The following article by Lydia Wheeler and Morgan Chalfant was posted on the Hill website August 17, 2018:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The judge in the tax- and bank-fraud trial against onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Friday he’s been threatened over the case, denying a request from media outlets to release the names and addresses of the jurors.
Judge T.S. Ellis III said he’s not going to reveal the specifics of the threats he received.
“I have the marshals’ protection,” he said.
The following article by John Wagner was posted on the Washington Post website August 16, 2018:
President Trump’s relationship with Omarosa Manigault Newman goes back to “The Apprentice,” but has turned sour with her tell-all book and White House tapes. (Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)
Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman released a secret recording Thursday in a bid to bolster her contention that she was offered a $15,000-a-month contract from President Trump’s campaign to stay silent after being fired from her job.
On the recording, campaign aide Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, can be heard discussing salary considerations and other aspects of a campaign job with Manigault Newman and makes clear that she expects her to be positive about the president.
The release of the recording, during an interview with MSNBC, was the latest escalation of Manigault Newman’s feud with President Trump in the wake of the release of her tell-all book, “Unhinged,” which depicts him as racist and in mental decline.
The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website August 15, 2018:
President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani tried to downplay collusion by saying it isn’t a crime and attacked the special counsel on July 30. (Jenny Starrs /The Washington Post)
Rudy Giuliani has said that collusion isn’t technically a crime. President Trump has said it’s totally normal to seek opposition research — even if it was from Russia.
Not even Republicans buy these defenses.
A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows there is actually a bipartisan consensus on the appropriateness of seeking information about a political opponent from a hostile foreign country. Fully 79 percent of Americans say it’s never acceptable, including 92 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans.
The following article by Griffin Connolly was posted on the Roll Call website August 15, 2018:
Paul Manafort’s lawyers presented their final argument Wednesday, defending the former Trump campaign chairman from 18 charges of tax evasion, bank fraud, and bank fraud conspiracy.
Manafort faces up to 305 years in prison if the Eastern Virginia jury finds him guilty on all charges.
Prosecutors bear the burden of proof in the United States, defense attorney Richard Westling reminded jurors. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, which is prosecuting Manafort, did not reach that evidential threshold, Westling said.
The following article by Eli Rosenberg was posted on the Washington Post website August 14 2018:
Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump and a longtime Republican operative, posted an image that depicted himself and other Trump allies wearing space suits with swastika patches on Monday, before deleting the picture after outcry on social media.
The image appears to have been originally deployed as an anti-Trump meme on social media sites and websites such as 4chan and Reddit that surfaced after Pence touted the proposal for a sixth branch of the military at a news conference last week. It shows Stone, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Vice President Mike Pence, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Fox News host Sean Hannity and President Trump in space suits with the Nazi symbol appropriated into an insignia for the space force on the front of their outfits. A magnified image of the swastika patch also appears in the photo’s upper right hand corner.
“In space no one can hear you lie,” the caption says.
The following article by Lydia Wheeler was posted on the Hill website August 14, 2018:
Attorneys for one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort rested their case Tuesday without calling any witnesses or presenting any further evidence to defend their client, who faces charges of tax evasion and bank fraud that could land him in prison for decades.
Manafort briefly spoke in the courtroom without the jury present, saying he did not wish to testify on his own behalf.
It’s the first time Manafort has been heard in the trial, which is in its third week.
The following article by Griffin Connolly was posted on the Roll Call website August 13, 2018:
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecution team on Monday rested its case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, wrapping up its evidence and witness testimony in just 10 days.
The defense will decide whether it will call any witnesses Tuesday morning. If it does not, both sides are expected to deliver closing arguments. Then the jury will decide Manafort’s fate.
The former political consulting titan is being tried on 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud and faces a maximum 305-year prison sentence if the Eastern Virginia jury finds him guilty.
The following commentary by Greg Sargent was posted on the Washington Post website August 13, 2018:
Despite President Trump’s tweets, meeting with a foreign power to get ‘dirt’ is not opposition research, argues deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
President Trump has spent the past year and a half emphatically declaring that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, adamantly and angrily insisting that any suggestion to the contrary is nothing but a “hoax.”
Trump is now trying out a new line, which looks a little something like this: There was “no collusion” … “to the best of my knowledge.”
The Post has a remarkable piece reporting that Donald Trump Jr.’s presence on the campaign trail is in major demand among GOP candidates. Trump Jr. energizes the Trump base, in spite of the fact — or rather because of the fact — that he may be in legal jeopardy, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III scrutinizes Trump Jr.’s role in the Trump Tower meeting and its aftermath. For many Trump voters who have been relentlessly told that Mueller is leading a “deep-state coup” against the president, Trump Jr. represents a galvanizing, heroic figure who is both resisting and getting unfairly persecuted by that coup.
The following article by Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker was posted on the Washington Post website August 12, 2018:
President Trump was watching Fox News Channel with aides in his private dining room off the Oval Office recently when Donald Trump Jr. flashed across the giant flat screen.
“Don’s gotten really good,” Trump said, according to someone who was present. “My people love him.”
The remark suggested a swell of unexpected pride from Trump about his namesake son, whose relationship with his father has been difficult at times but who has emerged as the president’s political alter ego and an in-demand campaign celebrity ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The following article by Cody Fenwick was posted on the AlterNet website August 10, 2018:
Peter Smith, a GOP operative, tried to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from believed to be Russian hackers during the 2016 campaign, according to a Wall Street Journal reportpublished in June 2017. This finding was especially significant because Smith appeared to have ties to Michael Flynn, an adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump who briefly became national security adviser.
While this thread in the Russia investigation has largely remained dormant since the initial reports, a new article from BuzzFeed on Friday breathed new life into the potentially crucial story. According to the report, Smith made “suspicious” money transfers in his effort to secure the emails:
Just a day after he finished a report suggesting he was working with Trump campaign officials, for example, he transferred $9,500 from an account he had set up to fund the email project to his personal account, later taking out more than $4,900 in cash. According to a person with direct knowledge of Smith’s project, the Republican operative stated that he was prepared to pay hackers “many thousands of dollars” for Clinton’s emails — and ultimately did so.
