The Daily Show on Sean Hannity

Written By: - Date published: 5:18 pm, April 19th, 2018 - 15 comments
Categories: International, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, us politics, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags: ,

15 comments on “The Daily Show on Sean Hannity ”

  1. Bewildered 1

    It looks like all they have on Cohen is possible electoral finance irregularities paying off Stormy, hardly crime of the century, name a political party that doesent have these issues. Any thing else will probably be client lawyer privileged unless knowingly supporting criminal activity Hannity knowing Cohen is sort of so what, he is a mate of trumps so hardly earth shattering Excuse the pun but appears a storm in a tea cup with overly certain excited media suffering deranged trump syndrome, Trump is very unlikable but doing some ok stuff, you don’t need to be liked to be a leader, many would argue Ardern is very likeable but not much shop as a leader in contrast

    • McFlock 1.1

      The hannity thing is just a bit of a laugh, and of course his undisclosed conflict of interest when talking about Cohen and Trump on his shows.

      But who knows where the Cohen thing will go – the feds just keep digging and still haven’t found bedrock yet, and I don’t think they’re anywhere close.

      It’s all a bit moot anyway, mostly for the history books – the most dramatic possible outcome is Trump gets replaced by Pence. No improvement, and never going to happen anyway when the repugs have both houses.

      • Andre 1.1.1

        I’m firming up my reckon that the way out for BLOTUS when he fully realises how big a heap of shit he’s in and he can’t offload it to someone else is he’ll quietly negotiate his exit with Pence, dish out a bunch of pardons, resign, then collect his pardon from prez Pence.

    • joe90 1.2

      Could well be a damn sight more to it than Stormy and possible electoral law violations.

      In short, this search warrant is apparently not about L’Affaire Russe. The FBI raided the office of the president’s personal lawyer on a matter related to L’Affaire Stormy. That means that prosecutors were able to show probable cause of criminal activity connected to Cohen’s representation of the president on matters far removed from Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, obstruction of justice or any of the other matters within Mueller’s purview. Notably, this subject matter metastasis coincides with a bureaucratic metastasis as well. It was not, after all, Mueller who sought or received the warrant. As Rosenzweig notes:

      Muller referred the matter to the Justice Department, where the investigation was assigned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. That office (run by a Trump appointee) then procured the warrant—with the approval of a magistrate judge—and worked with the FBI to conduct the search. In this regard, the special counsel’s actions, and the Justice Department referral are completely unlike the Starr investigation on which I worked many years ago. There, Attorney General Janet Reno kept expanding the Starr investigation into new areas—mostly, I think, as a matter of convenience. Here, the department seems intent on cabining the Mueller investigation to the scope it was originally initiated for—and to also be willing to spin off unrelated matters to the relevant local U.S. attorney’s office.

      https://lawfareblog.com/how-cohen-raids-and-trumps-reactions-edge-us-toward-confrontation

      • joe90 1.2.1

        Josh Marshall on the wheels within wheels.

        Now, who’s Seth Hettena?

        It turns out we at TPM have known and admired Seth’s work for years and years. He was one of the lead reporters – I think with the AP – on the Duke Cunningham scandal and wrote a book about it. A couple weeks ago I was emailed a press release announcing the imminent release of Seth’s new Trump/Russia book. I get a million press releases. But I had no idea he was even working on one. So I replied to the email and asked for a review copy which arrived a few days ago. I had not gotten around to looking at it yet. But in that excerpt, the reference to the El Caribe is followed by these two paragraphs …

        I spoke to two former federal investigators who told me Cohen was introduced to Donald Trump by his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine who arrived in the U.S. in 1975. Shusterman was in the garment business and owned a fleet of taxicabs with his partners, Shalva Botier and Edward Zubok – all three men were convicted of a money-laundering related offense in 1993. “Fima may have been a (possibly silent) business partner with Trump, perhaps even used as a conduit for Russian investors in Trump properties and other ventures,” a former federal investigator told me. “Cohen, who married into the family, was given the job with the Trump Org as a favor to Shusterman.” (“Untrue,” Cohen told me. “Your source is creating fake news.”)

        Shusterman, who owned at least four New York taxi companies, also set his son-in-law up in the yellow cab business. Cohen once ran 260 yellow cabs with his Ukrainian-born partner, the “taxi king” Simon V. Garber, until their partnership ended acrimoniously in 2012. Glenn Simpson, the private investigator who was independently hired to examine Trump’s Russia connections during the real estate mogul’s presidential run, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Cohen “had a lot of connections to the former Soviet Union, and that he seemed to have associations with organized crime figures in New York and Florida – Russian organized crime figures,” including Garber.

        Now, when I saw this, my jaw dropped. Admittedly, the significance probably needs some deciphering and perhaps you need to be a bit obsessed. But it connects together and makes sense of a number of key questions I’ve had. As I’ve explained many times here at TPM, Trump brought Cohen into the organization not because he was a lawyer but because he was a conduit for money from Russia and Ukraine. He’d been on a buying spree in the year or so before he was hired, buying up apartment units for him and members of his Ukrainian immigrant family. Trump wanted access to that spigot and more. So what Seth describes here – along with how Cohen got into the taxi business – is basically in line with my understanding. But I’d never realized Shusterman was such a critical player – perhaps even already a source of cash for Trump and, if Seth’s source is right, the reason Cohen got his job.

        https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/cohen-ology-pays-off-after-all

    • left_forward 1.3

      ‘doing some OK stuff’ ??!
      You are indeed bewildered !

  2. Andre 2

    Y’know, I kinda wish my lawyer was a bit like Michael Cohen. Never charging for advice, coughing up a $130k payoff out of his own pocket – even taking out a home equity line of credit to make the payoff. Seems to be a particularly generous soul.

  3. JohnSelway 3

    Compared to Stewart, Noah is a pretender to the throne.

    But anyway – to the actual content, Hannity is one of the worst TV propagandist of all time. Such an awful specimen. I very rarely wish for someone’s downfall, I’m too forgiving for that, but for Hannity I make an exception.

    • OnceWasTIm 3.1

      There is a Koiwoi equivalent of course.
      When he’s not standing in front of the mirror, or driving his penis extension, or writing for granny, or pretending a relationship with dutiful woify, he’s doing his best to become a Hannity clone. I’m not sure he’s got the finger pointing quite right yet though (on the downside), but on the upside he does have a bit of bint ‘standing by herrrrr man’.

    • joe90 3.2

      Classic John Stewart.

      • You_Fool 3.2.1

        “It will be hard to top this group [GW Bush administration] in terms of absurdity” – Jon Stewart 2004

        Its good to see that the US can even outdo itself these days

  4. Ad 4

    Would be just so awesome to see Hannity go down.

    I’m sure he will be replaced in time by someone just as toxic, but it’s great to see so many of the hard right in both Congress, Senate, and Fox go down in a screaming pile of flaming shit.