Pretty obvious now that the Rep. Gaetz threat to Michael Cohen came from, was at the direction of the President.

Who’s the green eyeshade at the center of every Trump scam? This guy.

Yesterday was such a torrent of news from Michael Cohen and his all-day testimony that I confess I’m still trying to absorb it. News is an inherently social phenomenon. That’s what makes it news as opposed to information. Our process of absorbing the news, which is notionally individual, is also communal. As the Russia story and Trump administration drags on, we increasingly see two stories, which are both increasingly distinct and yet deeply related, indeed inseparable parts of the same story. Read More

It was understated and didn’t make for the biggest fireworks. But this moment was likely the biggest moment of the day: Cohen clearly pointing to other investigations of the President that are on-going and apparently serious.

Florida bar opens an investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz threat tweets.

Here’s a key, too little noted, part of the testimony today. Cohen has actually burnished his credibility quite a bit by defending Trump on questions on which there is likely no evidence that could impeach him if he did otherwise. For instance, he said that he simply didn’t believe it was in character for Trump to ever hit his wife. But it’s more than about his credibility. Cohen has also knocked down a lot of questions and accusations that have loomed around Trump.

This is one of the weirder parts of this hearing. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) has now twice demanded to know the whereabouts of boxes of documents that were seized by the FBI in the Cohen raids and later returned to him. He then demanded that they be seized by law enforcement.

Here’s one snippet of the video. Read More

A quick reaction to the first couple hours of testimony. I’d say that in general, there haven’t been big revelations beyond those included in the prepared remarks. The Democrats have gotten some more granular detail on key points like the Trump Moscow project and the Wikileaks drops. The Republicans in general have not done terribly well. They’ve triggered some defensiveness on Cohen’s part a few times with respect to his crimes. Read More

On catch and kill, Cohen: “These catch and kill scenarios existed between David Pecker and Mr. Trump long before I started working for him in 2007.”

As we get ready for the questioning today I wanted to flag some early posts from early 2017 as I was looking into Michael Cohen’s background, his business history, ties to Russian emigres and Russian organized crime and his relationship with Trump himself. They hold up pretty well, though we of course know much more now. It’s All So Confusing (The Michael Cohen File). What Happened to the Michael Cohen Ukraine Dossier? “‘Says Who?’ – Piecing Together the Michael Story.” “What the CIA and FBI Knew About Trump Before 2016.”

Finally, from earlier this morning, my look at what was significant in Cohen’s prepared testimony this morning.