Re: Bikers for Trump, from the NYT:
A Half-Million Bikers and a Trade Debate
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006035154/harley-davidson-trade-war.html
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Iamwhomiam » Mon Aug 13, 2018 10:14 pm
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 14, 2018 8:14 am
WHAT ROGER STONE’S LATEST LIES TELL US ABOUT MUELLER’S INVESTIGATION INTO HIM
August 13, 2018/5 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe, WikiLeaks /by emptywheel
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
After a puff piece in the NYT over the weekend, Roger Stone took to the Daily Caller to attack Mueller’s case against him. As bad as the Daily Caller is, it actually ends up being far more informative than the NYT because Stone is so bad at telling lies they’re informative for what they mirror.
So assuming, for the moment, that Stone’s piece reflects some kind of half-accurate reflection of what witnesses have said they were questioned about him, here’s what we learn.
MUELLER IS EXAMINING CONDUCT THAT GOES BACK 10 YEARS
Obviously, statutes of limitation have probably tolled on any crimes Stone committed more than five years ago, but this suggests witnesses are being asked about conduct that goes back that far.Mueller is running a criminally abusive, constitutionally -unaccountable, professionally and politically incestuous conspiracy of ethically conflicted cronies colluding to violate my Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights and those of almost everyone who had any sort of political or personal association with me in the last 10 years.
Given the involvement of Peter Jensen and Kristin Davis in Stone’s recent rat-fucking, perhaps as an explanation of more recent rat-fucking we’ll finally get an accounting of Stone’s role in taking out Eliot Spitzer. (h/t Andrew Prokop for Jensen tie to Spitzer op)
MUELLER IS CONSIDERING CHARGING STONE WITH CONFRAUDUS
I assume this reference to ConFraudUs comes from a friendly witness passing on what the subpoena described were the crimes being investigated.Mueller and his hit-men seek to frame some ludicrous charge of “defrauding the United States.”
This is, of course, based on a false and unproven assumption that Assange is a Russian agent and Wikileaks is a Russian front — neither of which has been proven in a court of law. Interestingly Assange himself has said, “Roger Stone has never said or tweeted anything we at Wikileaks had not already said publicly.”
As described, it looks like how I envisioned Stone might be charged with ConFraudUs back in June.As Mueller’s team has itself pointed out, for heavily regulated areas like elections, ConFraudUs indictments don’t need to prove intent for the underlying crimes. They just need to prove,(1) two or more persons formed an agreement to defraud the United States;
(2) [each] defendant knowingly participated in the conspiracy with the intent to defraud the United States; and
(3) at least one overt act was committed in furtherance of the common scheme.
Let’s see how evidence Mueller has recently shown might apply in the case of Roger Stone, Trump’s lifelong political advisor.
[snip]
Stone repeatedly entertained offers from foreigners illegally offering dirt that would benefit the Trump campaign — Greenberg, Guccifer 2.0, possibly Peter Smith’s Dark Web hackers. He may even have exhibited a belief that Australian Julian Assange had and could release the latter dirt, possibly with the knowledge they came from Russians.
So we’ve got Stone meeting with other people, repeatedly agreeing to bypass US election law to obtain a benefit for Trump, evidence (notwithstanding Stone’s post-hoc attempts to deny a Russian connection with Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks) that Stone had the intent of obtaining that benefit, and tons of overt acts committed in furtherance of the scheme.
Stone appears to address just one conspiracy with a foreigner — Julian Assange — to obtain something of value, by insisting (though less strongly than he has in the past!) that Assange is not a Russian asset. Except, foreign is foreign, whether Australian or Russian, so making a weak case that Assange is not Russian won’t get you off on ConFraudUs.
Moreover, now that I’ve reviewed some dodginess about Stone’s PACs, I suspect there may be two levels of ConFraudUs, one pertaining to depriving the US government from excluding foreign influence on the election, and the other pertaining to depriving the US government of the ability to track how political activities are being funded.
That is, Mueller’s reported focus on Stone’s finances may well pertain to a second ConFraudUs prong, one based on campaign finance violations.
STONE THINKS MUELLER WANTS HIM TO FLIP, RATHER THAN TO PUNISH HIM FOR THE CASE IN CHIEF
In spite of the abundant evidence that Stone is a key target of this investigation, Stone appears to believe that Mueller only wants to charge him to get him to flip on Trump.Mueller’s hit team is poking into every aspect of my personal, private, family, social, business and political life — presumably to conjure up some bogus charge or charges to use to pressure me to plead guilty to their Wikileaks fantasy and testify against Donald Trump who I have known intimately for almost 40 years.
Side note: I appreciate the way Stone — an unabashed swinger — worked that word “intimately” into his description of his relationship with Trump.
Which is one of the reasons I’m so interested in how he describes hiring a new lawyer, a nationally known one who used to work for Trump.I have been ably served by two fine lawyers Grant Smith and Rob Buschel who won dismissal of a harassment lawsuit based on the same Wikileaks/Russian conspiracy theory by an Obama directed legal foundation in D.C. last month. No evidence to support this false narrative was produced in court other than a slew of fake news clippings from lefty media sites.
I have recently reached agreement to retain a highly respected and nationally known attorney who has represented Donald Trump to join my legal team and lead my defense.
Possibly this is just a hint that some operative like Victoria Toensing or Joseph DiGenova is going to take on Stone’s propaganda case. Possibly it reflects a recognition from Trump that Stone now presents as big a risk to him as Manafort does. Whichever it is, I look forward to learning how serious a lawyer Stone has and whether — Stone claims reports that he has $20 million are false, but if he has been engaging in epic campaign finance violations, who knows? — Trump is paying for his defense going forward.
STONE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND HOW STORED COMMUNICATIONS WORK
As I pointed out the last time Stone claimed he was targeted by a FISA order, what likely happened instead is Mueller obtained the contents of his phone along with four or nine others in a probable cause warrant on March 9. But that doesn’t stop Stone from claiming he was targeted under FISA again, explaining that his emails, text messages, and (this is less credible) phone calls have been seized going back to 2016.Even more chilling is the fact that I have learned that — in this effort to destroy me — the government began reading my e-mails and text messages and monitoring my phone calls as early as 2016.
I believe that I, like Carter Page and Paul Manafort, was subject to an illegal FISA warrant in 2016, as the New York Times reported on January 20, 2017. The New York Times published this claim in a page-one story on the same day as President Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
A whistleblower has told my lawyers where my name and the fact that application had been made for a FISA warrant on me was redacted from the stunning Carter Page FISA warrant application released by the FBI last week with 300 of 400 pages blacked out.
What Stone’s dumbass “whistleblower” was pointing to instead was a passage describing the other people being investigated in October 2016, when Page was first targeted. But being investigated is not the same as being targeted under FISA, and what Stone is really trying to obscure here is that Mueller (probably) already showed a judge, back in March, he had probable cause that Rog committed some crimes back in 2016.
ANOTHER WITNESS STONE WOULD LIKE TO DISCREDIT BY CALLING AN INFORMANT
Back in June, Stone tried to spin the fact that he willingly accepted a meeting with yet another Russian offering dirt on Hillary by noting (correctly, it appears) that the Russian had served as a source for the FBI on Russian organized crime before — just like Felix Sater, whom the Trump folks are all still peachy with. In spite of the fact that it was so obviously bunk the last time, he’s trying again, hinting at a second informant working against him.We also now know that at least one FBI informant in the United States on an informant’s visa approached me in May 2016 in an effort to entrap me and compromise Donald Trump. I declined his proposal to “buy dirt on Hillary.” There is now substantial evidence that a second FBI informant may have infiltrated my political operations in 2016. Stand by.
Who knows whether this is another person — like the Russian dealing dirt on Hillary, “Henry Greenberg,” is just someone who has worked his way out of legal trouble by serving as an informant — or whether there’s some other reason Stone is calling him or her an informant. Most likely, Stone is trying to suggest a perfectly ordinary witness cooperating with the government against him is an informant, to inflame his people. Possibly, this is prepping a claim that Randy Credico set up Roger.
JEANNIE RHEE IS LEADING THE QUESTIONING OF STONE WITNESSES
In tandem with Trump’s attacks on Mueller prosecutors with Hillary ties, Stone states that Jeannie Rhee led the questioning of his witnesses, and claims it’s a conflict.Incredibly, leading the questioning of witnesses before the Grand Jury about me is Jeannie Rhee, who in private practice represented the Clinton foundation in the Hillary e-mail scandal that is front and center in the special prosecutor’s investigation of me! Can you say conflict of interest?
Of course, he gets the attack wrong: Rhee represented the Foundation against a nutbag Republican challenge, not with DOJ.
But in telling us that Rhee is leading this inquiry, Stone is (helpfully) telling us that a person who has led the Russian side of the inquiry is leading the inquiry into … oh my! Roger Stone!
Even with all his prevarications, it turns out, a Stone column might be more informative than a NYT puff piece!
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/13/w ... lers-case/
Ryan Goodman
These Kushner-Manafort emails show extraordinary access and influence Manafort had with Trump transition team MONTHS after he was fired and MONTHS after it was publicly known he was under FBI investigation.
Remember this—next time POTUS says he wasn’t warned of Manafort by FBI.
Kushner’s Ties to Russia-Linked Group Began With Kissinger Lunch
By Caleb Melby , David Kocieniewski , and Gerry Smith
August 13, 2018, 3:00 AM CDT
Trump son-in-law met Center for National Interest in March ’16
Alleged Russian agent Butina used center to set up meetings
Jared Kushner’s Rise to Power Mirrors Trump's
In March 2016, as the U.S. foreign policy establishment shunned presidential candidate Donald Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner was invited to lunch for a think tank urging detente with Russia and struggling for influence in Washington.
The meeting at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, which hasn’t been reported before, would prove significant for the Center for the National Interest and Kushner, who was still a little-known figure in the Trump campaign.
Jared KushnerPhotographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
The main attraction of the March 14th event was Henry Kissinger, the center’s honorary chairman, who gave a talk that included analyzing U.S.-Russia relations for a small group of attendees. Kushner, who remained quiet and unobtrusive during the lunch, introduced himself to Kissinger afterward. He also met Dimitri Simes, the Russian-born president of the center and publisher of its magazine, The National Interest.
Questions have recently been raised about the center for its ties to Russia, including its interactions with Maria Butina, a woman accused of conspiring to set up a back channel by infiltrating the National Rifle Organization and the National Prayer Breakfast.
Trump Being Questioned by Butina: Video
Kushner meeting Simes at the lunch turned out to be a solid match. In the weeks following they discussed the possibility of an event hosted by the center to give Trump a chance to lay out a cohesive foreign policy speech. Simes’s organization, more pro-Russian than most in Washington, had invited other presidential candidates but none accepted. And Republican foreign policy analysts feared associating with Trump could end their careers. The center had the imprimatur of Kissinger, however, because it had been established by Richard Nixon who named him national security adviser.
A partnership with the center would help catapult Kushner to his role as a key diplomat in the White House. He and Simes organized Trump’s "America First" speech at the Mayflower Hotel the next month, with writing input and a guest list from the center.
It was at the Mayflower that Kushner first met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, an encounter he left off disclosure forms when he initially joined the government. After Trump was elected, but before he took office, Kushner asked Kislyak whether the transition team could use the Russian embassy to communicate privately with Moscow.
Henry KissingerPhotographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
Kissinger Endorsement
Through a spokeswoman, Kissinger confirmed meeting Kushner for the first time at the lunch in March. A year later, he wrote an endorsement of Kushner for Time’s list of the 100 most influential people, saying his closeness to the president, his education, and his years in business “should help him make a success of his daunting role flying close to the sun.”
Spokesmen for the Center for the National Interest, and for Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment.
Kushner had been involved in a previous foreign policy speech, one Trump gave to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But as a religious Jew, he had long been interested in Israel. The Mayflower event illustrated to other members of the campaign his broader interest in foreign policy.
That was a significant shift. Jeff Sessions, then a senator and now attorney general, had been the candidate’s lead national security adviser in a small group that included Carter Page and George Papadopoulos (who have become a focus of the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the election).
Russian Lawmakers Invited to U.S. as Butina Protest Floated
The center had several ties to Butina. In 2015, Simes helped arrange a meeting between Butina and Alexander Torshin, an ally of Vladimir Putin, with Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, according to a Reuters report. Butina also asked Hank Greenberg, former CEO of AIG and the center’s then-chairman, to invest in a flailing Russian bank, according to the Daily Beast. Greenberg didn’t make the investment. He and other members of the center’s board do business in the country.
Butina wrote an article for The National Interest in July 2015, a month after Trump announced his candidacy, arguing that electing a Republican could be key to improved relations between the U.S. and Russia.
‘Open Person’
Simes’s friends describe him as an open person whose job involves contacts in both Russia and the U.S., and they find his interactions with Butina unsurprising. In his writings for The National Interest, he was critical of President Barack Obama as relations with Putin deteriorated, and has been comparatively bullish on Trump’s international efforts. The organization’s board and staff represent a diversity of viewpoints and Simes’s perspective isn’t universally shared.
Kushner’s invitation to the March lunch came from a Time Warner executive. Richard Plepler, CEO of television network HBO, and his boss, then-Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes, sit on the board of the center. Attendees that day included Jeffrey Zucker, president of CNN; the center’s chairman, General Charles Boyd; and Drew Guff, who invests in Russia through his firm Russia Partners.
As Kushner planned Trump’s April speech, he relied on Simes for the guest list. Richard Burt, one of the organization’s directors and a lobbyist for Russia’s Gazprom, helped write the speech.
The speech was planned for the National Press Club but was switched to the Mayflower Hotel to accommodate a larger crowd. While the center wanted to have a smaller event with print journalists, Kushner and the Trump campaign wanted room for television cameras. In the end, there was both a public and private event.
The center had “done a great job putting everything together,” Kushner said in a July 2017 statement to Congress outlining his interactions with Russian nationals. “Mr. Simes and his group had created the guest list and extended the invitations for the event. He introduced me to several guests, among them four ambassadors, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.”
In his speech at the Mayflower, Trump called for easing tensions with Russia.
“Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon,” Trump said. “Good for both countries.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... =applenews
Omarosa Releases Tape Of Trump Campaign Aides Discussing Alleged N-Word Video
Trump resumed his Twitter attack on his former White House aide, calling her a “dog” and “crazed, crying lowlife.”
Hayley Miller
Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman on Tuesday revealed what she said was a secret recording of several of President Donald Trump’s campaign aides discussing how to handle potential fallout if an alleged video of Trump using a racial slur surfaced.
Manigault Newman, promoting her new book Unhinged, released the tape to CBS News. She identified the three Trump campaign aides as Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for the campaign; Lynne Patton, an assistant to Trump’s son Eric; and Jason Miller, chief spokesman for the campaign.
″I am trying to find out at least what context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it,” Pierson can be heard saying in the recording of the 2016 conversation.
POTUS says former White House staffer @Omarosa lied when she called him a racist who has said the N-word on tape. But a new recording, obtained by @CBSNews overnight, seems to back up Omarosa’s story that several Trump advisers discussed an alleged tape during the 2016 campaign. pic.twitter.com/tV3R6P2TvE
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) August 14, 2018
Pierson told Fox News on Sunday that Manigault Newman was the first member of the Trump campaign to discuss a so-called “Apprentice” tape of Trump allegedly using a slur on the set of the reality show he starred in. Pierson said neither Miller nor Patton have any “idea what she’s talking about.”
Manigault Newman said she did not personally hear the recording of Trump using the slur until after she finished writing Unhinged.
“I had an opportunity to fly out to California, and the person allowed me to hear it,” she told CBS News. “Had I heard it while working in the White House, I would have left immediately.”
This is the third secret recording Managault Newman has released in the days ahead of her book’s Tuesday publication. On Sunday, she released a tape of White House chief of staff John Kelly firing her, and on Monday she disclosed a recording of a phone call with Trump appearing to be surprised she had been fired.
HuffPost reported Monday that Manigault Newman told at least three of Trump’s aides that former “Apprentice” contestant Troy McClain played a tape for her in the White House in which the president is heard using the racial slur on the show’s set.
Manigault Newman told one staffer that the recording was the reason she left her job as director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, sources said. McClain denied he played a tape for her.
Trump has vigorously denied the existence of any such recording. He said on Twitter Monday that “The Apprentice” producer Mark Burnett had called him to say there were “NO TAPES of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa.”
Why were you taping? — @GayleKing
“Because the truth matters, Gayle. And if I didn’t have this tape, you all would probably be wondering if, in fact, they did talk about it.” — @Omarosa https://t.co/qga20EdFSQ pic.twitter.com/iUygxPe3UU
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) August 14, 2018
When asked by CBS’ Gayle King why she secretly recorded the conversation with Trump’s campaign aides, Manigault Newman responded: “Because the truth matters.”
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“If I didn’t have this tape, you all would probably be wondering if in fact they did talk about it,” she said. She added that anything in quotes in her book can be “verified, corroborated and is well-documented.”
King told Manigault Newman that her slow release of tapes has the feel of “blackmail.”
“I’m not asking for anything,” Manigault Newman responded. ” I’m telling my story in Unhinged.”
Minutes after Manigault Newman appeared on “CBS This Morning,” Trump savaged her on Twitter, praising Kelly for “quickly firing that dog,” and calling her a “crazed, crying lowlife.” It was the latest in a series of presidential tweets attacking the former reality TV contestant that began early Monday.
When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2018
Manigault Newman initially said she resigned her White House job in December, though she later admitted she was fired. She met Trump in 2004 on the set of NBC’s “The Apprentice, in which she appeared as a contestant for three seasons.
Manigault Newman on Tuesday also denied that she was ever romantically involved with Trump.
“That’s a charge that’s launched against successful women to kind of degrade them and undermine their success,” she told CBS. “I’m very well-educated, I have incredible experience, and I have never had to leverage sex to get anywhere I needed to go.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/om ... 32af9b774d
″I am trying to find out at least what context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it,” Pierson can be heard saying in the recording of the 2016 conversation.
Handler of alleged spy Butina tied to suspicious U.S.-Russia exchange program
Russian politician Alexander Torshin’s meetings with American students, coupled with his role managing alleged covert Russian agent Mariia Butina, suggest he may be a more important Kremlin operative than previously known.
JOSH MEYER
08/14/2018 05:18 AM EDT
Six years before he was exposed for allegedly managing a covert agent on U.S. soil, the Russian politician Alexander Torshin hosted young Americans visiting Moscow as part of two cultural exchange programs, including one that has drawn the FBI’s scrutiny.
The gregarious Torshin regularly hosted U.S. visitors in the ornate chambers of Russia’s parliament, where he gushed about his love of guns, bourbon and America.
“He was friendly, traveled to the U.S. often and enjoyed sharing his experiences of visiting small-town America,” recalls one participant who went on two trips sponsored by the Russian government.
A photo posted on Facebook by one of the exchange programs shows several young visitors, including the student body president of Princeton University, meeting with Torshin over tea and cookies. (The FBI is not known to have investigated that program. None of the students, or Torshin, has been accused of wrongdoing.)
It wasn’t until years later that Torshin would emerge as a major figure in the Trump-Russia saga — a man whom federal prosecutors say oversaw the accused Russian operative Mariia Butina’s efforts to infiltrate Republican Party circles, including the National Rifle Association, to push them toward more pro-Russia policies. Torshin himself has attended annual NRA meetings dating back to at least 2011.
Many of the first-class student exchanges were officially organized by the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., and included top-flight meals, airfare and hotel accommodations. But the center’s exchange programs abruptly stopped in fall 2013, after FBI counterintelligence agents urgently located dozens of trip participants and told them the program was an elaborate cover for a Washington-based Russian spy recruiting effort.
The agents said the Russians had prepared dossiers on some of the most promising participants, two of the former students told POLITICO. They pressed for every detail of the program, including whom the students met, where they went and what they discussed. They also said that Russian government official who oversaw the program — from a mansion about a mile and a half from the White House — was a suspected spy and would be kicked out of the U.S. soon.
“They said they had a great degree of confidence that the trips were part of an effort to spot and assess future intelligence assets,” the participant, a former student government leader and Russian-language student, said of the three FBI agents who questioned him for more than an hour. “They told us it was standard Russian spycraft.”
The FBI’s interest in that cultural exchange program for young American political and business leaders was reported at the time, including a single, passing reference to Torshin. But the details of his involvement in the exchanges is a new revelation, as is his participation in the second exchange program for student body presidents at American universities dating back to at least 2010.
The new detail fills out the picture of the Russian lawmaker — now deputy governor of his country’s central bank — who is a longtime close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It shows that Torshin’s collaboration with Butina was not his first connection to a Kremlin-linked effort to recruit Americans, and underscores that covert Russian spy operations in the U.S. have been underway for years, well before Trump launched his 2016 presidential bid.
While Torshin is not identified by name in the Butina court filings, several sources close to the investigation told POLITICO he is the Russian official described as directing Butina’s alleged efforts to establish “unofficial lines of communications with U.S. politicians and political organizations" and “to send reports, seek direction, and receive orders in furtherance of the conspiracy” from Moscow.
His name has also shown up in investigations by Congress, the Federal Election Commission and, reportedly, special counsel Robert Mueller, into Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Those include examinations of possible attempts to establish a back channel between Trump and Putin, as well as possible efforts to illegally funnel Russian campaign contributions to Trump.
But his meetings with American students earlier in the decade, coupled with the government’s recent allegations in the Butina case, suggest that Torshin may be a more significant Kremlin operative, and for a longer time, than was previously understood.
“All of that needs to be explored now through the lens that Torshin is a handler for Russian intelligence operatives,” said Max Bergmann, a State Department senior international security adviser in the Obama administration. “The suspicion has to be raised, given what is laid out in [the Butina] indictment, that this wasn’t his first rodeo.”
Torshin did not respond to requests for an interview, but has denied any wrongdoing related to the current investigations. The 29-year-old Butina, indicted by federal prosecutors in July, has pleaded not guilty to charges of acting as an illegal foreign agent — including, according to prosecutors, by using sex as a means of influence.
U.S. government Kremlinologists have tracked Torshin, 64, for years, at least since his first known visit to the U.S. in 2004.
As a rising star in Putin’s United Russia Political party, Torshin became an ally of the Russian leader. Putin tapped him that same year to run a sensitive parliamentary investigation investigating the horrific terrorist siege of a school in the Russian town of Beslan; many observers considered the resulting report a whitewash that absolved Russian security forces.
By 2010, Torshin had become a leading United Russia voice in the Russian Duma, a trusted Putin aide on sensitive security issues and, most likely, a go-to ally for important missions that didn’t fall under his official portfolio, according to Bergmann and other former officials.
Later that year, for instance, Torshin helped orchestrate a secret spy swap between the U.S. and Russia after the FBI arrested 10 Russian operatives who had been living undercover in America for years.
Also in 2010, Torshin met with a delegation of 15 student body presidents from American universities as part of an exchange program paid for, and sponsored by, a Russian government agency focused on “youth affairs.” Because the trip was designed to mirror a popular and high-profile congressional exchange program, the students were given a briefing by top White House and congressional Russia hands, including Michael McFaul, then the National Security Council’s director for Russian affairs and later the U.S. ambassador to Russia.
On the conference call, which has not previously been reported, McFaul and others gave the students background about Russia — but also cautioned them to be on guard about unusual overtures, including from their Russian student counterparts, said one participating student who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear the trips risk could taint their professional reputations. McFaul told POLITICO he doesn’t recall the discussion, but his role in the pre-trip briefing was referenced in some university news releases at the time.
Thanks to the briefing, “we went in with our eyes open” about how, in Russia, even a friendly interest in sharing information or establishing long-term relationships, might not be what it seemed, the former student said. He added that the trip went smoothly and nothing appeared suspicious about meetings with Torshin and at least two other Putin allies connected to the current Trump-Russia saga.
The next March, Torshin met with another set of students on an exchange program organized through the same youth affairs agency, in the meeting posted on Facebook.
And the year after that, he met with older groups of young leaders sponsored by the Russian Cultural Center, according to the participant on two trips and another person who went on one exchange.
By the fall of 2013, the FBI was well into an investigation into that exchange program, and had come to believe it was a front for developing young Americans as assets, the two participants said. The D.C. chapter is just one of more than 80 Russian cultural and science centers in various countries that U.S. intelligence officials suspect of being a front for all manner of spy operations.
The cultural center trips were popular among well-connected young Washingtonians interested in spending a week in an exotic foreign country with everything, down to the visa application fee, covered by the sponsor.
But the young former student government leader, who went on two trips in 2012 and 2013, said the organizers also “recruited on their own and made the determination who to select.”
“They had a specific type of person they were looking for,” he said. “Future leaders.”
When the FBI began contacting trip participants in late September and October of 2013, many were shocked at what the agents were telling them. The agents began by reading from a printed card with details of about what they were investigating, including how they believed Russian Cultural Center Director Yury Zaitsev was overseeing the alleged spy recruitment operation, according to the two participants, both of whom shared details of their trips and FBI interviews with POLITICO.
The discussions were “very frank,” according to one of the FBI’s top counterintelligence officials at the time. The official said the agents’ interviews were exhaustive, in part because Russian intelligence operatives excel at being unobtrusive and patiently laying the groundwork for relationships they hope to develop over years or even decades.
In hindsight, the second trip participant said there were indications that the group’s extremely generous Russian hosts might have had ulterior motives.
During his interview, that participant told the FBI agents that he thought it was “unusual” that the group had been granted such high-level meetings, including with top-ranking officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The agents were particularly interested in any details about those meetings, he said, “and why are these kids meeting with these super high-level people.”
“It seemed like they were trying to foster the exchange in a professional and productive way,” the second participant said. But, he added: “If one person out of a group of 20 becomes an asset for them, then I suppose it’s worth it for them to pay the whole group for the trip.”
After hearing from the FBI, some students backed out of the next scheduled trip. The former participant on two trips, who remains active in other efforts to promote U.S.-Russian relations, said he believed the FBI investigation — reported at the time by Mother Jones and the Washington Post — effectively ended the Russian Cultural Center exchange programs.
In all, the FBI believes that at least 125 people went on cultural exchange programs involving Zaitsev and the Russian Cultural Center, including grad students, non-governmental organization staffers, political aides to national and state officials and business executives. The former FBI official declined to comment on whether agents have investigated other cultural exchange programs, such as those sponsored by Moscow’s youth affairs agency, that also included Torshin.
As Butina and Torshin allegedly ramped up their U.S.-based influence operation ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Butina attended numerous events at the Russian Cultural Center. She even met with the organization’s director for a dinner that was caught on camera by FBI officials, as POLITICO recently reported.
That director was a suspected Russian intelligence operative just like his predecessor, Zaitsev, and also left the U.S. following FBI investigations, federal authorities allege in Butina’s case. Both men denied wrongdoing.
Robert Driscoll, Butina’s lawyer, scoffed at the notion that Torshin is a master spy, and said his client’s connections to the Russian Cultural Center were merely social. He added that in his frequent talks with Butina, she has described Torshin as someone who genuinely has come to love America — especially Nashville, where the two attended an Alan Jackson country music concert while there for the NRA convention.
“My impression of him from knowing Mariia is that she viewed him as a mentor and as someone who was helpful to her, with her gun rights group and personally,” Driscoll said. “He helped raise her profile, and she got to travel and attend different events with him.”
The participant on two of the cultural trips said Torshin was especially popular with U.S. visitors, in part because he seemed most interested in small talk and sharing his tales of traveling to the far corners of the United States.
“He was always eager and happy to meet with Americans,” he said.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/ ... hin-776237
Reading Between the Lines: Is Gates Cooperating About More Than Manafort?
The trial of Paul Manafort has not focused on President Donald Trump, but it has provided a lens through which to view the special counsel’s investigation.
Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, testified as a government witness in the ongoing trial of Manafort, who has been charged with tax and bank fraud. Gates, who worked for Manafort for years, pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia to charges of conspiracy and lying to the FBI. As part of his plea deal, Gates agreed to cooperate against Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2016.
During the trial, Gates spent several hours over the course of three days on the witness stand, describing how he worked with Manafort to hide money in offshore bank accounts to avoid paying taxes on $16 million in income. Gates also detailed Manafort’s various schemes to defraud banks when his political consulting business dried up and he became desperate for cash.
In light of Gates’ plea deal, it was no surprise that Gates was testifying against Manafort in this case, and he likely will do the same in a second federal case that is pending against Manafort in the District of Columbia.
But the real intrigue came during the cross-examination of Gates. After answering a number of questions about his own misconduct, including embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort, Gates was asked if he had been questioned by the special counsel’s office about his time on the Trump campaign. When Gates answered “yes,” he then was asked whether he had been interviewed several times about his time on the Trump campaign. Before Gates could answer, the government objected, and the parties conferred with the judge at sidebar. When questioning resumed, defense counsel moved on to a new line of questioning. The next morning, the government filed a motion to seal the portion of the transcript reflecting the conversation that occurred at the sidebar conference. In the motion, the government argued that disclosure of the transcript would reveal “substantive evidence pertaining to an ongoing investigation.” The court granted the motion to seal that portion of the transcript until that information becomes public “if that were to occur.”
Despite the secrecy, the incident was still revealing. The government’s use of the terms “substantive evidence” and “ongoing investigation” suggests that Gates’ cooperation exceeds the scope of the case currently on trial and the other case against Manafort that is already pending in the District of Columbia. Gates testified at trial that he has met with the FBI more than 20 times.
In my experience as a former federal prosecutor, debriefing sessions with cooperating defendants can be wide-ranging, including portions where the cooperator volunteers information. At other times, investigators ask cooperators their own questions. In both instances, investigators attempt to test the veracity of the cooperator’s statements by comparing them to other evidence. Agents and prosecutors may then come back to the cooperator and confront him with inconsistencies. Sometimes a defendant will lie to investigators before getting fully on board as a cooperator. Such lies must be disclosed to the defense in any case in which the cooperator is going to testify. With Gates, he initially lied to the FBI, and then ultimately pleaded guilty for doing so and separately admitted to conspiracy.
From the government’s objection and motion to seal, it appears that Gates, during his 20 meetings with the FBI, may have provided information beyond the Manafort cases. It may be that the FBI will only use this information to develop a lead in the investigation, or it may be that this is only the first of many trials for Gates as a witness.
Gates’ plea agreement states that he shall cooperate with the special counsel in “any and all matters as to which this Office deems the cooperation relevant.” The United States Attorneys Manual, which provides policy guidance for federal prosecutors, requires cooperators to provide “substantial assistance” in the investigation or prosecution of another to receive a recommendation for a reduced sentence. Substantial assistance credit may also be given to a defendant who provides valuable intelligence information. This information need not result in a criminal charge against another defendant if the government assesses that the information has value for the intelligence community.
It is unknown exactly what Gates has told the FBI, but his roles as deputy campaign manager and later deputy chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee put him in positions to see and hear what was happening at a high level as Trump ran for president and then transitioned to the White House. Gates also spent time in Ukraine, working with Manafort and his business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the special counsel has alleged to be a former Russian intelligence officer. Gates potentially has information of great value to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that is relevant to his mandate to investigate links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The plea agreement also permits Gates’ attorney to argue for a sentence of probation if Gates continues to cooperate and provide truthful testimony. The plea agreement goes on to state that, “Depending on the precise nature of the defendant’s assistance, the Office may not oppose defendant’s application.” In light of the significant tax and bank fraud crimes with which Gates was originally charged, a sentence of probation seems extremely generous in exchange for his testimony about Manafort. Generally, the more information a defendant can provide, the more generous is the reward. Is the potential reduction so great here because Gates is providing additional information of significant value beyond testimony against Manafort?
It may be that Gates received such a good deal because the special counsel’s office wanted to use Gates to induce Manafort to cooperate, but so far, Manafort has not budged.
The strength of the government’s evidence, revealed in full in court, now makes it seem even more curious that Manafort would choose to go to trial rather than work out a plea deal. While a jury can always decide to acquit, any objective lawyer assessing the evidence to date would conclude that a conviction in this case is likely. Even if Gates was an unlikeable witness because of his own wrongdoing, his testimony was corroborated by hundreds of documentary exhibits, including tax returns, corporate documents, bank records and email messages. In cases where evidence of guilt is this strong, defense counsel usually seeks a plea deal to reduce his client’s potential sentence in exchange for cooperation. In light of his role as Trump’s campaign chairman, Manafort no doubt has information that is valuable to the special counsel. At the very least, Manafort could shed light on what really happened at the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016, for which there are multiple conflicting stories from various participants. Manafort’s decision to go to trial instead could mean that he is betting against the odds or even hoping for a pardon.
Or it may be that Manafort is waiting to see how this trial comes out before he decides to cooperate. If Manafort were convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia case, and then approached the special counsel about cooperating, he likely could negotiate a plea deal that covered both trials. So, it could still happen.
The question now is whether additional charges will emerge from Gates’ cooperation with the government in the “ongoing investigation.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/60329/read ... -manafort/
Who’s Afraid of Tom Arnold?
On his new show, Roseanne Barr’s ex-husband is hunting for evidence to take down Trump. Inside a Hollywood outcast’s manic quest
Brian Hiatt August 12, 2018 8:00PM ET
Peter Yang for Rolling Stone
When Tom Arnold opens the big wooden door of his house in Beverly Hills on a Tuesday in late spring, he’s wearing a blue T-shirt with a Superman “S” logo on it. On the floor behind him is a pink, toddler-size Minnie Mouse car, property of his two-year-old daughter, Quinn. “Hey, buddy,” he says, out of breath from his flight down the stairs, and still sweaty, post-shower, from his morning cardio. He lost 90 pounds five years ago, when his son, Jax, was born, aiming to stick around for the family he’s built with his very patient fourth wife, Ashley. Since then, he’s gained enough back to land at a football-coach burliness — still not bad for a 59-year-old who once blew a $10 million Jenny Craig sponsorship by gaining more weight than he was supposed to lose. (Or maybe it was SlimFast — he tells the story both ways.)
We were supposed to be headed over to a taping of his friend Jim Jefferies’ Comedy Central show around now, but not for the first time in the world of Tom Arnold, something went wrong. “I did a bad tweet,” he says, walking through his kitchen toward his memorabilia-packed man cave of an office. It was, indeed, not good: He used the words “suck racist dick” in connection with black conservative figure Candace Owens. The right-wing press pounced. Arnold apologized, but he’s still too radioactive for Comedy Central. “Which made me laugh,” he says, “because Trump fuckin’ wins again on racism.”
Arnold parks himself at his desk, facing a TV tuned to CNN. Behind him is an Al Hirschfeld caricature of his younger self; on an opposite wall is a self-portrait drawn by Howard Stern, with a note thanking Arnold for being a good guest. In one corner is a framed tie David Letterman gave him when he showed up without one; in another, a cel from The Rosey & Buddy Show, a short-lived cartoon he and his ex-wife Roseanne Barr made. “None of it means too much to me except the pictures of my kids,” he says, his voice a familiar sandpaper rumble.
He can hardly sit down without sending a leg into twitchy overdrive: “Shaky Tom,” Barr called him. He says he’s “on the spectrum” (he’s not big on eye contact) and has ADHD. The Ritalin his parents snuck into his food calmed him as a kid; cocaine did the same for him as an adult. He’s done an awful lot of drugs, was in rehab just last year. He is, in all, a frantic, lovable, weirdly charismatic mess, “a crazy person,” by his own half-joking description.
He’s having some financial problems, had to refinance his house, sell his Warhol. He doesn’t always get his facts straight. His anecdotes can, at times, be hard to follow, and harder to verify. His acting career, fueled for many years by the triumph of 1994’s True Lies, is not at its peak, though he does have a recurring role on NCIS: New Orleans (he’s currently wearing black khakis purloined from the set: “They fit!”). Again, he once married Roseanne Barr. (When they split, Letterman held up a fake book on-air: “I’m Pretty Much Screwed, by Tom Arnold.”)
These days, in between stand-up gigs, Arnold is on a reckless, friendship-straining, marriage-testing, one-man mission to save the world from a former acquaintance who is now president of the United States, at whom he’s leveled a long and growing series of wild accusations. His claims of seeing Apprentice outtakes where Trump allegedly uses a racial slur were just the beginning. In September, Viceland will debut The Hunt for the Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold, a gonzo reality show about Arnold’s quest: Each episode will focus on a different alleged “tape,” from pee to Apprentice.
It’s not just a show. Arnold is consumed with his hunt, fueled by an apparent mix of moral outrage, general obsessiveness and a fair amount of free time. Longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger has a simpler explanation, though: He told Politico that Tom is just trying to reclaim his past “notoriety.”
Tom really did once know Trump a bit, really did run in some of the same showbiz circles. They were, after all, Arnold says, at the same “level of Hollywood.” But the anomaly that is the Trump White House has upended our cultural cosmos, pulling unlikely figures closer to the center of events than a saner timeline might allow. So amid the madness of 2018, the idea of Tom Arnold as a figure of destiny, a man of consequence, begins to seem plausible. Plausible enough for basic cable, anyway.
Another unlikely figure back in the spotlight, of course, is Arnold’s ex-wife, who embraced MAGA-dom with the same fervor she once applied to radical feminism. Barr had her own rise and fall earlier this year with a revamped, ratings-topping, vaguely Trumpist reboot of her show, which earned her a congratulatory phone call from the president before she self-immolated with a racist tweet. (“Turns out this whole election was an elaborate proxy war between Tom Arnold and Roseanne,” a podcaster named Jesse Case tweeted.)
At the start of their 1994 divorce battle, Barr accused Arnold of domestic abuse. She retracted the accusation, then made it again. He’s always denied it. Their union ended after Barr became convinced, correctly, that Arnold was attracted to their young assistant. Barr set up a fake three-way marriage ceremony on Letterman, and even Arnold wasn’t sure what was going on: “Is Roseanne fucking with me?” There was, Arnold claims, at least one actual three-way encounter.
“If that loser can become president,” Arnold says, “this loser can take him down.”
When Arnold got word last year that Barr was reviving Roseanne, he was somehow naive enough to imagine he might be able to participate — after all, she had invited him to her roast in 2012. Instead, he says he learned that his agent had signed Barr as a client without telling him — effectively leaving him with no agent at all. He also began to get the distinct sense that he was unwelcome on any ABC show as long as Roseanne was running.
But when it all comes crashing down, he sends an e-mail to the agent, cc’ing me. It was just a subject line: “Want me back yet?”
So: is Tom Arnold the madman hero we didn’t know we needed, a Trump-derangement-syndrome cautionary tale, or some confounding mix of both? Over the months we stay in touch, he supplies evidence to support all three scenarios.
Donald Trump and Tom Arnold during 13th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar Party Co-hosted by Chopard – Inside at Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California, United States. Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty
Arnold first got to know Trump in 1990, taping an HBO comedy special with Barr at Trump’s Castle in Atlantic City. Arnold was the opening act, leading one critic to accuse Barr of “shoehorning her thin-skinned, fat-bodied husband” into the show. Trump himself cameoed, apparently at his own suggestion, chauffeuring Barr onstage in a Duesenberg. Trump and Arnold would cross paths again over the next couple of decades — including an evening when, Arnold says, they visited the Playboy Mansion together, where Trump allegedly met with a girlfriend and also lost a shoe in the pool. In 2010, the future president and his producer Mark Burnett tried unsuccessfully to get Arnold to come on board for Trump’s reality show. “I really want you on Celebrity Apprentice,” Burnett wrote in an e-mail Arnold shared with me; Arnold says Burnett and Trump also called his house. “It’s not a compliment,” says Arnold, “to myself or Donald Trump that we know the same people.”
When I push Arnold for the full context of the alleged Apprentice slur, he claims that Trump was asked on the set about heading to Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse for dinner, and that Trump responded, “I don’t want to go uptown with all those n——.” (White House representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) It came out casually, Arnold claims, “like he’s said it a billion times before.” Later, I realize that Sammy’s Roumanian has only one location, way downtown, and I press Arnold on the maddening discrepancy. He corrects himself: It was the Harlem Italian restaurant Rao’s, he says, and Trump was asked about meeting Bo Dietl up there. (It is true that Dietl, the former-NYPD-detective-turned-media-figure, is a Rao’s devotee, and Trump has reportedly been there at least once.) Arnold also alleges that Trump calls his son Eric a “retard” in the tape, and that he uses the “c-word,” which, if ever proved, would probably be of interest to Samantha Bee.
By June, Arnold is feuding with the Trump Tapes producers, even as filming chugs along. “They’re fucking idiots,” he tells me casually, more than once. He adds that they’ve all grown to “fucking hate” him, and cheerfully shares tales of screaming matches with his showrunner. By August, they’re not on speaking terms, after a backstage argument at the Television Critics Association. “Get the fuck out of my face,” Arnold says he told him, just before their press conference to launch the show.
As Arnold becomes estranged from the people behind the show, even wondering whether “they are just stupid or complicit,” he sends more and more information my way. (Tensions do eventually ease to the point where he can finish the show.) “It’s down to me & you,” he texts at one point. I protest that I’m profiling him, not joining the investigation. But Arnold’s gravitational field is strong. I stay skeptical but get sucked in, spending late nights sifting through Apprentice crew credits.
As with so many moments in his big, weird life, it started with some stuff he did while he was high. On October 10th, 2016, three days after The Washington Post published the Access Hollywood tape that introduced the world to the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy,” Arnold tweeted the following: “Some R voting 4 him because he really is like that & worse. A man who casually uses the ‘N’ word, mic-ed up, on camera. Ask Apprentice crew.” In another tweet, an hour later, he made it clear that he was referring to outtakes from the show. At that point, all hell failed to break loose. Similar, near-contemporaneous claims from Bill Pruitt, a former Apprentice producer, got more attention — including a denial from the Trump campaign — before fizzling out. (A source once involved with the show told me that Pruitt got death threats at the time. Pruitt has had little further to say on the matter and didn’t respond to interview requests.)
Arnold’s tale slowly began to draw more notice. He says that shortly before the election, he got a call from a Hollywood agent who told him he was “sitting next to Hillary Clinton” and that “the fate of the free world” was in his hands, if only he could produce the footage. But Arnold didn’t have it. All he ever had, if you believe him, was a long-expired temporary online link to a three-minute highlight reel of unflattering outtakes, allegedly circulated back in 2015. “It was like somebody put together a ‘fuck this guy’ [compilation],” Arnold says. “Everyone has one, on every show.” He got more specific about the supposed outtakes in a radio interview soon after the election; this time, the story was picked up everywhere, and he had to explain again, over and over, that he didn’t have the tapes.
As Arnold continued to kick up a fuss about Trump, some heavy-duty journalists slipped into his orbit — even Carl Bernstein, who left him an irked voicemail after Arnold let slip on Twitter that “Watergate-level” journalists were on the case. Along the way, Arnold became a repository for oft-unverifiable Trump rumors, of which there are no shortage. He may have been the first, for instance, to publicly mention a supposed “Trump elevator tape,” well before the Daily Beast confirmed that TMZ had discussed buying such a thing; the gossip site reportedly dropped the matter after learning that Trump Tower elevators don’t have security cameras. Arnold says they had the wrong building, and is still after the tape.
Peter Yang for Rolling Stone
The whole time, Arnold — who had first gotten sober in 1989 after a nasty coke and alcohol habit — was addicted to Xanax and falling apart. As a teenager in his native Iowa, Arnold had a reputation among his friends as a fearless badass: He got into fistfights with cops, more than once, which was a thing you could survive if you were white and an Iowan in the Eighties. But he wasn’t really fearless. He just didn’t care if he died. His dad threw him out of the house at age 17, never wondering why Arnold was behaving so badly. The answer, Arnold says, was as simple as it was awful: From ages four to seven, he had been subjected to sexual abuse by a neighbor who threatened to kill his family if he ever told anyone. Trapped in his neighbor’s house, Arnold would imagine someone coming to save him — Superman, maybe.
As Arnold’s son, Jax, approached his fourth birthday, the milestone triggered something in Arnold’s psyche, overwhelming him with anxiety. For victims, he was told, it’s a reaction both common and perilous. A doctor prescribed him Xanax, and his intake got out of control. In the spring of 2017, Arnold’s friends held an intervention, and he shipped off to rehab at Crossroads. After learning that Chris Cornell, whom he’d gotten to know in certain meetings, died while taking similar drugs, he got all the more serious about his recovery. “My whole thing,” says Arnold, “was getting back to my kids.”
When he did return, “I did a little inventory,” he says, sitting under the sun at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge restaurant. “I went through everything I said in the fall about Trump. Everything I said publicly and privately, just to make sure that it wasn’t the benzos talking. It was all true. Sadly.”
The anxiety hasn’t fully subsided. Even in the past year, sober, he says, “I’ve had moments where I felt like running out a window. Just running.” But at Crossroads, he began trauma therapy, which continues to this day. The therapist takes him back to that room, and then helps him get out. “You just don’t have this fucking wild animal stalking you anymore,” says Arnold. “This dark feeling that you could be mauled. You’re walking around lighter.”
On some subconscious level, he says, Trump reminds him of his abuser, which makes him all the more embarrassed by his behavior around the future president. “You feel special when he likes you,” he says, “because that fucker doesn’t like a lot of people.”
Arnold has been public about a painkiller addiction after a nasty 2008 motorcycle accident, but he has one more drug story to tell. In 2015, he spent a couple of months in Moscow, shooting a movie called Maximum Impact. He stayed at the same Ritz-Carlton where Trump spent a famous night, and Arnold presumes there were cameras. So he’d like to pre-emptively reveal the story of “three bad days.” He was lonely and in pain from his latest hair transplant. (He’s had a bunch of them, and may be the only celebrity to admit it. His hair looks great.) He kept trying to get painkillers, and a guy on set would say, “No pain pills. Want pot or cocaine?”
In the end, Arnold embarked on an epic coke bender, somehow making it home on the plane despite carrying some 15 grams of cocaine on an international flight. “I’m not making light of how traumatic it was for Ashley,” Arnold says in an e-mail, “and my life is a living amends to my wife and children, but how frightened am I supposed to be of the Apprentice guy or his shirtless pony-riding man-crush when I’ve woken up from a 90-hour international cocaine psychosis eyeball-to-eyeball with the woman who has given me everything?” Fair enough.
In general, Arnold’s crusade hasn’t been good for his relationships. “Nobody wants to have their name associated with me, believe me,” he says. It’s even strained his friendship with Schwarzenegger, which began on the set of True Lies. Arnold had a rough night in December 2016 at Schwarzenegger’s Christmas party, where the attendees included “all these fuckin’ conservative Republicans that voted for Trump. I had one friend say, ‘We’re from Austria, Tom, and we know Hitler, and [Hillary is] worse,’ ” he recalls. “I swear to God. I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ I got into almost a fistfight because somebody I love said that to me.”
Then, Arnold says, a longtime Trump associate stood up and called Trump “the worst human being I’ve ever met in my life.” At that point, Arnold claims, he turned to Apprentice producer Mark Burnett, who was in attendance, and begged him for access to the show’s archives. “He goes, ‘Nothing is going to be worse than the grab-’em-by-the-pussy thing,’ ” says Arnold. “He goes, ‘Michael Cohen calls me every day. He wants all the tape. I won’t let him have it. I won’t let you have it.’ He holds up a picture of his kid as Trump’s ringbearer. ‘I can’t, mate.’ ” (Burnett’s representative said he was unavailable for comment.)
Around that point, Arnold made an uncomfortable exit from the party and found himself waiting at the valet stand next to Clint Eastwood. “ ‘Oh, Tom,’ ” Arnold says Eastwood told him, “ ‘Trump is a bonehead. You know the worst part about runnin’ for mayor? If you win, then you gotta be mayor.’ ”
Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, was at that point feeling optimistic about taking over for Trump as host of The Apprentice. “He’s gonna fuck you,” Arnold warned him, accurately. In June, Arnold playfully ambushed Schwarzenegger near his gym, camera crew in tow, to get him to appear on his show. In footage shared with me, Schwarzenegger is taken aback but can’t help being amused at Arnold’s audacity. He shifts into politician mode, chiding Arnold that he needs to root for Trump’s success. But he does ask, “Have you found the tapes?”
“No,” Arnold admits.
Schwarzenegger roars with laughter. “How long have you been trying to go after those tapes?” he says. “You are not a good spy!”
In late June, Arnold and I run into Michael Cohen, and things get weird. I meet Arnold one evening in New York’s Regency Hotel, where he’s staying while conducting interviews for his Vice show. We’re chatting on a banquette in the luxe lobby when we come to the topic of Cohen, who was known to be staying at the hotel.
At that moment, Arnold’s eyes bug out. “He’s literally right fucking there,” he says, bolting up. Michael Cohen is, indeed, right fucking there, trailed by his bespectacled teenage son.
Arnold strides over, shakes Cohen’s hand. Cohen comes off as soft-spoken — gentle, even, with a strong Brooklyn accent. If he was once the pit bull we saw on TV interviews (“Says who?”), he seems, for the moment, defanged. Arnold and Cohen chat amiably, mostly about Arnold’s friend Steve Tisch, whose family owns the hotel.
“If you ever need anything . . .” Arnold says.
“I appreciate it,” Cohen replies. Arnold asks him for a picture, and he happily agrees. Arnold hands me his phone, and I take a shot of them smiling together — the man seeking the tapes, and the man who knows where they are, assuming they exist. As Cohen prepares to leave, we could have asked about the supposed elevator tape. We could have asked anything. Instead: “Are you doing OK?” “Yeah,” Cohen replies. “It’s a rough gig. The country is very divided.”
Within seconds, Arnold tweets the picture. Cohen will, in the following weeks, make it clear he’s turned on Trump, but posing with Arnold — who once received a legal warning from Cohen’s associate Keith Davidson — is an early, blatant message. Arnold realizes it right away, as do some savvy reporters. He ends up on CNN and MSNBC, in segments that have friends calling his wife to ask if he’s OK. He goofs around, staying silent for an agonizing 25 seconds of live television when CNN’s Poppy Harlow asks him if Cohen has flipped. (Someone posts it on YouTube as “The worst interview, ever!”) Arnold also exaggerates his association with Cohen, spinning that brief encounter into a plan to “spend the weekend with Michael Cohen.” It’s the first time I catch him in a lie.
Aghast, I ask Arnold if he’s somehow had more contact with Cohen since the evening we met. He tells me they’ve been texting, and I ask to see the texts. To his credit, Arnold shares them, and what they reveal manages to make me feel bad for Cohen: Pretty much every text I see consists of the lawyer begging Arnold to stop lying about him for the sake of his family. Arnold blames the whole thing on “trolling Trump” and says he’s always honest with me.
Arnold’s tactics are, to say the least, unjournalistic: He’s willing to say things of dubious accuracy in the interests of bull-goring. He wants to move the story forward, to win, whatever it takes. In that moment, he reminds me of someone.
All that said, given the increasing visibility of Arnold’s attacks, it seems notable — maybe even meaningful — that a president who always punches back has yet to mention his old acquaintance in a single tweet. And Arnold seems to come away from that weekend even more determined to prove his credibility. “I’m getting you a tape, fucker,” he texts.
Spoiler alert: As of press time, no tape. But there are some tantalizing moments, even as Arnold keeps opening new investigative fronts. (“I figured out who ‘Q’ is!” he tells me in August, launching into a theory I don’t understand at all.) HuffPost drops a report on the elevator-tape hunt, respectfully mentioning Arnold’s role. And his TV appearances, shambolic as they are, do draw people out — including a legitimate, very highly placed source we both start talking to: “Tom is on to something,” the source tells me, before Arnold permanently alienates him with an overeager tweet. (“I fucked up,” says Arnold.) Another source, a longtime reality-show insider, tells me that well before Arnold’s tale of the outtakes, he heard talk of an identical-sounding highlight reel.
Most of the Apprentice crew members I reach out to don’t respond, and those who do have never heard of the reel, or of Trump using racial slurs — though they don’t rule out the possibility. But producers for Arnold’s show apparently have better luck.
According to a Viceland document I obtain, which doesn’t list names, the supposed Apprentice employees they spoke to bolstered reports of on-set sexism previously denied by Trump reps. (“Trump rated women on a number scale and by the size of their breasts.”) “Producers were in constant conversation about how to produce [sic] Trump away from race,” one says. Another, “crew member No. 7,” is quoted as saying, “Producers did everything they could to hide Trump’s racism. . . . I heard Trump say the n-word multiple times.” All seven purported sources allegedly got scared and never went on camera.
Meanwhile, sources lead us to a former employee who, based on his position, could be key to the Apprentice mystery. Arnold’s sure that the guy has tapes, and it seems possible. The former staffer doesn’t respond to multiple messages (and makes his Instagram private), but Arnold is convinced he’ll get through someday. And if he does, he says, he’ll pass him on to a particular investigative journalist. “He can have the glory,” Arnold e-mails. “And everyone can still say I’m an asshole!!” He adds a smiley face.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-feat ... en-709843/
by seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:17 pm
Corker compares revoking security clearances to Venezuela's dictatorship
REBECCA MORIN07/24/2018 10:53 AM EDT
Corker: Clearance threat "the kind of thing that happens in Venezuela"
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration's decision to consider revoking security clearances for several ex-government officials who have been vocal about their opposition to President Donald Trump, adding that it's "the kind of thing that happens in Venezuela."
"I can't even believe that somebody at the White House thought up something like this," Corker said during an interview on MSNBC. "I mean, when you're going to start taking retribution against people who are your political enemies in this manner, that's the kind of thing that happens in Venezuela."
"So you just don't do that. I can't believe they even allowed it to be aired, to be honest," he said. "I mean, it's a banana republic kind of thing."
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s administration is considered a dictatorship by the United States.
Corker's comments come a day after the White House announced it was looking to remove security clearances held by former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former NSA Director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser Susan Rice and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
McCabe's security clearance was deactivated after he was fired earlier this year, and Comey also does not currently have a security clearance. Hayden, the only Bush administration-era official who is facing revocation of his security clearance, tweeted he does not go back for classified briefings but has occasionally been asked to offer a view on something.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during Monday's press briefing that Trump feels as though the former officials have “politicized” their positions by accusing Trump of inappropriate contact with Russia.
“The fact that people with security clearances are making baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence,” she said.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... ker-737110
On July 24, after Helsinki, a Russian listed six Americans who‘d lose their security clearance.
TRUMP NAMED ALL SIX
Images attached: 1) his original tweet; 2) Twitter translation; 3) Google translation; 4) trump’s list.
https://twitter.com/PhilippeReines/stat ... 0081600512
The Government's Revealing Case Against Paul Manafort
The trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman offered a striking microcosm of the questions at the heart of the Russia probe.
Natasha Bertrand is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she covers national security and the intelligence community.
6:38 AM ET
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The trial of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been anything but sexy. A document-heavy, jargon-laden slog, the tax-and-bank-fraud case has disappointed many who expected bombshell testimony and allusions to a grand Trump-Russia conspiracy—but left the courthouse gossiping about $15,000 ostrich jackets and the extramarital affairs of Manafort’s ex–business partner instead.
In U.S. District Court on Wednesday, the lead prosecutor, Greg Andres, acknowledged the case’s complexity and thanked the jurors for their patience, while leaving unsaid perhaps the most significant nexus to the broader Russia investigation: With every new foreign bank account, fraudulent loan application, and falsified tax return the government presented, we learned more about the lengths the president’s campaign chairman was willing to go to hide his financial relationships with Russian or pro-Russian oligarchs (at least one of whom he continued to leverage while working on the Trump campaign).
The resulting portrait is of an operative who blithely defrauded his own government while working for pro-Russian entities—a striking microcosm of the question at the heart of the sprawling Russia investigation: namely, whether the Trump campaign compromised the 2016 election while working with Moscow to undermine their shared foe, Hillary Clinton.
“Mr. Manafort lied to keep more money when he had it,” Andres said in the government’s closing statement. “And when he didn’t have any money, he lied to make more.” Manafort “lied,” Andres said, to his bookkeeper and his tax preparer—both of whom testified against him in the case—and failed to report $15 million in income to the IRS from 2010 to 2014. That year, Manafort’s “cash spigot” and “golden goose”—the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort advised for more than a decade—was ousted and fled to Russia. Manafort’s funds dried up, and that’s when he began committing bank fraud to secure loans, according to prosecutors. “Manafort’s scheme was not that complicated,” Andres said on Wednesday. “But it was hidden for sure.”
Manafort had a co-conspirator, too, Andres alleged: his longtime business partner, Rick Gates. “Manafort chose somebody to lie with and engage in criminal activity with,” Andres said. “When you follow the trail of Mr. Manafort’s money, it is littered with lies.” He was referring to the alleged tax-and-bank-fraud scheme. But the government’s repeated characterization of Manafort as a liar brought other, more recent episodes to mind. From July 2016 until Trump’s inauguration, Manafort denied any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia at least five times—denials that, in hindsight, seem brazen.
In March 2016, as his firm, Davis Manafort Partners, was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month—it reported a $1.2 million loss in 2016—and while he was reportedly in debt to pro-Russian interests by as much as $17 million, Manafort took on a pro bono role with the Trump campaign. A month later, he appeared to offer the Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska access to the campaign in exchange for debt relief, and in May, he was told by the campaign’s foreign-policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, that “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss.” In June, Manafort attended a meeting at Trump Tower with Russian nationals offering dirt on Clinton. In August, Manafort was forced to formally step down as campaign chairman after reports surfaced that he was allocated millions in off-the-books payments by Ukraine’s pro-Russian Party of Regions. And throughout the campaign, Manafort remained in touch with with his longtime associate Konstantin Kilimnik—a Russian Ukrainian operative with ongoing ties to Russian intelligence services, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Manafort’s lawyers have argued throughout the trial that Gates, who testified against Manafort last week, is the one with the credibility problem. “To the very end, he lied to you,” Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, told jurors in his closing statement on Wednesday. The 46-year-old protégé was the real mastermind behind the alleged financial crimes, Downing alleged, as he stole from “the cookie jar” and embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort’s firm.
Prosecutors begged to differ. “This was not a cookie jar,” Andres said. “This was a huge dumpster of foreign money” that Manafort helped to collect and then conceal. “Manafort knew the law but violated it anyway.”
Trump and his allies have sought to downplay the trial, claiming that it has nothing to do with either the president or a conspiracy with Russia to win the election. But Manafort didn’t suddenly change his lifetime m.o.—trading and leveraging influence for cash—when he joined the campaign. The Deripaska episode I described above, in which Manafort dangled access to the campaign in an attempt to “get whole” with the Russian oligarch, is just one example. According to the government, Manafort also offered a banking executive at Chicago’s Federal Savings Bank a position on the Trump campaign in exchange for help in obtaining approximately $16 million in loans, even though other Federal Savings Bank employees “identified serious issues” with Manafort’s loan application.
The president, for his part, may already be laying the groundwork for a pardon. Earlier this month, he called Manafort a “Reagan/Dole darling” and claimed he was being treated worse than “legendary mob boss, killer, ‘Public Enemy Number One,’” Al Capone. “Now serving solitary confinement—although convicted of nothing?” Trump wrote. “Where is the Russian Collusion?” Manafort’s trial, as dull and tedious and disappointing as it was to many, answered that question again and again.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... rt/567661/
“Death Spiral”: Why Omarosa Totally Triggered Trump
The perceived betrayal of a longtime female ally, and her perfectly executed Trumpian tactics, made the feud too personal to ignore.
Gabriel ShermanAugust 16, 2018 11:31 am
Omarosa Manigault Newman was one of Trump’s most trusted aides.
Omarosa Manigault listens during the daily press briefing at the White House, October 2017.
By Drew Angerer/Getty Images.
In the days before Omarosa Manigault Newman rolled out her White House tell-all, Unhinged, Donald Trump’s advisers were hoping he wouldn’t engage with the book, believing it would only elevate her claims and help sell more copies. “Just ignore it,” one told me, while even Melania Trump told her husband to let it go, Axios reported. Of course, this being Donald Trump, he ignored their counsel and went to war. Now advisers fear his rage at Manigault Newman is fueling irrational outbursts that bolster the claim in her book that Trump said the “n-word” during an Apprentice outtake.
In recent days, Trump has called Manigault Newman “crazed,” a “lowlife,” and a “dog” on Twitter. His campaign filed an arbitration suit against her seeking “millions.” And Trump told advisers that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to have Manigault Newman arrested, according to one Republican briefed on the conversations. (It’s unclear what law Trump believes she broke.) Another Republican recounted how over the weekend Trump derailed a midterm-election strategy session to rant about Manigault Newman’s betrayal. In an effort to change the narrative, the White House announced yesterday that Trump had revoked former C.I.A. director John Brennan’s security clearance. But that only ignited a new public-relations crisis. A former West Wing official compared Trump’s erratic behavior this week to the P.R. nightmare he created by attacking grieving Muslim-American Gold Star parents during the 2016 campaign. It’s a “death spiral,” the former official said.
Advisers and friends offered differing theories to explain Trump’s nuclear response to a book that has failed to top the best-seller list, even while Trump has campaigned against it. “He’s known her for 15 years and thinks it’s a personal betrayal,” the former West Wing official said. Others said Manigault Newman’s well-oiled media rollout ignited Trump’s fury. “She is doing everything perfect if her ultimate goal is to troll Trump,” another former official said. One longtime Trump friend said Trump is so reactive to Manigault Newman’s book because he instinctively trusts women more than men. Throughout his career, he has allowed women to get close to him, from his early assistant, Norma Foerderer, to Rhona Graff, to Hope Hicks.
Meanwhile, former Trump aide Sam Nunberg told me that Trump is lashing out because he sees Manigault Newman as a “formidable enemy.” “Hell hath no fury like Omarosa scorned,” Nunberg said.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08 ... ered-trump
Briefing schedule just issued in Andrew Miller v. United States -- Mueller grand jury subpoena case in DC Circuit:
by seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:37 am
Judge says Trump campaign screwed up on wording of confidentiality agreements
August 16, 2018
Jessica Denson (Publicity photo)
A Manhattan judge issued a ruling on Thursday that thwarted the Trump campaign’s attempts to keep a lawsuit out of open court, with potential implications for the looming battle over fired Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman’s slow-motion revelations of her experiences in the Trump campaign and White House.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by Jessica Denson, a former campaign staffer who filed a complaint last November that alleged she was subjected to “harassment and sexual discrimination” while she worked on Trump’s White House bid in 2016. Lawyers for the Trump campaign tried to force the case into private arbitration based on an agreement signed by staffers that included nondisclosure and nondisparagement provisions. In her decision, Judge Arlene Bluth of New York State Supreme Court disclosed flaws in the wording of the agreement that she said limited its scope.
The ruling exposes potential weaknesses in the non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements that staff at Trump’s White House, his campaign, and the Trump Organization have been made to sign. These documents have made headlines this past week as Manigault Newman, a former White House staffer, claimed the White House was trying to use them to “silence” her after she went public with a tell-all book and a series of embarrassing tapes from her time in the West Wing and from working on Trump’s campaign.
Denson is suing the Trump campaign in state court for $25 million, alleging she was subjected to “severe and pervasive slander, aggravated harassment, attempted theft, cyberbullying, and sexual discrimination and harassment” by her former supervisor, Camilo Sandoval, and other campaign staffers after she received a promotion to “mobilize the campaign’s Hispanic engagement effort” in September 2016. The Trump campaign and Sandoval, who is currently the acting chief information officer of the Department of Veterans Affairs, did not respond to requests for comment on this story. According to Denson’s complaint, which was filed in November 2017, the harassment included being “routinely overworked,” the mysterious disappearance of her laptop charger, being treated in a “demeaning and abusive matter,” and being subjected to a conversation with Sandoval where he “laid down on a couch in front of her” in a “physical, sexual posture.”
Trump campaign attorneys responded a month later by filing a request for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association, and demanding damages of $1.5 million because Denson “publish[ed] certain confidential information and disparaging statements in connection with a lawsuit she filed against claimant in New York Supreme Court.” On March 19, lawyers for the campaign from the firm of Larocca Hornik Rosen Greenberg & Blaha moved to take the case out of court and have it heard in private arbitration. In the motion, the Trump campaign lawyers argued Denson was bound to private arbitration because, before joining the president’s White House bid, she signed “a written employment agreement in which she expressly agreed to arbitrate ‘any dispute arising under or relating to’ her employment.”
Arbitration is an alternative to trial, a hearing before arbitrators (often retired judges) in which the records may be sealed from the public. The parties involved also have some ability to decide who will hear the case, unlike the random assignment process typical of the courts.
The motion from the Trump campaign attorneys included a copy of the agreement Denson signed, which was similar to documents that have reportedly been signed by White House staffers.
Then presidential candidate Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault attend a church service in Detroit, September 2016. (Photo: Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
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Bluth’s ruling noted flaws in the agreement Denson was required to sign. The judge suggested the document was worded badly, and implied it could have done what the campaign’s attorneys wanted if it had been written better.
“As an initial matter, the Court observes that the arbitration clause confines arbitration to ‘any dispute arising under or relating to this agreement,’” Bluth wrote, adding with emphasis, “It does not require arbitration for any ‘dispute between the parties’ or even ‘any dispute arising out of plaintiff’s employment.’”
Bluth even took aim at the title of the document prepared by the Trump campaign. In the motion to compel arbitration, the campaign’s attorneys described the document signed by Denson as an “employment agreement.” The judge noted this wasn’t actually written down.
“The agreement is simply titled ‘Agreement’ — not ‘Employment Agreement,’” Bluth wrote.
The judge also found that the agreement only covers “a specific list of five prohibited acts” rather than all aspects of Denson’s employment. The document provided for “no disclosure of confidential information, no disparagement, no competitive services, no competitive solicitation, and no competitive intellectual property claims.”
“There is simply no way to construe this arbitration clause in this agreement to prevent … pursuing harassment claims in court. The arbitration clause could have been written to require any disputes arising out of … employment to go to arbitration. … But it did not,” wrote Bluth.
Bluth’s ruling became public today when Denson tweeted a copy of the order. It is notable because Denson is representing herself and still defeated the Trump campaign’s lawyers. The judge’s decision represents a rare victory for a pro se litigant, the legal term for a person proceeding in court on their own behalf against a party represented by licensed attorneys. Denson, a young actress, declined to comment on this story.
In an ironic twist, President Trump personally was a party to the New York case that establishes the legal principle controlling Bluth’s decision. That 1993 case, Trump v. Refco Properties, Inc., concerned a dispute among the partners who own the Grand Hyatt near Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan; it established that a party may not be forced into arbitration unless their agreement to arbitrate “expressly and unequivocally encompasses the subject matter of the particular dispute.” President Trump sought to avoid private arbitration in that case, and won the issue on appeal. Bluth specifically cited that decision in her ruling against Trump’s campaign.
The dispute between Denson and the Trump campaign now spans several different public and private forums. In addition to the action Denson brought in 2017 in New York State Supreme Court, she filed a complaint in federal court seeking to have the entire non-disclosure agreement declared null and unenforceable. The Trump campaign’s attorneys may stand a better chance of prevailing in the motion to compel arbitration filed in conjunction with the federal court case, because Denson’s complaint is more likely to be viewed as “arising under or relating to” the agreement than Denson’s harassment claims in state court.
These questions may bear, if indirectly, on the attempt by Trump’s lawyers to silence Omarosa Manigault Newman. That issue has mostly been discussed as a First Amendment matter, in which a citizen’s right to criticize the president is at stake. But Denson’s dispute hasn’t reached the level of Constitutional rights, at least not yet. It is being litigated, so far, on the wording of the forms crafted by Trump’s lawyers.
Bluth, who also ruled to allow Denson to amend her complaint, repeatedly described her decision as being “put simply.”
“It is clear that the limited agreement is not applicable to the current dispute,” the judge wrote.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-says-t ... 13573.html
In Revoking John Brennan’s Security Clearance, Trump Feeds More Ammo to Mueller Probe
Susan Wright
If Trump is caught up in the web of the ongoing Russia probe, do you know who will be to blame?
Donald Trump.
That’s right. It has become increasingly clear that the president is incapable of getting out of his own way. The very fact of there being a special counsel probe for him to grouse over is because of his comments regarding the firing of FBI Director James Comey in 2017.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to take over the Russia probe, in regards to any collusion or obstruction from the Trump team, with the broad authority to go after any wrongdoing uncovered along the way, after Trump told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he fired Comey for the “Russia thing.”
There was no need for him to say that. He had letters from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein recommending Comey’s firing because of how he handled the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Perfectly logical and legit reasoning.
He sent out then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster to make the announcement in a press briefing that Comey had been fired because of his handling of the Clinton email investigation.
For that matter, he didn’t need a reason. The position of FBI director is an appointed position. He could have simply said he wanted his own pick in the position and while some would have grumbled or groused, it would have quickly been forgotten.
Trump is, however, incapable of not getting himself jammed up with his own words, so of course, he had to cut the legs out from under his own people and announce to the world that he was punishing Comey for not stopping a lawful investigation into a hostile foreign power meddling in a United States election.
It was one of those moments where his staff probably watched in slow-motion horror, knowing the imbecilic new president had no idea that what he was saying was tantamount to attempted obstruction.
This wasn’t reality TV. There would be no censor to hit the “bleep,” in order to keep the audience from hearing the offensive words.
And for a presidency that should be carried out with a laugh track backdrop, it has not stopped. There has been very little to indicate that President Trump has learned from that early blunder.
In fact, he has not learned.
CNN’s Jake Tapper made the observation on Thursday’s episode of “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” noting that, in his comments about the stripping of former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, it was as if Trump were connecting the dots for Robert Mueller’s investigation.
In a statement from the White House, explaining the decision to revoke the security clearance of Brennan, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said:
“Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos,” the statement read.
Just sort of soak in that comment, for a bit.
The White House’s official position on Brennan losing his security clearance is that he lies and acts nuts on social media.
Oh, irony, why do you mock us so?
Brennan, for his part, called the move an “abuse of power.”
“I do believe that Mr. Trump decided to take this action, as he’s done with others, to try to intimidate and suppress any criticism of him or his administration,” Brennan said during an interview on MSNBC Thursday.
Now, to be clear, I have mixed feelings about the whole situation. I don’t think Brennan was a “good guy.” There is a lot in his past actions and associations that cause conservative-minded observers to shy away from defending the man.
That being said, there are plenty within the military and intelligence community who saw what Trump did as “punishing a political enemy.”
The list that has been released of those who may lose their security clearance because of President Trump reads like a who’s who of Trump critics.
Can the administration make the case that for each and every one of those named on the list that they all are “security risks”?
It’s hard to say, but in a Wednesday interview, Trump, once again, stepped all over the White House’s crafted narrative, and as Tapper pointed out, may have given further ammunition to Mueller’s investigation.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he decided to pull the clearances of Brennan and consider those of other Obama-era intelligence officials who probed Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham. And these people led it!” Trump told the newspaper hours after it was announced Brennan’s clearance was being revoked.
“So I think it’s something that had to be done,” he added.
In other words, those he sees as responsible for prompting the investigation into Russia’s interference in our election (not to mention the chaos they sought to stir up among citizens) are the “bad guys,” and need to be punished.
This is where you [credibly] ask if Trump considers himself the president of this nation, or an advocate for Russia.
That’s one of those questions you can contemplate amongst yourselves.
In the meantime, who wants to bet Robert Mueller has read Trump’s statements to the WSJ and added notes to his case?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/susanwrigh ... ive-again/
by seemslikeadream » Sat Aug 18, 2018 11:27 am
GOVERNMENT CLAIMS GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS HELPED JOSEPH MIFSUD GET AWAY
August 17, 2018/21 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by empty wheel
The government has released its sentencing memo for George Papadopoulos. They recommend he serve time somewhere between 0 and 6 months, with a fine of $9,500 (which is most but not all of the payment he got from a suspected Israeli spy). And given their description, he got off easy (though I do wonder whether he faces additional exposure in the conspiracy in chief).
While the most newsy bit of the memo is a footnote debunking a lot of what Simona has been telling the gullible Chuck Ross since May (which I’ll get to), the most interesting detail is that the government claims that Papadopoulos’ lies and obstruction helped Joseph Mifsud skip the country without being detained, as the government explains by way of describing the damage Papadopoulos did to the investigation.The defendant’s lies to the FBI in January 2017 impeded the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Most immediately, those statements substantially hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question the Professor when the FBI located him in Washington, D.C. approximately two weeks after the defendant’s January 27, 2017 interview. The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States. The government understands that the Professor left the United States on February 11, 2017 and he has not returned to the United States since then.
This claim is overly dramatic, but it makes the frothy right’s conspiracy about Mifsud being an FBI plant all the more interesting — if he’s an FBI plant, then why did Papadopoulos cover for him while he was in the US? (Yeah, I know the premise is insane but that’s what conspiracy theories do to sanity.)
And, as the government’s debunking footnote makes clear, either because George lied to her or because she’s lying, Simona hasn’t been telling the gullible Chuck Ross the truth about Papadopoulos offering up Mifsud’s name.In several recent media appearances, the defendant’s spouse has claimed that the defendant “voluntarily reported” to the FBI the Professor’s conversation with him about the “dirt” on Clinton. See CNN, Papadopoulos’ Wife Asks Trump to Pardon Him, Says He’s ‘Loyal to the Truth,’ June 6, 2018 (claiming at approximately 4:08 that the defendant “actually volunteered – he reported to the FBI about this meeting”); Fox News, Rethinking ‘Collusion’ and the George Papadopoulos Case, June 4, 2018, (claiming at approximately 2:11 that the defendant “voluntarily reported to the FBI at the time of their interview”); Chuck Ross, Papadopoulos’ Wife: Trump Aide Was ‘Absolutely Not’ Involved in Russian Collusion, June 4, 2018, available at http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/04/mangi ... collusion/ (stating that it was the “defendant who brought up” the matter).
To the contrary, the defendant identified the Professor only after being prompted by a series of specific questions about when the defendant first learned about Russia’s disclosure of information related to the campaign and whether the defendant had ever “received any information or anything like that from a [] Russian government official.” In response, while denying he received any information from a Russian government official, the defendant identified the Professor by name – while also falsely claiming he interacted with the Professor “before I was with Trump though.” Over the next several minutes in the interview, the defendant repeatedly and falsely claimed that his interactions with the Professor occurred before he was working for the Trump campaign, and he did not mention his discussion with the Professor about the Russians possessing “dirt” on Clinton. That fact only came up after additional specific questioning from the agents. The agents asked the defendant: “going back to the WikiLeaks and maybe the Russian hacking and all that, were you ever made aware that the Russians had intent to disclose information [] ahead of time? So before it became public? Did anyone ever tell you that the Russian government plans to release some information[,]
like tell the Trump team ahead of time[,] that that was going to happen?” The defendant responded, “No.” The agents then skeptically asked, “No?” The defendant responded: “No, not on, no not the Trump [campaign], but I will tell you something and – and this is . . . actually very good that we’re, that you just brought this up because I wasn’t working with Trump at the time[.] I was working in London . . . with that guy [the Professor].” Only then, after acknowledging that the agents had “brought this up” and lying about when he received the information, did the defendant admit that the Professor had told him “the Russians had emails of Clinton.”
Interestingly, the government suggests that Papadopoulos may have lied because he was still trying to get a job in the Trump administration — a job, we’ve since learned, that might have also come with a payoff from Sergei Millian.But the record shows that at the time of the interview, the defendant was attempting to secure a job with the Trump Administration and had an incentive to protect the Administration and minimize his own role as a witness. (PSR ¶ 50). In January 2017, the defendant had several communications with officials of the incoming Administration in an effort to obtain a high-level position with the National Security Council, the State Department, or the Energy Department. On January 27, 2017, in the hours after being interviewed by the FBI, the defendant submitted his biography and a description of work he did on the campaign in an effort to obtain a position as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Energy Department. (PSR ¶ 50).
And Papadopoulos didn’t provide much assistance at all — significantly, hiding a phone he used in the campaign until the last proffer session (at which point the government had probably identified it by correlating his identities).The defendant did not provide “substantial assistance,” and much of the information provided by the defendant came only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history, and other information it had obtained via search warrants
and subpoenas well after the defendant’s FBI interview as the government continued its investigation. The defendant also did not notify the government about a cellular phone he used in London during the course of the campaign – that had on it substantial communications between the defendant and the Professor – until his fourth and final proffer session. This cell phone was not among the devices seized at the airport because it was already in the defendant’s family home in Chicago. Upon request, the defendant provided that phone to the government and consented to the search of that device.
And he didn’t provide much help thereafter.Following the proffer sessions in August and September 2017, the government arranged to meet again with the defendant to ask further questions in late December 2017. However, upon learning that the defendant had participated in a media interview with a national publication concerning his case, the government canceled that meeting.
All of which leaves you with the sense that Papadopoulos would have happily served as a spy, had the FBI not come knocking on his door at precisely the same time as the White House was first dealing with the Mike Flynn investigation.
Again, the government is letting Papadopoulos off easy. Which makes me wonder whether he’s still exposed in the case in chief.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/17/g ... -get-away/
White House Counsel Has Cooperated Extensively With Mueller’s Obstruction Inquiry
Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel. For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual, but Mr. McGahn views his role as protecting the presidency, not the president.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman
Aug. 18, 2018
WASHINGTON — The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, has cooperated extensively in the special counsel investigation, sharing detailed accounts about the episodes at the heart of the inquiry into whether President Trump obstructed justice, including some that investigators would not have learned of otherwise, according to a dozen current and former White House officials and others briefed on the matter.
In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s furor toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.
Among them were Mr. Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and Mr. Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it. Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which investigators might not have discovered without him.
For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual. Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege.
“A prosecutor would kill for that,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, a deputy independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation, which did not have the same level of cooperation from President Bill Clinton’s lawyers. “Oh my God, it would have been phenomenally helpful to us. It would have been like having the keys to the kingdom.”
Mr. McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Mr. Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mr. Mueller. The president’s lawyers have explained that they believed their client had nothing to hide and that they could bring the investigation to an end quickly.
Mr. McGahn and his lawyer, William A. Burck, could not understand why Mr. Trump was so willing to allow Mr. McGahn to speak freely to the special counsel and feared Mr. Trump was setting up Mr. McGahn to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, according to people close to him. So he and Mr. Burck devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that Mr. McGahn did nothing wrong.
It is not clear that Mr. Trump appreciates the extent to which Mr. McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel. The president wrongly believed that Mr. McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.
In fact, Mr. McGahn laid out how Mr. Trump tried to ensure control of the investigation, giving investigators a mix of information both potentially damaging and favorable to the president. Mr. McGahn cautioned to investigators that he never saw Mr. Trump go beyond his legal authorities, though the limits of executive power are murky.
Mr. McGahn’s role as a cooperating witness further strains his already complicated relationship with the president. Though Mr. Trump has fought with Mr. McGahn as much as with any of his top aides, White House advisers have said, both men have benefited significantly from their partnership.
Image
Mr. McGahn is guiding the Supreme Court pick, Brett M. Kavanaugh, left, through his confirmation.CreditAl Drago for The New York Times
Mr. McGahn has overseen two of Mr. Trump’s signature accomplishments — stocking the federal courts and cutting government regulations — and become a champion of conservatives in the process.
But the two rarely speak one on one — the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and other advisers are usually present for their meetings — and Mr. Trump has questioned Mr. McGahn’s loyalty. In turn, Mr. Trump’s behavior has so exasperated Mr. McGahn that he has called the president “King Kong” behind his back, to connote his volcanic anger, people close to Mr. McGahn said.
This account is based on interviews with current and former White House officials and others who have spoken to both men, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation.
Through Mr. Burck, Mr. McGahn declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office also declined to comment for this article.
Asked for comment, the White House sought to quell the sense of tension.
“The president and Don have a great relationship,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “He appreciates all the hard work he’s done, particularly his help and expertise with the judges, and the Supreme Court” nominees.
Mr. McGahn’s route from top White House lawyer to a central witness in the obstruction investigation of the president began around the time that Mr. Mueller took over the investigation into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russia’s interference in the presidential election.
When Mr. Mueller was appointed in May 2017, the lawyers surrounding the president realigned themselves. Mr. McGahn and other White House lawyers stopped dealing on a day-to-day basis with the investigation, as they realized they were potential witnesses in an obstruction case.
In the following weeks, Mr. Trump assembled a personal legal team to defend him. He wanted to take on Mr. Mueller directly, attacking his credibility and impeding investigators. But two of his newly hired lawyers, John M. Dowd and Ty Cobb, have said they took Mr. Trump at his word that he did nothing wrong and sold him on an open-book strategy. As long as Mr. Trump and the White House cooperated with Mr. Mueller, they told him, they could bring an end to the investigation within months.
Mr. McGahn, who had objected to Mr. Cobb’s hiring, was dubious, according to people he spoke to around that time. As White House counsel, not a personal lawyer, he viewed his role as protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump. Allowing a special counsel to root around the West Wing could set a precedent harmful to future administrations.
But he had little ability to intervene. His relationship with the president had soured as Mr. Trump blamed him for a number of fraught moments in his first months in office, including the chaotic, failed early attempts at a ban on travelers from some majority-Muslim countries and, in particular, the existence of Mr. Mueller’s investigation.
How the Mueller Investigation Could Play Out for Trump
If Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finds evidence that Mr. Trump broke the law, he will have decisions to make about how to proceed. We explain them.
May 23, 2018
The son of a Treasury Department investigator, Mr. McGahn, 50, briefly attended the Naval Academy before transferring to Notre Dame, graduating in 1991. He attended Widener University law school in Pennsylvania, then came to Washington and climbed the ranks of the Republican establishment, alternating between private firms and a stint on the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. McGahn joined the Trump team as an early hire, said to like the candidate’s outsider position. His lack of a degree from a top law school bothered Mr. Trump, but the candidate saw that Mr. McGahn was respected by most of his peers, according to veteran party strategists.
Though he was a senior campaign aide, it is not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned Mr. McGahn about whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia’s effort to influence the election.
Mr. McGahn’s decision to cooperate with the special counsel grew out of Mr. Dowd’s and Mr. Cobb’s game plan, now seen as misguided by some close to the president.
Last fall, Mr. Mueller’s office asked to interview Mr. McGahn. To the surprise of the White House Counsel’s Office, Mr. Trump and his lawyers signaled that they had no objection, without knowing the extent of what Mr. McGahn was going to tell investigators.
Mr. McGahn was stunned, as was Mr. Burck, whom he had recently hired out of concern that he needed help to stay out of legal jeopardy, according to people close to Mr. McGahn. Mr. Burck has explained to others that he told White House advisers that they did not appreciate the president’s legal exposure and that it was “insane” that Mr. Trump did not fight a McGahn interview in court.
Even if the president did nothing wrong, Mr. Burck told White House lawyers, the White House has to understand that a client like Mr. Trump probably made politically damaging statements to Mr. McGahn as he weighed whether to intervene in the Russia investigation.
Inside the counsel’s office, lawyers feared that on the recommendation of Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb, the White House was handing Mr. Mueller detailed instructions to take down the president and setting a troubling precedent for future administrations by giving up executive privilege.
At the same time, Mr. Trump was blaming Mr. McGahn for his legal woes, yet encouraging him to speak to investigators. Mr. McGahn and his lawyer grew suspicious. They began telling associates that they had concluded that the president had decided to let Mr. McGahn take the fall for decisions that could be construed as obstruction of justice, like the Comey firing, by telling the special counsel that he was only following shoddy legal advice from Mr. McGahn.
Worried that Mr. Trump would ultimately blame him in the inquiry, Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of the White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, who was imprisoned in the Watergate scandal.
Image
Mr. McGahn’s relationship with the president soured as Mr. Trump blamed him for a number of fraught moments in his first months in office, including the existence of the special counsel’s inquiry.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. McGahn decided to fully cooperate with Mr. Mueller. It was, he believed, the only choice he had to protect himself.
“This sure has echoes of Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, John Dean, who in 1973 feared that Nixon was setting him up as a fall guy for Watergate and secretly gave investigators crucial help while still in his job,” said the historian Michael Beschloss.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers still had a chance to keep Mr. McGahn’s insider knowledge from the special counsel. By exerting attorney-client privilege, which allows the president to legally withhold information, they would have gained the right to learn what Mr. McGahn planned to tell investigators and what he might reveal that could damage the president. But the president’s lawyers never went through that process, although they told people that they believed they still had the ability to stop Mr. Mueller from handing over to Congress the accounts of witnesses like Mr. McGahn and others.
Mr. Mueller has told the president’s lawyers that he will follow Justice Department guidance that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Rather than charge Mr. Trump if he finds evidence of wrongdoing, he is more likely to write a report that can be sent to Congress for lawmakers to consider impeachment proceedings.
Unencumbered, Mr. Burck and Mr. McGahn met the special counsel team in November for the first time and shared all that Mr. McGahn knew.
To investigators, Mr. McGahn was a fruitful witness, people familiar with the investigation said. He had been directly involved in nearly every episode they are scrutinizing to determine whether the president obstructed justice. To make an obstruction case, prosecutors who lack a piece of slam-dunk evidence generally point to a range of actions that prove that the suspect tried to interfere with the inquiry.
Mr. McGahn gave to Mr. Mueller’s investigators, the people said, a sense of the president’s mind-set in the days leading to the firing of Mr. Comey; how the White House handled the firing of the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn; and how Mr. Trump repeatedly berated Mr. Sessions, tried to get him to assert control over the investigation and threatened to fire him.
Despite the Trump lawyers’ insistence that cooperation would help end the inquiry, the investigation only intensified as last year came to a close. Mr. Mueller had charged Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and his deputy and won guilty pleas and cooperation agreements from his first national security adviser and a campaign adviser.
Mr. Dowd said that cooperation was the right approach but that Mr. Mueller had “snookered” Mr. Trump’s legal team. The White House has handed over more than one million documents and allowed more than two dozen administration officials to meet with Mr. Mueller in the belief that he would be forced to conclude there was no obstruction case.
“It was an extraordinary cooperation — more cooperation than in any major case — no president has ever been more cooperative than this,” Mr. Dowd said, adding that Mr. Mueller knew as far back as October, when he received many White House documents, that the president did not break the law.
As the months passed on, the misinterpretation by Mr. McGahn and Mr. Burck that the president would let Mr. McGahn be blamed for any obstruction case has become apparent. Rather than placing the blame on Mr. McGahn for possible acts of obstruction, Mr. Trump has yet to even meet with the special counsel, his lawyers resisting an invitation for an interview. Mr. McGahn is still the White House counsel, shepherding the president’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh, through the confirmation process.
Mr. Mueller, armed with Mr. McGahn’s account, is still trying to interview witnesses close to the president. But the White House has a new lawyer for the investigation, Emmet T. Flood, who has strong views on privilege issues. When the special counsel asked to interview Mr. Kelly, Mr. Flood contested the request, rather than fully cooperate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/us/p ... ation.html
emptywheel
This piece is (searching for the word) funny.
It confuses WHCO with personal lawyer.
It doesn't mention that one thing McGahn produced (Flynn report) was badly misleading.
It uses the word "cooperate" in a misleading way.
It continues to treat obstruction as only investigation.
Sandra Przybylski #BlueInitiative
Yes McGahn is Koch lawyer Jones Day's biggest client is Diebold. Diebold is now ES&S easily hacked voting machines used by GOP to rig elections since early 90s. Then of course Diebold makes ATM software for Alfa Bank. Follow money law firms banks and oil.
Legal Eagles: Stephen Brogan
editorial
Stephen Brogan, Managing Partner, Jones Day
With at least 13 of its lawyers positioned strategically throughout the Trump administration, including Don McGahn, the firm has not been coy about its ties to Trump and exercises immense, unprecedented power in Washington. McGahn who served as counsel to the 2016 campaign and then the transition team has also led the highly successful effort to pack the U.S. courts with fellow conservative Federalist Society judges and has been at the center of a continuous stream of legal actions in connection with the Mueller investigation, immigration, and other issues. A Jones Day advertisement boasts of insights on the new administration with a photo of the White House to hammer home the point.
Other Jones Day attorneys who have or currently hold key administration positions include: Noel Francisco: solicitor general; William McGinley, deputy assistant to the president and Cabinet secretary; James Burnham, senior associate counsel to the president; Annie Donaldson, special counsel to the president, chief of staff to the White House counsel; Stephen Vaden, special assistant to the secretary of agriculture; Blake Delaplane, special assistant to the White House Counsel; John Gore, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights; Michael Murray, counsel to the deputy attorney General; James Uthmeier, special advisor to secretary of commerce; Greg Katsas, deputy counsel to the president; David Morrell, associate counsel to the president; and Kaytlin Roholt, special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Commission.
Jones Day is famously governed – unlike any other major international law firm – with control resting in the hands of just one man, Steve Brogan. The power Brogan exercises over Jones Day’s 2,500 attorneys located in 44 global offices has been described as autocratic and absolute.
Unusually, on April 16, 2016, The White House Counsel’s Office, issued a blanket ethics waiver allowing White House Counsel McGahn and other former Jones Day attorneys working in the White House to participate in communications and meetings with Jones Day.
It is well known that the law firm of Jones Day represents President Trump, the Trump 2016 and 2020 Presidential Campaign Committees, Trump for America, Inc. (aka The 2016 Trump Transition Team) and certain Trump related political action committees as well as the Republican National Committee, The National Rifle Association, Citizens United, Judicial Watch, Diebold, RenTech (owned by Robert Mercer), and certain interests of Wilber Ross. According to Federal Election Commission filings, during the period from March 13, 2017 through the end of the year Trump’s campaign has been publicly reported to have paid more than $2.3 million to Jones Day.
What is less known is Jones Day’s global reach, which includes a Moscow office, run from Washington by Vladimir Lechtman. The firm’s oligarch practice has included representing companies owned and controlled by a group of the former Soviet Union’s most wealthy and powerful oligarchs, some of whom appear to be at the center of the U.S. election controversy now being investigated — all of whom are alleged to owe their immense wealth and influence — at least in part — to relationships with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although it is unclear whether Jones Day represents the oligarchs themselves or merely the companies holding their assets, according to Jones Day and their clients’ disclosures, these oligarch controlled companies include but are not limited to the following (noted along with these individuals approximate net worth): Alfa Bank, TNK and LetterOne (Petr Aven, $4.6 billion, German Kahn, $9.3 billion, Alexey Kuzmichev, $7.2 billion and Mikhail M. Fridman, $14.4 billion); Access Industries (Leonard Blavatnik, $19 billion); Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (Alexander Mashkevitch, $1.91 billion, Patokh Chodiev, $2 billion and Alijan Ibragimov, $2.3 billion); Basic Element (Oleg Deripaska, $5.1 billion); Sapir Organization, 100 Church Street development (Sapir family, $2 billion); Rosneft (Igor Sechin, $2 billion); Roust Corp (Roustam Tariko, Russian Standard Bank and Russian Standard Vodka, $1 billion) and Renova Group (Viktor Vekselberg, $12.4 billion). Notably Victor Veksleberg, Oleg Derapska and Igor Sechin have been placed on the U.S. Sanctions List. The founders of the Alfa Group entities and Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation have remained off of the sanctions list. Jones Day has also represented Gazprom Export, a branch of the Russian state-owned energy giant.
A former Jones Day attorney, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, is also now next in line, after Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, to oversee the Mueller investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election given the vacancy created by the departure of Rachel Brand. In February, Brand, who was next in the line in succession behind Rosenstein, announced she was stepping down as associate attorney general after only nine months on the job. In a speech before the Federalist Society in February she said she resigned because she “unexpectedly” received an offer she could not refuse to become the global governance director at Walmart. Coincidentally, Jones Day generated millions of dollars advising Walmart on an investigation regarding violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) after which the CEO was replaced by Doug McMillon to whom Brand will now report. The reason Francisco is next in line behind Rosenstein is because the President has not appointed her replacement, who in any event would need to be confirmed by the Senate.
http://washingtonlife.com/2018/05/09/le ... en-brogan/
by seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 19, 2018 10:51 am
Polly Sigh
Trump Is Not a King. Former intelligence & military leaders send a message to US troops & spies: "Remember your oath to protect & defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign & domestic. Think twice before following this man’s orders in a crisis."
SHOULD TRUMP RUN: DON MCGAHN HAS BEEN COVERING FOR ROGER STONE’S PRO-TRUMP RAT-FUCKING FOR SEVEN YEARS
August 18, 2018/44 Comments/in 2012 Presidential Election, 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
It has become clear to me that today’s big puff piece in the NYT about Don McGahn was designed to hide that Mueller is challenging the White House Counsel, former FEC Commissioner, and Trump campaign finance advisor on past work he has done for Trump.
One of those things must be McGahn’s effort, while at FEC in 2011, to stymie any investigation into a PAC involving Roger Stone and Michael Cohen, called Should Trump Run.
As I’ve noted, in 2011, one of the people closely involved in Stone’s 2016 rat-fucking, Pamela Jensen, was involved in a 527 called ShouldTrumpRun that listed Michael Cohen as President.
The organization was apparently laundering Trump corporate cash into campaign spending. But when the issue came before the FEC, Commissioner Don McGahn helped kill an investigation into it.During McGahn’s FEC tenure, one of those he helped save from enforcement action was Trump himself. In 2011, when the future president-elect was engaged in a high-profile process of considering whether to enter the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump was formally accused in an FEC complaint of violating agency regulations. The case was dismissed on a deadlocked vote of the FEC commissioners.
A four-page complaint filed by Shawn Thompson of Tampa, Fla., accused Trump of illegally funneling corporate money from his Trump Organization into an organization called ShouldTrumpRun.com. McGahn and fellow FEC Republicans Caroline Hunter and Matthew Petersen voted to block FEC staff recommendations that Trump be investigated in the matter—designated Matter Under Review (MUR) 6462.
Ultimately, Trump opted not to run for president in 2012. Nonetheless, FEC staff attorneys concluded his activities before that decision may have violated campaign finance rules regarding money raised to “test the waters” for a candidacy. A staff report from the FEC Office of General Counsel, based largely on news articles and other documents about Trump’s flirtation with running for president—including Trump’s own quoted statements— recommended that the commissioners authorize a full FEC investigation backed by subpoena power.
FEC Democrats voted to pursue the recommended probe, but the votes of McGahn and the other FEC Republicans precluded the required four-vote majority needed for the commission to act.
McGahn and Hunter issued a “ statement of reasons” explaining their votes in the Trump matter in 2013. The 11-page statement blasted FEC staff attorneys in the Office of General Counsel for reviewing volumes of published information regarding Trump’s potential 2012 candidacy in order to determine whether to recommend that the FEC commissioners vote to authorize a full investigation. McGahn and Hunter argued that the FEC counsel’s office was prohibited from examining information other than what was contained in the formal complaint submitted in the case.
The Office of General Counsel shouldn’t be allowed to pursue an “unwritten, standardless process whereby OGC can review whatever articles and other documents not contained in the complaint that they wish, and send whatever they wish to the respondent for comment,” the Republican commissioners wrote.
Jensen, her family, and Stone teamed up on a number of equally dubious efforts in 2016, including a 527 called Stop the Steal, which McGahn provided legal protection for in both its early (convention focused) and its late (Democratic voter suppression) incarnations. The latter effort at least paralleled Russian voter suppression efforts.
In other words, White House Counsel Don McGahn — the subject of a Maggie and Mike puff piece suggesting he would only be of interest on the obstruction investigation — has for at least seven years been right in the thick of defending Roger Stone’s legally dubious rat-fucking on behalf of Donald Trump.
And Roger Stone has been the focus of Mueller investigation for six months.
Those are the same six months during which Maggie and Mike have been pushing an increasingly absurd claim that Trump and his associates are only at risk in an obstruction investigation, not the conspiracy investigation McGahn has surely been questioned in.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/18/s ... ven-years/
Trump's Praise of Paul Manafort May Have Led His Attorney to Commit an Ethics Violation: Legal Experts
By Alexandra Hutzler On 8/18/18 at 9:52 AM
Donald Trump's praise of Paul Manafort may have led one of his attorneys to commit an ethics violation, law experts say.
Attorney Kevin Downing has been accused of making a "totally inappropriate" comment on Friday, after Trump told members of the media that Manafort was a "good man."
"I think the whole Manafort trial is very sad... I think it's a very sad day for our country," the president told the press on Friday morning. "He worked for me for a very short period of time but you know what he happens to be a very good person and I think it's very sad what they have done to Paul Manafort."
After announcing that the jury was dismissed for the weekend, reporters followed Downing, asking him what his reactions were to the Trump's sympathetic comments toward his former campaign manager.
"We were very happy to hear from the president, and that he's supporting Mr. Manafort," the attorney told Pierre Thomas from ABC.
Kevin Downing - Manafort's Attorney Kevin Downing, lead lawyer for former Donald Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, speaks to members of the media outside District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday, August 17. Trump declined to comment Friday on whether he'll pardon Manafort, whose fate is in the hands of jurors deliberating an 18-count indictment for a second day. The lawyer is accused of possibly violating an ethics violation for telling reporters he is happy to have the support of the president on the matter. Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Downing made the comment after day 14 of the trial, which saw the jury go home earlier on Friday after a second day of deliberations. No verdict has been reached yet, as Manafort faces charges of bank fraud and hiding foreign bank accounts. The jury will reconvene on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. for a third day of deliberations.
Law experts say that Downing's statement may have breached ethical standards. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted that the comment was "totally inappropriate." Mariotti also accused Downing of making the remark in an effort to get a hung jury.Renato Mariotti
Totally inappropriate comment by Manafort’s attorney. They’re pulling out all the stops to get a hung jury. If they do, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump pardoned Manafort before the case could be tried again.
Katherine Faulders
In response to POTUS comments this morning, Manafort attorney Kevin Downing says “it’s great to have the support of the President of the United States”
In another social media post, Mariotti pointed to the American Bar Association rules of conduct on trial publicity. One rule states that an attorney should never "make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter."
Mimi Rocah, another former federal prosecutor echoed Mariotti's statements, saying that Downing's comment "is likely violating ethic rules" and that the government should file a motion based on the statement.Mimi Rocah
@Mimirocah1
Manafort attorney is likely violating ethical rules by his comment. Gov should make motion. Completely inappropriate. (President’s comments are too of course but Ellis doesn’t have control over that).
Jim Sciutto
As the jury deliberates in the #ManafortTrial, the sitting US president called the defendant's treatment "sad" and the defendant's attorney said he and his team "really appreciate the support of President Trump."
https://www.newsweek.com/paul-manafort- ... mp-1079176
Manafort trial has Ukraine freshly nervous about Trump
Good-government advocates say Ukrainian authorities will ignore the incriminating details from Paul Manafort's trial, fearful of losing Donald Trump's support.
Alexandra Glorioso08/19/2018 07:05 AM EDT
KIEV — Paul Manafort’s criminal trial in the United States has also incriminated his political allies in Ukraine, where Manafort made millions as an operative. But good-government advocates here think Ukrainian authorities will decline to prosecute any officials, fearful of angering Donald Trump — a man whose help they need to keep Russia in check.
“The Ukrainian government will try to ignore this,” Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the Kiev-base New Europe Center, a think tank that promotes European and Western standards in Ukraine, told POLITICO. “Manafort is a person who was close to President Trump, and for whom Trump still may hold some sympathy.”
“They fear losing Trump’s support, or to provoke an unnecessary conflict with the US administration,” she added.
Still, some politicians and anti-corruption advocates believe new information disclosed in Manafort’s trial on bank and tax fraud charges should trigger new criminal action in Ukraine against officials and oligarchs who lavished Manafort with cash.
Ukrainians were taken aback during the trial to learn that the country’s former Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his political party, funneled more than $60 million in undeclared income to Manafort through a complex scheme of offshore shell companies. It was also revealed that one of Manafort’s companies briefly worked for President Petro Poroshenko’s first presidential campaign, potentially linking the country’s current leader to Manafort’s dealings as he heads into a tough bid for reelection next March.
But these advocates don’t expect these revelations to translate into legal action, given the power of the country’s oligarchs, the fact that no oligarch or top official has been convicted yet in the matter and the simple fact that further digging into Manafort could invite political blowback from Trump, who would not welcome new headlines involving his 2016 campaign chairman. POLITICO also found uncertainty among Ukrainian agencies over who would take up such an investigation.
Ukraine can ill-afford a rupture with the U.S. The country’s pro-U.S. government depends on Washington as a source of diplomatic, financial and military support against Russian territorial aggression in the country’s Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have waged a years-long insurgency that has left more than 10,300 people dead. The Kremlin also annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 over the opposition of the international community.
And the Poroshenko administration is recovering from a rough start with Trump, who believes Ukrainian officials and political figures favored his campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton. Reports after the election that Ukrainian officials tried to help Clinton and damage Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office didn’t help smooth things over — although there’s no evidence Poroshenko himself was involved in these efforts.
Additionally, a Ukrainian politician, Serhiy Leshchenko, made public key details regarding the financial transactions to Manafort that helped fuel special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election.
President Poroshenko seems to have soothed relations for the moment: Washington recently sold Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kiev, which the Ukrainians had long lobbied for in order to fight the Russian-backed insurgency in the country’s East.
In a show of support, John Bolton, the White House national security adviser, will also travel to Ukraine next week for the country’s independence day celebrations on Friday. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently issued a strong call for Russia to end its occupation of Crimea.
Still, fears exist that the relationship could again turn south, especially given President Trump’s warm rapport with Russian President Vladimir Putin. With the Ukrainians fighting the Kremlin for their territorial integrity, they feel they have little room to maneuver.
“The situation isn’t stable between the White House and Ukraine — [Kiev] will try to avoid any factor that could weaken their position,” said Getmanchuk.
And the entire Manafort case, dating back to revelations last year, is a “very toxic” factor, Getmanchuk said, adding: “Some lessons have been learned.”
Still, she said, “I hope they will use this case as a pretext to communicate anti-corruption steps in the U.S. — to show that Ukraine is at least a little bit different now.”
At the moment, however, bureaucratic confusion reigns over how Ukraine will handle any new evidence that has come out of the Manafort trial. It’s not entirely clear which government body would pick up an investigation.
Officials at Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said that they will decide soon what they will do with the new information: open an entirely new investigation, use the evidence to supplement already existing ones, or do nothing at all.
Other authorities say Ukraine’s newly created Federal Bureau of Investigation — which isn’t yet up and running — should handle any probe. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which is tasked with investigating corruption after the country’s 2014 revolution that pushed out Viktor Yanukovych, told POLITICO the organization is “aware” of the revelations in the U.S. and is “examining this information.”
Separately, Manafort is a person of interest — but not charged with any crime — in three cases currently being pursued by the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office, including an investigation into off-the-books payments by Yanukovych’s political party (referred to in Ukraine as the case of the “black ledgers”).
Viktor Yanukovych gestures.
Viktor Yanukovych, seen here in 2016, and his party funneled millions to Paul Manafort. | AP Photo
These cases have encountered a number of roadblocks in Kiev, though. In April, Ukrainian officials stripped investigators of their right to issue subpoenas in the investigations, effectively freezing the probes. Some critics speculated that the cases were halted because of their political sensitivity at a time of tense U.S.-Ukraine relations. Officials say the freeze has since been lifted.
Washington officials have also hindered the probes. The Justice Department has failed to answer most letters from Ukrainian authorities requesting assistance in questioning Manafort and other witnesses, despite a legal assistance agreement between the two countries.
In Ukraine, there is pressure to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen with evidence exposed during the Manafort trial.
Serhiy Leshchenko, the parliament deputy and former muckraking journalist whose own original investigations aided Robert Mueller’s investigation, said the web of offshore accounts that Ukrainian politicians used to pay Manafort is patently illegal.
“It is against Ukrainian law to control companies and have direct control over offshore accounts while serving in the government,” Leshchenko told POLITICO, adding that some of the alleged participants were serving as ministers or deputies at the time of the transactions, such as Yanukovych’s head of administration Serhiy Lyovochkin.
“If they made the transfers, it means that they were involved” and should be investigated, he said.
But there’s doubt that Leshchenko will get the robust investigation he wants.
“These guys have very good lawyers,” said Volodymyr Ariev, another member of President Poroshenko’s parliamentary faction, noting that the power players and oligarchs involved in such transfers know how to preserve plausible deniability.
“It will be difficult to find them giving a command,” he said, adding that he will nonetheless call for an official inquiry into the new evidence when parliament reconvened.
Some in Ukraine argued that the payments that may have violated U.S. law don’t run afoul of Ukrainian statutes, making the issue even more difficult to adjudicate.
But the Trump administration — and Trump himself — looms large over the whole situation.
In addition to the missiles, the Defense Department recently announced it would send an additional $200 million to Ukraine to help with the ongoing conflict in the Donbass region. And Ukraine has leaned on the U.S. in the past to help encourage the European Union to retain sanctions against Moscow over the Crimea annexation, which were renewed in June for another six months.
Despite these positive signs for Ukraine, Trump continues to raise doubts about his intentions with Putin. While the State Department pledged to stand firm on fighting Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Trump has separately indicated he’d consider formally recognizing Russia’s land grab.
And despite Trump’s decision to postpone a follow-up summit with Putin, he still intends to welcome the leader to Washington, D.C., next year — a concerning prospect for Ukrainians.
The Manafort issue could come into sharper focus in Ukraine as the country’s presidential election heats up in the coming months, with reformers pressuring Poroshenko to investigate and critics dredging up his years-old Manafort connection.
Poroshenko currently sits fifth in opinion polls, trailing former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and some believe the president would be loath to take on the oligarchs — supremely powerful men with unlimited financial resources and extensive media holdings — at a time when he needs their support most.
The president’s office has also already tried to explain away Poroshenko’s Manafort link, saying his team only held one meeting with Manafort’s people, and that there was no relationship after that. Still, Poroshenko’s office had initially denied any contact at all.
To some Ukrainians, though, the Manafort revelations simply reveal business as usual. The new facts are “interesting for investigation,” said Alexandra Ustinova of Ukraine’s Anti-corruption Action Center, a non-governmental organization. “But they’re not sensational.”
“They just confirm what we already know about Ukrainian oligarchs and politics in general — oligarchs are being oligarchs, and they are using their money to buy political influence,” she said.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/ ... ial-788028
by seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:23 am
Barrett Brown
You know how the #Wikileaks party line has been that Assange couldn't have messaged Trump Jr. himself because he didn't have internet access? Seen them attack those who believe otherwise? Here's close Assange associate @KimDotcom admitting in private that "he wrote this"
5:55 PM - 19 Aug 2018
continued:
empytwheel
Oh. Roger Stone says he's going to sue me.
Here's the post that set the old rat-fucker off.
My attorney has already started popping corn about deposing Roger Stone.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel
Barrett Brown
Aug 13
Regarding my banishment from the Courage Foundation at the behest of Julian Assange
Drip, drip, drip.
[This is the full statement I provided to The Daily Beast on the matter of the board of Courage terminating my “beneficiary” status with that organization; the article may be found here, along with the text of the board’s e-mail to me on Sunday. Naomi Colvin’s statement in which she explains why she resigned rather than follow an order to get rid of me may be found here.]
Since getting out of prison in late 2016, I have been increasingly vocal about my growing distaste for Wikileaks in general and Julian Assange in particular, largely due to his close and ongoing involvement with fascist entities, his outright lies about his role in the last U.S. election, and his willingness to have others tell similar lies on his behalf. I have also continued to support his rights against the state and private organizations that have pursued him from the very beginning, when his original mission of ethical transparency was still in play.
Given that the original FBI investigation into me stemmed directly from my involvement in defending Wikileaks from firms like HBGary, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Palantir, as made clear by the FBI’s own search warrant that may be found at Buzzfeed; and given that the charges I ultimately plead to were directly related to my efforts to ensure that the Stratfor leak was handled properly; and given that Assange himself refrained from even mentioning my name in public until it became a clear that I was to become a cause celebre; and given that the entirety of the legal defense fund that actually kept me from going away for decades was handled by the FreeBB organization, not Wikileaks or anyone associated with it; and given that Courage, though a fine organization staffed by extraordinary people, has provided me with something along the lines of $3500 out of the total $14,000 that has been donated for my benefit since FreeBB was incorporated into that organization; and given that I voluntarily allowed the rest to go into a pool for other beneficiaries that would seem to include Assange himself; and given that Assange and close associates have nonetheless chosen to publicly imply that I am somehow indebted to Assange for having made me a beneficiary after I’d already been sentenced; and given how much I’ve learned since my release about the degree of dishonesty and outright fabrication that Assange has engaged in along with those associates, much of which is already public record; and given that Assange himself has repeatedly reached out through intermediaries to “explain” himself to me but has in each case failed to actually do so — given all of this, I’m afraid I cannot agree with the stance, presented by the Courage board to me yesterday via a poorly-written e-mail, that I am somehow obligated to not only defend Assange’s rights — which I’m happy to do - but also to refrain from speaking out about the problems facing a movement that I risked a hundred years of prison time in order to defend.
https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/regard ... 475e6f6ec3
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:51 am
Michael Avenatti
.@RudyGiuliani Buckle Up Buttercup. You and your client completely misplayed this..
emptywheel
@emptywheel
19m19 minutes ago
DOJ: Okay, there's just one spot for this scandal's John Dean: who's going to get it first, Don McGahn or Michael Cohen.
Michael Cohen
Verified account
@MichaelCohen212
Follow Follow @MichaelCohen212
More
@HillaryClinton when you go to prison for defrauding America and perjury, your room and board will be free!
7:03 PM - 19 Dec 2015
https://twitter.com/MichaelCohen212/sta ... 6774141956
Rick Wilson
@TheRickWilson
1h1 hour ago
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any minute now Gentry Breitbart is going to come out with a piece that says that Michael Cohen was part of the Deep State's 20 year plan to destroy the wonder of the Trump presidency.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 21, 2018 4:36 pm
emptywheel
For the record, a guilty plea was reached pertaining to Trump's sex habits before a guilty plea pertaining to his conspiring with Russia.
Putin probably feels let down.
Stephen Brown
@PPVSRB
·
31m
Max sentence he faces on all counts is 65 years.
Stephen Brown
@PPVSRB
Cohen admits to working “at direction of the candidate” Trump and national enquirer to silence Karen McDougal. He also admits to Stormy Daniels payment that he made “with and at direction of the same candidate.”
Zerlina Maxwell
What are we going to name the Tuesday when the President's campaign chairman is convicted, his personal lawyer reaches a plea agreement with prosecutors and his 1st national security advisor is still needed for the ongoing probe? TuesDay Massacre doesn't seem catchy.
TRUMP’S PECKER GOT HIM IN TROUBLE BEFORE HIS CONSPIRING WITH RUSSIA DID
August 21, 2018/2 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
It was a three ring circus among top Trump advisors today: Jurors found Paul Manafort guilty on 8 counts (the jury was hung on the other 10); Michael Cohen pled guilty to 8 counts, and Mueller’s team continued Mike Flynn’s sentencing for 24 days, with a status report due September 17.
The big takeaway, however, is that Trump got named in a criminal information for his extramarital affairs before his conspiring with Russia did. [I’ve restated this headline, replacing “Dick” with “Pecker,” in honor of the National Enquirer’s role and so Democracy Now can show the headline tomorrow when I appear.]
TRUMP’S HUSH PAYMENTS MAKE IT INTO MICHAEL COHEN’S GUILTY PLEA
The Cohen plea — which developed quickly and reportedly came under pressure to plead before an indictment got filed this week — covered five tax charges, one false statement to a financial institution, one unlawful corporation contribution tied to Cohen’s quashing of a National Enquirer story on Karen McDougal, and one excessive campaign contribution tied to Cohen’s hush payment to Stormy Daniels. The first reference to Donald Trump — named as Individual 1 — is the 46th word in the in the criminal information.From in or about 2007 through in or about January 2017, MICHAEL COHEN, the defendant, was an attorney and employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). COHEN held the title of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to the owner of the Company (“Individual-1”).
Cohen will reportedly face three to five years in prison and substantial fines.
In his plea, Cohen stated that he made the hush payments at the direction of a candidate — Trump was not named — knowing the payments violated campaign finance law.
For all the legal trouble his top aides have gotten in, this is the first time (aside from his cameo calling on Russia to find Hillary’s “missing” emails in the GRU indictment) where Trump has been implicated directly.
Thus the headline: His dick got him in trouble before his conspiring with Russia did.
There was reportedly not cooperation agreement attached to this plea. I suspect he will be or already has cooperated, however.
Contrary to what some of NYT’s hacks say, this doesn’t mean his dick got him in more trouble than he’ll face in the Russian inquiry: just that that will take a bit longer.
LIKE COHEN, PAUL MANAFORT IS A TAX CHEAT
Literally at the same time Cohen was pleading guilty, the jury in the Manafort case declared themselves hopelessly at odds on 10 charges, but found Manafort guilty of 8. Like Cohen, he is guilty of 5 counts of tax fraud. He was found guilty on one FBAR charge for not identifying foreign holdings (my suspicion in the other FBAR charges were hung because it was unclear whether the corporations that held the money faced the same liability. And Manafort was found guilty on two of the bank fraud charges. My guess — I’m trying to clarify this — is the jury hung on the one in which he didn’t get a loan (meaning TS Ellis’ criticism about prosecutors focusing on a loan that didn’t go through may have had an effect).
Manafort’s next trial starts in 27 days, and if Mueller wants a retrial on the remaining 10 charges here he could get that. Though he has bigger fish to fry.
MUELLER THINKS MIKE FLYNN WILL BE DONE COOPERATING IN THE NEAR FUTURE
While it’s far less sexy than the trouble Trump’s dick got him in, I’m most fascinated by the status report in the Mike Flynn case. While they’re continuing the sentencing process again (meaning he’s still cooperating), they’re asking for a status report on September 17, the same 27 days away as Manafort’s next trial.
That suggests they may be done with whatever they need Flynn to do in the near future.
Things are picking up steam.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/21/t ... ussia-did/
emptywheel
Trump's Dick Got Him in Trouble Before His Conspiring with Russia Did
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/21/t ... ussia-did/ …
Donald Trump is named -- as Individual 1 -- in the 46th word in Cohen's criminal information.
[collecting my winnings on for the 5,295,371 predictions I made Trump would get named in a legal doc w/o being indicted]
s ago
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This is why those claiming Trump's criminal actions can only be described in a report to Congress should find a new hobby.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 22, 2018 8:02 am
What Michael Cohen’s Plea and Paul Manafort’s Conviction Mean for Trump and the Mueller Investigation
In the history of the American republic, there has never before been a single hour in which, in two separate courts, in cases prosecuted by two separate offices, a president’s former campaign manager and his former lawyer simultaneously joined his former national security adviser as felons—and one of them implicated the president in criminal activity.
Normally, the sort of felonies that Paul Manafort was convicted of Tuesday and to which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty are beyond the scope of what Lawfare covers. Bank fraud and tax evasion are not exactly national security legal issues, and certainly payments to adult film actresses and models in violation of campaign finance law are not the sort of “hard national security choices” that are our bread and butter.
Yet the convictions obtained Tuesday create a remarkable moment, one that interacts inevitably and deeply with major national security investigations—and that places stress on a presidency, and presidential personality, in a fashion that inevitably poses national security concerns.
On Tuesday afternoon, Manafort was found guilty on eight felony counts of tax evasion and bank fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia. The judge declared a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts after the jury deadlocked. Shortly thereafter, in the Southern District of New York, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies of his own: five counts of tax evasion, one count of bank fraud, and two counts of campaign finance violations involving hush-money payments to the actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) and to Karen McDougal.
Here are seven questions and some related observations pointed up by Tuesday’s events.
Does Donald Trump choose the “best people”?
We didn’t need a raft of criminal convictions to answer this question. The consistent incompetence of Trump’s inner circle is all the answer one needs. That said, the starting place in this conversation must be the degree to which close associates of the president of the United States keep turning out to be felons. Yes, only one portion of Cohen’s criminal conduct and none of the charges on which Manafort was convicted connect directly to President Trump. But the parade of greed and the continuous criminal conduct on the part of two people closely associated with Trump and his campaign sheds disturbing light on who the president regards as appropriate top aides and associates. That Trump himself continues to express sympathy with Manafort, not outrage at his conduct, further undermines confidence in his judgment of character.
Presidential judgment matters. In a week dominated by headlines about the president’s real and threatened revocation of security clearances of current and former officials who have criticized him, take a moment to consider the individuals the president has favored with trust and confidence, as well as those to whom he has denied it.
Do these convictions have implications for L’Affaire Russe?
They may, and in both cases, there is reason to suspect they do, but we don’t know yet know for certain.
With both defendants, there are reasons to suspect the individual may have important information for Robert Mueller’s investigation. And in both cases, the current moment is one in which cooperation would be extremely well advised. In Cohen’s case, cooperation is almost certainly happening, though the plea agreement contains no cooperation provision.
In neither case, however, is it clear what the defendant knows. That is, assuming either Manafort or Cohen or both decided to cooperate, would either of them have anything important to offer Mueller? And at least in Manafort’s case, there is no particular reason to think that conviction on eight counts by a jury of his peers will concentrate his mind any more than the prospect of conviction did. Whether the verdict will cause Manafort to cooperate in order to avoid another trial and to obtain some sentencing leniency is a substantial open question. Embedded within that question is an even larger one: If Manafort and Cohen do cooperate, does either of them hold the keys to any kingdoms?
On MSNBC on Tuesday evening, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis made his client’s feelings plain: "Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows."
But keep in mind that there were high hopes that Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos would be in a position to offer Mueller substantial cooperation after his plea agreement. That turned out not to be the case.
How big a deal is the Manafort verdict?
Pretty big.
It is a big deal first because the failure to obtain it would have been an immense setback to the investigation. Going to trial is always a fraught process. And for the Mueller investigation to have failed to garner a conviction would have risked consequences for the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. A conviction on eight counts and a mistrial on 10 other counts may seem like a split decision—but it is not. The jury found Manafort guilty of substantial criminal conduct, and he faces significant jail time at his sentencing in December. Having the jury hang on some charges and convict on others shows independence and makes it hard to argue that Manafort did not get a fair shake. Mueller’s shop is no doubt satisfied with this outcome.
Tuesday’s verdict is also not the end of the story for Manafort—not even close. He is scheduled to go on trial in Washington, D.C., in September for alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other charges. While the charges in the Virginia trial were not central to the core questions of the Mueller probe—the foreign conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election—this trial did demonstrate that Manafort was under overwhelming financial stress and deeply indebted to foreign interests at precisely the time he agreed to join the Trump presidential campaign without pay.
What’s more, it is clear that the special counsel’s office believes the Manafort case is important to its mission. The evidence of this is the simple fact that Mueller chose to keep the Manafort prosecution within the office, not to refer it elsewhere. For some reason, Mueller’s team views the tax- and bank-fraud charges against Manafort as connected to the central inquiry, in a way the Michael Cohen case—which it referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York—is for some reason not. That may be because Mueller’s team wants information it believes Manafort has. And that, in turn, makes his conviction, and the pressure on him that it generates, a significant event.
How big a deal is the Cohen plea agreement?
Very big.
The president’s former lawyer has not only confessed to criminal campaign finance violations, but he has also said under oath that he was doing so at the direction of the president himself. It’s hard to say yet what precisely this means. But it is not a small thing. Setting aside the question of whether Cohen will cooperate with Mueller, it remains to be seen whether prosecutors will pursue additional criminal charges against individuals mentioned but not charged in the criminal information.
Cohen’s plea agreement does not contemplate any specific cooperation. However, as Lawfare’s David Kris noted, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allow the court to reduce a sentence within one year of sentencing when the government agrees that the defendant has “provided substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person.” That means the question of cooperation, on campaign finance questions or other matters, could remain open possibly even after Cohen’s sentencing. It seems preponderantly likely that Cohen is cooperating—or at least that he will cooperate.
This means that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have a witness on their hands who was very close to Trump and knows a great deal about a lot of things—some of which he pleaded guilty to Tuesday.
How close is this to the president?
“It doesn’t involve me,” the president said Tuesday afternoon when asked about the Manafort verdict. Setting aside the implications of the Manafort case for the Mueller investigation as a whole, Trump is certainly correct that the specific charges on which Manafort was convicted, and those on which the jury could not reach a verdict, do not involve the president’s conduct. The closest connection is that Manafort’s alleged bank-fraud scheme was ongoing during the time he managed Trump’s presidential campaign.
As we noted above, the story is quite different in the Cohen case. Among the counts to which the president’s former lawyer pleaded guilty are two violations of federal election law: “causing an unlawful corporate contribution,” regarding Cohen’s role in silencing Karen McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump by persuading her to sell the rights to a tabloid that then quashed the story; and “excessive campaign contribution,” regarding Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels as part of a hush agreement, for which he was then reimbursed by the Trump Organization.
The criminal information made public Tuesday states that Cohen “caused and made the payments ... in order to influence the 2016 presidential election”—that is, to prevent damaging information about the affairs from surfacing during the campaign. It is the political motive behind the payments that transforms the matter into a question of federal campaign finance law. As former White House counsel Bob Bauer wrote of the Cohen case Tuesday evening, legal constraints on such expenditures are implicated when “motivation[s] materially if not wholly shaped by political objectives” come into play.
The criminal information is not clear on the extent of any coordination between Cohen and Trump personally, though it does state that Cohen “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” But in his court hearing Tuesday, Cohen accused Trump of personal involvement in both arrangements in all but name, saying that he acted “in coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office.” His lawyer then made the connection even more explicit on Twitter:
Trump’s current lawyer Rudy Giuliani declared that, “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen.” That’s not quite right. Although it might not sound as good for the president, the proper formulation would have been that the Justice Department allowed a defendant to plead guilty to crimes on the basis of factual claims and sworn statements that, if true, potentially implicate Trump as well.
Is a second special counsel needed?
This is not a crazy question.
The purpose of the special counsel structure is to remove the normal Justice Department hierarchy from the process of investigating the president. With the Cohen plea, President Trump’s personal conduct is now clearly a matter of investigation in the Southern District of New York. Under normal circumstances, this would be a prototypical case for the appointment of a special counsel.
For a variety of reasons, however, that step would be unwise here. For one thing, there is no reason to question the Southern District prosecutors’ competence or independence here. (The president controversially interviewed Geoffrey Berman for the position he now holds as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, but Berman has recused himself from this case and his office has conducted itself professionally and admirably.) For another thing, a special counsel would—like Mueller—become a lightning rod for presidential anger and is potentially vulnerable to firing. By contrast, it is very hard for the president to shut down a career-level investigation in the Southern District of New York. Trump can’t fire his way out of this problem. Notably, this case began in the special counsel’s shop and was specifically referred to a normal Justice Department office to be handled in the regular order. At least for now, keeping it there is the right course.
Are there dangers here?
Yes. Big ones.
Major investigations that touch the president directly are always dangerous. Trump accentuates those dangers. The general danger is of presidential distraction. The burden of running the country is real—or at least it should be to a president who takes the job seriously. Being under federal investigation would distract almost anyone. And whether or not one likes Donald Trump should not obscure the reality that interfering with a president’s ability to govern and represent the United States globally—by compromising a president’s legitimacy and by distracting him from governance—is dangerous at the best of times with the most focused of presidents.
Trump is not the most focused of presidents. He is also mercurial and angry. With Trump there is the additional risk of his lashing out, taking vindictive action or engaging in irrational behavior—things he does in spades on a daily basis. This sort of behavior is inimical to cohesive national security policy, which requires presidential leadership and direction. The myriad bureaucracies involved with defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, economic security, law enforcement and homeland security all have different institutional needs, interests and missions. Absent policy direction and leadership from the White House, the national security apparatus does not work optimally on autopilot.
This does not mean that the office of the presidency should be above investigation, or that the risks of these particular investigations are too great to justify them. To the contrary, as described above, prosecutors have shown evidence of serious criminal conduct on the part of Trump’s inner circle, and unveiling Russia’s role in election interference is a matter of great importance for American democracy. The consequences of investigating a president may be great, but the consequences of not investigating such matters are far greater.
Most fundamentally, the burden lies with the president himself not to behave in fashions that necessitate such investigations—and, when they are necessary, to handle them in a manner that minimizes the dangers. Perhaps the greatest danger at this moment is that one can have no confidence that Trump understands this.
As the cloud over the president darkens, we are entering a dangerous period.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-michae ... estigation
Michael Cohen wants to tell Robert Mueller what he knows about what Trump knew about Russian hacking leading up to the 2016 election, lawyer says
By janon fisher
Michael Cohen wants to tell Robert Mueller what he knows about what Trump knew about Russian hacking leading up to the 2016 election, lawyer says
Michael Cohen, the personal attorney of president Donald Trump, leaves Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News) (Jefferson Siegel / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
President Trump’s ex-lawyer Micheal Cohen wants to spill his guts to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, dishing on what Trump knew about meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower and the hacking of the 2016 Presidential Election, according to Cohen’s lawyer.
Heavy-hitting Democratic legal eagle Lanny Davis told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow Tuesday night that Cohen’s got the dirt on the President and “is more than happy to tell the Special Counsel.”
“I can tell you that Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the Special Counsel,” Davis told Maddow. “The obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election,which the Trump Tower meeting was all about. But also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and whether he cheered it on. We know that he publicly cheered it on, but did he also have private information?”
Davis would not say if his client had met with the Mueller team yet.
Paid Post What Is This?
Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court to eight counts of tax fraud and campaign finance violations stemming from hush payments he said he made at the direction of the President to silence porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal.
The Trump Tower meeting that Davis referred to happened in the lead up to the presidential election during which the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., the former — and now convicted — campaign manager Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, met with a Russian lawyer for reasons that are now in dispute. One theory is that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was lobbying the campaign to lift restrictions on Russian adoptions. The more sinister explanation is that the Trump campaign sought compromising information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to gain the advantage in the polls.
In July 2016, Trump made an appeal to the Russians during a campaign event to hack into Clinton’s emails. Davis suggested Tuesday night that those were not just idle words.
The President had adamantly denied that he’s done anything wrong.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny- ... story.html
Cohen lawyer: ‘There is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime'
The attorney representing President Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen says that there is now "no dispute" that President Trump committed a crime during the 2016 election.
Interviewed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Lanny Davis said that Cohen's decision Tuesday to implicate the president in directing him to commit campaign finance violations with relation to his payments to women such as Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels as proof of Trump's wrongdoing.
"Well, let's clear up for some reason in ambiguity the smoke that [Trump attorney] Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and the people around him are blowing," Davis says.
"Very clearly, there is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime," Davis continues. "No dispute, because his own lawyers said to the special counsel in a letter that he directed, that's the word they used, Michael Cohen to make these payments."
Cohen surrendered to FBI agents on Tuesday ahead of reaching a plea agreement on charges of tax and banking fraud, while admitting in court filings that the president had personally directed him to make the payments to Daniels and McDougal, who both claim affairs with the president, weeks before the election.
Prosecutors working with Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation have been probing the payments and their funding for possible criminal activity including campaign finance law violations as part of the ongoing investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Cohen's surrender to authorities on Tuesday came amid the president's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, being found guilty on 8 charges related to his lobbying work in Ukraine by a judge in Virginia.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... ed-a-crime
Seth Abramson
(THREAD) So what happens now that Michael Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, has said on MSNBC that Cohen will tell Mueller (a) Trump colluded with the Russians, and (b) his collusion involved knowing about Russian hacking *in advance*? I'll break it down. Hope you'll read and share.
11:48 PM - 21 Aug 2018
2,171 Retweets 3,412 Likes Linda KelleyJulie LapointeLorraine Shawnutter buttersLisa SmithJoanne EObama Girl...kenrentzTim Anderson
1/ First, here's video of what Michael Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, said on MSNBC last night, which was perhaps the most shocking thing anyone has said on TV in the last decade when you think about its implications for this presidency and for the nation:
2/ Second, here's an example of how it's being covered. One question that will be answered today is whether The New York Times and The Washington Post appreciate the import of what Davis said *enough* to report on this story as they *did not do* yesterday:
3/ Third, understand that while Davis (@LannyDavis) is unlikely to walk back what he said to MSNBC, you *should* expect him to *clam up* and realize that revealing what he revealed was a mistake. He wasn't serving his client well and what he did on MSNBC was deeply irresponsible.
4/ What Davis did was irresponsible (and I say this attorney to attorney, as I've tagged Lanny and he follows this feed) because as an attorney you *mustn't* do *anything* that could jeopardize your client beyond the jeopardy they already face. Davis' words were harmful to Cohen.
5/ Cohen needs his value to Mueller to be as high as it can be; revealing what he has in the media damages the value of his information by giving information to potential jurors, the media, and Mueller critics when what Mueller *wants* is to have information others do *not* have.
6/ When a prosecutor doesn't control the flow of valuable information that's incoming to him—or for all we know, has already come to him—by a witness' proffer, it can slam doors in the faces of his investigators that wouldn't have been slammed if the information was closely held.
7/ For instance, imagine that there's a witness willing to talk to Mueller if s/he believes Mueller does *not* know about Trump's collusion who suddenly will *refuse* to talk to Mueller (or his investigators) if s/he discovers that Mueller *has* been told about Trump's collusion.
8/ Mueller wants to control the information Cohen is going to give him—when it's released, who has it, how it's framed, how it shapes his probe. He doesn't want Cohen's lawyer making those decisions. I suspect that's why Davis had *clammed up* by the time he spoke to @ChrisCuomo.
9/ So don't expect Lanny Davis—who I think, as a Clinton ally, was a bit giddy about being able to stick it to Trump, and let his emotions overrule his professional instincts—to repeat his claim that Cohen can confirm Trump-Russia collusion. But the thing is—he *already said it*.
10/ What that means is that The Washington Post and The New York Times *have* to report what Davis said. They can say, "Well, he *intimated*..." but the fact is, if the Times and Post report what Davis said, *most* Americans will assume Cohen is confirming Trump-Russia collusion.
11/ And let's be clear: Davis *absolutely* confirmed that what Michael Cohen is now offering Mueller is that Trump *did* collude with Russia under *any definition of that word* you might choose to use. And Davis *can't* unring that bell; that information in the public square now.
12/ The question now is, "Did Cohen already talk to Mueller?" If he already spoke to Mueller—gave even a partial proffer of the information he has—I was right to think there was a sub rosa cooperation agreement lying invisibly behind the favorable plea terms that Cohen got today.
13/ If he *didn't* talk to Mueller already one could *argue* Davis was trying to "tease" the proffer to get Mueller interested—but in fact that's unnecessary, you'd just go to Mueller privately. (And the next step would be Cohen meeting with Mueller's team for *scores of hours*).
14/ And that really is what comes next now: Cohen negotiating his *Russia* knowledge into, he hopes, no prison time. The theory? If Mueller knows I'm already going to prison for about five years, he may run any sentence I get *concurrent* to that one or just let me go altogether.
15/ And that *is* one way to read what Cohen did today: he knew he was getting prison time either way, on the campaign finance stuff *or* on Russia, so he needed to begin the narrative Lanny Davis was pushing on TV tonight and begin it *now*: "I'm here to tell America the truth."
16/ Today's theater—a man pleading guilty with no cooperation deal and accepting prison time—is almost certainly, then, just the appetizer for what Cohen *really* has to offer the government, which is Trump-Russia collusion. This *isn't*—in the end—about Stormy Daniels, that is.
17/ So I would expect Davis to claim up; Cohen to basically disappear; Mueller to *not* leak; and the Mueller *investigation* to take the view of Cohen—who is not a witness anyone will build a case around—it *must*: he can help us get the proof we need, but he can't be our case.
18/ So what changed tonight is we know where the story's headed—that *doesn't* mean we're suddenly going to have more *evidence* than we had, besides knowing what Cohen is telling Mueller behind closed doors in broad strokes. But there's something more important than any of this.
19/ I think I know what "hacking" Davis is referring to—and he's only got it partially right. Cohen can confirm Trump heard from Papadopoulos in April 2016 that Russia had the "missing" Clinton emails. Meaning that he knew Russia was claiming to be hacking. But there's a problem.
20/ The problem is, Russia *never had those particular emails*—they gave *fake* Clinton emails to Trump adviser Joe Schmitz and to Trump campaign agent Peter W. Smith, who said he was working with Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sam Clovis, and Kellyanne Conway. So it's complicated.
21/ What I think Davis is *really* saying is that Trump knew Russia was boasting of being behind cyber-intrusions in April—about 50 days before DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. And he responded to that knowledge by furiously working—through his NatSec team—to find those Clinton emails.
22/ Meanwhile, Trump was almost certainly using any backchannel he could to let Russia know he approved of them getting as much Clinton dirt as possible. But did he know about the *DNC* hacking in advance? Davis intimates that he might have, but realize that's *far* less likely.
23/ Simply put, there was *no reason* for *anyone* associated with the Kremlin to risk their IRA/GRU operations by letting a moron like Trump know what they were going to do in advance. They *did* benefit from dangling Clinton emails before Trump because they knew he'd go for it.
24/ That said, *because* Russia *did* make criminal attempts (particularly on July 28, 2016, just one day after "Russia, if you're listening...") to get Clinton's emails, Cohen *is* implicating Trump in Conspiracy to Commit Computer Crimes—as this feed has been saying for a year.
25/ So is there Trump-Russia collusion? I think that's absolutely clear, and Cohen *will* help Mueller *add* to what he's already been told by Flynn, Gates, and Papadopoulos on that score, which I continue to think (particularly as to the first two of those three men) is a *lot*.
CONCLUSION/ The end of this story was all but confirmed tonight—proof of Trump-Russia collusion in the public square and Trump's impeachment or resignation (though resignation would lead to indictment, so he'll avoid that). The question now? *How long it takes to get there*. /end
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 9510738944
Adam Schiff
The first two members of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter Jr., have been indicted for financial crimes and campaign finance violations in the past two weeks.
Gee, I wonder what they saw in Trump?
by 2012 Countdown » Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:52 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:21 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:51 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:30 am
This Is How It Always Ends for Trump’s Scuzzy Friends
Far from taking a bullet, Cohen shot a proverbial one at the Con Man in Chief, and Manafort may end up doing the same. The train wreck of Trump’s life is finally being exposed.
Is it dangerous to be friends with Donald Trump?
Duh.
If yesterday didn’t prove to you my theory that Everything Trump Touches Dies, I have to presume you were locked somewhere deep in an underground bunker, submerged in a warm-water sensory deprivation tank while tripping balls on some high-quality hallucinogens. You certainly weren’t watching now-wrecked lives of two of Trump’s former confidants, fixers, business associates, wives, girlfriends (compensated and otherwise), and political allies join the long, long line of people who have learned that it’s dangerous to be friends of Donald Trump.
The associative property of Trump’s reality-TV glamour, his crude fame, his various blandishments, and his seductive promises of fame, wealth, and empowerment have long lured in suckers. Don’t be ashamed if you’re one of them; from major international banks to the thousands of people who bought into his low-rent, ersatz “university” multilevel vitamin marketing schemes, shoe-leather prison-meat steaks, jug-wine, assorted dead-on-arrival real estate branding projects, and of course, his objectively ludicrous presidency, Trump is the alpha con man.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018, will stand as one of the more terrible days in a catalog of terrible days in the era of this terrible president. All cons fall in the end, and there are always marks, victims, and collateral damage left holding the fecal end of the stick. Yesterday, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen felt the cruel, hot pain of reality’s hardest bitch slap; both men are going to prison either because of crimes in service to Donald Trump or because their association with him drew their malfeasance into the baleful glare of the law.
Trump watched as his former personal attorney stood in a Manhattan courtroom and began the process that will amount to a beautiful, brutal, and richly deserved betrayal of his former friend and client, the president of the United States. Cohen, as I’ve written before, has the keys to the Trump Kingdom.
He was the keeper of a gigantic pyramid of evidence, experience, and inside-the-Tower knowledge. He’s the sticky-fingered archivist of emails, text messages, documents, contemporaneous notes, recordings, NDAs, contracts, medical records, and who knows what kind of sketchy bank paperwork, used pregnancy test kits, DNA swabs, and Hefty trash bags full of crusty hotel sheets that would glow vividly under UV light.
“All cons fall in the end, and there are always marks, victims, and collateral damage left holding the fecal end of the stick.”
For outside observers, it was a thing of karmic beauty. For years, victims of Trump’s utter lack of loyalty to anything but his monstrous ego, rapacious greed, and whatever caused his last erection felt almost entirely powerless. They were victims of a man with a corporate organization designed from the ground up to fuck over his latest partners, contractors, wives, and hoochies-du-jour.
Now, no matter how many snide tweets Trump throws to further humiliate and demean Cohen, his ex-fixer is in a position to rip the veneer off of Trump’s finances, business practices, personal life, and taxes. Cohen has testified that he acted to violate the law on Trump’s direction and can point to the greasy financial snail-trail of Trump’s payoffs to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, and others. (Over at the professional evangelical headquarters, they’ve laid on a second shift for the mulligan machine.)
No matter how much Trump’s media enablers want to downplay Cohen’s admission of guilt, the facts stand. He is now drawing a direct implication that the president of the United States, while still a candidate for office, used Cohen to illegally silence two of the candidate’s most recent sexual conquests.
The fear emanating from the Trump’s tweets about Paul Manafort is an entirely different flavor. Manafort has direct, personal ties back to the Home Office in Moscow and its oligarch friends. Pasha isn't just a witness to Russia conspiracy and Trump's ties thereof; he’s an architect. The Trump-Manafort relationship goes back well before 2016, and while Manafort may be praying for a presidential pardon, that pardon would leave him forced to testify to things for which the Russians will gladly kill him. Hell, they’d likely kill him pour encourager les autres, so flipping and selling Trump down the river is his best bet, as long as witness protection gets thrown in on the term sheet.
For professional frenemy Omarosa, she’s out of legal jeopardy (despite Trump’s reported wish for Jeff Sessions to arrest her) and grinding away without mercy. She’s going to drag out her revenge in the way only a reality star born in the same table-flipping, cat-fighting culture can; publicly, painfully, and in the hot lights of every TV studio that will have her.
Even those under his own roof aren't displaying the kind of blind, self-sacrificing loyalty Trump irrationally expects. White House Counsel Don McGahn (or, if you're reading this Mr. President, “Councel”), clearly mindful of the Trump death touch, spent 30 hours with special counsel Robert Mueller's team, and something tells me they're not having sleepovers and painting one another's toenails.
Trump’s long, long train wreck of a life is full of broken, victimized, and traumatized people. His loyalty is conditional, transactional, and expedient on a good day. After so many long years of escaping consequences for his failures, his reprobate behavior, and his lack of any sense of honor or honesty, the Con Man in Chief is facing people who can tell his story outside the power of his tweeted and televised narrative. He doesn’t like it, and it’s not going to get easier from here.
The most significant misread of yesterday’s news came from Trump’s media cheer section. They raced for their keyboards, declaring breathlessly that this had nothing to do with Russia, whew! The glorious era of Trump is safe! Witch hunt! Phoney! Mueller and Soros are BFFs! Many of them see themselves as serious people mounting an intellectual defense of Trump, but the gymnastics needed to mount what one wag called “the Titanic only hit part of the iceberg” defense are hilariously weak. Yesterday didn't end the Russia probe, as many of the Foxentariat declared.
The fall of Cohen and Manafort is the first at-bat of the first inning of the first game of the World Series, and Bobby Three Sticks is next in the batting order.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/manafort- ... itter_page
Why Michael Cohen Agreed to Plead Guilty—And Implicate the President
Prosecutors had reams of evidence and a long list of counts, which also could have included the lawyer’s wife
Joe Palazzolo Aug. 22, 2018 9:22 p.m. ET
Michael Cohen had many reasons to play ball last weekend when his legal team sat down to talk to federal prosecutors.
The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office had testimony from Mr. Cohen’s accountant and business partners, along with bank records, tax filings and loan applications that implicated not only Mr. Cohen in potential criminal activity, but also his wife, who filed taxes jointly with her husband. Prosecutors signaled Mr. Cohen would face nearly 20 criminal counts, potentially carrying a lengthy prison sentence and staggering financial penalties.
Adding to the pressure, David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, provided prosecutors with details about payments Mr. Cohen arranged with women who alleged sexual encounters with President Trump, including Mr. Trump’s knowledge of the deals.
This account of how Mr. Cohen went from a pugnacious defender of the president to turning on Mr. Trump is based on details provided by people close to Mr. Cohen and others briefed on the discussions with prosecutors.
For weeks, the president had been distancing himself from Mr. Cohen, including by stopping paying his longtime attorney’s legal fees, making clear amid the pressure that he was on his own.
Under oath on Tuesday, before a packed courtroom, Mr. Cohen created a spectacular moment without parallel in American history when he confessed to two crimes that he said he committed at the behest of the man who would become president.
Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes, including tax evasion and making false statements to a bank, capping a monthslong investigation into his business dealings and work as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. For the president, it opens up a perilous new legal front.
In a courtroom drawing, Michael Cohen stands to plead guilty in federal court in New York on Tuesday.
In a courtroom drawing, Michael Cohen stands to plead guilty in federal court in New York on Tuesday. Photo: Elizabeth Williams/Associated Press
Mr. Cohen in court said Mr. Trump directed him to arrange payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who alleged they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. The payments violated caps on campaign contributions and a ban on corporate contributions, prosecutors said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump denied he directed Mr. Cohen to buy the women’s silence. Contradicting earlier statements, the president said he became aware of the payments to the women “later on” and said Mr. Cohen was reimbursed from his personal funds, not his 2016 campaign coffers.
The investigation is continuing, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Although the plea deal doesn’t require Mr. Cohen’s cooperation, it leaves the door open for him to talk with both the Southern District of New York and special counsel Robert Mueller. The court restricted Mr. Cohen’s travel to New York City; Chicago, where he owns taxi medallions; South Florida, where his parents live; and Washington, D.C., where the special counsel is based.
The deal doesn’t preclude further prosecutions, including other charges against Mr. Cohen.
Robert Khuzami, deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, spoke to the press on Tuesday after Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors built their case partly by using materials seized in April 9 raids of Mr. Cohen’s home, office and hotel, including recordings and other items that provided evidence of campaign-finance violations.
Investigators quickly zeroed in on Mr. Cohen’s relationship with American Media, including its role brokering deals on behalf of Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker had been an open supporter of Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Prosecutors say Mr. Pecker offered to help keep quiet negative stories about Mr. Trump that might come to the National Enquirer, a practice in the business known as “catch and kill.”
American Media executives were involved in both hush-money deals that formed the basis of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign-finance violations, prosecutors said on Tuesday. One was a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford—a former porn star who goes professionally by Stormy Daniels—as part of an agreement to keep her from publicly discussing an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was first reported by The Wall Street Journal in January.
The second was a $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her exclusive story of an alleged extramarital affair with Mr. Trump, a story that was purchased by American Media in August 2016 at Mr. Cohen’s urging, and then never published. The payment was first reported by the Journal in November 2016.
On April 5, days before the raids, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One he didn’t know about the payment to Ms. Clifford, and referred questions about the matter to Mr. Cohen. “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Mr. Trump said. “Michael is my attorney.”
Mr. Cohen, who that night was staying aboard the yacht of Trump donor Franklin Haney, which was docked in Miami, grew irate on the ship soon after Mr. Trump made his remarks distancing himself from the Clifford payment, according to a person familiar with the episode. Mr. Cohen was swearing loudly as others on the boat were sipping their drinks, the person said.
The search warrant executed on April 9 sought materials and information related to a wide range of communications, including ones related to the payments to Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal. At the same time, investigators subpoenaed Mr. Pecker, American Media and the Trump Organization, Mr. Trump’s business.
Prosecutors had reason to be concerned that without raiding Mr. Cohen’s office, “records could have been deleted without record and without recourse for law enforcement,” according to a court filing.
Prosecutors in the Southern District said the investigation into Mr. Cohen was, in part, a referral from the special counsel’s office. It isn’t clear when the referral took place, or if the office was already investigating Mr. Cohen when the referral came through.
The special counsel’s office was examining Mr. Cohen’s finances since at least October 2017, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Prior to the raids, investigators had already obtained covert search warrants on multiple email accounts used by Mr. Cohen, prosecutors said in a court filing. Early this year, they also had subpoenaed Mr. Cohen’s former accountant, Jeffrey A. Getzel, who handled Mr. Cohen’s personal and business tax returns.
In May, Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Ms. Clifford, released a memo detailing payments made to Mr. Cohen from companies including AT&T Inc. and Novartis AG, as well as an investment firm linked to a Russian oligarch. Federal agents investigated whether Mr. Cohen lobbied Trump administration officials on the companies’ behalf without registering as a lobbyist, the Journal previously reported.
Initially, Mr. Cohen seemed unlikely to turn on the president. Although their relationship was at times turbulent, Mr. Trump appreciated Mr. Cohen’s absolute loyalty. On the day of the raids, Mr. Trump called the move a “disgrace” and a “witch hunt.”
Soon after the April raids, Mr. Cohen’s relationship with Mr. Trump began to deteriorate.
The estrangement began over legal bills, said a person who has spoken with Mr. Cohen about the matter. The Trump family covered part of Mr. Cohen’s legal fees after the raids, but then stopped paying.
Mr. Cohen felt exposed. Public comments by Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, put distance between the president and Mr. Cohen and further alienated the attorney, the person said.
President Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on April 5.
President Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on April 5. Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Mr. Cohen told associates and friends he felt Mr. Trump didn’t have his back and vented that the president hadn’t personally offered to pay his legal bills in the Manhattan investigation, which he said were “bankrupting” him.
Mr. Cohen’s troubles increased in May, when Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, a New York City taxi mogul who managed taxi medallions owned by Mr. Cohen and his relatives, pleaded guilty to state criminal tax fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their probe of Mr. Cohen.
By then, prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service had focused on Mr. Cohen’s personal income taxes. In conversations with a potential witness in June and July, investigators asked “very pointed” questions about various tax filings, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
“They knew what they wanted, they knew what they had, and they went after it,” the person said.
In late June, Mr. Cohen openly broke with Mr. Trump.
A personal turning point for Mr. Cohen was a conversation with his father, Maurice Cohen, a Holocaust survivor.
Mr. Cohen’s father urged him not to protect the president, saying he didn’t survive the Holocaust to have his name sullied by Mr. Trump, according to a person who was told about the conversation. The elder Mr. Cohen couldn’t be reached for comment.
On June 20, Mr. Cohen stepped down from his position as the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman and tweeted his first public criticism of his former boss: “As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart wrenching.” The tweet no longer appears on Mr. Cohen’s Twitter account.
By then, Mr. Cohen had hired New York lawyer Guy Petrillo to represent him in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s probe. The choice of Mr. Petrillo, who had once served as the chief of the office’s criminal division, was seen as a sign that Mr. Cohen hoped to cooperate. Mr. Petrillo began to signal this intent to prosecutors.
Shortly after Mr. Petrillo’s hiring, Mr. Cohen told ABC News in an interview that his first loyalty was to his family and country, not to the president.
In July, a recording became public that Mr. Cohen surreptitiously made of a conversation he had with Mr. Trump in September 2016 about buying the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story. The president has denied the affair.
The president’s legal team had waived attorney-client privilege on the recording, which had been seized in the April 9 raids.
The week of the recording’s release, the investigation appeared to accelerate, people familiar with the investigation said.
Federal prosecutors faced an early September deadline to charge Mr. Cohen. After that, they would have to wait until after the midterm elections, under Department of Justice guidelines, or risk criticism of potentially affecting the election’s outcome. They had follow-up witness interviews scheduled as recently as this week, a person familiar with the investigation said, but canceled them as the plea agreement came together over the weekend.
Given the Justice Department’s policy of not indicting sitting presidents, a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen and his public implication of Mr. Trump were among the strongest outcomes prosecutors could have hoped for, according to former federal prosecutors. For prosecutors, the guilty plea meant they could avoid a contentious trial and free up resources to pursue other investigations.
On Monday, Manhattan federal prosecutors filed a court document, in a case then labeled as U.S. v. John Doe, indicating a guilty plea was forthcoming.
By Tuesday night, hours after Mr. Cohen implicated Mr. Trump in a possible crime, one of Mr. Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny Davis, appeared on cable news shows to say Mr. Cohen wouldn’t accept a pardon from Mr. Trump and “is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-michae ... 1534987372
Washington Is Turning Into Moscow
What upsets the Putin regime isn’t research into its military strength, but anything exploring its illicit finances. Something similar might now be said of the White House.
Ben Judah is a contributing writer at POLITICO and the author of This Is London and Fragile Empire.
Aug 22, 2018
A storm builds over the White House
Leah Millis / Reuters
Last week, a friend called to say he was worried. The air conditioning was running when he came home. He was sure he’d turned it off. Absolutely positive. Had someone—some spook—broken in? That was when I knew Washington, D.C., had turned into Moscow.
I had the same feeling on Tuesday morning when The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that my think-tank project at the Hudson Institute had been targeted by Russian military intelligence. This again.
In 2014, I stopped going to Moscow. It felt like the right thing to do. Twice over the past two years, I had been taken in for questioning by the FSB. Once, in remote Tuva, I was hauled in off the side of the road and, as my notebook was photocopied and every file was downloaded from my laptop, I was made to write a “declaration of my activities.”
A few months later, I arrived in Birobidzhan. For years, I had dreamed of visiting the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, the name still attached to the mosquito-infested marshlands set aside by Stalin for Jewish settlement in Siberia as an alternative to Zionism. But before I could find any of the handful of Jews there was a knock on my hotel-room door. It was two agents from the FSB.
Both encounters lasted only a few hours. There was nothing special, nothing unprecedented, about them. Both times, the agents were almost courteous. But still, the encounters rattled me. I was a think-tank researcher with an interest in corruption, not military secrets. What did the FSB have to do with me?
But what made me decide not to go back to Moscow was when friends started to accuse one another of being involved with the Russian security services. It was too depressing and too murky. I wanted something new.
In 2015, I started visiting Washington, D.C. I began working with the newly launched Kleptocracy Initiative at the Hudson Institute on Pennsylvania Avenue. After years in and out of Moscow, the languid city on the Potomac felt like a breath of fresh air. I could call a senator’s office for a quote and someone would actually answer. Even better: I could meet senior officials who were actually charged with running policy.
It felt so different from Moscow, where if ever I had the chance to visit the Foreign Ministry or speak with Russian lawmakers, we would always have wonderful conversations, but all too often they felt irrelevant. With a nod and wink they would practically admit the obvious. The real power wasn’t there—it wasn’t even in the institutions with grand imposing names like the Federation Council—but in the hands of oligarchs, propagandists, and the president’s friends.
Power had long ago slipped out of formal institutions in Moscow. What mattered most was an unspoken fact: The president’s friends’ financial interests shaped almost everything. I became sick of government officials repeating the lines they parroted from the hate-filled nightly opinion shows on state TV. What I really wanted was to move to America, where it was all so different.
Then Donald Trump was elected president. I moved a few months later and started noticing things changing almost immediately. People I knew began having dreams (actual dreams) about Trump, something that started with Putin in Moscow a long time ago. Everything that felt so distinctively D.C. about how people talked began to fade. All the earnest discussion about policy that I had so enjoyed was replaced by opaque rumors and guesswork about the influence of oligarchs, the ructions of the intelligence services, and the intentions of “the family.” I shuddered as, when discussing politics, people started to speak about “him” and “what he wants” without ever needing to name him. Just like Moscow.
I set to work on my new project at the Hudson Institute doing open-source research on corruption. But what had long been my fringe interest on the nexus of money laundering through luxury real estate, shell companies, and Russian oligarchs no longer felt so eccentric as Paul Manafort was arrested and Robert Mueller started digging into Ukrainian money trails.
Something strange was happening. Offline, living in a Whole Foods–eating, Netflix-watching bubble off Dupont Circle, Washington felt like one of the softest places in the world. Moscow, goodbye. But online, and on TV, it was quite another matter.
I had to pinch myself watching Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson on Fox News. These men, railing furiously against plots and traitors, were eerily reminiscent of the propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov on Channel One Russia.
But that was not all. The mounting hysteria about foreign influence. The professional trolls and Twitter accounts laying blame on MI6. I felt like I had seen it all before. But nothing more so than the fact that smart people kept telling me power was measured here by proximity to the president, not by the office you held.
So I wasn’t surprised when my computer was hacked in a custom-made attack launched from a Russian-speaking country. Nor was I shocked when Microsoft revealed that, once I had finished my research into how kleptocrats move around their money, my project had been targeted by hackers run by Russian intelligence who cloned a website in order to phish the accounts of anyone interested in our work.
But this time I didn’t stop to think Why me? It was now perfectly clear. What upsets the current regime in Moscow is not what used to infuriate the old Soviet authorities—research into its military strength—but anything exploring its illicit finances. Something similar might now be said of the current White House.
Looking back on it, I realize that every story I ever filed from Russia was not just a politics story, or a crime story, or a spy story—but almost always, on some level, also a corruption story.
That’s one final, spooky way that Washington now feels just like Moscow.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... rs/568105/
Michael Cohen paid a mysterious tech company $50,000 'in connection with' Trump's campaign
Christina Wilkie18 Hours Ago | 02:44
Michael Cohen, attorney for The Trump Organization, arrives at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 17, 2017.
Stephanie Keith | Reuters
President Donald Trump's longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments during the summer and fall of 2016 to silence two women who claimed they'd had sexual relationships with the married candidate.
But silence is not all that Cohen appears to have purchased in order to help his boss win the White House.
Buried in the legal documents released Tuesday as part of Cohen's guilty plea on eight felony counts, there was a new, previously unreported payment Cohen made in 2016 to help Trump: $50,000 for work that prosecutors say Cohen "solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign."
The documents do not identify which tech company Cohen paid the money to, or what, exactly, the company did for him. But the mere existence of the previously unknown payment suggests that Cohen may have been doing more for Trump, and for the Trump campaign, than simply paying off women.
Furthermore, the way that Cohen reported the $50,000 expense to the Trump Organization in January 2017 suggests the money may not have been paid out through traditional financial channels.
According to prosecutors, Cohen presented Trump executives with bank records for several of the expenses he incurred on Trump's behalf. But for his $50,000 payment to a tech company, Cohen provided no paperwork, just a handwritten sum at the top of one of the other bank documents.
The Trump Organization would later say that the $50,000 was a "payment for tech services." However, prosecutors say the $50,000 "was in fact related to work Cohen had solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign."
A spokesman for the Trump Organization did not respond to questions from CNBC Wednesday about the payment. Trump's campaign, likewise, did not answer questions about whether it knew Cohen had paid a tech company $50,000 to aid in Trump's election bid.
Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, also did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the money, and the White House did not respond to questions about whether the president was aware that Cohen was paying a tech company for election help.
It's not clear exactly when Cohen spent the money, only that it was during the campaign. And without knowing precisely what it was for, it's difficult to tell whether Cohen violated the law by not reporting it as a campaign expense.
The Trump campaign in 2016 had a savvy digital operation run by a relatively unknown online marketing specialist named Brad Parscale. Today, Parscale holds the top job on Trump's 2020 campaign team.
Cohen is not believed to have played any part in the official digital operations of the Trump 2016 campaign, nor did Cohen ever have a formal staff position on the campaign itself.
All of which only deepens the mystery of exactly what tech services Cohen was buying to help Trump's campaign.
In the 24 hours since Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday, Davis, his lawyer, has repeatedly said that his client knows things that would be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the Russian attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Central to that investigation is the question of whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to sway the election in Trump's favor.
Cohen "is happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows, not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election … but also, knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on," Davis said during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Tuesday night.
Despite Davis' cryptic clues, there is nothing so far to indicate that the $50,000 in services that Cohen bought from the anonymous tech company were in any way related to the Russian cyber crimes and theft of emails that damaged Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
It is also unclear whether the special counsel has interviewed Cohen yet. A Mueller spokesman declined to comment.
-- CNBC's Dan Mangan contributed to this report
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/22/michael ... paign.html
Paul Manafort went to Kyrgyzstan to 'strengthen Russia's position'
Andrew RothWed 22 Aug 2018 06.47 EDT
Investigation claims former Trump campaign chair promoted Russian interests
Donald Trump – latest news
Paul Manafort, whose work as a political consultant in Russia and Ukraine led to his conviction in a Virginia courtroom on Wednesday, worked more extensively in the former Soviet Union than was previously reported, a new investigation has claimed.
According to a report published on Wednesday by the new investigative media outlet Project, Manafort and his fixer Konstantin Kilimnik were sent in 2005 to the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, where the two promoted Russian interests, including the closure of the US military base Manas.
According to the article, their travel was funded by a Russian oligarch who was later sanctioned by the US over meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections.
“I heard about Kyrgyzstan – they went there to strengthen Russia’s position,” a former member of Manafort’s team from Ukraine said in the article, which was obtained by the Guardian before its release. A colleague of Kilimnik confirmed to Project that the two men worked there.
Kilimnik worked in the country for the then new president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who had come to power following an uprising dubbed the Tulip revolution. It would mark the second time Manafort appeared in a post-Soviet country shortly after a “coloured revolution”, as the uprisings sparked by contested elections which Moscow has blamed on malign US influence are known.
While Manafort’s work in the country has not previously been reported, leaked documents had indicated he later wired money that he received from a Ukrainian political party to offshore accounts he held in Kyrgyzstan.
Project’s article was co-written by investigative journalists Maria Zholobova and Roman Badanin. The latter is a former editor of the news website RBC who left amid a conflict with management over the paper’s investigative reporting, including a profile of Sergei Roldugin, the Vladimir Putin confidant whose links to a money trail of billions was revealed in the Panama Papers, and a story revealing the identity of Putin’s daughter.
The article tracks down Kilimnik, a Russian political operative who served as Manafort’s fixer for close to a decade while the former Trump campaign chairman worked in Ukraine.
The piece also asserts that Kilimnik received envelopes containing cash and air tickets for his and Manafort’s travel from the offices of a company owned by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch close to Putin who was recently sanctioned by the US. The Treasury department’s top sanctions official said on Tuesday that the US had made Deripaska’s business “radioactive”.
Representatives of Deripaska denied to Project that he or the company, BasEl, had ever financed Kilimnik. The “private investment relations of Deripaska and Manafort, whose existence is not disputed, have never been aimed at achieving political goals”, a Deripaska representative told Project. The Guardian could not independently confirm the article’s conclusions.
While Kilimnik could often be found in Kiev at the Hyatt Regency lobby, he has largely disappeared since leaving for Russia. Project tracked the political fixer to a wealthy gated neighbourhood just north-west of Moscow, where the graduate of the Military University of the Russian Ministry of Defense lives with his wife and shuns publicity.
He has also been famously conscious of avoiding having his image taken, but the report included several new photographs of Kilimnik.
US officials have speculated about Kilimnik’s loyalties, and an indictment released by Robert Mueller alleged he had links to Russian intelligence. He has denied that, and Manafort has said he was promoting western values in places such as Ukraine. The Project report suggested Kilimnik was acting in the interests of his native country, Russia.
“He is absolutely a Soviet man, a patriot,” one of Kilimnik’s friends said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... are_btn_tw
by seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 23, 2018 1:01 pm
\emptywheel
Ut oh. DOJ immunized Donald Trump's Pecker.
“Holy Shit, I Thought Pecker Would Be the Last One to Turn”: Trump’s National Enquirer Allies Are the Latest to Defect
David Pecker and Dylan Howard corroborated Michael Cohen’s account implicating the president in a federal crime. And Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis says there are more revelations to come.
Gabriel ShermanAugust 23, 2018 11:30 am
Trumpworld
David Pecker in New York on April 8, 2015.
By Angela Pham/BFA/REX/Shutterstock.
As Robert Mueller’s siege closes in on Donald Trump, the president has been left to wonder which of his staff and closest allies will, after all, stay loyal. On Tuesday, Michael Cohen completed his operatic turn against his former boss when he stood in federal court and pleaded guilty to eight felonies that included making hush-money payments at Trump’s direction to women Trump allegedly had sex with. The admission effectively made Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal crime.
Cohen’s stunning admission came just days after The New York Times reported that White House counsel Don McGahn provided 30 hours of testimony to Mueller’s investigators. McGahn’s extensive cooperation with Mueller rattled the West Wing to the core at a time when aides were struggling to contain the fallout from former Apprentice star Omarosa Manigault Newman’s scathing White House memoir.
And now Trump’s most powerful media ally next to Fox News has broken with him. According to two sources briefed on the Cohen investigation, prosecutors granted immunity to David Pecker, chairman of The National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., and A.M.I.’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, so they would describe Trump’s involvement in Cohen’s payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal during the 2016 campaign. The Wall Street Journal first reported Pecker’s cooperation on Wednesday night. (Pecker and Howard did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.)
Pecker’s apparent decision to corroborate Cohen’s account, and implicate Trump in a federal crime, is another vivid example of how isolated Trump is becoming as the walls close in and his former friends look for ways out. “Holy shit, I thought Pecker would be the last one to turn,” a Trump friend told me when I brought up the news. Trump and Pecker have been close for years. According to the Trump friend, Pecker regularly flew on Trump’s plane from New York to Florida. In July 2013, Trump tweeted that Pecker should become C.E.O. of Time magazine. “He’d make it exciting and win awards!”
During the 2016 campaign, Pecker provided invaluable media support to Trump by regularly attacking his Republican rivals and Hillary Clinton. At times, it seemed like the Enquirer operated as a de-facto arm of the campaign. In October 2015, I reported that Trump aides were a source for an Enquirer article exposing Ben Carson’s malpractice lawsuits (“Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!”). Pecker denied it at the time. In June, The Washington Post reported that the Enquirer routinely sent stories to Trump to review prior to publication. (The Enquirer denied that as well.) During the transition, rumors circulated that Trump was considering Pecker for a prime ambassadorship. Last summer, Pecker reportedly brought an adviser to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman to meet Trump in the Oval Office to help him expand A.M.I.’s business.
But that was before federal prosecutors investigating Cohen subpoenaed A.M.I. Pecker’s friendship with Trump now seems to be over. According to a source close to A.M.I., Pecker and Trump haven’t spoken in roughly eight months. Howard remains particularly angry at Trump, two people close to Howard told me. “There is no love lost,” one person familiar with Howard’s thinking said. Another person said Howard “hates Trump” and feels “used and abused by him.”
It’s likely that more Trump relationships will be stress-tested in the weeks to come as Trump’s legal peril escalates. Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis has given a series of cable-news interviews intimating that Cohen has valuable and damaging information on Trump to share with Mueller—including the claim that Trump had foreknowledge of Russia’s hacking of Clinton’s e-mails. One source close to Cohen told me Cohen wants to tell Mueller that Trump discussed the release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails during the weekend when the Access Hollywood "grab ’em by the pussy” tape dominated the news cycle.
Trump, meanwhile, is struggling to develop a strategy to push back on the damaging headlines. He largely avoided the topic of Cohen and Paul Manafort during his relatively subdued rally on Tuesday night in West Virginia. On Wednesday, he gave a meandering interview to Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt, in which he suggested the stock market might crash were he to be impeached. One source close to the White House said Trump is considering announcing he’s revoked additional security clearances to create a new story line. The source added that Trump is even considering taking clearances from former members of his administration, including former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and secretary of state Rex Tillerson.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08 ... hael-cohen
National Enquirer boss David Pecker gets federal immunity in Michael Cohen case
Kevin Breuninger
President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, leaves the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Court House in lower Manhattan, New York City, August 21, 2018.
The chairman of the company that publishes the National Enquirer was granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of an investigation into President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, NBC News reported Thursday.
The immunity deal was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.
The Journal had reported earlier Thursday that American Media Inc. Chairman David Pecker gave prosecutors details about the president's knowledge of payments Cohen made to women alleging affairs with Trump.
Prosecutors declined CNBC's request for comment on the Journal's report. A spokesman for American Media did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.
Details of the agreement were not immediately known. But the immunity deal could hold significant consequences for Trump, as Pecker could have as much damaging information about the president as anyone in Trump's orbit.
He and Trump have been friends since the 1990s, and he has reportedly used his media holdings to shield the president since he was a New York real estate developer and reality television star.
That includes a reported effort during the 2016 election to stifle Playboy model Karen McDougal's allegations of an affair with Trump.
Pecker was subpoenaed by federal investigators in April, as were his company and the Trump Organization. The Journal said the subpoenas were served at the same time the FBI raided Cohen's office and residences, seizing electronics, recordings and thousands of documents.
Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight criminal charges, including tax fraud and campaign finance violations, and could face years in prison. The Journal reported that he struck a plea deal shortly after federal prosecutors signaled he could face as many as 20 criminal counts.
In a courtroom statement, Cohen said, without mentioning the president by name, that Trump directed him to arrange the payments to two women "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."
The hush-money deals, which were both made in the run-up to the November 2016 presidential election, formed the foundation of the campaign finance crimes Cohen pleaded guilty to.
But Trump, in a Fox News interview after Cohen's plea, denied knowing about Cohen's payments until "later on."
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on the Journal's report.
Both Cohen and American Media, or AMI, were involved in two payments made to women who say they had sex with Trump years before he became president, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Though they only named Cohen explicitly, the Justice Department said Tuesday that the "chairman" of "a media company that owns, among other things, a popular tabloid magazine" put Cohen in touch with one of the women, who in October 2016 was paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair.
That woman, porn star Stormy Daniels, is suing Trump and Cohen in California to void the hush-money agreement and speak freely about the alleged tryst.
A spokesman for AMI did not immediately respond to a phone message left by CNBC.
The other woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, was paid $150,000 in August 2016 by AMI for exclusive rights to her own story about an alleged dalliance with Trump. In a practice known within the industry as "catch and kill," the story was never published, allegedly to protect Trump from bad publicity on the eve of the election.
McDougal reached a settlement agreement in her lawsuit against AMI in April, freeing her from the hush deal.
Cohen had urged one of the publisher's editors to buy — and bury — McDougal's story, promising that the company would be reimbursed, prosecutors said.
The White House has denied Trump had sex with the two women.
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