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Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s ‘Fixer,’ Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison

Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and so-called ‘fixer,’ was sentenced today to three years in prison for his role in secret hush money scandals regarding alleged affairs between Donald Trump and two women.

His crimes included campaign finance violations as well as lying to Congress.

From The New York Times:

The sentencing in federal court in Manhattan capped a startling fall for Mr. Cohen, 52, who had once hoped to work by Mr. Trump’s side in the White House but ended up a central figure in the inquiry into payments to a porn star and a former Playboy model before the 2016 election.

Judge William H. Pauley III said Mr. Cohen had committed a “smorgasbord” of crimes involving “deception” and motivated by “personal greed and ambition.”

“As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better,” the judge said.

Before he was sentenced, a solemn Mr. Cohen, standing at a lectern, sounded emotional but resolved as he told the judge he had been tormented by the anguish and embarrassment he had caused his family.

Referencing Trump recently calling him ‘weak,’ Cohen agreed with that assessment but for different reasons than Trump.

“It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass,” Mr. Cohen said.

Cohen had also served as deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee.

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News Round-Up: December 11, 2018

Matthew Camp flies the friendlier skies
Matthew Camp (via Instagram)

Some news items you might have missed:

• As I board my plane to head home to Las Vegas from the fab Puerto Vallarta, let me inform you no one on my flight looks quite like Matt Camp (above), who I just chatted with for an upcoming interview.

• Michelle Obama has added EVEN MORE dates to her book tour as sales of her memoir, Becoming, have already exceeded 3 million copies in North America alone.

• Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin has a VERY interesting idea Donald Trump might use to stay out of jail if not re-elected.

• A Florida man has been sentenced to 3 years in prison for hooking up with straight men, telling them he was a woman, promising blindfolded anonymous sex and then filming them without their knowledge or consent.

• Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro has issued his annual list of the year’s most memorable quotes. Topping the list is Rudy Giuliano’s “Truth isn’t truth” quote from his interview on “Meet the Press,” August 19, 2018.

• Jim Marchese, who no one remembers from the 2014 season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, is attempting to become relevant in some way via his blatant homophobia on social media telling his Twitter followers, “NO STRAIGHT MALE wants his son to be gay.”

He doubled down with even more homophobia:

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Washington Post Launches New “Bottomless Pinocchio” Rating For Trump’s Repeated Lies

Donald Trump

The Washington Post Fact Checker is beginning a new fact-checking rating for politicians – the “Bottomless Pinocchio.

That dubious distinction will be awarded to politicians who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation.

The bar for the Bottomless Pinocchio is high: The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times. Twenty is a sufficiently robust number that there can be no question the politician is aware that his or her facts are wrong. The list of Bottomless Pinocchios will be maintained on its own landing page.

The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list.

Among the whoppers that Trump continues to repeat that qualify for the “Bottomless Pinocchio” include the Democrats ‘colluding’ with the Russians in the 2016 election (48 times); calling his tax cut legislation “the biggest tax cut in history (123 times); and boasting that the U.S. is experiencing ‘the best economy in the history of the country (99 times).

There’s much more at the link.

What a dubious distinction.

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Trump Argues Over Funding His Mexico Wall With Democrats As Cameras Roll

Donald Trump just sparred with expected Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and soon-to-be-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in the Oval Office with cameras rolling, over the passing of a budget bill that would include the funding for Trump’s precious wall.

Trump threatened a partial government shutdown if he doesn’t get the funding he wants.

From The Hill:

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) during a contentious, 11-minute exchange at the White House.

“I will take the mantle,” the president added. “I will be the one shut it down, I’m not going to blame you for it.”

Trump’s vehemence left Pelosi and Schumer exasperated, with both leaders pleading with the president not to debate the funding request in front of the news media.

“Unfortunately, this has spiraled downward,” Pelosi said, after arguing with the president over the need for a border wall and whether Republicans have the votes to pass funding through the House.

“You will not win,” Pelosi told Trump.

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White Supremacist Sentenced To Life In Prison For Driving Car Through Charlottesville Crowd

James A Fields Jr.

The Washington Post reports that neo-nazi James A. Fields Jr., convicted of first-degree murder (among other charges) has been sentenced to life in prison and more for his actions.

James A. Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally, was sentenced to life in prison by a jury Tuesday after a trial that offered an unsparing view of the physical and emotional ruin he caused in this city with a burst of vehicular rage 16 month ago.

As he had throughout his two-week trial, Fields, 21, sat impassively at the defendant’s table, clad in a powder blue sweater, as the jury delivered its verdict at 12:20 p.m. after about four hours of deliberations that began Monday: life for first-degree murder; 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding; 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding; and nine years for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

His overall sentence: life plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines.

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the attack as well as 35 others who were seriously injured.

In Virginia, a trial jury hands out sentences within certain guidelines.

The judge will officially sentence Fields on March 29.  At that time, the judge may reduce, but not increase, the prison time.

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Scientists: “Meddling” Kids Skew Studies By Trolling As LGBTQ

Scientists and researchers who study LGBTQ youth are finding a new (annoying) phenomenon: meddling kids who think it’s funny to troll giving exaggerated responses to surveys while identifying as LGBTQ, especially regarding eating habits or substance use.

Those ‘funny’ answers end up skewing data in regard to health issues and more.

From The Daily Beast:

NYU economics professor Joseph R. Cimpian, whose new study in the American Journal of Public Health explores this emerging problem, said that he was tipped off to its potential scale when he noticed how frequently the ostensibly gay kids on one survey reported being blind—way beyond what would be expected.

“What we found is that ‘gay’ kids are way more likely to be blind and to be deaf and to have three or more children of their own and all sorts of things,” he told The Daily Beast. “When you look at these data, you think, ‘This is ridiculous!’”

There was only one conclusion: “Clearly the kids are messing with us.”

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James Comey: Vote Trump Out In Landslide Without Impeachment

James Comey

During a Q&A session at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y in New York City on Sunday night, former FBI Director James Comey told the audience that the answer to the scandal-ridden Trump administration is voting him out in a landslide in 2020, not impeachment.

Via CNN:

“All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021,” Comey told an audience at the 92nd Street Y on New York City’s Upper East Side. He all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election.

Comey said he hoped that Trump would be swept out of office without being impeached. Framing the rise of Trumpism as a political ill the country needed to exorcise at the ballot, he expressed a hope that Americans would “in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values.”

“Removal by impeachment would muddy that,” he said, and potentially leave a third of the country feeling like their chosen leader had been removed in a “coup.”

For what it’s worth, I wholeheartedly agree.

First, even though a Democratic-led House of Representatives might vote for articles of impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would never vote Trump out.

Second, the democratic process would be viewed as a much more widespread solution than, as Comey says, a Trumper-viewed ‘coup.’

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Donald Trump Rants About “No Smocking Gun”

Donald Trump

Donald Trump clearly had a terrible weekend after announcing his second chief of staff, John Kelly, would be leaving soon AND his prime pick to replace Kelly, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, publicly tweeted his decision to decline the offer.

So, Monday morning, the Trumpster was all ready to pick a fight. Taking to Twitter, he ranted:

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun…No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,..which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

Legal experts weighed in:

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Two Men Arrested & Charged In Violent Hate Crime Attack On Gay Couple

Kealan Abraham (L) and Andre Duncan (R)

According to local Fox News affiliate, Andre Duncan, 39, and Kealan Abraham, 34, were arrested and charged with battery with a deadly weapon, battery with use of deadly weapon result of substantial bodily harm and conspiracy to commit criminal contempt.

The incident occurred near Vegas Drive and Simmons Street outside the gay couple’s home.

Charles Clements told police he and his boyfriend were followed home and attacked on November 29 as they arrived at their home.

The assault spilled onto their front patio where a glass table was knocked over and shattered. According to Clements, one of the men picked up a shard of glass and began to stab his boyfriend Vincent in the back puncturing his lung and breaking two ribs.

Clements said the men called Vincent a “faggot” and “an abomination” during the attack. Clements suffered head wounds.

Clements said neighbors heard the attack and then saw everything.

“Neighbors, everybody just looking,” he said. “Nobody called the police.”

Police said officers found Duncan’s driver’s license on the scene of the attack.

Vincent told police he recognized one of the attackers as a man who works with him at Walmart. That’s how the man knew about their relationship, he said.

“It was all about gay bashing,” Clements said. “The guy came up to my boyfriend’s job, calling him an abomination, calling him ‘fag.’”

When police went to Abraham’s home on December 2, Duncan’s car was present. According to police reports, he was seen leaving the home and drove to Walmart. Officers arrested him there.

Police arrested Abraham at his home.

Both men admitted to taking part in the fight but claimed there was not ‘hate crime’ aspect to the attack.

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News Round-Up: December 9, 2018

Some news items you might have missed:

• You could say things are going “swimmingly” down here in Puerto Vallarta. The views are very nice 🙂

• Speaking to OUT from the set of his new movie, Limited Partners, Billy Porter described the news of his Golden globe nomination for “Best Performance by an Actor In A Television Series – Drama” for Pose as “unbelievable, it’s out of body, it’s surreal, it’s crazy. I’ve been in this business for 30 years, I’m speechless, and I’m a man of many words, so to make me speechless is a big deal.”

• GOP Sen. Marco Rubio warns a presidential pardon for former campaign chair Paul Manafort would be a “terrible mistake” and could “trigger a debate about whether the pardon powers should be amended.”

• Focus Features has acquired Michael Ausiello’s critically-acclaimed memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies with Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant to co-write the screenplay. The memoir is an emotional, often funny, account of Ausiello’s 14-year relationship that ends with the heart-wrenching death of his husband Kit, who succumbed to a rare form of neuroendocrine cancer in 2015. Jim Parsons is set to star.

• Vanity Fair: Donald Trump wonders if he should dump Vice President Mike Pence in 2020?

• Robyn has released the official music video for her hit, “Honey,” featuring dancers cast from a call sent out on her Twitter account.

The chosen dancers were flown to London for the shoot from all around the world.

According to press materials, “Robyn wanted the process of making the video to also embody her mantra of bringing people together and communicating in person…It is a testament to love, sensuality and the loose feeling during the after-hours of a great party.”