I hadn’t caught up with this one! It sounds like he knew he might need to deny he had been to Prague at some point, so went there in a way that it wouldn’t show up on his passport.

It’s getting more and more interesting. The bit I like best is being able to tell all those people who thought Trump and Co were innocent of everything, “I told you so!”

I’ve been without a laptop for a week. I’m back now, and I’ll do a quick post.

Cohen is spoken of in the Steele documents in detail as going to Prague, meeting with the Russians and cleaning up for Manafort who had recently been let go from the campaign. So anyway, Cohen makes this big appearance on Hannity’s show to let everyone know he had never been to Prague so that proves the Steele documents were garbage. He waved his passport around as proof he had not gone to Prague. Now we have evidence that yes, he did go to Prague and Mueller and company are working out the rest of the evidence. He went by train from Germany into Prague (Passport not needed). If they pin this one down, Trump is yesterday’s breakfast and this is the collusion story.

And now Mr Hannity appears to be one of three clients of Mr Cohen last year (the others being Mr Trump and Mr Broidy -a Trump campaign donor who used Mr Cohen to ‘buy off’ a child with a model).
Now what does Mr Hannity have to hide to need the services of Mr Cohen (the ‘fixer’, who modeled himself on the despicable Mr Cohn)?
And thinking of hiding, I wonder what Mr Trump is hiding, no tax returns, not seriously distancing himself from his business interests when he became president and every time an investigation comes close to his business, he goes berserk apoplectic.
Is it -Russian or other-mafia money laundering? Is he not a billionaire at all, but living from oligarchs handouts? And what for? Is there something else? Drug trafficking? Running a prostitution/human trafficking network? Or what could it be that even Mr Trump knows he can’t get away with? It must be something very serious.

No kangaroos in New Zealand (maybe zoos?)

There are wallabies on Kawau Island (near Auckland) and around Waimate in the South Island. Both lots are descended from imports from Australia in the 1800s.

Prior to the arrival of Maori, the only mammals in New Zealand were two species of bat. Birds and insects occupied the ecological niches that elsewhere were occupied by mammals.

I agree. When all this latest stuff comes out properly, Trump’s base cannot save him. People like Hannity, Jesse Watters, and Judge Jenine are looking increasingly ridiculous. More and more Fox hosts are stepping back from the brink. Shepherd Smith was never on it. Those sticking up for Trump on other networks where they’re getting proper questions either don’t answer the question asked or are incoherent.

I think this revelation that Cohen taped conversations is interesting. I bet it was so he could play them back for Trump so Trump could get a thrill hearing the person being cowed by bully-boy Cohen.

It does worry me that Trump has been very effective at building his brand with up to a quarter of the population. He’s got those same people to distrust quality media outlets and the FBI.

Mueller has been very clever passing the Cohen part of the investigation to SDNY. That makes it a state crime. Trump, of course, won’t be able to pardon him. The only thing Trump can do to retain his loyalty is pay him, and since the prosecutors have all the evidence, I’m not sure pleading the Fifth will help. Also (as you probably know), apparently in a civil case, the jury is allowed to assume that the alleged perpetrator is pleading the Fifth because they’re guilty.

Cohen gave an interview to Don Lemon yesterday. I haven’t seen all the actual interview, but he apparently talked about how much this is affecting his family. If it comes to a choice between Trump and his family, I suspect there’s a good chance he’ll pick his wife and kids. That’s similar to how Mueller got Michael Flynn to confess – he chose his son over Trump.

Well , I guess that Cohen is a kinda guy who deserves some ‘underbussing’. I also guess in a sense the most deserving ‘underbussing’ candidate threw himself under it. Twice, first by admitting why he fired Mr Comey, and now by -probably unintentionally- allowing Mr Cohen to speak out, since no more ‘client discretion privilege’ (or whatever it is called). Interesting times, ne?

Here is another little legal twist on the raid of Cohen. When Trump said, while on the airplane the other day, No, to the question, did you know about the payment to Daniels? When he verified what Cohen had already said much earlier – the attorney client thing is dead. You can whip up all non disclosure agreements but if your client confirms what you have already said, that you know nothing about any $130,000 you do not have a client. Cohen was thrown under the bus. But then Trump has lots of guys doing that.

I think there’s a fourth kind who really believe in their version of the “science”. They think there’s a great conspiracy to hide the truth, though to what end I can’t imagine. When Obama was president, a quarter of Republicans genuinely believed he was the Anti-Christ. These people get in their information silos, they support and reinforce each other and talk themselves into their ideas.

For us, it’s impossible to believe that people could really think that stuff, but they do. Watch some of the videos people like Alex Jones (InfoWars) put out. Check out the Right Wing Watch site. You will find them. Remember how big the US is, and these people can live largely isolated from main stream ideas. They won’t watch the usual media. Some even think much of Fox is too left wing. They genuinely believe that Trump is president through God’s will. They think we’re in the Biblical End Times and they’ll be raptured. Some atheists set up a company to look after their pets after they were gone and made a fair bit of money, though I think they were done for fraud because the sheriff didn’t believe in the Rapture. There’s a series of books called the Left Behind series about people who aren’t raptured that’s sold tens of millions of copies and made its Rapture-believing writers a huge amount of money.