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https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-cohens-lawyers-ask-for-no-prison-time-after-plea-

Lawyers for Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, asked a federal judge in a memorandum filed late Friday night to impose no prison time for Mr. Cohen at his scheduled sentencing later this month, citing Mr. Cohen’s contrition and his cooperation with law enforcement.

In their plea for leniency, Mr. Cohen’s lawyers said Mr. Cohen’s decision to cooperate with investigators reflected his “personal resolve, notwithstanding past errors, to re-point his internal compass true north toward a productive, ethical and thoroughly law abiding life.”

The memo stressed the “weighty and fraught” decision by Mr. Cohen to break with his longtime former boss, who the filing noted has repeatedly attacked the special-counsel investigation into his associates as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.” Mr. Cohen, the lawyers said, “could have fought the government and continued to hold to the party line, positioning himself perhaps for a pardon.”

“In the circumstances of this case, at this time, in this climate, Michael’s decision to cooperate required and requires singular determination and personal conviction,” the lawyers wrote.

The filing came a day after Mr. Cohen, now 52 years old, pleaded guilty to one count brought by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, in which he admitted lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

In August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to eight counts, including five counts of tax fraud, one count of making false statements to a bank, and two campaign-finance violations related to hush-money payments to two women who said they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told the court that Mr. Trump ordered him to arrange the payments, which the president has denied.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-muellers-report-go-unanswered-1543786233?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Special counsel Robert Mueller is likely to wrap up his investigation soon and issue a confidential report to the attorney general. It is important to understand the legal status of such a report and how it should be released and evaluated under the Justice Department regulations governing special counsels.

First and foremost, because it is the report of a prosecutor, it will inevitably be one-sided. Prosecutors pick the witnesses they present to a grand jury. Defense lawyers are not allowed to appear with their clients, or to present witnesses who might contradict the prosecutor’s case. Prosecutors need not provide exculpatory evidence, even if they are aware of it. Nor need they interview witnesses who might contradict their narrative. That is why it is generally considered unfair for prosecutors to issue “reports.” Normally prosecutors announce only that the subject has been indicted or not, without further comment.

Special counsels are permitted, and sometimes required, to issue reports—but in doing so they are governed by rules. The title “special counsel” might seem to give their findings special weight—to which they are not legally, morally or logically entitled. That is why in a high-stakes case like this one, it is imperative that the target’s legal team be allowed to issue its own report, presenting its side of the case. Basic fairness requires this, and the American public is entitled to judge for itself which side is more persuasive.

There should never be a presumption in favor of crediting the one-sided reports prepared by prosecutors. Such reports have no higher status than an indictment, and an indictment handed up by a grand jury is not proof of guilt—only a charging instrument. Like an indictment, a special counsel’s report should not undercut the presumption of innocence.

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/the-russia-probe-has-nothing-to-do-with-russia/

America is at war with itself and the Russia probe is the leading, but far from the only, front in that war.

Bad as Vladimir Putin is, the investigation has little or nothing to do with Russia–which has been what it is since the days of the tsars–and everything to do with us.

From the Okhrana (the tsars’ secret police that authored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and specialized in agents provocateurs) to the Cheka to the NKVD to the KGB to the FSB, it has always been the same. The Russians — Soviet or not — have always engaged in disinformation. Their recent Facebook and Twitter offerings were nothing more than the tip of an iceberg that’s been sailing for years.

In other words words, there’s nothing new here. The indictments of the Russian hackers by Mueller and Company were no more than a face-saving charade. They will never be arrested and no one will care. No one remembers who they were even now, less than a year later, except that they vastly expand the number of those indicted for breathless press reports.

U.S. leaders have been trying, and largely failing, to cope with Russia in all its guises since Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was gulled by New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty, the progenitor of “fake news” and probably its worst practitioner, into thinking Stalin wasn’t so evil after all and that Dzhugashvili didn’t really starve over a million Ukrainians. And what little he did had to be done. After all, as Duranty put it, you had to break some eggs to make an omelet.
Exposing Joseph Stalin’s Media Apologist

Roosevelt went on to cede Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, setting up decades of misery. When Reagan came along and tried to reverse the situation, building the military and confronting Moscow, many of our Democrat friends — the same ones attacking Trump for being soft on Russia — cried foul and went viciously after Reagan as a war monger.

The hypocrisy is beyond comprehension. Do these people think we’ve had a lobotomy and can’t remember anything? Maybe they have.

Nevertheless, after the Wall fell, things only got better for a brief time because Russia remained Russia and our leaders remained ineffectual or worse in their ability to deal with it. George W. Bush naively looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his “soul.” Obama was sleazier. He colluded with the Russian dictator, being caught on video whispering to Putin’s lackey Medvedev to tell Vladimir that he, Barack, would be freer to make concessions after the election. (If Trump had been caught doing such a thing, CNN would be playing it fifty times a day for the next fifty years.) And then he literally gave Syria to the Russian dictator, walking back on his red line on chemical weapons. (Again, if Trump had done that, CNN would have had a mega-orgasm. We need a new word for extreme hypocrisy.)

But now we’re in the era of Trump and that intramural blood sport the Russia probe is in full blast, threatening never to end, people being arrested right and left for process crimes or for engaging in the kind of corruption that has pervaded Washington, D.C., in both political parties since any of us were alive.

The latest is that we learn Donald, a businessman, was trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. As news, that’s right up there with the sky is blue and the sun rises in the East. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

November was the “mean” month, or, rather, another “mean” month. Tweets, inanities, recriminations and a general sense of unpleasantness, swept the nation and Europe: In the U.S., ballots disappeared, others became water-damaged and some arrived without signatures. In Europe, France’s Emmanuel Macron, already on the ropes for the economy, called for a European military force: “We must protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States.”This was said with President Trump, leader of the country that pays over 70% of the continent’s defense through NATO, standing nearby. This nastiness occurred despite the month hosting the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. Instead of giving thanks for living in this great land, the media and political elites went out of their way to find fault with anyone or anything that got in the way of their ideology, especially Donald J. Trump – witness the election results in Florida and Georgia and blame for the California wildfires. The crevasse created by identity politics, Mr. Trump’s Tweets and Trump haters grows wider and deeper. Bridging it grows more difficult and less likely.

Consider Jamal Khashoggi – not an admirable character, and not just because he was a columnist for The Washington Post, but because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a right-wing, religiopolitical organization. Nevertheless, his murder was despicable and undoubtedly leaders in Saudi Arabia had fore-knowledge of the killing. But, spare me the hypocrisy – that does not make angels of those crying foul. Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other nation according to PBS. Iran is a hotbed of exporting terrorism. Yemen is ground zero in the battle between Shias and Sunnis, with Iran supporting the Houthi rebels who have infiltrated the country against the Saudi-supported government. Mr. Trump does himself a disservice in the crudity of his response, but had he singled out MBS (Mohammad bin Salman) for blame, the media and the left would have found fault for his cozying up to the Turkish dictator. As well, they would blame him for a spike in oil prices, which undoubtedly would have followed an abandonment of our decades-old relationship with the Kingdom. What Mr. Trump should do, with MBS in the spotlight, is pull concessions from the Saudis. He has already told the Saudis to end the bloodshed in Yemen, but he should do more. He should push them to restore ties with Qatar and to ensure the Gulf Cooperation Council remains effective. He should pressure the Saudis to recognize Israel. Keep in mind, the Saudis remained our ally after 9/11, despite fifteen of the nineteen hijackers being Saudi citizens. And it was President Obama who, in September 2016, vetoed a bill that held Saudi Arabia legally accountable for 9/11. Fortunately, Congress overrode his veto. Just remember, there are no clear consciences when a democratic nation’s interests require allying with a dictator.

Elections in the United States were much as expected, though counting extended into the middle of the month, and one Senate race – Mississippi – not decided until November 27. (Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith won by eight points.) Some results were not accepted by those that lost, reminding one of Anthony Trollope’s 1858 novel, Dr. Thorne: “…no political delinquency is abominable in the eyes of British politicians, but no delinquency is so abominable as that of venality at elections.” The bottom line: Democrats took over the House, while Republicans increased their lead in the Senate.