[Consistent]

FBI raided Michael Cohen's office for info on Access Hollywood, Trump affairs: Report https://t.co/lVqTATOImE pic.twitter.com/zxr7HYgLbM

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 11, 2018

[EVERYDAY]

This must be a separate investigation. I don’t see how it relates to allegations of collusion with the Russians.

Trump fans are positively livid about this “witch hunt.” Me? I don’t care how Trump goes down.

[Consistent]

News the Cohen raid was largely about the "Access Hollywood Tape" has confused a lot of media types. However, for me it has further validated some questions I have had about the tape for some time. Here's my brand-new column which includes a unique theory: https://t.co/g4o1Tgum0x

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) April 12, 2018

……..

It has always struck me as EXTREMELY odd that it was the Washington Post, not NBC, who first released the tape on Friday Oct. 7, 2016, barely beating NBC which, it should be noted, was clearly ready to go with it immediately after the Post did. I presumed that perhaps NBC wanted this to be the case because it might take some of the focus off why they had not released it during the primaries (and thus chose not to prematurely kill off the media’s Golden Goose which was Trump’s ratings-friendly campaign).

However, there is another aspect of the Post being the outlet which got the big scoop that has always struck me as potentially very significant. The Post’s reporter, David Fahrenthold, has said that he was only made aware of the tape, via an unnamed source, THAT day — which is a clear indication that whomever was trying to get the Post to release it had decided to do so in tremendous haste. After all, if the source had planned it sooner they would have made contact with Fahrenthold well before then because he might have been out of pocket that day.

Why is this timing important? Well, two other significant events happened that day in almost exactly the same time period. That morning, U.S. intelligence released a statement formally accusing Russia of breaking the law in an effort to influence our election. That afternoon, WikiLeaks began releasing emails which were hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Now it is certainly possible that this timing was all coincidental. After all, it was just two days before a huge presidential debate and just one month before the election was over. However, especially now in light of the Cohen raid, there is now plenty of reason to reevaluate what was really going on here.

For instance, what if it was actually someone from the TRUMP team who leaked the tape. At first glance, this seems ludicrous because no one thought that Trump would be anything but greatly harmed by the tape (though he clearly was not). But what if someone in Trump World got wind that the tape was about to be released and decided that stepping all over the Russia news (which would normally have dominated the narrative for the remainder of the campaign) would at least create the least bad outcome for them?

…….

Even if this admittedly somewhat wild theory is not accurate, there is still the issue of how Russia-linked WikiLeaks knew to start releasing the Clinton emails at the perfect time to allow Trump to change the subject with remarkable speed. Again, it could be a coincidence, but at a certain point there start to be too many of them for none to be significant.

Because of all of this, I was not at all surprised when we learned that law enforcement and the special counsel’s investigation is interested in the real origins of the “Access Hollywood Tape.” The only real shock is that the news media, strangely, never has been.