It Was Michael Cohen, In Prague, With The Cell Phone HE WAS SUPPOSED TO LEAVE AT HOME, JESUS CHRIST

You know, allegedly.

Hey, McClatchy, whatcha talkin' about this fine December day?

A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump's former lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

OH REALLY?

Is this the evidence McClatchy was talking about months back, when it reported that Robert Mueller has evidence that Michael Cohen was in Prague in late summer 2016, despite his VERY LOUD INSISTENCE that never in his life had he secretly traveled to Prague in late summer 2016? The thing where Cohen pissed all over the research of British spy Christopher Steele by tweeting his passport, which proved he didn't go to Prague, even though it proved no such thing, because any globe-trotting idiot knows that once you're in the Schengen Area, you don't have to get your passport stamped every time you cross a European border?

Who's in the mood for a little light reading from the Steele Dossier, AKA the DODGY DOSSIER, AKA the thing that hasn't been disproven in any meaningful way, despite Republican/Trumpian protestations to the contrary? Please turn in your Bibles to the sections about Michael Cohen, where we may refresh ourselves on what it says about how Cohen went to Prague to clean up all the poopy messes Paul Manafort allegedly made in conspiring with Russians to get Donald Trump elected. (Manafort was being pushed out of the Trump campaign because all his Russian/Ukrainian foreign agent misdeeds were starting to get reported in the press.)

Later in the DODGY DOSSIER, Steele's notes claim Cohen's role in the conspiracy had grown much larger -- which pleased absolutely nobody , we imagine -- because Manafort was having to lie low. Allegedly, Cohen was, as usual, acting as Trump's fixer, to hide what Manafort had been doing with the Russians, and also what Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page had been doing with the Russians. (The dossier alleges that Page had traveled to Moscow that summer for fireside chats about how maybe Trump/people in his orbit could be bribed to lift sanctions on Russia if/when Russia successfully elected Trump president, in exchange for ownership of almost a fifth of Russian oil giant Rosneft.)

The dossier gave more detailed information about what Cohen was allegedly discussing with the Russians in Prague, perhaps while simultaneously being such an idiot that he turned his cell phone on instead of leaving it in whatever country he was supposed to leave it in and buying a burner phone, holy Jesus shit, we are dealing with SMART PEOPLE . It's not that big of a deal. It just says he was talking to the people involved with and/or overseeing the Russian hacking operations against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and that the Trump campaign was involved in paying for the operation :

Again, this damn dossier of raw intelligence has not been disproven in any meaningful way, and the alleged Cohen meetings in Prague come up again and again in Chris Steele's spywork. Note above that it says Cohen had three "colleagues" with him. Wonder who he (allegedly) traveled with? Wonder if they also (allegedly) used their cell phones to fucking play Pokémon GO   on their walks from their hotel to the big sexxxy spy meetings with the Russians ? 

Swear to God, if Robert Mueller's eventual report says intel services were able to trace Cohen's cell phone because one time he wouldn't stop catching Pidgeys at the St. Vitus Cathedral, that will ... OK, it won't be that surprising. But it will be funny!

Cohen's former lawyer Lanny Davis still insists Cohen has never been to Prague, and we'll be sure to let you know the second we give a fuck what Lanny Davis says. To be as fair as possible as we can to Michael Cohen, though, we should note that sometimes cell phone pings end up in weird places. Like, it might say you are in Brooklyn when you are actually in lower Manhattan. It could say you are in Syria when you are in Israel! It could say you are in Prague when really you are traveling with your kid in Southern California, which was Michael Cohen's alibi, LOL JUST KIDDING NOPE.

We know for sure that Michael Cohen took a trip to Italy in July 2016 (which is in the Schengen Area, just like Prague). We also know that there have long been rumors about a jet owned by Russian fertilizer oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev -- you know, the Russian who bought that South Florida mansion from Trump for a ridiculous profit -- spiriting Trump people, including Cohen, from the Hamptons off to Europe just after the Republican convention. The plane went from Nice and then on to Dubrovnik, Croatia (where Ivanka and Jared mysteriously showed up on vacation, WEIRD!), and then off toward Budapest, which is really close to ...

Well YOU know. (Read more about all that in this insane Carrie Mathison post we wrote a few weeks ago!)

Has Cohen told Robert Mueller about all this? We don't know, but we're wondering if Mueller's light sentencing recommendations for Cohen (while SDNY was throwing the fucking book at him), which said he had been helpful with things "at the core" of Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation, might partially reflect that he did in fact come clean about what happened in Prague, not that his cell phone's apparent presence in Prague means he was in Prague. (Maybe Hillary put it there!)

Hey, maybe Cohen went to Prague but it didn't go down exactly like the dossier says. Maybe Steele got the Eastern European city wrong and it was Budapest, which would make a hell of a lot of sense. (Can a phone in Budapest ping in Prague?)

Regardless, this all brings us back to the same question we have for every single person in Trump's orbit since the early days of the campaign, which is why the fuck have they been lying about every single bit of this ? What on earth have they been trying to hide?

Anyway, none of this is very surprising, but it's WHOA IF TRUE just the same. We just wonder how many Trump people are banging their heads against the wall today realizing they all asked Siri for directions to their secret Russia spy meetings, on their personal iPhones , Jesus Christ, what fucking idiots.

[ McClatchy ]

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