taken down on the word of a porn star? Is that where we are? It should be obvious that the witch hunt can be ended, but only if we organize to determine that result. Make the next days our best days. Join our Campaign to Secure the Future!