https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/michael-cohen-evgeny-freidman-russia-investigation One of Michael Cohen’s Russian Business Partners Agrees to Sing New York’s “Taxi King” just cut a deal that should worry Donald Trump. he government has flipped a longtime associate of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in the latest sign that special counsel Robert Mueller, in coordination with New York prosecutors, is executing a “Gambino-style roll-up” of Trump associates. Evgeny Freidman, a Russian immigrant known as the “Taxi King” and Cohen’s longtime partner in the taxi-cab business, has reportedly agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in state or federal investigations in exchange for leniency—a development that could portend serious legal consequences for Cohen and, potentially, the president. Freidman’s remarkably light sentence suggests the government assigned a high value to his cooperation. As Sol Wisenberg, a deputy prosecutor in the Starr investigation, explained to me after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to the F.B.I. earlier this year, prosecutors “don’t want to give somebody too good of a deal if they have done some really damaging things,” unless they have information about a higher value target that prosecutors couldn’t get anywhere else. According to The New York Times, Freidman faced four counts of criminal tax fraud and one of grand larceny stemming from allegations that he failed to pay more than $5 million in taxes—charges that could carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison each. On Tuesday, the Taxi King pleaded guilty to just one count of evading $50,000 worth of taxes. In exchange for his cooperation, he will avoid jail time entirely, and faces just five years of probation if he delivers on his agreement. He will also be forced to pay $1 million to the state attorney general’s office. Given the extent of his ties to Cohen—Freidman and Cohen worked together for many years in a taxi-cab management company with fleets in New York and Chicago—Freidman’s deal might foreshadow Mueller turning the screws on the president’s longtime lawyer. Cohen is facing a federal investigation into his business practices led by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, which was referred to the case by Mueller. Cohen, who tried to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign and was later involved in a bizarre scheme to deliver a pro-Russian Ukraine peace treaty to Trump, has emerged as a key figure in Mueller’s probe. Federal investigators are reportedly scrutinizing a $130,000 hush-money payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, along with millions of dollars funneled through a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, for consulting work beginning shortly before Trump’s election victory. (Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, declined to comment to the Times.) If Freidman’s deal involves ratting on Cohen, he’s not saying. In a statement to the Times, Freidman said, “Michael is dear dear personal friend and a passive client! That’s it! I am humbled and shamed!” A former lawyer who was disbarred earlier this month, Friedman characterized the guilty plea as “me taking responsibility for my actions,” and added, “I had been an officer of the court in excess of 20 years and now I am a felon! I hate that I have been grouped in this runaway train that I am not a part of!” But when asked about cooperating with the government, Freidman did not respond. Cohen has often dismissed speculation that he might flip on Trump, never failing to declare fealty to his client. “I’m the guy who protects the president and the family. I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president,” Cohen told my colleague Emily Jane Fox in September of last year. But as the noose tightens around Cohen, the lack of support from Trump’s allies appears to have unnerved him. People in Washington, he has said, have been treating him as though he were “disposable,” and his friends have remarked that “Washington has made a huge mistake” in leaving him to fend for himself. “That,” one person told Fox, “is a dangerous place for him to be.” If Trump was alarmed by Freidman’s plea deal, his agita could not be distinguished from his broader Twitter meltdown over the past 24 hours over news that the F.B.I. used an informant during the 2016 campaign to uncover links to Russia. Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal attorneys in the Russia matter, told the Times that Trump is “just not involved in the taxis,” and presumably has no reason to worry. “He has as much involvement in it as I do.”
Shallow State got to him, BITCH HUNT! I remember how giddy Cons were when Clinton's campaign manager's brother was listed as one of the firms Manafort did business with and that was evidence that Clintons were going down soon. But Trump's personal lawyer going down? STOP MUELLER!
RRY16 I have asked you politely to please be civil in your responses. If you can't, you will be sent to the ignore pile. Last warning.
A problem, or should I say yet another problem, for Trump is going to be the quality of Vanity Fair's journalism. Their investigative journalism has been first rate for years and they hardly ever have to retract. It's a highly reliable source of detailed, accurate information.