Secrets and lies
“Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial enters its 16th day on Monday in New York with the potential for bombshell testimony as his former fixer turned prosecution witness, Michael Cohen, is expected to take the stand“, writes Victoria Bekiempis in The Guardian, 13 May.
It seems to have come as a complete shock to the media that, in a case where the defendant is accused of covering up illicit ‘hush money’ payments in advance of an election by falsifying his business accounts, the person who allegedly made the payments on his behalf and the individual who allegedly received the money are being called to be cross-examined in the trial.
‘Who you gonna call?’ became a well-known slogan in the wake of the film Ghostbusters. So, who the hell else do you expect to be called as prosecution witnesses in a trial of a case in which they are so deeply, individually implicated?
But ‘bombshell’? FFS, media, wake up. Go back to the original 2018 trial of Michael Cohen and you will find all the facts of the current case (except possibly the extent of the cover-up, 34 instances in all of falsifying records) were exposed then, on the stand, under oath – even the disappointing size and odd ‘mushroom’ shape of the presidential penis, and the spanking with Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ cover – possibly a forgery. Cohen is a nasty piece of work, but also comical, who formerly expressed almost filial devotion to his mentor, Trump, but later turned against him with some pretty damning evidence. He thus became one of the few members of his gang Trump never pardoned, describing Cohen as ‘a rat’.
(Incidentally, there is another possible offence Trump could be charged with, inasmuch as it is technically illegal in the US for an elected official to benefit personally from commuting the prison sentence of a convicted criminal, as Trump did with Manafort and Stone, both of whom agreed in exchange not to testify against the boss. In the case of Alan Weisselberg, former CFO of Trump Organisation, his refusal to testify against Trump over a tax dodge got him a 5-months jail sentence, which the Teflon Don could do nothing about as he was no longer in office – though the favour could undoubtedly be repaid at some later date. However, while the Framers could scarcely have foreseen that a serving President might act in such a way, so that the constitutional position is uncertain, the common law has generally persuaded jurists that the power of pardon is unconditional, albeit with certain conditions.) (Harvard Law Review)
A third key witness has, of course, been David Pecker, the former editor of celebrity gossip rag The National Enquirer (for some reason, my local convenience store here in West Wales stocks a few copies each week). Notorious for his willingness for a few dollars to bury stories about his friend, Trump, Pecker has been more forthcoming on the stand, and admitted that he, Cohen and Trump discussed making the payments.
Cohen has done much to rehabilitate himself through an endless round of good-humoured, mildly scabrous media appearances since his release, and, inevitably, a ‘crush and tell’ book. To most people, I suspect, he comes across as a loveable rogue – although if you had crossed his boss, you would not have wanted to meet him in a car park. Yet the speculation that surrounds his upcoming appearance as the star witness in the Stormy Daniels trial is all about his trustworthiness on the stand, an ex-con who admitted to witness tampering and tax evasion, perjured himself and lied to the FBI – how could you possibly trust his word against that of a former President of the United States, a man accused of telling only 35 THOUSAND lies while in office, and quite a few more since?
Something about beds and lying in them springs to mind. But The Pumpkin would be happy to believe Cohen’s testimony. Really, it would be for the best.
Oops, how embarrassing
On the very day Rishi Sunak launches his big Tory fightback at the opaquely funded (donor income £4m a year) rightwing thinktank, Policy Exchange, positioning his fragmented party as the only antidote to five more years of chaos, World War Three and the growing menace of drowning migrants, it’s reported that two podcasters working for the hated BBC have managed to do what the Tory security establishment has failed to do for several years, to track down ‘The Scorpion’ – possibly the ‘Mr Big’ behind the overcrowded boats in the Channel – to Kurdistan, where they had him arrested.
What’s even more embarrassing, is that he’s now facing possible extradition from Iraq on a warrant served by the authorities in Belgium, home of the even more hated You-know-what, where he has already been convicted in absentio and sentenced to 10 years in jail. And unapologetically admits on camera that his organisation may have sent 10 thousand desperate migrants fleeing to Britain – he doesn’t know, he doesn’t count them, he just takes the money while an army of footsoldiers take care of the details.
“Who do you trust to keep you secure?”, squeaks the Prime Minister, former Head Boy of C15th Winchester college (motto: Manners myketh man) , in a characteristically wet-blanket attempt to underwhelm respect for his opponent, the former head of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer. It’s all too predictable, and after 14 years of outstandingly poor governance – all the fault of the previous administration, naturally – preposterous.
As the cost of living crisis continues, unemployment rises, job vacancies slump, public services collapse, schools and prisons rot, food banks flourish and children go hungry while oligarchs thrive, this pint-sized financial juggling act with a home in California and a handy green card in his pocket has chosen to presume to overturn a 30 per cent deficit in the polls by making ‘Illegal migration’ the main plank of his supposedly populist reelection strategy, continually doubling down on his vain promise to end the images of overcrowded boats sinking in the Channel through his brain-dead policy of expelling a handful of asylum applicants to Rwanda instead.
Not for the first time might one refer to ‘a drop in the ocean’.
Little did Rishi suspect that the national broadcaster, so often the target of Tory accusations of soft-centred, woke liberalism, resulting in chronic defunding and lurid threats of privatization, would be doing his job for him. Congratulations to journalist Sue Mitchell and Rob Lawrie, a former soldier turned aid worker, who doggedly picked their way back along the smuggling routes to northern Iraq, spending two years tracing every key stage in the operation, until they eventually found the guy at the top, Barzan Majeed, on the run in Sulaymaniyah.
One assumes the National Crime Agency is far too underresourced to actually pursue criminals, keeping us safe from all the bogeymen lurking under Rishi’s child-sized cot; keeping us safe from Starmer’s bizarre (and somewhat cowardly and dispiriting) brand of conservative socialism.
You can read Sue Mitchell’s account of their investigation on the BBC News website, or listen to the podcast on BBC Sounds:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g92zkd7n4o
GW
Brazil: more heavy rains over the weekend have left the centre of Rio Grande do Sul’s state capital, Porto Alegre, underwater. Half a million people are displaced, while “The Taquari and Caí rivers have burst their banks and are causing fresh flooding in the interior of the state. 147 are confirmed to have died in the floods. Rescue workers continue to search for people who are missing.” (BBC)
Afghanistan: Flooding and landslides in the north of the country, especially in mountainous Bhaglan province, have killed a total of 300 people, with many more missing. Floods have caused “significant damage to infrastructure, including critical health care facilities and water supply systems. The floods have rendered roads impassable, hindering rescue and relief efforts in the affected areas.” The report, dated 13 May, marks a welcome return for the Floodlist website, listed in the previous BogPo as having gone AWOL since 24 March!
A village in Afghanistan after heavy rain (UN)
Tailpipe
Canada: Wildfire season has broken out once again in British Columbia, with frequent warnings of poor air quality affecting northerly US states. It’s expected to be another bad year for Canadian forests, though not as bad as 2023’s record acreage destroted. So far this year, fires have burned through more than half a million acres, while thousands of residents are on evacuation alert (Various sources). AccuWeather reports the extent of the smoke pollution: “Monday morning, air quality was at unhealthy levels from northern Wisconsin, across southern Minnesota and northern Iowa and into Nebraska and the Dakotas. … By early Tuesday morning, air quality was at poor levels from southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin to eastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas as the smoke traveled farther south overnight.” Asthmatics are being advised to stay indoors.
One strike and you’re out
Japan Times reports that study of a 430 million years-old fragment of charcoal found in Wales shows that wildfires, even from a time before trees evolved, would have played a major part in some of history’s mass extinctions. Each 1 degree rise in temperature produces 40% more lightning strikes, the main cause of wildfires today.
Gas station moves to front burner
Teesside, UK: a row is brewing over an energy industry-backed gas power station project, that environmentalists say will emit over 20 million tonnes of additional CO2 during its anticipated lifetime.
Owing to its reliance on as-yet unproven-at-scale carbon capture and storage technology, which they claim will absorb up to 95 per cent of emissions, investors BP and Norway’s Equinor have persuaded low-wattage Energy minister Claire Coutinho (see BogPo passim) to give it the green light, despite the government’s waning commitment to achieve Net-Zero by 2050 – a goal enshrined in law. Once again, a person supposedly in authority, one with known prior links to the Energy sector, appears to be wilfully ignoring the downstream emissions problem and taking the ccs ‘solution’ at face value.
Little so far gives one hope that Ms Coutinho’s successor will be brave enough to favour the climate over jobs in the industrially stricken Northeast, let alone the allure of a promise of future ‘energy security’ at the risk of societal collapse. (Guardian Environment)
Why are we all becoming so half-witted?
Oops, no, your Old Gran was reporting last week that the average atmospheric CO2 concentration in the northern hemisphere had started its annual spring migration southward, only to read today that it’s back up again, to 427.7 parts per million – another record, I’m afraid. And to think, when this li’l bogl started in 2012, it was just 408 ppm. (NOAA)