Category: Trump Administration

Giuliani’s Legal Bills Are Growing. His Allies Want Trump to Pay Them.

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As Rudolph Giuliani faces an escalating federal investigation and defamation suits, his advisers believe he should benefit from a $250 million Trump campaign war chest.

As a federal investigation into Rudolph W. Giuliani escalates, his advisers have been pressing aides to former President Donald J. Trump to reach into a $250 million war chest to pay Mr. Giuliani for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

The pressure from Mr. Giuliani’s camp has intensified since F.B.I. agents executed search warrants at Mr. Giuliani’s home and office last week, according to people familiar with the discussions, and comes as Mr. Giuliani has hired new lawyers and is facing his own protracted — and costly — legal battles.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been examining communications between Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and Ukrainian officials as he tried to unearth damaging information about President Biden before the election. The prosecutors are investigating whether Mr. Giuliani lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials who were helping him, a potential violation of federal law. Continue reading.

Judge orders release of Trump obstruction memo, accuses Barr of deception

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A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release a March 2019 legal memo clearing former President Trump of potential obstruction of justice charges following the Mueller investigation, with the judge accusing former Attorney General William Barr and agency lawyers of deceiving the public.

District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Monday ordered the DOJ to release the legal memo within two weeks in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).

The DOJ had argued in court that the full memo — portions of which have already been released — should be withheld because it falls under exceptions to the public records law for attorney-client privilege and deliberative government decisionmaking. Continue reading.

New report reveals Trump’s DOJ targeted academics who exposed the Bolivian coup regime

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Evo Morales’ 13 years as president of Bolivia came to an end when, in 2019, he was removed from power via a coup. According to reporters Ken Klippenstein and Ryan Grim, e-mails that have been obtained by The Intercept and were sent during former President Donald Trump’s final months in office “add new evidence to support Bolivian allegations that the United States was implicated in its 2019 coup.”

“The e-mails reveal the Justice Department’s involvement in the Bolivian coup regime’s criminal investigation into alleged voter fraud, which has not previously been reported,” Klippenstein and Grim explain. “The inquiry targeted a pair of respected MIT researchers about their work for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in which they broadly refuted suspicions that Bolivia’s socialist party had rigged the election.”

The reporters add, “The short-lived coup regime reached power following a clear script: In the weeks leading up to the Bolivian presidential election in October 2019, the opposition pumped endless propaganda through social media and television networks, warning that incumbent President Evo Morales would exploit widespread fraud to win reelection.” Continue reading.

Trump told Facebook board his supporters were ‘law abiding’ during Capitol riot

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Former President Donald Trump defended his supporters as “law abiding” the day of the Capitol insurrection, while insisting his social media posts making false claims about the election did nothing to incite violence on January 6, when an angry mob breached the Capitol to stop the count of President Biden‘s Electoral College victory.

The defense by Trump was made to the Facebook Oversight Board, which was reviewing whether his account on the social media platform should be restored.

In comments submitted on the former president’s behalf, Trump said his supporters were “law-abiding” when they stormed into the building and that nothing he posted on Jan, 6 could “reasonably be interpreted as a threat to public safety.” Continue reading.

Trump voter in Pennsylvania convicted of voter fraud

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As a Trump voter in Pennsylvania is convicted of casting a ballot for his dead mother, whatever happened to the reward money offered by Texas’ Dan Patrick?

In the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat six months ago, Republicans launched a desperate search for illegally cast ballots to help justify the GOP’s conspiracy theories. But despite all the hysterical rhetoric, only a handful of legitimate allegations have been raised, and some involve Republicans casting illegal ballots for Trump on behalf of dead relatives.

Take Bruce Bartman, for example. The Washington Post reported this morning:

Weeks before Election Day, Bruce Bartman mailed his mother’s absentee ballot with a check mark next to President Donald Trump’s name. The problem was, his mother had been dead since 2008. Bartman, 70, pleaded guilty on Friday to a charge of felony perjury and unlawful voting — and blamed his decision to cast the fraudulent ballot on consuming too many false claims about the election.

Continue reading.

Flynn, Bannon, Manafort, Ivanka: Private Emails From Inside The Mueller Investigation

“We actually sat at dinner together,” Flynn said of his meal with Vladimir Putin.

Five days before Donald Trump was sworn in as president in January 2017, his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, sent an email to the person Trump had chosen as deputy national security adviser.

“I have some important information I want to share that I picked up on my travels over the last month,” Manafort wrote to KT McFarland.

Manafort’s ties to foreign leaders had already attracted the scrutiny of the FBI, and McFarland wasn’t sure if she should take him up on his offer. So she sent an email to her boss, Michael Flynn. Continue reading.

Trump muddles Republican messaging on Afghanistan

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Donald Trump’s hearty endorsement of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by September has undercut efforts by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other key Republicans to question President Biden’s strategy. 

More broadly, the former president has focused the nation’s attention on China as the United States’s premier national security concern, putting pressure on Senate Republicans to support legislation Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to move to respond to Beijing’s growing influence and power. 

McConnell is the most powerful Republican leader in Washington, but he doesn’t have the same unrivaled platform that he did when he was in the same position — head of the minority opposition in Washington — at the start of former President Obama’s tenure.  Continue reading.

Documents show Trump officials skirted rules to reward politically connected firms with huge pandemic contracts

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A top adviser to former President Donald Trump pressured agency officials to reward politically connected or otherwise untested companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts as part of a chaotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the early findings of an inquiry led by House Democrats.

Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant and trade adviser, essentially verbally awarded a $96 million deal for respirators to a company with White House connections. Later, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were pressured to sign the contract after the fact, according to correspondence obtained by congressional investigators.

Documents obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis after a year of resistance from the Trump administration offer new details about Navarro’s role in a largely secretive buying spree of personal protective equipment and medical supplies. Continue reading.

‘Tells you a lot’: George Conway explains why Trump’s former lawyer is in deep legal trouble

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In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Molly Jong-Fast, conservative attorney George Conway got right to the point and explained that the way in which the Justice Department is going after former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is indicative that they already have a solid case against him and, in Conway’s words, the man once called “America’s mayor” is in “deep shit.”

In the “New Abnormal” podcast, which can be listened to below, the husband of Kellyanne Conway said the DOJ doesn’t take going after a lawyer lightly, much less one who has been representing the president of the United States.

After a discussion about Donald Trump, who Conway referred to as “the big liar,” the conversation turned to Giuliani’s legal problems after last week’s raid where his phones and computers were confiscated. Continue reading.

Opinion: Elected Republicans are lying with open eyes. Their excuses are disgraceful.

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“Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!”

— “Henry IV,” Part 1, Act 5

For the activist base of the Republican Party, affirming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential contest has become a qualification for membership in good standing. For the party’s elected leaders, accepting the clear result of a fair election is to be a rogue Republican like the indomitable Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.)— a target for Trump’s anger, public censure and primary threats.

Nothing about this is normal. The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood is so obviously and laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders who embrace it fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie — an act of immorality — is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.

This kind of determined mendacity requires rolling out the big guns. Said the prophet Isaiah: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” Continue reading.