Last edited Sun Jan 19, 2020, 07:26 AM - Edit history (1)
Parnas' indictment is directly related to laundering foreign money into tRump's campaign interference shenanigans in Ukraine, including $1 million from a Russian bank account. In other words, his crimes are all wrapped up in the same nutshell tRump is being impeached for.
Contrast this with Michael Cohen: His crimes (at least the ones he was charged with) were about campaign finance violations regarding Stormy Daniels, personal tax evasion, and personal bank fraud.
While Cohen testified about a sprinkling of tRump insurance and bank fraud and, of course, the Stormy issue, there was no way he was ever going to give up the goods about tRump's decades-long Russian and Ukranian money laundering. Why? Because doing so would mean taking down members of his own family (on both Cohen's side and his wife's side) who are deeply entrenched in the Russian mafia here in America as well as in sketchy enterprises in the Ukraine.
Needless to say, there was just no freaking way Cohen was ever going to testify against his father-in-law, his uncle, his cousins, his own brother, and his brother's father-in-law (who BTW, died in Ukraine under suspicious circumstances a day after media reports came out about his role in a backchanneled "peace plan" through Michael Flynn that would cede control of the Crimea to Putin). And that doesn't even count his relatives' business associates who are some straight-up scary oligarchs.
Remember when Cohen gave a flurry of interviews after it was known that he was no longer on team tRump's side? Remember how he would say over and over again that he had to put his "family" first? What family did you think he was signaling to with those interviews? This is why SDNY wouldn't cut any deals with him. He couldn't give them tRump because he wouldn't give them his relatives who have been laundering money through tRump for decades.
Bringing all this back to Parnas, how does it compare? I think Parnas (who also has connections with both the Russian mob and corrupt Ukranians) has analyzed what happened with Cohen. As already seen with the SDNY, the only way he gets to cut a deal with them is by giving up some mobsters higher up the food chain. Maybe Firtash would be enough, maybe not. Perhaps, as with Cohen, it would be safer to just go to trial and take the couple years (or less) prison sentence. But then again, there's always the Epstein factor to worry about when going that route.
That brings us to what's going down now. If I had to guess, I think Parnas is first trying to make a play for Congressional immunity in exchange for tRump. Don't know if it will work out that way, but it's probably worth a shot.
Thus, the media blitz in advance to try to put certain Rethug senators in a box who are also on the take from the Russians. Notice how Lev has signaled from the get-go that he's implicating everyone from top down, but he stops short in naming senators. Yet, he throws in a representative, Devin Nunes, as a warning shot. The smart move would be to leverage compromised senators who have their fingers in the rubles till into letting him testify with immunity in exchange for keeping their names out of it. Not saying this would at all be ethical, but, hey, I think we all know we aren't dealing with any Boy Scouts in this lot.
Anyway, that's where my head went when I started applying game theory to the whole scenario.
Any additional thoughts?
= new reply since forum marked as read
; not at all like Trump's mocking, which is always cruel.
