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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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Even in the recording, Trump declined giving cash and opted for a check.
This the same Trump who claimed to have not known about this pay-off at the time that it happened? If so, I'm a little curious how he could have both not known about it, and insisted it be a check.
The argument goes that paying the hush money during the campaign was intended to further the goals of the campaign, and therefore is campaign related spending.
You'll note that the hush money was paid during the campaign and not back in 2006 when it happened.
So, tell us again, how does the shady lawyer for Trump paying out hush money during the campaign to keep this out of the news isn't related to the campaign? The entire purpose of the hush money was to benefit the campaign.
It's campaign related spending, which was not declared. That's a violation of campaign financing laws, and that is what Cohen plead guilty to.
But somehow we're supposed to believe that Trump's lawyer paid off porn star without the knowledge of Trump, purely out of the goodness of his own heart, and meant in no way to benefit the campaign?
Now that's some grade-fucking-A bullshit right there.
Sorry, just more of Trump's complete disregard for the law, and trying to make it sound like it was all perfectly normal.
Not buying it.
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.
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.
Do you really not understand the qualitative difference between these things? The Obama campaign finance violations were all basically just a matter of missing deadlines. More importantly there's no evidence that it was willful. Even more importantly, there's absolutely no evidence that Obama directed it, or was even aware that it happened.
In this case, you could make an argument that they were just really, really late on reporting and refunding the illegal campaign contribution, except that, since they're still trying to hold Stormy Daniels to the agreement in court, they clearly have no intention of getting the money back and refunding it. Not to mention that Cohen and Trump have repeatedly lied in the past about it even happening, what the source of the funds were, whether Cohen was reimbursed, etc., etc. So this isn't some case of making a mistake and saying "Mea culpa" and getting a fine. So, clearly this is a willful, not accidental, violation. Beyond that Cohen is alleging that Trump knew about these violations and directed them. There's already pretty much absolute proof that he did for at least one of them on the tapes,
So, go on, make your claims about the left being the hypocritical ones. To clarify, the Democrats and the Republicans are both pretty right wing, really, but the Republicans are clearly more right wing in most respects, although they're clearly not "conservative" anymore in a social sense at least. Overall, when it comes to hypocrisy and corruption, lies, moral cowardice, etc. there's plenty to go around for both of them, but there's definitely a lot more of that going on with the Republicans these days than with the Democrats.