Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen is getting a lot of attention since it came out that he’s been under investigation for months — and the FBI came the other day to obtain lots and lots of records. What’s in there is going to be interesting (why else would a judge sign off on the raid?), but there’s some other connections coming into view. Per Tom Sullivan at DIgby’s place,
Cohen's insistence he never, ever visited Prague leads one wondering as well, not to mention (as Wheeler did), his lawyer's reluctance to take a stand on the claim. Andrew Prokop writes at Vox:
If the McClatchy report was accurate, it would utterly devastate one of the Trump team’s leading arguments that there was no Trump-Russia collusion. That’s because, to be blunt, there is no reason for Cohen to try to debunk the Steele dossier by lying and saying that he didn’t visit Prague at all if he actually did, unless he was trying to cover up extremely serious wrongdoing that happened during that visit.
But like many of Trump's circle, Cohen might [not] be the sharpest tool. As his lawyers fought for him in a federal investigation into his business dealings, photographers spotted Cohen casually smoking cigars with friends outside the Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue.
“not” inserted into text; seems to make more sense that way — xaxnar
Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo have been doing amazing work on the Russia story. The video in this tweet from Marshall is fascinating. Watch the man in blue as Cohen joins a group smoking cigars outside the Lowe’s Regency.
Digby picks up Marshall’s video as well, and has more from Addy Baird at Think Progress, who notes Cohen skipped court to go for that smoke while his lawyers dealt with a judge not happy about his absence.
...Whatever the state of their relationship [with Stormy Daniels — xaxnar], Trump and Cohen’s lawyers went to court Friday in an effort to block the Justice Department from reading seized documents, and although Cohen was not technically required to be there, a judge seemed upset that he didn’t appear….
...Asked to specify how many clients shared attorney-client privilege with Cohen, his attorney said, “I need more time to really analyze that question.”
...“Your inability to answer these questions suggest to me that your client, Mr. Cohen, should be in court with you next time,” the judge told his lawyer, according to reporters in the room.
So, who were these good fellas Cohen thought it was more important to spend time with than appearing in front of a judge? Josh Marshall asked readers to see if they could identify one of them. The key person of interest seems to be the man in blue who welcomes Cohen and has another man give up a seat for him. According to Marshall, the best guess is that the man in blue is Rotem Rosen.
So who is Rotem? These two paragraphs from a piece last year in Politico give you a flavor …
Its patriarch, the late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in the Soviet state of Georgia and arrived in 1976 in New York, where he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron district that, according to the New York Times, catered largely to KGB agents.
Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.” In December 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The event featured performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, the Putin oligarch Leviev’s holding company.
Here is Rosen with Donald Trump and Aras Agalarov at the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013. The man on the far right is Sapir’s son. (photo)
emphasis added
Now lawyers know lots of people, and by the nature of their business, not all of them are necessarily of 100% reputable reputation. Still, it’s amazing how those Russian connections keep popping up, isn’t it?
All the best people. No collusion. Nyet. Nada. Zilch.