Tag: Trump transition

20 lies and alleged lies the Trump team has told in the Mueller probe, dissected

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and hosts and guests on cable news shows reacted to the indictment of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone on Jan. 25. (Allie Caren, Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The growing number of lies that members of President Trump’s team have admitted to or been accused of telling investigators leads to one big question: Why?

Why would these people risk jail time to tell lies if there wasn’t something significant being covered up? Many of them had to know exactly the stakes of lying to the government, and they did it anyway. Why take such a risk to protect … nothing?

It might be the defining question of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation — especially given that this is the predominant crime being charged and pleaded to. We still have no members of the Trump team charged with conspiracy. (Though just because there have been no such charges doesn’t mean they couldn’t be coming. Prosecutors have an incentive to charge smaller crimes before bigger ones and to keep their evidence under wraps.)

View the complete January 28 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Former CIA director: Collusion ‘is quite evident’ in Trump campaign

Former CIA Director John Brennan, Credit: Greg Nash

Former CIA director John Brennan says Russian collusion ‘may have gone to the very top of the Trump campaign.’

Now that close Trump adviser Roger Stone has been indicted, former CIA director John Brennan is more convinced than ever that Robert Mueller’s investigation will prove damning for Trump.

Brennen said Friday that he thinks it’s “quite evident” the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, that this collusion may have “gone to the very top” to Trump himself, and that it could even rise to the level of “criminal conspiracy.”

“There was an extensive effort to try to influence the outcome of the [2016] election that involved the Russians, that involved U.S. persons, and that may have gone to the very top of the Trump campaign,” Brennan said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration

During the 2016 presidential campaign and transition, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, a New York Times analysis has found. At least 10 other associates were told about interactions but did not have any themselves.

Knowledge of these interactions is based on New York Times reporting, documents submitted to Congress, and court records and accusations related to the special counsel investigating foreign interference in the election.

Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.

View the complete January 26 article with interactive graphic  by Karen Yourish and Larry Buchanan on The New York Times website here.

It took about 20 minutes for a judge to destroy the right’s conspiratorial defense of Michael Flynn

Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

Conservatives were giddy about Tuesday’s sentencing hearing … until it started.

Early Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed to delay the sentencing of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn until March.

In some ways, Flynn’s sentencing will bring closure to one chapter of the ever-expanding investigation by Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s efforts to collude with Russia to steal a presidential election. Flynn was the first and most senior Trump administration official to plead guilty to federal charges, in this case lying to the FBI.

But while the hearing was, in some ways, expected to be a formality — federal prosecutors recommended Flynn receive no prison time on account of his extensive cooperation with Mueller’s investigation — Judge Sullivan used his opportunity to meticulously and methodically twist the knife in one of the far-right’s favorite talking points.

View the complete December 18 article by Adam Peck on the ThinkProgress.org website here.

Flynn associates claim he was in contact with Russian ambassador about a ‘grand bargain’ during 2016 campaign

“Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States.”

When Michael Flynn, former national security advisor in the Trump Administration, agreed to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, he admitted to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the late 2016 lame duck session. But according to a new David Corn/Dan Friedman article for Mother Jones, Flynn was in touch with Kislyak not only after the 2016 presidential election, but during the election as well.

For the article, published December 13, Mother Jones’ reporters interviewed two Flynn associates who asked for anonymity—and both of them discussed their conversations with Flynn. One of them, according to Corn and Friedman, alleges that Flynn and Kislyak discussed “a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump Administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine.”

According to Corn and Friedman, the other Flynn associate alleges that Flynn and Kislyak discussed “Syria, Iran and other foreign policy matters that Russia and the United States could tackle together were Trump to be elected.”

View the complete December 13 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet.org website here.

Cohen sentenced to three years in prison

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for a series of crimes he committed while working for Trump.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III sentenced Cohen to 36 months in jail in Manhattan federal court Wednesday morning. The sentence stems from eight federal charges he pleaded guilty to in August, including campaign finance violations tied to a scheme to pay off women alleging affairs with Trump in order to prevent damaging information from surfacing during the 2016 presidential campaign.

His sentence also entails two months to be served concurrently for a single charge of lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump property in Moscow, which Cohen pleaded guilty to in late November as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. That deal guarantees his cooperation in Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation.

View the complete December 12 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and transition

Federal prosecutors filed new court papers on Dec. 7 that revealed a previously unreported contact from a Russian to Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. (Melissa Macaya , Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

The Russian ambassador. A deputy prime minister. A pop star, a weightlifter, a lawyer, a Soviet army veteran with alleged intelligence ties.

Again and again and again, over the course of Donald Trump’s 18-month campaign for the presidency, Russian citizens made contact with his closest family members and friends, as well as figures on the periphery of his orbit.

Some offered to help his campaign and his real estate business. Some offered dirt on his Democratic opponent. Repeatedly, Russian nationals suggested Trump should hold a peacemaking sit-down with Vladi­mir Putin — and offered to broker such a summit.

View the complete December 9 article by Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Carol D. Leonnig on The Washignton Post website here.

Mueller says Manafort lied about contacts with Trump officials

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to prosecutors about his contacts with the White House and an associate with suspected ties to Russian intelligence, special counsel Robert Mueller‘s office said in a filing Friday.

The heavily redacted report filed in the criminal case against Manafort in Washington, D.C., comes more than a week after prosecutors accused the one-time Trump campaign chief of “committing federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the special counsel’s office on a variety of subject matters” in breach of his plea agreement.

The report released Friday detailing those claims had been highly anticipated for its potential to shed light on Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, an investigation that has been kept tightly under wraps.

View the complete December 7 article by Lydia Wheeler and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

White House Lied About Having No Contacts With Russia

Trump and his White House repeatedly denied that there were any contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. They were lying — now we know Russians interacted with at least 16 Trump associates during the campaign and transition.

Trump denied any campaign contact with Russia, “with a firm ‘no.’”

Jim Acosta: “Fortunately ABC’s Cecilia Vega asked my question about whether any Trump associates contacted Russians. Trump said no.”

Cecilia Vega: “?? @DavidGroff you must have missed the part of my reporting that said trump came back and answered my first question with a firm ‘no.’”

Continue reading “White House Lied About Having No Contacts With Russia”

Prosecutors recommend ‘substantial’ prison time for ex-Trump lawyer Cohen

Federal prosecutors in New York on Friday recommended that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, receive “substantial” prison time for several federal crimes, despite his cooperation with ongoing law enforcement investigations, including special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia probe.

In a filing late Friday afternoon, prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York recognized Cohen’s cooperation with law enforcement in “ongoing matters” but argued the seriousness of his crimes warrant a “substantial term of imprisonment.”

The filing also cites Cohen’s decision not to become a traditional cooperating witness with federal authorities in New York, despite offering assistance in numerous ongoing investigations.

View the complete December 7 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.