Thank-you Michael Cohen

When I first read the media spin on Michael Cohen "exposing" Trump and how Cohen and the press were creating this sob story of a poor little lawyer being used and abused by a brash billionaire, I was incensed. Cohen has been involved with criminal activity for his entire career and his law degree is simply a tool in his bag of dirty tricks, screwing everyone he came in contact with for a buck. He was doing so long before he tried to leverage Trump for his own ends, avoiding paying taxes, refusing to admit to all of his crimes to Mueller, and on the way screwing his family as well. He went to jail for his long history of shady and corrupt activities, not for protecting "individual 1" or paying off a bimbo for Trump, although an entirely biased media would have you believe it had everything to do with Trump. Use the linked articles above to research the individuals Cohen was involved with long before Trump and you will get the picture. Trump was simply a goy that had value and that constantly needed money. A significant vulnerability to a shyster like Cohen. Then, like the sniveling rat he is Cohen tried to sell privileged and likely embellished information for a reduced sentence.

Michael Cohen's upbringing and training provided him with tools that he could corrupt to help him in his criminal pursuits. At first I thought that should be part of the story. But Cohen's abuse of his Jewish heritage and his criminal history damages Jews everywhere. The last thing all of the smart and decent Jews in the world need is to be associated with a schmuck like Cohen.
corrupt scales

Cohen did do us all a favor however, demonstrating in no uncertain terms what Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore believed about lawyers and members of the legal profession. Lee believed they were as corruptible and contemptible as anyone, and must never be given the benefit of the doubt merely because of their role in the legal system of a country. Cohen could be a poster boy for that point of view.

Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew believed that to fight corruption in Singapore it was necessary for lawyers, judges and the police to be investigated like any other criminals, since the amount of money involved in the trade in illicit drugs was so great that anyone could be compromised. Lee set up agencies independent of the courts, lawyers, and police to investigate corruption funded by the billions of dollars available in drug trafficking in Asia.

Lee appointed a trusted acquaintance, John Hanam to found the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB). John Hanam's sister Jesse, who we have known for roughly 60 years, said she went out with Lee when she was a young nurse in Singapore. Her family is highly intelligent, well educated and honest. Jesse, her husband, John Hanam and his wife Lillian had dinner in our home some time ago and over the course of the evening John regaled us with Lee's thinking and single mindedness in defeating corruption in Singapore. John said Lee believed in no uncertain terms that the legal system had to be closely monitored and that those doing so must answer directly to him and not the courts or the police.

Cohen is a clear example of why. Not only was Cohen involved in criminal activity his whole life, he leveraged his position as a lawyer to exploit people's trust for his own ends. Cohen proved:

Your lawyer can be a self dealing chiseler using knowledge you gave him or her, for their own benefit, going so far as to blackmail you and undermine you in the future.
Your lawyer is likely secretly taping your conversations and phone calls at any time, and may even be using correspondence you have with the lawyer for his/her own benefit.
Your lawyer could at anytime be working with a prosecutor to destroy you, and you would not necessarily know that is the case. In the links below I explain how that works in detail. To the thousands of people doing time, you need to reexamine in your mind how you may have actually been sent up.
Your lawyer may be a vindictive rat and lie about or embellish information given in trust to him or her.
Nothing you say to a lawyer is assured to remain privileged or confidential. You should assume as much.
Government agencies like the Department of Justice and the intelligence agencies can gain access to all of your communications with your lawyers, in spite of an assurance of confidentiality, lawyer client privilege and so on. In fact they will do so regardless of any protections you think you might have. Information is a weapon.
The prosecution arm of government can use any illegal or even immoral activity your lawyer was involved in to leverage your lawyer to turn against you to save their own skin. That includes manipulating them to enhance and embellish the information to aid the government to destroy you. Conrad Black had this to say about it.
Complete and total hacks in government like Jerry Nadler, using the flimsiest of excuses, can subpoena your information for their own nefarious political purposes and your lawyer may be willing to give it up.

Retribution

Michael Cohen is serving time in the Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville. Of the hundreds of inmates in that facility, a very legitimate question the inmates need to ask themselves is what role their lawyers may have played in putting them there. Cohen's conduct gives that question legitimacy. An article I wrote some time ago on the law offers even greater insight into the vastness of the problem for everyone.

A Case in Point

A reliable source many years ago detailed his experience with lawyers whose behavior more than illustrates these points. The source was involved in a situation which compromised his integrity. The business was profitable and he ended up purchasing millions of dollars in real estate. To facilitate development of the real estate he became involved with another businessman who was a client of a particular law firm. In addition to a business relationship, the two had a social relationship as well. His associate enjoyed and benefited from the many fruits of their relationship. His first Mercedes Benz and a new home in a high end location flowed to him from their dealings. My source confirmed Mercedes Benz vehicles can survive jumping bridge washouts over creeks in Montana, although the 300D at the time only had a top speed of 90.

Over time the pair purchased other real estate, borrowing money from tier 2 private lenders for its development. The law firm they both dealt with had several partners involved in providing bridge financing to real estate projects. They would acquire real estate and fund construction of stores which they would then sell or lease to the store chain as part of their activities. Unbeknown to my source, his associate was placing mortgages on my source's properties with the help of his law firm, and had taken the mortgage proceeds and seconded them out of the country. Israel was suspect, which at the time had no money laundering laws. More recent news stories investigating his former associate's questionable dealings indicate he had funds in the US that were unexplained.

When my source discovered the deception, he went to a major law firm and upon investigation, they froze the lawyers' involved assets to protect my source. The case dragged on for some time, with the assets remaining frozen, apparently causing some difficulty for the lawyers.

At one point the lawyers whose assets were frozen proposed a one on one meeting with my source, but with no counsel involved, and in that meeting one of the lawyers facilitating the theft of my source's funds told him that his money was gone and he will never get it back. He offered a bank draft for $50,000 as settlement of the theft, which he said if my source refused to accept it, my source's business associate would declare bankruptcy and he would get nothing. My source said he basically told the lawyer to go f**k himself, and as sure as rain, his associate declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile the lawyers' assets remained frozen.

As an aside, one of the lawyers involved later was caught up in a scheme in which millions of dollars were being kited between financial institutions. If you want to understand how lawyers can arrange things so people can get screwed in these situations and get away with it, look no farther than the case of the convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein, which is in itself a completely disgusting example of legal and judicial corruption and malfeasance. In that matter Epstein's counsel blamed the 12 year old girls for Epstein molesting them.

In any case, the failed kiss-off resulted in a second attempt at blowing away my source. My source had sold the business that provided the funds for the real estate, and in so doing used a number of companies and confidential agreements to keep the purchaser from scrutiny. My source explained that at the time it was NOT illegal to create shell corporations and put them in the name of prominent individuals, all of which confounded ownership. Because my source funded the sale to be paid over a number of months he said he needed to keep the sale quiet until the debt was paid.

Some time later the purchaser ended up getting in trouble and was hauled into court. Because the sale obscured ownership it made it difficult for prosecutors to sort out who the owners were. In order to have my source testify to the structure of the deal the prosecutor subpoenaed my source to court. My source however did not know the reason for the subpoena and was concerned the obscurity of the transaction could drag him back into the mess.

At that point one of the firm's lawyers whose assets were attached contacted my source and suggested that in fact the purpose of the subpoena was to involve my source in the activities of the purchaser, which could result in fines, jail time and the sky falling. He said he would defend my source in the matter if my source would release his frozen assets.

What the lawyer clearly had forgotten was that he had allowed my source to be present in meetings in which he and the prosecutor would trade client's lives like pawns on a chess board, for fees, and the courts went along with it. Knowing that, my client arranged for a follow up to that conversation with the same lawyer to be documented. A widely respected lawyer was made aware of the intimate detail of the conversation, and subsequently inquired of the prosecutor who he knew what the purpose of subpoenaing my source to court was. The prosecutor advised that they knew my source was not involved but the complexity of the transaction and the fact that companies existed with prominent people owning them made prosecuting the case somewhat sensitive and they needed my source to explain it. So the lawyer whose assets were frozen was lying.

My source explained that part of the sale agreement included a clause that should the purchaser became involved in a situation that required disclosure of the transaction structure it would be made available to the courts if so required. My source said he invoked that clause in court as agreed with the purchaser, and outlined how the transaction was structured.

An interesting sidebar was the fact that the agreement of purchase and sale was prepared by the head of the public defender's office on their stationery, which shocked the court when they saw it. The head of that department at the time was my source's associate's sister in law.

Another was the fact that in court counsel for purchaser suggested there never was a sale and that my source was really the owner all along. My source suspected the lawyer whose assets were frozen and counsel for the purchaser were in cahoots, although he said that is speculation on his part. The purchaser, who was incarcerated at the time, arranged for him to deliver a substantial cash payment to the purchaser's lawyer in an envelope, which was handed to his counsel at the courtroom door. My source said the envelope was packed with bills and made quite a bulge in his lawyer's breast pocket.

Things are never as they seem on the face of it.