1/ A key Trump camp lie that died this week was that Trump was aloof from virtually every campaign conversation that could possibly have had legal ramifications. Cohen now tells us how closely Trump followed every development. We'll discover that that was true *across the board*.
2/ For instance, if Cohen kept Trump apprised of every development in a single deal involving Russia from 2015 to 2016, why would *anyone* still believe Trump was *not* told in advance by his son of a gaggle of powerful Russians coming to his house (Trump Tower) on June 9, 2016?
3/ Just so, we've been told that even though Mike Flynn accompanied Trump to every pre-election high-level national security-related meeting, Trump had *no* idea Flynn was negotiating with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak *prior* to the election. That's almost certainly false.
4/ As I know from my own training in criminal investigation, criminal investigators don't just profit from the development of new information by the expansion of their stock of knowledge, but *also* because new information tells us a great deal about broader patterns of behavior.
5/ Cohen kept Trump so well informed because Trump either implicitly or explicitly had demanded that of all his lieutenants. The very same expectations and relationship contours would've applied to both his son Don Jr. and his top shadow national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
6/ Likewise, when we learned Trump personally wrote a false witness statement for his son about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and then demanded Don release it to the public, it confirmed Trump was *actively* involved in narrative development on the Russia question throughout.
7/ One reason this feed sometimes seems to be ahead of the curve is that it uses common investigative techniques for developing a theory of the case, including broadly assuming that patterns of human behavior remain constant over time unless and until evidence suggests otherwise.
8/ For instance, if your theory of the Trump-Russia case relies to any extent on Trump having told the truth about a fact that could hurt him politically or legally, there's a more than 90% chance your theory is false. The same applies with any assumption Trump was *ever* aloof.
9/ But we could take it further. We've seen that Ivanka is one of her father's top advisers on every issue of importance, so this feed presumed Ivanka advised Trump on Russia-related issues, as they too are of importance. This week we learned that theory of the case is *correct*.
10/ We can all agree—and I can certainly agree, as someone who teaches journalism at a university—that *hard news reporters* must restrict themselves to individually confirmed facts. But analysts and investigators will always develop dynamic theories of a case from patterns. /end
