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Encrypted Communications Apps Failed To Protect Michael Cohen (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Within the detailed federal allegations against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty earlier this week to eight charges including campaign finance violations, are multiple references to texts sent by Cohen and even a call made "through an encrypted telephone application." Cohen was apparently a fan of encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp and Signal, but those tools failed to keep his messages and calls out of sight from investigators. In June, prosecutors said in a court filing the FBI had obtained 731 pages of messages and call logs from those apps from Cohen's phones. Investigators also managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents. Those logs, judging by the charging document, appear to have helped document at least Cohen's communications with officials at the National Enquirer about allegations from porn actress Stormy Daniels -- whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law. It's unclear if the FBI actually broke through any layers of encryption to get the data. It's possible that Cohen, who apparently at times taped conversations, stored the conversation logs in a less-than-secure way.
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See page 1...
On page 1 I see:
- Tax evasion
- Lying to investigators.
- Making improper use of corporate money.
The first two are only on Cohen. If The Donald thought Cohen was paying with his (Trump's) personal money the third is also only on Cohen.
Campaign contributions are on page 2, and the argument there is that if it wasn't paid by the campaign and is something he'd have paid anyway for reasons other than his run for president, it's not a campaign activity. (Imagine if the government tried to interpret a rich candidate's charitable donations as excessive campaign spending, because they make him look good to voters. It's the same argument.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If done with the purpose of influencing a federal election, it is ALL considered campaign funds. https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/types-contributions/
Considering the two relationships were in 2006, and the payoffs were done ten years later in 2016, just before the election, Trump will have an almost impossible task arguing that these payoffs weren't related to his candidacy in a federal election.
The determination of "campaign funds" depends on what it was spent on vs what account it came from.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Yes, it actually is.
What's going on is the payment is considered a campaign donation, because it was made by a private person in order to further the campaign. The campaign donation was not properly declared, and exceeded the maximum allowed donation to a political campaign.
Congresspeople using Congress's funds to pay off accusers isn't a private person spending money to further the campaign, failing to document it properly and exceeding contribution limits. It's different and it should be illegal, but it's not.
This is a textbook case of the Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Train0987 addresses none of the points raised by the AC to which he was replying, but only attacked the motivations behind Cohen's plea and the prosecutors. Earlier here he had been willing to attempt to defend Trump by raising points, which the AC refuted. Instead of defending his own argument he switched to rhetorical fallacies.
The reader can draw his or her own conclusions about Train0987's honesty and integrity from this.
Expect to see much, much more of these attacks as more evidence against Trump comes to light.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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Am I mistaken? Did they get a warrant before the papers were shredded and discarded
Yes, you are mistaken. First, there was a warrant. Second, you can get the warrant post-shredding. Just because you hid the evidence (by shredding) does not make it immune to a warrant. The entire point of warrants is to pierce your expectations of privacy, but only when a judge says the government can.
Also: What kind of idiot uses a strip-shredder for anything he really wants to keep secret? Have they developed a way to reassemble crosscut shreads
The kind of idiot that decides to be a fixer for a crooked real estate developer. And yes, they have developed a way to reassemble crosscut shreds as long as the shreds are big enough. The size you get from a shredder you buy at Staples is plenty big.
If so, how do they avoid the "ransom note assembled from cut out newspaper letters" risk of reassembling fine shreads into somethig that looks coherent but is nothing like the original.
By dumping the shreds on a flatbed scanner and scanning both sides. Then having a computer re-assemble the shreds based on characters that cross more than one shred. It's just a big jigsaw puzzle with identically-shaped pieces.
False. See the John Edwards case. Determined not to be illegal or a campaign violation even though it was hush money.
I mean, isn't 'protection your reputation' something you can do at any time regardless of running for public office?
"Running for public office" triggers additional rules. Those rules consider the payments to be a campaign contribution and/or expense (contribution if non-campaign funds were spent, expense if campaign funds were spent).
In this case, it's a contribution. The contribution was not properly documented and it exceeded the maximum allowed contribution.
It is considered a contribution/expense because the payoff is intended to influence the election, not just make someone look better to the public.
I'm not a Democrat or "left", sorry. The simple fact is, the Obama and Biden cases were about incomplete or incorrect paperwork that they later corrected, hence the fine. They never denied the contributions.
Had Trump simply owned up to the payments and corrected the FEC filing, this would be a fine.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Trump self-financed his campaign
No, he didn't. Here's his campaign financing: https://www.opensecrets.org/pr...
"Donald J Trump for President" is his campaign. Scroll down and you can see all the sources of funding, which was primarily campaign contributions.
He directed Cohen to pay with a check for crying out loud. He would've paid even if he wasn't running for office.
Running for office triggers a different set of rules. Don't run for office if you want to pay off your mistresses.
Even if it had been a publicly-funded campaign, see the John Edwards precedent.
John Edwards was put on trial for his campaign finance crimes. There was no precedent set, he was just acquitted by the jury.
No, actually the FEC ruled the opposite. But thanks for the continued lying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Indictment and trial
On May 24, 2011, ABC News and the New York Times reported that the U.S Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section had conducted a two-year investigation into whether Edwards had used more than $1 million in political donations to hide his affair and planned to pursue criminal charges for alleged violations of campaign finance laws.[118][119][120]
On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on six felony charges, including four counts of collecting illegal campaign contributions, one count of conspiracy, and one count of making false statements.[121]
After postponing the start of the trial while Edwards was treated for a heart condition in February 2012, Judge Catherine Eagles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina scheduled jury selection to begin on April 12, 2012.[122] Edwards's trial began on April 23, 2012, as he faced up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.[123]
In a related development, on March 13, 2012, the Federal Election Commission ruled that Edwards' campaign must repay $2.1 million in matching federal funds. Edwards' lawyers claimed the money was used, and that the campaign did not receive all the funds to which it was entitled, but the commission rejected the arguments.[124]
Twelve jurors and four alternates were seated, and opening arguments began April 23, 2012.[125] Closing arguments took place May 17, and the case went to the jury the next day.[126]
On May 31, 2012, Edwards was found not guilty on Count 3, illegal use of campaign funding (contributions from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon), while mistrials were declared on all other counts against him.[2] On June 13, 2012, the Justice Department announced that it dropped the charges and would not attempt to retry Edwards.[3]
Again, you are wrong. It is not illegal to pay someone to keep quiet; happens all the time.
The fact that it happened during a campaign makes different rules come into play. The fact that you don't like these rules does not make them disappear.
The Justice Dept. tried to convict John Edwards on the exact same charges; they lost, and here's why: when an act can serve "dual purposes", in this case, hiding embarassing information from Edward's family, in addition to hiding information that may hurt his election chances, the act cannot be considered illegal.
You're doing an excellent job making shit up. Edwards was found not guilty at trial. That's it. Someone being found not guilty does not set a legal precedent. Otherwise murder would be legal by now.
Alan Dershowitz, no fan of Trump
[Citation required]
Get yourself a criminal lawyer. No, a criminal lawyer.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You should care, beause it's now been established beyond any reasonable doubt that the President is a crook.
Now that it's established that the President is a crook, America must decide whether it is to remain a country that is governed by the rule of law, or whether it is going to look the other way on Trump's criminality and become another corrupt pseudo-democracy like Russia or Saudi Arabia. Because it's one or the other, we can't have it both ways.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.