your powder dry. laying the predicate, as you said earlier, is precisely, i think, what the mueller team is doing here. they want to use michael cohen or any defendant for that matter look, generically, you have a defendant plead guilty to conduct that he committed when you want to use that defendant against others who did the same thing. whether it s the taxi king, whether it s michael cohen, you have them plead to a set of operative facts describing what they did because someday down the road you re going to use them to help you get others who did the same thing. that s what i think happened here. but you don t want to sort of lay all of your cards on the table as a prosecutor because you re still investigating that thing, that conduct, the others who were involved in it. so what the mueller team did makes sense to me, and the way they described it really in some ways buttresses the core of the buzzfeed story. now, obviously the mueller team is pushing back on aspects of
pled guilty to five counts, five felony counts of tax evasion. there was consulting that he had done that he hadn t paid taxes on. there were some real estate sales he brokered that he hadn t paid taxes on. he also apparently sold a fancy purse. seriously. he had brokered the sale of a fancy purse and had not paid taxes on that either. most of his tax trouble, though, related to his involvement in the taxi business, and that, too, made sense, at least from the perspective of those of us on the outside watching this case trying to make sense of it. michael cohen s partner in the taxi business had himself turned up in court in may and at that court appearance in may, that guy was allowed to i mean, it seemed like he was allowed to absolutely skate on what otherwise looked like a whole list of big serious charges. this guy, this nickname is literally the taxi king. he was michael cohen s taxi
against others who did the same thing. whether it s the taxi king. whether it s michael cohen. you have them plead to a set of operative facts describing what they did because some day down the road you re going to use them to help you get others who did the same thing. that s what i think happened here. but i don t want to sort of lay all of your cards on the table as a prosecutor. because you re still investigating that thing, that conduct, the others who were involved in it. so what the mueller team did makes sense to me, and the way they described it really in some ways buttresses the core of the buzzfeed story. now, obviously the mueller team is pushing back on aspects of the buzzfeed story. but i think in the main what you can glean from their december 7th sentencing memorandum is that the core of the buzzfeed story is accurate. in terms of that the way they are pushing back, i mean, we heard from ben smith, who is
otherwise looked like a whole list of serious charges. the guy, his nickname is literally the taxi king. he was michael cohen s taxi business partner. he got this whole host of charges against him boiled down to basically nothing in a new york state courtroom in may in exchange for him becoming a cooperating witness for the government. so it made sense that anything that might have been a little bit hisnky, made sense that prosecutors nailed down evidence of that once they got his partner to cooperate, right. so him turning up in court, michael cohen turning up in court in august, it was dramatic but also sort of orderly in terms of us understanding. law enforcement in new york got search warrants to raid him and his office, they flip his business partner. within a matter of months they ve got him in court pleading guilty on five felony tax evasion charges. and a bank fraud charge.
doing here. they want to use michael cohen or any look, generically, you have a defendant plead guilty to conduct he committed when you want to use that defendant against other with the same thing. whether it s the taxi king, whether it s michael cohen. you have them plead to a set of operative facts describing what they did. because some day down the road, you re going to use them to help you get others who did the same thing. that s what i think happened here. but you don t want to sort of lay all your cards on the table as a prosecutor, because you re still investigating that thing that conduct, the others who were involved in it. what the mueller team did made sense to me. the way they described it really in some ways buttresses the core of the buzzfeed story. now, obviously the mueller team is pushing back on aspects of the buzzfeed story. i think in the main, what you can glean from their sentencing