This morning I was coming into work after attending my son’s school play and got an email from our editorial staff in DC and NY telling me they’d unanimously agreed to form a union and asking if I would voluntarily recognize their decision. The email was signed “Sincerely, TPM union.” I confess it was novel experience hearing from someone else identifying themselves as ‘TPM’. But I replied that I was happy to do so. I had our lawyer reach out to the WGA, East to formalize that agreement. And that was that.
This afternoon the new TPM Union put out a statement announcing the formation of their union and our agreement to recognize the union. They also asked me for a statement from TPM which they could include in their press release, which I was of course happy to do.
I publish their press release here in its entirety below. Read More
Tierney Sneed talked to past White House lawyers to get a sense of where President Trump’s legal defense has gone farthest off the rails – and why. The irony, of course, is that the person least served by the tumult is Trump himself. Worth your time.
One of the silent joys – perhaps not so silent – of the Cohen chapter of the Trump/Russia scandal is observing the discomfiture of big corporations getting dragged into the endlessly sleazy, moronically corrupt world of Michael Cohen. Sources at AT&T insisted they didn’t pay Cohen for access to the President but rather for “actual work done.” No doubt. But the best explanation for hiring Michael Cohen has to go to Korea Aerospace Industries, a firm trying to land a major contract with the Pentagon. They say they hired Cohen “to inform reorganization of our internal accounting system.”
If you’re interested in who Michael Cohen is, how he came to work for Donald Trump, where his money comes from and what network is behind him, you need to listen to this new episode of my podcast. I know that sounds like a high-pressure sale. But trust me: I consider myself a premier Cohen-ologist. But Seth Hettena knew and knows way more than I did not just about Cohen but Trump’s whole universe of Russian/Ukrainian organized crime associates and partners. And he’s got a new book that came out just yesterday. Listen to this episode right here or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play.
Michael Cohen’s lawyers have now responded to Michael Avenatti’s information in a scathing filing to Judge Kimba Wood. It’s mainly pounding the table. But they do seem to have found some errors. So let’s go through the details.
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In some ways the more fascinating aspect of the fallout from yesterday’s Michael Cohen revelations is seeing Fortune 500 companies struggle to explain how and why they found themselves connected, albeit simply through a shell company, with the President’s payoffs to Stormy Daniels and his fixer’s pay-offs from a Russian oligarch. I think the evolving Novartis story is going to be a good example of the difference between the press release business press and the national political press in full scandal mode. Novartis’s explanation simply makes zero sense – it’s telling that they thought it would survive first contact with any scrutiny. I suspect we’ll find out that that’s the case because it’s a hastily contrived cover story. Even now, the story seems to be evolving toward a more plausible and problematic destination.
Here’s Novartis’s official explanation. Read More
There’s an interesting twist that takes center stage today. Tierney Sneed previews it for Prime subscribers.
Before tonight’s stunning revelations, we looked at why Donald Trump started paying cash in 2006. And we think we know the answer. Here’s Episode #12 of The Josh Marshall Podcast.
TPM Reader TH thinks he knows where Michael Avenatti got his amazingly specific details. And it sounds right to me …
I want to shed some light on tonight’s post re: Cohen/Avenatti, specifically this line:
“They’ve also confirmed the dollar amounts. So while we still don’t know where or how Avenatti got this information he must have had access to one of Cohen’s ledgers, a bank statement or perhaps an investigative document. The details are simply too specific.”
I work as an Anti-Money Laundering and Bank Secrecy Act Specialist at a financial institution. Every bank/credit union/etc will have someone who’s responsibility it is to examine transactions and file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with FinCEN, a department of the Treasury. This is what I do.
Tonight we have what I’d say may be the most staggering revelations since the tangle of “Trump/Russia” investigations began almost two years ago. This is not hyperbole.
Late this afternoon Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti posted what he called a “Preliminary Report” on financial transactions of Michael Cohen. The claims were staggering. But this wasn’t a legal filing in which the attorneys in question need to vouch for their accuracy. For all the fancy language it was simply a press release, with no clear explanation of the basis for the various claims. (It’s an example of how TPM is in many ways a much more conservative operation than many mainstream media publications. Bloomberg for instance published basically all the claims even though they were clear that it could not independently verify them. To be clear, this is not necessarily a criticism. These are fact sets for which there is little obvious precedent.) In any case, the key claims are now being confirmed – in most cases to the letter. Read More