RUSH: Michael Cohen has accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors, and the Drive-By Media is going nuts! I mean, they’re so excited here they can barely contain themselves. Now, they have forgotten something. This is not Mueller’s case. Michael Cohen did not reach a plea deal with the special counsel investigating Trump. If you remember, the special counsel passed this case off to the United States attorney’s office, the Southern District of New York, which is the Manhattan office of the U.S. attorney. They have the case. They are the federal prosecutors.
Mueller passed this case off with full knowledge of what Cohen had, which means Cohen didn’t have anything of value that Mueller wanted which would prove collusion or obstruction, because it didn’t happen. They’re beside themselves because they’re now hoping, “Oh, my God.” They’re hoping so much that Cohen flipped on Trump. “Oh, my God.” And they’re just gonna die to find out what happened.
They not stopping to think that Cohen might have been in trouble on his own. That Cohen might have stretched the boundaries of the law on his own, having nothing to do with Trump. I guarantee you Mueller would not have passed this case off if there was anything in there that he could use in his upcoming blistering report to nail Trump. So I think they’re getting their hopes up here over something that’s not gonna materialize.
I have no idea what crimes Cohen committed that he needed to enter a plea deal for. Some of it may involve Stormy Daniels. But let me tell you what they want. They want Trump’s tax returns. They have always believed that Trump’s tax returns hold the smoking-gun evidence that the Russians have been propping Trump up, the Trump Organization has been bought and paid for by the Russians for years and years and years.
They think that Trump tax fraud will be readily seeable with Trump’s tax returns. They think that it will prove that Trump does not have anywhere near the money that he has said he has and that he lives off of. That he’s not a billionaire, that he’s a total phony and a total fraud! And they think that’s why Trump will not turn over his tax returns, and they desperately wanted to see them.
So they are hoping that Cohen’s got some kind of knowledge of Trump’s tax returns and involved with Trump in some kind of lawbreaking that he’s reached a plea deal here and thus has flipped on Trump. But I have to warn everybody that if that kind of evidence existed, I don’t think Mueller would have passed the case off. There might be some Stormy Daniels stuff in there.
I mentioned earlier, I got a text message from a friend late yesterday afternoon. And I was invigorated to see this. Any time I see evidence that the general population understands something, it enthuses me. It gives me great comfort.
And my buddy’s message read this way: “I’m sure you saw the tweet comparing Mueller to McCarthyism. Mueller is worse, and here’s why. McCarthy had a limited mandate to investigate government employees. His scope was specific and defined. Mueller’s mandate is not clearly defined. His scope is unlimited. The power he currently has is unprecedented and not anticipated or supported in our Constitution.”
And this is so right on the money. He then said, “I don’t believe we have a fourth independent branch of government, which we now have with Mueller. The deputy attorney general screwed up, not limiting the power and scope of Mueller. I’m confused why it hasn’t been adjusted or refined.”
And I wrote back. I said, “Because the deputy AG did not screw up. The deputy AG intended exactly what you have just nailed here, buddy, and Mueller is plowing through the presidency and plowing through the Constitution and ripping both of them to shreds. He’s establishing himself and his office, not as a fourth branch, but rather as the supreme branch. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Where is it written that the special counsel gets to sit in judgment of the president? There isn’t anything like this in the Constitution. But that’s how this is being portrayed. The media, the deputy AG, everybody is treating this special counsel, Mueller personally and his office and his investigation separately as some powerful existence over here that somehow has power over Trump, enough power to determine whether Trump stays in office or not.
And there’s no such power invested in either a special counsel or this one! The Constitution does not address this. That’s why I say that Mueller is destroying the presidency here. He’s literally plowing through it with this idea that the presidency is subject to an ongoing, never-ending review of some appointed lawyer and however many tainted investigators he can assemble.
That’s exactly how this is being portrayed. It’s exactly how it’s being presented in the media. And it’s exactly how Mueller is playing it! Which, again, I ask, how can the man with the greatest integrity and honor and honesty in Washington engage in this? Because this is shredding the Constitution. He is not a fourth branch. He’s not a supreme branch. Trump can fire him any time he wants. He does not have the power to judge Trump’s presidency each and every day.
Imagine if we did. Imagine if there were such a constitutional position. The American people vote, they elect a president. But over here is somebody appointed from the Department of Justice to conduct essentially an ongoing investigation day in and day out of the man the American people just elected. He can investigate 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
He can investigate the present, there’s no limit on what he can investigate, no limit to his subpoena power. There is no limit to who he can charge. There’s no limit to how much money he can spend. That’s what this is. And in the process it is, he’s plowing through the presidency, the office of the presidency as defined and explained in the Constitution.
Now, I will guarantee you there are a lot of people, average, ordinary citizens who do not know that the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch. They do not know it. They think it’s a separate branch that has more power than the presidency because that’s how all this is being presented. And they think that Robert Mueller has the legitimate power to sit there and determine whether or not Donald Trump is fit to be president.
They’ve accepted it because that’s how the media and the Democrat Party has presented it. That’s how the Department of Justice, some of the leaders in that DOJ and at the top of the FBI, that’s how they have played this whole thing. The Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party are waiting breathlessly for Robert Mueller to pronounce on the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. That’s what they are waiting for.
They are hoping and praying that Robert Mueller will write a report that comes as close as possible to saying Donald Trump’s presidency is illegitimate, that he should not be serving, that he should not have won. That’s what they want to see. And if that’s what happens, that will be nothing more than a tremendous and desperately damaging assault on the United States Constitution, because there is no such power invested in any office, any department, or any individual in the Constitution.
I think a lot of what’s going on is the players here involved are trying to bait Trump into firing Mueller. They’re desperately looking for Trump to obstruct. They don’t have any collusion because there wasn’t any — all of this is so bogus. Every aspect of this is a gigantic fraud. But now they want a process crime. They want to get Trump on a process crime. And I’m not talking about perjury. They want to try to get Trump for obstruction by firing Comey. If they can try to bait Trump into firing Mueller or Rosenstein, then they can make a beeline for obstruction.
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RUSH: Michael Cohen has surrendered to the FBI. The plea deal supposedly involves campaign finance violations, which… That might be related to the payoffs to Stormy Daniels, the porn star. Anyway, we’ll see. Just keep in mind that Mueller passed that case off to the Southern District of New York, U.S. attorney’s office. So there’s nothing in there about the Russians in it.
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RUSH: All right. MSNBC, CNN can barely keep their clothes on, folks. They’re about to descend into a massive live orgy of happiness. There are two people related to Trump now that are in court flipping. One would be Cohen, the other would be Manafort. They are convinced this is the beginning of the end of Trump. Here is the New York Times story on Cohen. Not that you can trust this. See, this is the thing. But the key to this, to me, is in the opening sentence.
Headline: “Michael Cohen, Trump’s Former Fixer, Reaches Plea Deal Over Payments to Women.” Here is the opening sentence paragraph. Quote, “Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, reached a plea agreement with prosecutors investigating payments he made to women for Mr. Trump but the deal does not include cooperation, two people familiar with the matter said.”
Does not include cooperation? Well, now, since we’re discussing who assigns gender when and various other leftist contortions as they go through life trying to be happy, what does this mean? The deal does not include corporation. They’re telling us that Cohen flipped! Well, not according to this.
If the deal does not include cooperation, it doesn’t mean he flipped on anything. It means they had him dead to rights, and he copped to some of it in order to spare the time and cost of trial to convict him. In exchange, he got a little better deal, which we don’t know what it is, if this is accurate. But I imagine that part of it is and the New York Times has gotta be somewhat disappointed to have to include that in the story. “The deal does not include cooperation.”
Well, then what else is there? As far as these people at MSNBC and CNN are concerned, that’s all that matters, is the cooperation! That means flipping! That means Cohen didn’t flip! It may mean Cohen has nothing to flip with. And that’s probably the same thing with Manafort.
We will see, my friends. But I’m telling you, I’m telling it’s a lot of people that are gonna have a lot of laundry and dry cleaning, I mean, by tonight. They can barely contain themselves here. There’s probably a mad dash in the greenroom, all their guests to be on the next panel. You could have panels of 25 people before this day’s over. Professor Dershowitz remoting in from Martha’s Vineyard.
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RUSH: CNN claims that the deal involving Cohen involves jail time, prison time and a fine. So it must be more than campaign finance violations. Might be tax fraud in there. We’ll just have to wait and see.