Opening Statement of Ambassador William B. Taylor – October 22, 2019

Opening Statement of Ambassador William B. Taylor – October 22, 2019 (search friendly pdf) ; )

Giuliani Cohen LLP or Cellmates? (Pt 1)

Giuliani Cohen LLP or Cellmates? (Pt 1)

Could Rudy Guiliani and Michael Cohen be having tea soon? Watching movies?

While lawyer Michael Cohen has become a household name among DC insiders and deep-dive survivors of politics, he was the lawyer that unfortunately fell under the spell of $$ and power - the
 the Trump fever, some years back, while yet another shadow appears to be "leaning in" to the darkened space he resides now.

Cohen hails from the “old school” days of Queens, NY. It was when John Gotti paparazzi dazzle met the front page of the Daily News or NY Post often, if not weekly, with some new insights, footnotes, on the “family.”  It was the days of old, that was a familiar thread of the social order, hierarchy and standing from Hunts Point, Howards Beach to Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn, where the rubber met the road for the working, union man. They got the job done, come hell or high water!

And like most astute lawyers starting out in practice, Cohen would want to move beyond the likes of a small town borough/county like Queens (108.1 mi²/pop. 2.3m) and small time local business practices like the TLC, Taxi Limousine Commission. They’d likely have researched their client “wish list” of up and coming stars to represent. Yet, back then - all that Cohen had was his local newspapers, Newsday or the Post, to see “who” was trending.  Popular among emerging markets was one name, “Trump.” The real estate -“bon vivant”. 

And like any astute lawyer on the move for an aspiring client wish list, they’d likely have researched their “wish-list” client’s lawyers, and Roy Cohn’s name must have appeared on their radar.  Albeit, Cohen was good.  To a point. Just the sounding comparison of names, Cohen and Cohn may have had an odd subconscious earmark of validity to Trump.  Perhaps, a MAYA moment (“Most Advance. Yet Acceptable”) moment, one might think.

While Cohen courted Trumps MAYA interest in his early days representing the Don of NYC real estate, Rudy Giuliani had been making a big footprint in criminal prosecutions as the US attorney in the Southern District of New York. 

It was during this time throughout the late 1980s while Trump was flipping millions to his return in the NYC real estate market in the late 80’s, from high rise condo properties to door man building co-ops, Giuliani was across town taking on the mob.  Giuliani was engaged in one of the biggest criminal case prosecutions in decades, if not history, comparable to that of the Al Capone hearings in Chicago during the 1930s. Yet then, 1988, and armed with the RICO act (signed into law by Richard Nixon, 1970) Giuliani was determined to uncouple the means for which all financial mechanisms could filter their way into the East Coast Mafia markets, from Chicago to New York, by attempting to govern the means for which the East Coast “Families” could manage their income revenues. Rudy wanted to appoint a Trustee to the mob's bank of choice, "The US Teamster’s Pension Fund."

Historically speaking, the US Teamster Pension Fund was the basis for which many have come to know the term, “What happens in Vegas. Stays in Vegas.”  Many a marriage today, among so much more, would not exist today if not “there but for the grace of” the US Teamster’s Pension Fund existed. Thank you Al Pacino and Marlon Brando, for “The Godfather.”  

In the late 80’s, under the RICO act, Giuliani took on the basis of how the RICO act was prosecuted and went to the root of how and where all the “root” cases, from the Fulton Street Fish Market to Capone in Chicago, to countless other cases that under the RICO act would constitute a “RICO” crime and one name, entity, repeatedly jumped out, showed up on countless FBI reports. Members or mention of activity related to the US Teamsters Pension Fund. The paper trail was voluminous over the decades leading up to the time.

As such, Giuliani, under the theory of the RICO act, was able to research and dig up every criminal prosecution that involved every crime and perps name that involved, albeit “tagged” in todays terminology, a felony, interstate crime and/or “tag,” US Teamsters, or the like, US Teamster’s Pension Fund.  It was a wide net, and the USA SDNY was a treasure trove of information regarding crime family records, prosecutions reaching back as far as the 1930s, Chicago to the union docks of Brooklyn, Giuliani and his team became ministers of knowledge on organized crime, unlike any other entity in criminal forensic history past.

As such, one cannot underestimate the extent of knowledge base Rudy Giuliani benefitted back then, from the Teamster case, knowledge reaching far beyond the scope of what Roy Cohn or Michael Cohen could have ever come in contact. Rudy Giuliani presently representing POTUS wasn't some fluke of circumstances that suddenly converged. It was a seed long in waiting, for Giuliani's  "knowledge base" to be tapped, championed, uncorked and celebrated like a fine wine of decades past.