Pecker Leaks, Cohen Gets Three Years

     OK, let's try to put this in perspective. Michael Cohen is a dried out hors d'oeuvre, a shrunken road apple on the highway to justice. He got three years today after prosecutors originally had asked for about five.
     I expect Trump will be crowing about that while never mentioning that his old pal David Pecker cut a sweetheart deal with those same prosecutors after turning on the scum spigot. Pecker even admitted to prosecutors that, yeah, the National Enquirer should have mentioned the $150,000 in hush money disguised as "catch and kill" to Karen McDougal to federal authorities, "Oops, sorry, we sure won't do that again. Can I go now?
     Because Cohen shot his wad and has long outlived his usefulness to Trump and just about everyone else on the planet except for Bubba, the hypermasculine 300 lb bull whose penis is tattooed with, "Shake hands with it, bitch" and anxiously awaiting Cohen in the prison shower. Trumpie may still have use for Pecker in case another incredibly greedy and misguided woman like Daniels and McDougal come out of the woodwork  alleging an affair with a mushroom-headed guy who seems to think he's the honorary Bachelor.
     But Cohen's second guilty plea, that earned from a Trump an enraged Twitter response that read like something Al Capone would've written if he'd found out Frank Nitti had just served him up on a silver platter on tax evasion charges, is nonetheless important. "He's weak!" Trump voicelessly screamed. Weak how? In stove-piping information to the feds about your direction of dirty deeds done not so dirt cheap?
     Granted, this facet of the probe doesn't mention the Russians... yet. But we all know about the Steele Dossier and Cohen's testimony all but proves that dossier does indeed exist.  Who cares who'd paid for it if the contents are real? As Trump himself has said on countless occasions, opposition research is part and parcel in a campaign. And, yes, yes it is.
     And, even more important than the Steele Dossier (although it alleges leverage Trump had given Russians in the form of the pee tape not to mention preliminary research on real estate sweetheart deals Trump intended as bribes to those selfsame Russians (such as offering Putin a $50,000,000 penthouse suite in the unbuilt Trump Tower Moscow that would've virtually required his personal approval), is what Trump had directed both Cohen and Pecker to do.
     Seeking his own leverage over Trump, Cohen had secretly taped several conversations he'd had with his boss, tapes that were seized by federal authorities in the raid on Cohen's home and office. We have all heard by now Trump directing the hush money to McDougal and disguising it as a "catch and kill" payment.
     And, of course, since this was all orchestrated after Trump had officially thrown his jester cap in the ring, all this hush money came about simply because Trump tried to sway the results of the election by making sure McDougal's story wouldn't sway the results of the election.
     That's not only campaign finance fraud, which is a felony under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, but anything amounting to a sum of $25,000 and up is punishable by five years in prison, two more than Cohen got.
     Math's not my strong suit but I think I stand on pretty firm ground when I guess $150,000 is much greater than $25,000.
     And if I know the Department of Justice's MO as well as I've grown to these last 14 years, it's that the DOJ doesn't spend upwards of a year and a half plus and millions of dollars going after stooges like Cohen. There's an end game, an even bigger pot of gold beyond this little rainbow provided by Cohen, Flynn and Manafort.
    And we all know who will be the star of that end game.