Michael Avenatti:If Trump was aware of, directed &/or approved the use of a bogus retainer agreement

[iluvtennis]

@MichaelAvenatti
8h8 hours ago
If Trump was aware of, directed and/or approved the use of a bogus retainer agreement and/or payment of Cohen's bogus invoices to cover-up the payment to my client, that is far more than a campaign finance violation @GeraldoRivera. That would be mail/wire fraud. And its a felony

Link to tweet

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Avenatti is referring to the SDNY document that says this:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5453395/USDOJ-Cohen-20181207.pdf
After the election, Cohen sought reimbursement for election-related expenses, including
the $130,000 payment he had made to Woman-2.

Cohen presented an executive of the Company with a copy of a bank statement reflecting the $130,000 wire transfer. Cohen also requested reimbursement of an additional $50,000, which represented a claimed payment for campaign- related “tech services.”

Executives of the Company agreed to reimburse Cohen by adding $130,000 and $50,000, “grossing up” that amount to $360,000 for tax purposes, and adding a $60,000 bonus, such that Cohen would be paid $420,000 in total. Executives of the Company decided to pay the $420,000 in monthly installments of $35,000 over the course of a year. (PSR ¶¶ 52-53).

At the instruction of an executive for the Company, Cohen sent monthly invoices to the Company for these $35,000 payments, falsely indicating that the invoices were being sent pursuant to a “retainer agreement.”

The Company then falsely accounted for these payments as “legal expenses.” In fact, no such retainer agreement existed and these payments were not “legal expenses” – Cohen in fact provided negligible legal services to Individual-1 or the Company in 2017 – but were reimbursement payments. Cohen then received the $420,000 during the course of 2017.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. felonies everywhere

It's beginning to look a lot like prison, everywhere you look.

[mr_lebowski]

2. Outside of the Campaign Finance problem, I'm confused how this is a 'felony' by Trumps people?

Were they skirting taxes in some way by characterizing the payments in this fashion?

Because if not, what is the crime outside of the campaign finance issue?

Who cares about 'false accounting' other than the IRS or the Campaign Finance regulators (in his case), IOW?

If I keep a sheet of paper on my desk 'accounting' for all the money I spend on booze ... as 'cat food and utilities' ... am I committing a felony?

[marylandblue]

3. If it were a regular company, it would be fraud

A lawyer bills for services he didn't perform. Company execs know he didn't do the services but they pay him anyway, because they are hiding the illegal activities he did do. The execs have defrauded their own company. They'd be immediately fired for sure, and the company may consider pursuing criminal charges, but many big companies would just let it go.

In this case, Trump's own personal finances, his company's and his campaign were all inextricably bound up in such a big mess, that it amounts to Trump defrauding himself. Which is still technically illegal, but the real crimes lay elsewhere.

[unblock]

4. i'm not sure it's criminal fraud when all the principals know exactly what's going on.

if the irs is being defrauded, sure, that's tax fraud.
if it's a public company and investors are being defrauded, sure, that's securities fraud or some other form of criminal fraud.
if it's actually am unreported campaign contribution and/or in excess of legal limits, then sure, it's a campaign finance violation.

but if one private company gives the other private company money and the invoice says one thing when the money was actually for something else, but the owners all know exactly what's going on, is that really criminal fraud?

i mean, who exactly is being defrauded?

[mr_lebowski]

6. That's what I'm saying. Not sure Avenatti is correct here ...

Though the campaign finance thing ... is still clearly illegal.

[marylandblue]

7. Well yes, it's done for tax evasion and campaign finance

But it's also a type of money laundering and may violate laws about how attorneys can't bill for work they haven't done. So Avenatti does miss the main crimes, but they might throw in wire fraud for good measure. Now that I think about it, mail fraud for legal bills was part of the plot, in "A Pelican Brief." Maybe that's where Avenatti got this idea?

[unblock]

8. i think you're thinking of "the firm"?

but in that movie, the lawyers were overcharging their customers, by padding their hours, iirc. actual, good old-fashioned fraud, where customers were being deceived and deprived of money. but if the clients were all in the same state, it's just a state-level crime, not enough juice for justice. but putting a stamp on it made it a federal crime with teeth because it involved the us postal system.

yes, a deceitful invoice could be *a part* of a whole lot of crimes. but i don't think it's a crime in and of itself.

[marylandblue]

9. Yes, it's "The Firm"

But if I remember correctly, the law firm worked for the Mob, and Tom Cruise found out about the illegal activities, they tried and failed to blackmail him, so the firm was going to kill him, but Cruise turned them in for mail fraud without getting in trouble with the Mob. Or something like that. Anyway, either that's what Avenatti was thinking about, or his next gig will be Hollywood screenwriter.

[unblock]

10. yeah, i think the fbi was hoping cruise would give them the goods on the mob itself.

but cruise realized that if he did that, the mob would kill him and his family.

so he gave the fbi a case against the mob's law firm, on charges with teeth but that wouldn't get the mob in trouble. that way the mob wouldn't feel the need to go after him.

as for avenatti, the jury's still out. i have a feeling he wants to be a celebrity lawyer on cnn or something.

[mr_lebowski]

5. Right ...

Seems to me that where a 'felony' might rise up ... is if Trump claimed a tax write-off for this money, calling it a 'business expense' ... when it clearly was nothing of the sort.

And THAT could easily have happened, IMHO.

[lunatica]

12. My understanding was that paying the two women to not affect his campaign

is a felony. The fact is he paid them so no one would know before the elections. Campaign fraud or some such.

[mercuryblues]

14. And funneling the money

From Deutsche bank to a shell company to trump org to repay Cohen in 12 installments is money laundering. At some point the money was wired from the bank to the shell to trump org.

Bank fraud = getting the loan from the bank to commit the crime of campaign violation.

wire fraud = transferring the funds for the criminal act

Hiding where the money came from to hide the criminal act = money laundering

The best part about all this is that trump didn't need to do any of this. His followers could not have cared less if he slept with a porn star. They would have voted for him anyhow.

[lunatica]

15. But, but, but Melania!

[mercuryblues]

17. She knew

about Stormy. Malaria's main job was to scour the internet to see what the press was saying about Donnie.

This interview was from 2011 (they have since updated it) Malaria had to have read it

https://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/stormy-daniels-full-interview-151788/

Porn star Stormy Daniels confirmed she had an affair with Donald Trump in an exclusive 2011 interview with In Touch, five years before she was reportedly paid $130,000 by the president to stay silent about the fling. Here is the full transcript of the interview conducted by former Bauer Publishing reporter Jordi Lippe-McGraw. Subsequent to the interview, Ms. Daniels took and passed a polygraph test. The account of her affair was corroborated by one of her good friends and supported by her ex-husband, both of whom also passed polygraph tests. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

[lunatica]

18. And she probably didn't care

She had her son by then so her future was secure financially. She had his name to use to do her own business deals.

Who could want more?

Then he went and humiliated her by making her the First Lady! What an insult. It’s pretty obvious it’s been a step down for her.

[Azathoth]

11. Probably not wire fraud, but maybe conspiracy to defraud the United States

It's also certainly misprision of felony. And given how deliberately co-mingled everything is and how the Trump Org appears to be an ongoing enterprise designed from the ground up to facilitate and obscure Trump's innumerable fraud schemes, I wouldn't be surprised if Mueller and SDNY aren't closely re-reading the racketeering statutes.

We may well see a RICO case before this is over.

[genxlib]

13. Illegal or not, it sure is a bad business deal

He paid $420k for $180k worth of "services".

Just the kind of great "deal" that Trump keep bragging about.

[lunatica]

16. Hahahaaa!

Winning!