The Briefing Room
General Category => Trump Legal Investigations => Topic started by: mystery-ak on December 12, 2018, 11:29:58 pm
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A tale of two Trump comrades
Feds have gone easier on high-profile liberal Democrats than they have Trump associates
By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Wednesday, December 12, 2018
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Paul Manafort thought he was in the clear in the summer of 2014 after meeting with federal prosecutors and FBI agents about his Ukrainian income, bank records and income tax returns.
Michael Cohen was charged so quickly he never got a chance to meet with the Justice Department’s Tax Division to negotiate a non-criminal solution to his tax evasion, a court filing says.
Today, both men stand convicted of tax cheating in indictments brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in 2017-2018.
The two have other similarities.
Manafort and Cohen worked closely with President Trump, as campaign manager and personal attorney, respectively. Both men didn’t come under investigation until the FBI opened its Russia probe in July 2016. A Manafort friend said that if the political consultant hadn’t gone to work for Mr. Trump, he never would have faced charges in a 2014 probe that had gone dormant.
Conservatives see decisions to prosecute them — on tax charges not remotely connected to Russian collusion — as the Justice Department’s and Mr. Mueller’s strong-arm tactics. They wanted to force guilty pleas and then gain cooperation, with a goal of getting evidence against Mr. Trump.
more
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/12/manafort-cohen-were-prosecuted-tax-matters-could-h/?cache (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/12/manafort-cohen-were-prosecuted-tax-matters-could-h/?cache)
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Rowan is leaving out more than a few key points. First, the work Manafort did for the Trump campaign was for free and specifically designed to get back in Deripaska’s good graces. Also, after the 2014 discussion with the FBI, Manafort continued engaging in financial fraud, leaving him open to further investigation. He cites T. S. Ellis and his skepticism in the article, but fails to mention how, after requesting redacted filings, the judge agreed with the prosecution the charges ultimately fell under the investigation scope. Cohen has cooperated with the Mueller probe and we do not know what ‘political synergy’ means or who the Russian national was with whom he had that conversation. All of that matters.
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Seems like much ado about nothing