Mickey Cohen, Laura, Catherine, et al

Mickey aka Michael Cohen had his day in court. The media had been telling us the prosecutors we’re recommending  a “substantial sentence’ of 51 to 63 months  (4 to 5 years) as set out in the sentencing guidelines. The prosecutors wrote: “Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows … [he] clouded a process that Congress has painstakingly sought to keep transparent. The sentence imposed should reflect the seriousness of Cohen’s brazen violations of the election laws and attempt to counter the public cynicism that may arise when individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich and powerful.”

He also didn’t pay his taxes owed and lied to Congress and defrauded banks. It doesn’t take much Googling to find several folks sentenced to eight years for just tax fraud. So the judge gave Mickey 3 years.Seems like maybe the political process does belong to the rich and powerful. (We don’t want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein’s case yet.)

There’s a total other dimension here though. Don’t we have to ask why wasn’t Mickey’s wife Laura Shusterman also prosecuted. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that “prosecutors had evidence that also implicated Mr. Cohen’s wife in potential criminal activity, according to people familiar with the matter. His wife was never charged.”

Then there’s this tweet from Mickey’s client “He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get… his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free.’

Well it’s true Laura Shusterman’s father Fima did plead guilty in Federal court to crimes related to a money laundering. Remember Jimmy Katz of Whitey trial fame. He was a bookie who was charged with money laundering. The prosecutors locked him up for four years and moved to seize all his assets including his home throwing his wife and kids out on the street and into the poor house.

Mickey Cohen’s father-in-law Fima Shusterman got probation. He was never brought back to a grand jury. He never had his family threatened with the poor house.

Speaking of Whitey, remember his girlfriend Catherine Greig. She was charged with aiding Whitey in his flight and lying to probation. (I’d suggest not as bad as lying to Congress.) How come she was charged and imprisoned and Laura Shusterman is not charged for her involvement in Mickey’s crimes.

Mickey is charged with only a few of the many crimes he could have been charged with. He gets a marshmallow sentence. Catherine Greig gets slammed for falling in love.

Then there are the et al. Those familiar with Latin or the law know that stands for “the others.” Others are usually women but can be other relatives.

No one is exercised over Laura not being charged because that is what is usually done. Wives and girlfriends normally get passes. We are a civilized nation understanding that if a person is in love with another we do not punish that person for the others crimes even if they may have incidentally profited from them.

We are not like North Korea where the family gets sent to labor camps or Israel where the family home of a Palestinian terrorist gets destroyed. Or Russia where the person disliked is poisoned along with his daughter.  Or even Saudi Arabia that likes to chop up people and make them disappear.  All four countries by the way which are highly admired by Cohen’s client. In America we punish through the courts the main culprit and leave others alone.

That is how it should be. That is the normal way a decent society works. Nor is it sexist benefiting only women. If for instance Hillary were to be implicated in a crime we would not lock up Bill.

Or would we?

19 Comments

  1. You like lobsters Jerry ?!? We’ll show you some fucking lobsters …

    Hanover St. 2015

    Operation Lobster was in the air ….

    What a Bunch !!!!!

  2. Sending down some Maine Lobster and Maine
    Humor for the uneducated and uneducable

    https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/9-11.htm

    9/11’s Trainer in Terrorism Was an FBI Informant

    (Peter Dale Scott Talk in Palo Alto, October 27, 2006)

    If I had an hour, I would talk to you about how the 9/11 Report failed to reconcile Dick Cheney’s conflicting accounts, which cannot all be true, of what he did on the morning of 9/11 in the bunker beneath the White House. But that story takes two whole chapters of my forthcoming book, The Road to 9/11. So instead I will expand on what I spoke about a month ago in Berkeley, concerning Ali Mohamed, Washington’s double agent inside al-Qaeda, and also a chief 9/11 plotter.(1) I want to add important new material tonight. Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian, was a close ally of Osama bin Laden. As he later confessed in court, he also aided the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, a co-founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and by then an aide to bin Laden, when he visited America to raise money.(2) It is now generally admitted that Ali Mohamed worked for the FBI, the CIA, and U.S. Special Forces.
    Patrick Fitzgerald, who testified to the 9/11 Commission about Ali Mohamed, knew him well. In 1994 he had named him as an unindicted co-conspirator in the New York landmarks case, yet allowed him to remain free. This was because, as Fitzgerald knew, Ali Mohamed was an FBI informant, from at least 1993 and maybe 1989.(3) Thus, from 1994 “until his arrest in 1998 [by which time the 9/11 plot was well under way], Mohamed shuttled between California, Afghanistan, Kenya, Somalia and at least a dozen other countries.”(4)

    also see

    https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/12/robert-bryan-half-of-original-bert-i-duo-has-died/

    LIFE & CULTUR
    Robert Bryan, half of original ‘Bert and I’ duo, dies at age 87
    With Marshall Dodge, he popularized the Maine humor known to many Americans.

    in other anxieties

    https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-federal-debt-20181212-story.html

    Under Trump, the U.S. debt grew by the size of the Brazilian economy in just two years

    By ALEX TANZI
    | BLOOMBERG |
    DEC 12, 2018 | 11:10 AM

  3. “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” Communist Tyrant Josef Stalin

    http://votefraud.org/News/2000/1/011800.html

    In 1987, our political organization, Cincinnatus Political Action Committee, helped two whistelblowers, former Cincinnati Bell workers Leonard Gates and Robert Draise, get their story in to the public arena. Their story was that they had been paid to do illegal wiretaps for the police and organizations unknown while employees at Cincinnati Bell.

    We used the device of a political TV commercial to break the news censorship. Gates and Draise had been to a Congressman, public officials, the FBI, and the newsmedia – without being able to enlist any help in bringing their story to the public. The law of the Federal Election Commission is that the electronic licensed newsmedia is not allowed to censor the paid ads of political candidates as long as the ad does not contain profanity. I was on the ballot for Cincinnati City Council in 1987, and after two years of frustration, Gates and Draise decided to appear on my political TV ad. We could afford three ads, all placed on Channel 12 WKRC TV at the 6 PM, 11 PM, and 6 PM newscasts on the Thursday and Friday before the 1987 November Cincinnati City Council Election.

    On the commercial Gates told the audience that while at Cincinnati Bell he had wiretapped the computers to alter the vote. Looking into the camera he told the Cincinnati audience, “Your votes.” Draise told the people that he had been used to wiretap prominent Cincinnatians including Charles Keating and Hamilton County Commissioner Alan Paul.

    other anxieties

    http://www.thelandesreport.com/VotingSecurity.htm

    VOTING SECURITY

    There is no “voting security” in the U.S. Over 80% of elections are counted by ES&S, whose owner(s) and/or technical staff could easily rig voting machines wirelessly (either touchscreens or ballot readers); but ES&S or subcontractors could also rig elections while inputting the candidates names for each new election.

    “If you did it right, no one would ever know,” said Craig C. Donsanto, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Election Crimes Branch, Public Integrity Section (from 1970-2010) in a July 4,1989 Los Angeles Times article about electronic voting machines and vote fraud. See DOJ & FBI complicity

    At the highest levels, both political parties, the U.S. Government, and major news media are well aware of this situation because they are complicit in it. See Exit Polls

    At the very least, election counting should be local and consist of only paper ballots and hand counts at the local polling precincts on election day – no machines, no computers, no absentee, and no emails. See Paper Ballots

    ugh

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/20/roy-cohn-donald-trump-joseph-mccarthy-rosenberg-trial

    A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity
    The Guardian

    Apr 20, 2016 · Donald Trump, Mayor Ed Koch and Roy Cohn attend a Trump Tower opening in October … Not long after the trial, he began working for McCarthy and the FBI director, J Edgar Hoover.

  4. “The prosecutors wrote … that Congress has painstakingly sought to keep the (election process) transparent”

    Does anyone really believe this? What a bunch of BS !!!

    They also wrote that “individuals like Cohen act as if the political process belongs to the rich and powerful.”

    Like Obama and the Clintons ?

  5. “Marcus Cicero, over 2000 years ago, defined freedom
    as participation in power. If you don’t participate in power,
    you are not free. Whoever has the power owns you. If you
    want to be free you have to participate in power..”

    – U.S. Senator Mike Gravel

    • Pretty pathetic statement. Where did it get Cicero? Now people name their cats after him.

      • Al Capone was not a pussy, Abe .

        • Without a gun in his hand and a bunch of goons in front of him leading, he was the epitome of a pussy.

          • Don’t be a Hard-o now Abe . Don’t write anything here that you would not have said to his face back in the day and for the love of Christ don’t tell me that you would have said that to his face .

            Drop it .

          • “Don’t write anything here that you would not have said to his face back in the day….”

            Why not? I speak on behalf of history. Can I say Stalin was a bad guy? I wouldn’t say that to his face.

          • I think the guy everyone feared in that administration was Vasily Blokhin. Check out his complete bio sometimes. We lived across the street in Milton from an old Russian Jew that had been through the mill over there. After a couple hours of chess with the guy he would be into his homemade wodka pretty deep. I just assumed he was BS’ing me with stories about Blokhin. No, no. Vasily was a Vald, the Impaler level monster.

          • “The only thing better than a kind word is a kind word, and, a gun”
            Alphonse Capone

  6. Hi Matt: Last night, I emailed the Wa Post columnist that you linked to. I wanted to know why Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance didn’t get a mention. The guy wrote back to say he knew about Vance and would bring it up in a future Epstein column.

    I felt sorry for Laura. Being married to Michael Cohen is punishment enough.

  7. The disease this country suffers from, greed, has no cure.