Tag: Trump corruption

As it turns out, there really was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia

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The investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III ended anticlimactically. Although Mueller’s report detailed evidence of Russian interference and the Trump team’s welcome receipt of help from Moscow, there was insufficient evidence on the so-called “collusion” — that is conspiracy — to rise to the level of criminality. However, thanks to the misleading spin from Attorney General William P. Barr, the extent of the cooperation — collusion, in laymen’s terms — was obscured.

On Tuesday, the Republican-chaired Senate Intelligence Committee released a report with damning details of the extent of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence operatives.

The Post reports: “The long-awaited report from the Senate Intelligence Committee contains dozens of new findings that appear to show more direct links between Trump associates and Russian intelligence, and pierces the president’s long-standing attempts to dismiss the Kremlin’s intervention on his behalf as a hoax.” These include a determination “that a longtime partner of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer.” Continue reading.

How Trump was able to shape the Postal Service board to enact a new agenda

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on the Postal Service’s governing board Monday to oust Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and roll back the cost-cutting moves Democrats warn are designed to sabotage mail-in voting.

“That’s why we have a board of governors,” Warren (D-Mass.) told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “We need them to just get rid of Louis DeJoy and say, all those mailboxes they took out, all those [mail] sorting machines they took out, the no-overtime policy . . . we’re done.”

It is highly unlikely to happen. DeJoy, the North Carolina businessman and Trump campaign donor who arrived in June to make sweeping cuts to postal operations, was appointed by a board that is now controlled 4 to 2 by loyalists to President Trump. “We just got the board,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. Continue reading.

Five takeaways from final Senate Intel Russia report

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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released its long-awaited Russia interference report detailing significant contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow during the 2016 election.

The fifth and final volume, just shy of 1,000 pages, lays out the counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities that were exposed through Russian contacts and a willingness by some members of the Trump campaign to accept foreign assistance.

Its release comes more than a year after former special counsel Robert Mueller wrapped up his 22-month investigation in which he did not find evidence to charge any Trump campaign associates with conspiring or coordinating with the Kremlin to interfere in the election — a finding President Trump has hailed while lambasting the probe as a “witch hunt.” Continue reading.

Here are 7 damning revelations from the new Senate report on Trump and Russia

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Long after any debate about whether President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference might lead to his impeachment had fizzled out, the Senate Intelligence Committee dropped a bomb of a report on Tuesday including explosive new details of the sordid affair.

While the new report doesn’t completely upend the story of the 2016 campaign as we knew it — much of the outline of the conduct was contained in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and previous news articles — it highlights new details and facts that emphasize the duplicity going on behind the scenes. It completely undermines the notion, pushed by the president and attorney general, that there was no basis for the investigation and shows there is ample evidence for what was once widely discussed as “collusion.” And this is particularly significant because the report was developed by a committee led by Republicans — they can’t be painted as enemies of the president, as Mueller’s team was.

Here are seven of the most striking details from the new report: Continue reading.

Postmaster general says he’s pausing changes ‘until after the election’

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The postmaster general on Tuesday said he would pause changes to the operations of the Postal Service until after the election amid bipartisan outcry, a sharp reversal after President Trump spent days defending the agency’s actions.

“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” Louis DeJoy said in a statement.

The postmaster general said retail hours at post offices will remain unchanged, mail processing equipment and collection boxes will not be removed and no mail processing facilities will be closed. Continue reading.

Manafort shared campaign info with Russian intelligence officer, Senate panel finds

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Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had deep ties to a Russian intelligence officer and secretly shared campaign information, according to a sweeping Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday.

The nearly 1,000-page report offers a detailed portrait of Manafort’s connection to Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the Senate panel identifies as a Russian intelligence officer with potential ties to the hack of Democratic emails during the 2016 election.

“On numerous occasions over the course of his time on the Trump Campaign, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik,” the committee wrote. Continue reading.

DeJoy donated big to GOP senators up for re-election. They’re still mum on the USPS

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Recently appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a top donor to Donald Trump and until earlier this year the head fundraiser for the Republican National Convention, has given tens of thousands of dollars to Republican Senators up for re-election this November, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Salon.

FEC records also show that DeJoy regularly maxed out with tens of thousands of annual contributions to the official GOP committees dedicated to electing Republican lawmakers: the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

DeJoy’s political fundraising and donor records have come under scrutiny since his appointment to the head of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors. He caught fierce backlash last week from Democrats and Postal Service employees after reports broke that USPS warned 46 states that their mail ballots might not be delivered on time for the November election, potentially disenfranchising millions of voters. Continue reading.

Senate report finds Manafort passed campaign data to Russian intelligence officer

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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the fifth and final volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which details “counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities.”

Why it matters: The bipartisan, 996-page report goes further than the Mueller report in showing the extent of Russia’s connections to members of the Trump campaign, and how the Kremlin was able to take advantage of the transition team’s inexperience to gain access to sensitive information.

Highlights

Paul Manafort: The report found that the former Trump campaign chairman began working on influence operations for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs in 2004. Continue reading.

House accelerates oversight of Postal Service as uproar grows, demanding top officials testify at ‘urgent’ hearing

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The House Oversight Committee announced a hearing for Aug. 24, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan

The House Oversight Committee will hold an emergency hearing on mail delays and concerns about potential White House interference in the U.S. Postal Service, inviting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan to testify Aug. 24, top Democrats announced on Sunday.

Democrats have alleged that DeJoy, a former Republican National Convention finance chairman, is taking steps that are causing dysfunction in the mail system and could wreak havoc in the presidential election. The House had earlier not planned a hearing until September.

“The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Oversight Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said in a statement announcing the hearing. Continue reading.

Michael Cohen says he was ‘active and eager participant’ in ‘tax fraud’ in book

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In the 3,700-word foreword from his forthcoming memoir, “Disloyal,” Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and “fixer” of President Donald Trump, describes his life working for his former client in terms of organized crime, comes clean about “screaming threats” on his client’s behalf and admits to being an “active and eager participant” in some of the most notorious and salacious episodes involving the future leader of the free world.

“From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise — I was an active and eager participant,” Cohen writes in the foreword, dated March 11, 2020, which he says he began penning on legal pads in the early morning hours at the white-collar Otisville Federal Prison located about an hour and a half drive from his former Manhattan high-rise apartment.

Cohen had earlier been furloughed from that prison amid concerns over the spread of COVID-19. However, he was soon remanded, apparently for writing this book. His book’s website directly quotes federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein: Continue reading.