On the 1 yr. anniversary of the filing of Stormy's lawsuit against Cohen/DT,

[pnwmom]

guess what? Michael Cohen will be reporting to prison.

Good work, Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti and SDNY.

Link to tweet

March 6, 2018 - We filed the case on behalf of Stormy Daniels against Michael Cohen and Donald Trump

March 6, 2019 - Michael Cohen is due to report to federal prison to begin his 36 month prison term.

We are not done yet.

[jberryhill]

1. What "work" did Avenatti do?

Last edited Thu Dec 13, 2018, 09:58 AM - Edit history (1)

And it will be a year and THREE MONTHS after Common Cause filed its complaint with the DoJ:

https://www.commoncause.org/resource/complaint-to-fec-doj-stormy-daniels-hush-money/

Complaint to FEC & DOJ Regarding Stormy Daniels Hush Money
01.22.2018

-----

January 22, 2018 - That's before Avenatti ever MET Daniels.

But he'll keep claiming the sun comes up because he crows, I guess. At least until the January 22 2019 hearing on the motion to dismiss Daniels' case on the NDA. And THAT will be the one year anniversary of the Common Cause complaint to the DoJ about Cohen's facilitation of the illegal campaign contribution.

[pnwmom]

2. His work entailed filing a DIFFERENT lawsuit. His was about the nondisclosure agreement,

seeking to have the court declare it was invalid. In response to Stormy/Avenatti's lawsuit, DT claimed, in front of the TV cameras, that he knew nothing about such a payment, that if Cohen did it he didn't authorize it.

(At that point, Common Cause had filed its lawsuit, but the FBI hadn't raided Cohen's offices.)

According to multiple reports, Trump's disclaimer after Stormy's lawsuit meant that Cohen's actions regarding her were likely not subject to attorney-client privilege -- which helped the FBI justify the subsequent raid on Cohen's offices.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insider/2018/04/18/the-stormy-raid-of-cohens-office-strengthens-the-attorney-client-privilege/#4a0330a14435

According to public statements made by the President, he had no knowledge of the payment made by Cohen to Daniels, which would mean that he did not seek legal advice from Cohen on this matter and the privilege is not likely to apply.

[jberryhill]

3. Privilege wouldn't have applied anyway

There is NOTHING, zip, nada, zilch, in the docket of this action in the SDNY that has anything to do with any waiver of privilege on account of public statements to the media (nor would such statements constitute a waiver anyway).

Trump didn't make any public statements about the Karen McDougal thing AT ALL, and that was included in this as well. Likewise, Trump didn't make any public statements about the Trump Tower Moscow deal, for which Cohen pled to lying to Congress in this action as well.

Cohen has been under investigation by Mueller for a long, long time. Cohen was specifically mentioned in the Steele dossier as well, and before this is all said and done we will know a LOT more about other things in which Cohen was involved. But, as such, Mueller's office had access to all of the SARS and all of the financial activity conducted by Cohen even before the raid, and it is why they knew what they were looking for.

There is NO attorney client privilege in an attorney and client conspiring to commit a violation of law, and Avenatti has done a masterful job of claiming credit for things in which he has had no material impact or effect whatsoever.

Point to a SINGLE document in this case in which the AG-SDNY argued ANYTHING about privilege premised on that statement by Trump.

And, if you believe your argument here, then explain how it applies to the McDougal transaction, about which Trump has said nothing.

[pnwmom]

4. I haven't seen the search warrant, have you?

David Super, a law professor at Georgetown, also thinks the statement Trump made in response to the Daniels' lawsuit gave support to the FBI's case for raiding Cohen's offices.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/10/stormy-daniels-michael-avenatti-donald-trump-michael-cohen-fbi-raid/503989002/

Watchdog groups, including Common Cause, had lodged complaints with Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission about the Daniels' payment months before Avenatti's lawsuit. They also have asked regulators to investigate a $150,000 payment by the National Enquirer's parent company to a former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also says she had an affair with Trump.

But Wertheimer and other legal experts say Avenatti’s lawsuit made public for the first time the details of the nondisclosure agreement Daniels signed with Cohen.

SNIP

The legal battle has spurred Cohen and Trump to make public statements that are “quite incriminating,” said David Super, a Georgetown University law professor.

Among them: Trump's comments to reporters last week, denying knowledge of the Daniels payment or the source of the hush money. "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen" why the payment was made, the president told reporters on Air Force One.

If Cohen acted on his own to pay Daniels, Super said, "then there's no attorney-client privilege, which may have made (the FBI) more comfortable doing this raid."

Trump's statements "have exacerbated his problems severely," Super added. "If he had taken the usual lawyers' advice to clients and referred all questions to the lawyers and declined comment, I don't think we would have seen this raid and I don't think this lawsuit would be any big deal."

[jberryhill]

5. You don't have to see the search warrants

You only have to use your own eyes, brain, and the documents in the case.

Note the following FACTS:

1. That Forbes article is dated April 10 - the day after the raid.

Unfortunately for that speculation, the government's VERY FIRST MOTION, filed April 13 disproves the speculation in that article.

2. Trump's airplane statement was made April 5.

3. The raid was conducted April 9 (a Monday, btw)

4. Cohen objected on general privilege grounds, and here is the government's April 13 motion in opposition:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.491943/gov.uscourts.nysd.491943.1.0_2.pdf

Not only is there NO RELIANCE AT ALL on Trump's public statement, but there are other facts which demonstrate that the April 9 raid could not have been premised on that April 5 statement:

"These searches were carried out as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation being conducted by the USAO-SDNY and the FBI.

...

Moreover, before seeking and obtaining the search warrants, the USAO-SDNY consulted with the Department of Justice’s Office of Enforcement Operations, consistent with the guidance provided by the United States Attorney’s Manual. "

April 9, incidentally, was a Monday. So there was only one working day for all of that to happen between the public statement which you believe led to the raid, and the day of the raid.

Where, in 22 pages of argument over the privilege issue, does the government rely in its April 13 filing on ANY public statement made by Trump as a rationale for ANYTHING?

It is quite obvious that the speculation from that April 10 article is wrong, and the government's own filing on the 13th proves it to be wrong. In addition to the observations above, they had ALREADY gotten all of his emails from a previous warrant:

"Fourth, the USAO-SDNY has specific reason to doubt that the seized materials will
include the volume and nature of attorney-client communications that Cohen claims. This is
because the USAO-SDNY has already obtained search warrants – covert until this point – on
multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen, and has conducted a privilege review of
the materials obtained pursuant to those warrants.
The results of that review, as resported by the USAO’s Filter Team, indicate
that Cohen is in fact performing little to no legal work, and that
zero emails were exchanged with President Trump."

Did the guy who wrote that article know about the previous warrants which were secret until the 13th? No, he didn't.

You are also forgetting the fact, which would not have been known to the April 10 editorialist, that what Cohen was charged with are primarily his own violations, which the government noted at the time of the raid:

"Cohen claims that the materials seized include “thousands of privileged documents and
communications related to numerous clients of Mr. Cohen, as well as Mr. Cohen’s privileged
communications with his own attorneys.” (Br. 2). Although the USAO
-SDNY and FBI have not yet reviewed the seized materials, there is considerable reason to doubt that assertion.
As an initial matter, as set forth above, the USAO-SDNY’s investigation relates
in significant part to Cohen’s personal business dealings and finances. Moreover, it is neither apparent (i) that Cohen,
in his capacity as an attorney, has many, or any, attorney-client relationships
other than with President Donald Trump (indeed, he does not specifically identify any in his motion and thus far
has refused to identify any to the USAO-SDNY), nor (ii) that the seized communications will
include a significant volume of communications with that one identified client. This is so for
several reasons. "

There were considerable arguments about privilege very early on in the case, and after the Forbes article was written, and certainly more argument beyond the one brief I've linked, and which you might want to read before relying on uninformed speculation, no matter whose it is.

Despite all the argument about privilege that went on, there is NOT ONE WORD in any of the government's filings which supports any notion that the raid was premised on some sort of waiver theory based on Trump's statement to the press. Not a single word.

The speculative lengths to which Avenatti fans will go to justify his claiming credit for other people's work continues to impress.