Tuesday night, she took on an exchange between Michael Cohen's lawyers in the New York Court and Judge Kimba Wood. Judge Wood is often described as having a brilliant legal mind or being one of the nation's foremost jurists. She was nominated to become Bill Clinton's Attorney General but had to withdraw when it came out that she had employed domestic workers who were not in the country legally. This was in the late 80s when this was just beginning to become an issue that disqualified people for high profile appointments.
Rachel introduced this segment of her show by saying that the New York investigation and the raid of Michael Cohen's offices and home "really are about the President." This was to explain the scene in the courtroom that day in which Cohen's lawyers were trying to explain to Judge Wood why they were not prepared with their arguments.
One of them explained that he had been concentrating solely on the Russian connections and the campaign finance charges. But they had only just discovered that:
"There are five paragraphs in that Attachment A that deal directly with seeking the papers of the President [that are] in possession of my client. . . . There are five paragraphs there. The case is that."No wonder Cohen's lawyers are bewildered if they didn't know that, among the documents seized in the raids, were papers involving the President of the United States. Well, yes, we all assumed there would be some evidence of work that Cohen did for Trump; but this sounds more like some "papers" that Cohen was keeping in supposed secrecy and safety that are now radioactive.
Or maybe not. We don't know at this point what Attachment A is an attachment to. Maybe it's the search warrant. But we don't have that information. I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps Rachel will have more information on her show tonight. If so, I'll add it below.
If not, it could be that Cohen's lawyers are merely trying to take the heat off Cohen by making it seem "this is about the president." Either way, it's a development worth watching closely.
[Later: Rachel discussed this further but only in the context of the cases, which Cohen handled, that had to do with paying women to keep quite about affairs with Trump. I was expecting that these "five paragraphs" might have to do with fraudulent financial transactions. And that could still be the case.]
There another matter related to the Cohen case that Rachel brought up. The head of the Southern District of New York's federal prosecutor office is headed by a Trump appointee, Jeffrey Berman. But Berman has recused himself on strong advice from the Ethics Division of the Justice Department. No reason was given other than an unspecified conflict of interest. So the case is being conducted by the next in line, a career prosecutor in the department.
We've all breathed sighs of relief that Trump can't interfere because the state offices are not under his direct control -- although he does nominate the head and the senate confirms. But he can't pardon someone for a state crime.
The thing is that Berman is only an interim appointee. Trump has not yet made a formal nomination of him to the senate -- and his interim appointment expires in two and a half weeks. If Trump let's that expire, he could then appoint someone else to that position who would not have to recuse -- and then that person could quash the case against Cohen . . . which really "is about the president"?
So in truth this is not really any more safe from Trump's interference than is the Mueller investigation.d Except that he can't pardon anyone for a state crime.
Ralph
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