A Real Life John Grisham Lawyer/Fixer Story

This past week we launched our first video newsletter that provides an interactive summary of news, knowledge, history, sports & humor. If you like that edition and would like future ones, please subscribe here.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Ivanovich for being the winner of last week’s Daily Pnut Week in Review. Elizabeth writes arts and lifestyle articles on California’s Central Coast. She chose Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals as her prize, though Jeff Lemire’s Essex County: Ghost Stories tempted her mightily.

“We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.” – Mario Puzo, The Godfather

Michael Cohen’s Carousel of Clients and Complicity: Federal prosecutors are supposed to be non-partisan. That said, they are appointed by the president currently in office, so the question becomes, just how non-partisan are they actually when it comes to prosecuting something or someone sensitive to the current administration? The answer is: It’s complicated. Specifically, it’s particularly complicated when it comes to Trump’s home turf, the Southern District of New York. That office is really independent, and that’s the office investigating Trump’s personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen. The president potentially has much more to fear from an investigation/case based in New York than the one Special Counsel Robert Mueller is heading up in Washington.

Back in 2016, the head of the Southern District office (under former president Obama) was Preet Bharara. Bharara was initially asked by incoming President Trump to remain on the job, but then was abruptly fired in March 2017. In early 2018, Geoffrey Berman, a former Republican prosecutor, GOP party donor, and Rudolph Giuliani law partner, was personally interviewed by Trump and then put in charge of the office. Later it was learned Berman might have a conflict of interest in the then-undisclosed Cohen investigation. Berman was recused, leaving his hand-picked deputy, Robert S. Khuzami, in charge of the investigation. One of the many hats worn by Khuzami during his career was as general counsel to Deutsche Bank.

On Monday, Cohen’s lawyers were in federal court to fight a plan by Trump’s Justice Department to start looking through records seized by FBI agents a week ago from Cohen’s homes and offices. The lawyers said the materials were attorney-client privileged, but court filings said Cohen was “being investigated for criminal conduct that largely centers on his personal business dealings.” Cohen had already revealed that his clients included Trump and Elliott Broidy, a former top GOP fundraiser on whose behalf Cohen paid $1.6 million in 2017 to a former Playboy playmate to hide her secret sexual relationship with Broidy. Also on Monday, Cohen was forced to reveal his third high-profile client: Fox News commentator and vocal Trump supporter, Sean Hannity. The judge also ordered prosecutors to share the seized materials with Cohen’s attorneys so they can “tell the judge how much of it might be subject to attorney client privilege.” We promise we aren’t plagiarizing John Grisham with this recounting of Trump, Cohen, and his other clients.

– The US and Britain went out on a limb Monday and accused Russia of launching global cyber attacks on a wide range of computer routers, firewalls, and other networking equipment used by government agencies, businesses, and critical infrastructure operators. In a somewhat less than bone-chilling warning, the White House cybersecurity coordinator indicated when malicious cyber activity is seen, push back would be in order. (Reuters)

– An intrepid Russian investigative journalist, found badly injured last Thursday at the bottom of his five-story apartment building, died Monday. “He was probably on his balcony star-gazing and accidently fell over the railing,” said no one. (BBC)

– Millions of eggs from Rose Acre Farms in North Carolina are feared contaminated with salmonella and are being recalled. The eggs were sold to consumers under brand labels, including Coburn Farms, Country Daybreak, the Food Lion store brand, Crystal Farms, Great Value and Sunshine Farms, and sold to restaurants including Waffle House. (NPR)

– But what about non-contaminated food that’s just wasted, you ask? The Center for Biological Diversity and The “Ugly” Fruit and Veg Campaign reported on how 10 supermarkets handle their food waste, and it’s not a Pretty picture. (NPR)

– “A severe tissue-destroying ulcer once rare in Australia is rapidly spreading and is now at epidemic proportions in regions of Victoria, prompting infectious diseases experts to call for urgent research into how it is contracted and spread.” (The Guardian)

– Facebook has banned Richard Spencer, an American white nationalist who popularized the term “alternative right.” Spencer’s page was removed on Friday, along with two other pages he managed–one belonging to the National Policy Institute think tank (the organization he runs) and one promoting AltRight.com, his news analysis website. (BBC)

– Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been dogged by two domestic scandals over the past year. Over the weekend, thousands gathered at Parliament, calling for him to step down. He leaves Tuesday to meet US President Trump at the latter’s Palm Beach estate. Abe also has plans later this year to meet with China’s president and possibly even Kim Jong-un, but he may not last that long in office. (NYT)

More News Reads:

– Xi Jinping sends warning to Taiwan, United States with live-fire drills (CNN)

– U.S. bans American companies from selling to Chinese phone maker ZTE(Reuters)

– China’s ZTE ‘poses risk to UK security’ (BBC)

– ‘Men Treat Us Like We Aren’t Human.’ Indian Girls Learn to Fight Back (NYT)

– ‘They Eat Money’: How Mandela’s Political Heirs Grow Rich Off Corruption (NYT)

– Puerto Rico’s power outage is now the second-largest blackout on record (CNN)

– Mud in this small Japanese island could change the global economy (CNN)

– Why Germany Didn’t Join the Syria Strikes (Bloomberg)

Syria’s Attempt to Whitewash History: Saturday saw US, UK, and French forces launch military strikes aimed at reducing Syria’s chemical weapons facilities. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also arrived over the weekend on a fact-finding visit to search for evidence and interview witnesses. However, inspectors were told the Syrian military had “purified” the region where Douma is located and that “pending security issues” prevented them from entering the area to inspect the site.

On Monday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Parliament, saying: “The Syrian regime has reportedly been attempting to conceal the evidence by searching evacuees from Douma to ensure samples are not being smuggled from this area, and a wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack is underway, supported by the Russians.” Russia denied interfering with evidence and said international inspectors would be allowed to visit the Douma site on Wednesday.

– “We now know that much of what we call the placebo effect is chemical–where the brain actually self-medicates with its own pre-existing drugs.” (Pulitzer Center)

– Barbara Bush, wife and father to two US presidents, has opted to stop treatment for  congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and “will instead focus on comfort care.”

-Speaking of a peaceful death, Barbara Ehrenreich, noted author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, has decided that–at age 76–she is old enough to die. In her new book, Natural Causes, she writes: “Nothing in modern life prepares us for the leaving of it. We treat aging as an outrage or, worse, as a sin. In our addiction to betterment, we’ve replaced ‘health’ — an absence of sickness — with the amorphous ‘wellness’ and a flurry of overtesting, fad diets and pointless ‘alternative’ treatments.” (NYT)

– “Genetic disease risk screening is becoming a popular employee benefit. But the tests may not be all that beneficial for the general population, experts say.” (NYT)

– “The air smelled fried.” Chick-fil-A’s first stores in New York City were greeted by protests, due to the company’s Christian fundamentalism and support of anti-LGBTQ groups. Well, not anymore. Recent openings of Chick-fil-A in the Big Apple have proved very successful for the Atlanta-based chain, which plans to open up to a dozen more stores in the city. New Yorkers are loving their chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. But how exactly did Chick-fil-A score this marketing coup? (The New Yorker)

Please consider making a one-time donation to Daily Pnut, an independently operated and bootstrapped publication, via PayPal. Many thanks to everyone who already supports us!