With such an avalanche of news on the Trump and Cohen fronts, it’s easy to lose track of other critical stories. That makes this week’s Weekly Primers on Voting Rights and Democracy and The Battle Over Obamacare and Health Care Policy must reads. Take three minutes to read the Primer on each topic and you’ll never be behind.
In today’s podcast, we look into the background of Michael Cohen. TPM first reported last year that Cohen was actually a childhood friend of Felix Sater, whose father was himself a reputed capo in the Mogilevich organized crime syndicate, said to be Russia’s largest and most dangerous. Filling out this picture of how Cohen fell into this milieu we’ve always been focused on the fact that Cohen’s uncle, Morton Levine, owned and ran a Brooklyn social club, El Caribe, which was a well-known meeting spot for members of Italian and Russian organized crime families in the 1970s and 1980s. (Levine, a medical doctor has never been charged with a crime.) But now it turns out there’s a bit more to this story. Read More
Get caught up on all that’s happened in the last week relating on two of TPM’s core issues: voting rights and democracy and the battle over the future of Obamacare (Prime access).
Today’s Episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is a bit different. Want to know how Donald Trump got this deep in with Michael Cohen? Where Cohen came from? We pack the whole story into a single episode from the early days at the mob social club with Felix and the crew (a la Spider and Henry Hill) to the Ukraine-money-backed taxi and casino cruise businesses, his Ukraine based operations, the big prize tens of millions dollar investments in New York City real estate. Trump brought Cohen in to the Trump Organization because he was a conduit for Russian and Ukrainian money. In the last ten years Cohen has touched virtually every part of the Russia story and Trump’s vast and opaque business dealings around the country and the world. Trump is worried because he should be worried. In this episode we explain why. I’m joined by my co-host David Taintor and TPM Reporter Allegra Kirkland who covers the Cohen beat and was in the court room downtown Friday and yesterday. Listen on iTunes or Google Play or use our Podcast RSS feed. If you’re on iTunes or Google Play please subscribe. That helps us build audience. We hope you enjoy.
For you junkies, the top GOP group trying to hold onto the House majority has signaled with a multimillion dollar ad reservation which seats it’s fighting to hold and which ones it may have already given up on.
In an earlier report, Allegra Kirkland described the scene in the federal courthouse when Sean Hannity was revealed to be Michael Cohen’s third client. We now have her full, must-read account (Prime access) of her day at the federal courthouse with Cohen and Stormy Daniels.
Allegra Kirkland on the scene in the courtroom when Hannity was unmasked as Michael Cohen’s third client.
The judge in the Michael Cohen case has denied Cohen’s bid to have the government blocked from going through the materials they seized last week from his offices and hotel room. But she outlined a process where both sides will go though the documents for privileged material. The government can’t look at the substance of the materials, beyond the narrow search. The judge did not rule out appointing a special master to look through the materials, but said she’d decide at a future hearing.
The upshot: This slows things down somewhat, but, at least for now, it doesn’t derail the government’s investigation. We’ll have more details up shortly.
Update: And here they are.
One sub-thread to the Cohen investigation is that the US Attorney in Manhattan (SDNY) recused himself from involvement in the case. It’s been assumed that that was because of his ties to Trump. Trump appointed him (he hasn’t actually been confirmed yet or technically even nominated). He made campaign contributions to candidate Trump and even did some work on the transition. But most notably he sat for a personal interview with the President while he was being considered for the post. That is entirely irregular, though there’s no particular rule against it. It’s been widely assumed that some combination of those factors triggered Berman’s recusal. But this new New York Times piece suggests that’s not the case. Read More