UPDATE: Saturday, May 4, 2024 · 3:18:13 AM +00:00
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AlyoshaKaramazov
And I have my answer!!! Trump initialized the contact.
Hicks said that Trump then wanted her to get David Pecker's number because he wanted to call him, so she asked Cohen for it. Hicks said that Trump was worried about how Melania would react to the story, so he asked Hicks to make sure no newspapers were delivered to their residence the next morning. She was then asked if Trump was concerned how it would hurt his campaign. Hicks said he was constantly asking her, "How's it playing?" with the public.
She also defied a subpoena…..
But first, Trump’s apparent defense strategy:
…….Trump could go scorched earth. He could deny that he ever had sex with Daniels, argue he paid her off because she was extorting him, maintain there’s nothing wrong with the paperwork and that he wasn’t even aware of what Cohen was doing, and call everyone else a liar.
By all accounts, this is precisely the road he’s taking. Blanche’s opening statement cinches it.
Now, the problems with Trump’s scorched earth defense position (from The Status Kuo):
tinyurl.com/…
There are some big holes in this defensive strategy.
The first is the idea that Cohen would take out a home equity loan and use a shell company to pay off Daniels for something that didn’t happen and that she couldn’t prove. If it never happened, that number would likely be far, far lower or zero.
[...]
Then there is Hope Hicks, who was Trump’s press secretary at the time. As NBC reported earlier this month,
Hicks met with prosecutors for several hours and is expected to be a witness for the state. According to an FBI agent in an earlier criminal case around the same matter, Hicks was involved in the negotiations with Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, to prevent Daniels from going public about the sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
[...]
Negotiations between the Trump campaign and Daniels’s attorney began in earnest in October of 2016 following the infamous Access Hollywood tape that was already destroying Trump’s election chances. Trump believed yet another scandal could end them.
As the FBI affidavit in the Cohen case states,
I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford’s attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign.
That’s quite an electronic trail between Cohen and other people, including Davidson, Pecker, Howard and Hicks. Will any of them testify that Trump 1) did in fact have a sexual encounter with Daniels, 2) was trying to cover it up by routing the payoff through Cohen, and 3) cared primarily about how such a story might affect his election chances? The likelihood is high. And these witnesses aren’t so easily impeachable as Cohen and Daniels.
The thing I most want to know though, is this:
WHO initiated this flurry of communications between all these people? I do not doubt that it was Trump to Cohen/Hicks to Davidson/Daniels.
But if, by chance, Stormy contacted them first, then the extortion part of Trump’s crazy defense, might have some legs. However, if it never happened, how does Trump use extortion as part of his defense?
Or am I missing something?
Anyway, let’s Hope Hicks tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when she testifies………
Same goes for everyone else. If Trump is convicted, I want it to be fair and square.
Oh, and then there’s this:
Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
And as far as that “denying everything” strategy?
It goes along with something he said back in 2015:
Moderator Frank Luntz asked Trump whether he has ever asked God for forgiveness for his actions.
“I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so,” he said. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
Go read Jay Kuo’s entire piece. It’s free, and it’s very enlightening.