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Title : Prague rock
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Prague rock
Syria was supposed to be today's topic -- never before has Donald Trump taken a serious action so clearly at the behest of a foreign government -- but the latest revelation about Michael Cohen demands attention.A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.Which intelligence agency? Ukraine would have much to gain from the release of this information, especially given the current situation. An even likelier candidate would be the Czech Republic itself, which has a decent signals intelligence capability. The BIS (their CIA) is headquartered in Prague; they consider Russia their primary target.
During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.
The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.
Heretofore, the dossier's claim that Cohen went to Prague was the most controversial section (aside from the moist bits.) Whenever someone wanted to discredit the entire Steele report, they pointed to the fact that Cohen insisted that he had not gone that city. Moreover, he produced a passport which backed up this assertion.
"Case closed," said Trump's defenders. "The whole dossier has been fully disproven!"
The Trumpers don't like to be reminded that Paul Manafort had three passports. Multiple passports are fairly common in cases of international skullduggery.
Lanny Davis, the attorney for Michael Cohen who helped him segue from Trump toady to Trump enemy, has always insisted that his client has never been to Prague. For a while, I thought: Maybe that part of the dossier really is off the mark. Such an error would constitute a serious strike against Steele, even if it doesn't disprove the entire opus.
But Davis has not been Cohen's lawyer for a while, although the two men retain some sort of friendly relationship. I've been wondering why Davis deliberately adopted this "non-lawyer" status, even though his client still requires the services of an attorney. Perhaps Davis adopted this "Not a lawyer, just a friend" role precisely so he could say things about Cohen in public that are not necessarily true. When Davis told the press that his former client never went to Prague, he sent a clear signal to Team Trump: "Cohen still won't spill the beans. Not those beans. He's talking about Stormy Daniels, but not about the real stuff."
Why would Davis send that signal? Perhaps to offer Cohen a certain degree of protection: The Russians don't just play dirty -- they play filthy. Or: Perhaps the intention was to entice Trump into making false statements when he answered Mueller's questions. It seems likely that Mueller asked "Did you send Michael Cohen to Prague?"
I've just given you two related Theories of Cohen. If you possess any degree of imagination, you could concoct another dozen or so before supper.
One thing is certain: What truly counts is not what Cohen told Davis but what Cohen has told Mueller -- about Prague or about anything else.
Kevin Drum makes an interesting point:
Second, it means that special counsel Robert Mueller knows about all this and decided to keep it closely held instead of using it in the charge sheet against Cohen.One claimed purpose of the Prague meeting was to pay hackers. In this light, you may want to check out an under-noticed column published in the Spectator a couple of weeks ago...
But why would Mueller want to keep it secret? Well, the alleged purpose of Cohen’s trip to Prague was to visit with Russian intelligence folks in order to come up with a plan for making cash payments to the hackers who were working with Team Trump to take down Hillary Clinton. Even for Mitch McConnell, I assume this would be considered an impeachable offense, and it’s the kind of thing you’d really want to nail down solidly before you make it public.
Pay especially close attention to a mysterious $50,000 payment to an unnamed tech company that – court filings reveal – Cohen made during the election campaign.Marcy Wheeler, in her twitter feed, seems to be treating this story with skepticism. I know that I should defer to her judgment, but I'm an ornery sunvabitch -- and I've always been more willing than she to believe in the Dossier. McClatchy is a trustworthy news source. I don't think that they'd buy into a false claim made by someone pretending to be from an Eastern European spy organization.
Could these be the payment to ‘hackers’ made in the Czech Republic described in the Steele dossiers – and always, so far, publicly denied by Cohen and his lawyers?
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