Tag: Trump campaign

Nadler: Hope Hicks testimony is huge gift in legal battle with Trump

House Democrats are planning to file a lawsuit within days to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify on Capitol Hill — and they say Hope Hicks’ reluctant testimony Wednesday will help deliver them a crucial win in court.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Hicks’ blanket refusal to tell lawmakers about her tenure in the West Wing is the real-life illustration Democrats needed to show a judge just how extreme the White House’s blockade on witness testimony has become.

“It very much played into our hands,” Nadler said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office Thursday. “It’s one thing to tell a judge blanket immunity is not a right thing. It’s another thing when a judge can see what that means in actuality, and how absurd it is.”

View the complete June 21 article by Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Hope Hicks refused to answer 155 questions during House testimony

Hope Hicks refused to answer 155 questions from House Democrats on Wednesday about her tenure as communications director in the Trump White House, according to a transcript of her closed-door testimony released Thursday.

The longtime confidante of President Donald Trump spent nearly eight hours clinging closely to White House attorneys’ demands that she refuse to answer every question about her time in the White House, as Democrats ticked through a lengthy, detailed and at times monotonous recitation of questions they knew the answer to: “Objection.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s interview yielded virtually no new information about Hicks’ role in the Trump campaign, and none at all about her testimony to former special counsel Robert Mueller centering on Trump’s repeated attempts to constrain or thwart Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

View the complete June 20 article by Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Paul Manafort Seemed Headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department Intervened.

The decision came after Attorney General William Barr’s top deputy sent a letter to state prosecutors. Mr. Manafort will now be held in a federal lockup while he faces state charges.

Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case.

But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new top deputy, indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York.

And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in, telling the Manhattan district attorney’s office that Mr. Manafort, 70, would not be going to Rikers.

View the complete June 17 article by William K. Rashbaum and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.

Trump’s narcissistic delusions: Now he’s bragging about awful polls — and threatening armageddon

Last week Donald Trump continued down a path of implicating himself in impeachable crimes. During an interview with ABC News he admitted that he would take dirt on a political opponent from a hostile foreign government, which is against the law. He also falsely accused his White House counsel, Don McGahn, of committing perjury, which is obstruction of justice. And he’s asserting that he has secret agreements with North Korea and Mexico, which are illegal if not ratified by Congress.

Trump is nearly incapacitated by his fear of being held accountable for the crimes that he knows all too well he is guilty of. And this is causing him to become more desperate with each passing day. So now he is trying to find some comfort by cowering in the slimy warmth of the Trump-fluffing media that he relies on for emotional support. And they are cooperating by telling him he is beloved by the American people.

The only problem with that is that even their reassurances are pitifully weak. They come in the form of reports on polling of Trump’s approval. But those numbers are historically negative. Nevertheless, when they reach what are considered “highs” for Trump, he celebrates, even if they are dismally low in reality:

View the complete June 16 article by News Corpse from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

House panel subpoenas Flynn, Gates

The House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates.

“As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), said in a statement on Thursday.

Schiff noted that both Flynn and Gates cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but said that they have so far “refused to cooperate fully with Congress.”

View the complete June 13 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Hope Hicks agrees to testify to House Judiciary Committee

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on June 19, the committee announced Wednesday.

Why it matters: Hicks will be the first former Trump official to appear before a Democratic committee investigating whether the president attempted to obstruct justice. However, Hicks may decline to answer certain questions if the president asserts executive privilege over events relating to her time in the White House.

  • Last week, the president instructed Hicks not to turn over documents related to her time in the administration, in defiance of a subpoena from the committee.

Details: The “transcribed interview” will “include questions related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and efforts by President Trump, his associates, and other Administration officials to obstruct justice and investigations into Presidential misconduct,” per the statement.

View the complete June 12 article by Alayna Treene on the Axios website here.

Former federal prosecutor: Here’s the giant hole in the Mueller report — and why it means the special counsel must testify

In his May 29 televised statement, special counsel Robert Mueller told us that everything he had to say was contained in his written report, and that it contained everything that Congress and the public needed to know about his investigation. This, however, is incorrect in several material respects, and the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees should insist that he appear before them to answer extremely urgent questions.

The Mueller report is completely silent on the results of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation that was opened up shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017. The next day, Trump then confided to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S. the following day in the Oval Office that — referring to the FBI’s Russia investigation — the firing of “nut job” Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him. Trump then followed this confirmation by admitting to NBC’s Lester Holt in a televised interview at the White House that he had decided to fire Comey because of the “Russia thing.” Continue reading “Former federal prosecutor: Here’s the giant hole in the Mueller report — and why it means the special counsel must testify”

Trump: ‘I had nothing to do with Russia helping me get elected’

President Trump said early Thursday that he “had nothing to do with Russia helping me get elected” while slamming special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation in a series of tweets.

“After spending $40,000,000 over two dark years, with unlimited access, people, resources and cooperation, highly conflicted Robert Mueller would have brought charges, if he had ANYTHING, but there were no charges to bring!” he said in his first tweet of the morning.

“Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist,” he said in a subsequent tweet.

View the complete May 30 article by Kyle Balluck and Tal Axelrod on The Hill website here.

There’s a new FBI probe of foreign ties to Trump’s campaign — but this time, it isn’t about Russia: report

Who could’ve ever guessed New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft getting arrested for soliciting prostitution would lead to the FBI investigating whether the Chinese have been funneling money to the Trump re-election campaign? But, here we are.

To recap, after Kraft was arrested, the Miami Herald noted the spa’s founder, Cindy Yang, was a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago and had been photographed with Donald Trump at the private club on several occasions. She used these photos to prove she had access to the president and others could as well, for a price. The grift began from the moment Donald Trump took office. Yang hosted an event at Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., and those funds have never been accounted for to this day. From The Palm Beach Post:

But there’s no trace of the money raised that night, as required by law, The Palm Beach Post has found.

That includes donations by their biggest listed sponsors. Among them: an embattled Saipan-based casino later raided by the FBI, a Guam-based shipyard and a handful of Pacific Island hotel operators, all of which benefited from a foreign labor bill signed into law by Trump a year later.

View the complete May 10 article by Jen Hayden from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.