Tag: Trump campaign

Oversight Committee Probes Fox Coverup Of Stormy Daniels Story

Stormy Daniels Credit:  Chris Farina, Wireimage

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, wants to hear from the Fox News reporter whose bosses refused to let her run a story about Trump’s hush money payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.

The reporter, Diana Falzone, uncovered the story — but was told it would not run because those in charge of Fox News wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 election.

MSNBC’s Ari Melber broke the story Thursday night that Congress wanted to hear from Falzone. Melber read on air parts of a letter Cummings sent to Falzone, requesting documents and information related to “women alleging extra marital affairs with President Trump, payments by the President or anyone on behalf of him to silence those people.” The request also seeks any documents about potential campaign finance violations. 

View the complete March 16 article by Dan Desai Martin of The American Independent on the National Memo website here.

Tech Firm in Steele Dossier May Have Been Used by Russian Spies

WASHINGTON — Aleksej Gubarev is a Russian technology entrepreneur who runs companies in Europe and the United States that provide cut-rate internet service. But he is best known for his appearance in 2016 in a dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the Trump campaign’s complicity.

Mr. Gubarev’s companies, the dossier claimed, used “botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.”

On Thursday, new evidence emerged that indicated that internet service providers owned by Mr. Gubarev appear to have been used to do just that: A report by a former F.B.I. cyberexpert unsealed in a federal court in Miami found evidence that suggests Russian agents used networks operated by Mr. Gubarev to start their hacking operation during the 2016 presidential campaign.

[Read the report here.]

View the complete March 14 article by Matthew Rosenberg on The New York Times website here.

A Manafort Pardon Would Prove Trump’s Guilt

No longer can there be any doubt that Paul Manafort expects Donald Trump to pardon him — and that Trump has encouraged that expectation in a broad strategy to obstruct the Russia investigation over the past two years.

The signals emanating from Manafort’s legal team over the past few days could scarcely have been clearer. Moments after Judge Amy Berman Jackson extended Manafort’s federal prison time to seven and a half years, his lawyer, Kevin Downing, assured the assembled press outside the Washington courthouse that the judge’s sentence indicated there had been “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Downing uttered that false statement just minutes after Judge Jackson had scolded him in court for making exactly the same irrelevant remark following Manafort’s sentencing last week in Virginia.

As the judge said, those statements were intended not for the court but for the White House, echoing the president’s own favorite alibi. Coming from Manafort, through his legal mouthpiece, “no collusion” means “I didn’t tell Robert Mueller about any collusion.”

View the complete March 14 article by Joe Conason with the Creators Syndicate on the National Memo website here.

Mueller focus shifts to Rick Gates

The focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is about to shift to Richard Gates.

Gates, Paul Manafort’s ex-business partner and President Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, has been quietly cooperating with federal prosecutors for over a year on Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He’s also a cooperating witness to other undisclosed federal probes.

View the complete March 14 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

House votes for Mueller report to be made public

The House passed a resolution Thursday calling on Justice Department (DOJ) officials to release special counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Lawmakers unanimously passed the nonbinding resolution in a 420-0 vote.

Four Republicans — Reps. Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), and Justin Amash (Mich.) — voted present.

View the complete March 14 article by Juliegrace Brufke and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Manafort indicted by Manhattan DA on mortgage fraud charges

The Manhattan District Attorney on Wednesday indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in connection to a mortgage fraud scheme, announcing the charges within minutes of his sentencing in federal court in Washington, D.C.

District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced 16 charges against Manafort, including residential mortgage fraud, attempted mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy. Prosecutors said Manafort engaged in the scheme over the course of roughly a year, from December 2015 until January 2017.

The 11-page indictment, filed in New York Supreme Court in New York City, alleges that Manafort falsified business records to obtain millions of dollars in mortgage loans.

View the complete March 13 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Second Manafort sentencing brings total to 7.5 years

A federal judge on Wednesday added 43 months to Paul Manafort’s prison term, bringing the former Trump campaign chairman’s overall sentence to 7 1/2 years.

Manafort, 69, appeared before District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., wearing a suit with a light purple tie and seated in a wheelchair.

He faced sentencing for conspiracy charges that he pleaded guilty to as part of a deal with prosecutors in September. He faced a maximum of 10 years in prison for those crimes.

View the complete March 13 article by Morgan Chalfant and Lydia Wheeler on The Hill website here.

Mueller says Flynn’s cooperation ‘complete’

Michael Flynn’s cooperation in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is complete, lawyers for the special counsel said in a Tuesday night report to a federal judge presiding over the former Trump national security adviser’s case.

In the same joint status report, Flynn’s lawyers asked for a 90-day delay in their client’s sentencing so he could continue to cooperate with the government in his former business partner’s upcoming trial in Alexandria, Va. Flynn expects to testify in the mid-July trial against Bijan Rafiekian, who faces charges of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign government agent for Turkey.

“At this time, the defendant continues to request a continuance since the case in EDVA has not been resolved, and there may be additional cooperation for the defendant to provide pursuant to the plea agreement in this matter,” Flynn’s attorneys said in the report to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, referring to the Eastern District of Virginia.

View the complete March 12 article by Darren Samuelsohn on the Politico website here.

In newly released transcript, former FBI lawyer fires back on charges that anti-Trump bias affected Trump and Clinton probes

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page defended herself and the bureau last year against accusations that bias against Donald Trump affected federal investigations of the Trump campaign’s suspected Russia ties and of Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to a transcript released Tuesday by the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

Page, who came to prominence over anti-Trump texts she exchanged with former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok while both were assigned to the Clinton and Trump investigations, stressed that senior bureau officials were also expressing anti-Clinton animus — but that neither affected how agents working those cases carried out their jobs.

“Many of us in law enforcement dislike the subject of our investigations. We are not keen on pedophiles and fraudsters and spies and human traffickers,” Page said. “That is fine. What would be impermissible is to take that harsh language and to act in some way that was illegal or against the rules. And we don’t do it.”

View the complete March 13 article by Karoun Demirjian, Aaron Blake and Rosalind S. Helderman on The Washington Post website here.

Here’s What Happens When Robert Mueller Is Done

Will Mueller’s report be made public? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

WASHINGTON — This is not a story about when special counsel Robert Mueller will finish his investigation, or when he’ll submit his final report. Speculation has floated for weeks that he’s close to finishing, but no one knows for sure. This is about what will happen once he’s done and what happens after Mueller and his team of prosecutors disband.

The big picture: When the investigation is over, Mueller will submit a report to Attorney General Bill Barr, and Barr will submit a report of his own to Congress. Neither report must be public, but both can be. Pending prosecutions and investigations, such as the criminal case against longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, will continue; Mueller’s office has been partnering with other federal prosecutors who can take over. Mueller will no longer be the most watched man in America, and he could return to the lucrative job he left in private practice — or at least go to an Apple Store or the airport without having his picture taken. Continue reading “Here’s What Happens When Robert Mueller Is Done”