Anderson Cooper: When is a crime a crime?

Manafort juror says one holdout prevented conviction on all 18 counts

nbcnews.

Eleven of the 12 jurors in the Virginia trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort were ready to convict on all 18 counts, but one holdout had reasonable doubt and could not be swayed, a juror said in a televised interview Wednesday night.

"There was one holdout," juror Paula Duncan said in an interview on Fox News.

"We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail, we laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt," Duncan added. "... We didn't want it to be hung, so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her. But in the end she held out, and that's why we have 10 counts that did not get a verdict."

Todd Starnes: California Dems prepare for crackdown on churches

foxnews.com/opinion

Christians across the nation are expressing grave concerns over a proposed California law that would outlaw speech dealing with certain issues – including homosexuality and gender identity – by clergy members, licensed counselors and others.

Assembly Bill 2943, authored by Democratic Assemblyman Evan Low, would utilize the state’s existing consumer fraud statute to classify gay conversion therapy as a fraudulent practice.

State senators passed the legislation last Thursday and the Assembly is poised to take up a final vote before the bill is sent to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.

“The faith community, like anyone else, needs to evolve with the times,” Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi said during debate on the legislation. “The science is clear. The claim that the First Amendment can be used as a defense for promoting fraudulent conduct is a fallacious argument.”

Dr. Paul Chappell, the pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church and the president of West Coast Baptist College, said there is a groundswell of opposition rising up among Christians and conservatives to the Assembly bill.

“This is an encroachment by the state,” Chappell said on the Todd Starnes Radio Show.“It’s time for Christians all across America to recognize it’s an attack on our faith.”

Trump-hating Democrats who pursue impeachment will be punished by the American voter

foxnewsl

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas Tuesday are unlikely to result in criminal charges against the president. But the pleas admitting to campaign finance violations could be used by Democrats to try to impeach the president, should they win control of the U.S. House in November.

And what if everything Cohen stated in his guilty plea is true?

Remember former North Carolina Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards? Donors paid $1 million to Edwards’ mistress to keep quiet just before the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries when Edwards was a candidate.

Federal prosecutors charged Edwards with campaign finance violations but he was acquitted, largely because the contributions didn’t go directly to his campaign, though Edwards also argued that the payment was meant to hide his extramarital affair from his dying wife. There’s even a name for this sad business – the “mistress loophole.”

There are other problems with the Cohen case that are less concrete but should still be mentioned. Cohen is smarmy, but smarmy or not, he has an incentive to cooperate with prosecutors to get the lightest punishment possible for his crimes.

If Cohen doesn’t cooperate, or maybe even “compose,” he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. The fact that Cohen’s lawyer is Clinton-confidant Lanny Davis, and that the judge in the case is Kimba Wood – who was almost Bill Clinton’s attorney general – might raise a few eyebrows as well.

To many Americans, it seems that men like Cohen, former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort (who was convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud charges Tuesday), and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI on highly suspect grounds) have been targeted for prosecution simply because of their association with Donald Trump.

We now live in a country where pundits on the left explicitly hope that people working for President Trump will be prosecuted. In other words, they argue that the selective use of justice is a good thing if it is directed against conservatives or supporters of the president.

That is chilling. Without a concerted effort from the American people to condemn such political prosecutions, things will only get worse.

Anderson Cooper: Cohen basically called Trump a crook

Sean Hannity Melts Down About Hillary Clinton On Day Manafort, Cohen Become Felons

huffingtonpost

Sean Hannity mourned the death of “equal justice under the law” on Tuesday,
riled up that President Donald Trump’s former associates were deemed
guilty of crimes when his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton had not been. 

“Equal justice under the law ... is dead,” Hannity said during his opening monologue.

The Fox News host was responding to reports that Trump’s former campaign
manager Paul Manafort was convicted of eight of 18 charges, including five counts
of tax fraud, in the first trial of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Manafort
faces a maximum of 80 years in prison. The judge declared a mistrial after the
jurors failed to reach a decision on the remaining 10 charges. 

Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, entered into a plea deal with
prosecutors on Tuesday, pleading guilty to eight charges including bank fraud,
tax fraud and campaign finance violations due to his payments of “hush money”
in 2016 to women who said they had affairs with Trump several years earlier.
Cohen said he paid the women at the direction of Trump.

“Cohen and Manafort ― literally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
for bank and tax frauds, etc.,” Hannity said. “In today’s two-tiered
justice system, as a Democrat, clearly you can commit financial fraud and
get away with it. By the way, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

The host then launched into an attack on Clinton and her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying she “destroyed classified information, which violates the espionage act.” 

“And then you can delete subpoenaed emails ... 33,000 of them and acid-wash your hard drive ... and eliminate the evidence, and have your aide smash up your devices with hammers, and get away with it,” he added.

An FBI investigation into Clinton’s email use concluded in 2016
that there was no evidence that prosecution was warranted.
Then-FBI Director James Comey said there was evidence
of potential mishandling of classified information and referred
the matter to the Justice Department, which closed the investigation
without bringing charges. A State Department inspector general
report concluded that Clinton had violated the government’s policy
on email use but that such violations were not criminal.

Hannity, who was also a client of Cohen’s, told viewers that he
suspected prosecutors “forced” the attorney to say Trump knew about
the hush money payments. He also told his viewers that there were
lessons to learn from Tuesday’s news, including not lying to the FBI
and paying taxes. 

Minister: Trump's statement 'a cause for concern' //

Arutz Sheva News

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel responded Wednesday to US President Donald Trump's statement Tuesday night that Israel will have to pay a "higher price" in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority "because they won a very big thing," referring to American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the transfer of the US embassy.

"The President stressed: 'If there ever will be peace,' I suggest that we examine this 'ever'," said Minister Ariel in an interview with Army Radio.

At the same time, he emphasized Israel must examine the President's remarks carefully. "This isn't a terrible morning, but there is cause for concern regarding Trump," the minister added.

He noted if there is an issue that should be of concern to the government it is the construction of a bridge on the Ayalon Highway on weekends. "There are other times to do the work, and construction on Shabbat is severe, unnecessary, and inappropriate, and the struggle will be shared with the haredim - the Torah is one," concluded Minister Ariel.

Bolton: No 'quid pro quo' in Jerusalem embassy move // Arutz Sheva News

arutz 7

In his opening comments Wednesday, Bolton cited the recent arrest of Iranian agents in the US who were conducting surveillance of Israeli and American Jewish targets, as well as the planned attack by Iranian agents against a gathering in Paris, saying the two cases highlighted “the threat that Iran poses in Europe and the United States.”

Responding to a question from a reporter at the press conference regarding President Trump’s comments Tuesday night that Israel would have to pay a “higher price” in talks with the Palestinian Authority because of the US decision to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem, Bolton played down the statement, saying it did not indicate a change in US policy.

“I don’t think there’s any change in policy. I think the president looked at the recognition of Jerusalem as being Israel’s capital and the inevitable consequence of that – that the US embassy ought to be in the capital city of the country which its accredited as the right and natural thing to do, and it’s not an issue of quid pro quo.

“He’s made the point, I think, several times that this issue has been a hang up in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. And as he said last night as well, he’s taken that issue off the table. As a deal-maker... he would expect that the Palestinians would say, ‘Okay, great – we didn’t get that one, now we want something else.’ We’ll see how it goes.

“But the fundamental point is that this is something that the parties are going to have to agree on.”

Citing former Secretary of State James Baker, Bolton said the US “can’t want peace more than the parties themselves.”

“The real point is, the president did the right thing in moving the embassy to Israel’s capital. And that in and of itself brings reality to the negotiations.”

“It was a very positive step forward not just for Israel, but for the Palestinians as well.”

The NSA later added that a peace deal was not something “the US is prepared to force on anybody.”

Michael Cohen pleads guilty to 8 counts

cnn

Kaminetsy Greenblatt heter

Attachment Theory: How Your Childhood Shaped You

Trump is powerless as his legal fate spins out of his control

cnn

President Donald Trump may no longer control his fate, a plight that helps explain his increasingly volcanic Twitter eruptions.

Trump's persona -- in politics, business and life -- relies on his self-image as the guy who calls the shots, closes deals and forces others to react to the shock moves of a master narrative weaver.

But as a legal web closes around the President, he's in a far weaker position than he would like, a situation especially underlined by the bombshell revelations that White House counsel Donald McGahn has spent 30 hours in interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller.