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Fri, 25 Jan 2019 06:08:18 -0500
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| Palmer Report: Here comes the downfall of Jared Kushner | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:30:25 -0500
This afternoon, Palmer Report said it was a big deal that new House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings was launching an investigation into Jared Kushner’s controversial security clearance, because it would prompt the media to dig in and expose the international scandals and entanglements that made it difficult for Kushner to get his clearance to begin with. We knew it was coming; we just didn’t know it was coming this soon.
This evening, NBC News reported ugly new details about how Jared Kushner failed an FBI background check, prompting top White House officials to deny him security clearance, only for their decision to be overruled by someone further up the chain. Why does this matter? Obviously, someone – whether it be Kushner himself or his father in law Donald Trump – stepped in and forced an inappropriate decision to be made.
This is a massive scandal in its own right. Whoever meddled in the process is potentially guilty of a felony, and is absolutely guilty of corruption on the highest level. You can bet we’re about to soon learn who gave the order. We also now know what’s long been widely assumed: the FBI flagged Jared Kushner as a security risk, and so did White House officials.
Even as the media keeps digging into this, we’re about to see the House Oversight Committee hold public televised hearings into why Jared Kushner was ultimately given security clearance, why he was denied in the first place, and which foreign governments he’s financially and politically loyal to. Here comes the downfall of Jared Kushner.
•••••
The post Here comes the downfall of Jared Kushner appeared first on Palmer Report.
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Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:26:38 -0500
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner struggled for more than a year-and-a-half to get security clearancebefore it was abruptly announced last spring that he had finally been given a pass.
However, now House Democrats say they plan to investigate just what was holding up Kushner’s security clearance for so long — and what happened that finally tipped the scales and granted him full clearance.
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“The Committee on Oversight and Reform is launching an in-depth investigation of the security clearance process at the White House and Transition Team in response to grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a letter to the White House obtained by NBC News.
Kushner gained security clearance last year despite the fact that he had “omitted” hundreds of contacts with foreign officials in his initial security clearance application forms.
When Kushner first filed his SF-86 form shortly after President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, it listed precisely zero contacts with foreign officials. After it became clear that Kushner had actually met with many foreign officials during the presidential campaign, however, he amended his form to reflect more than 100 contacts.
Kushner subsequently amended the form once again after it was revealed that he met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had met with him based on the promise that she had damaging information on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Charles Phalen, the director of the National Background Investigations Bureau, told lawmakers at a House subcommittee oversight hearing held in 2017 that he had “never seen that level of mistakes” on a security clearance application than what he had seen from Kushner’s original SF-86.
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Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:25:35 -0500
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Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:25:04 -0500
Officials rejected Jared Kushner for top secret security clearance, but ...
<a href="http://NBCNews.com" rel="nofollow">NBCNews.com</a>-4 hours ago
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner's application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an ...
Trump appointee 'overruled' rejection of Jared Kushner for top security ...
The Guardian-34 minutes ago House Democrats plan to investigate what held up Jared Kushner's ...
Salon-Jan 23, 2019
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner struggled for more than a year-and-a-half to get security clearancebefore it was abruptly announced last ...
Security clearance info on Jared Kushner, John Bolton and Michael ...
International-USA TODAY-Jan 23, 2019
Democrats open investigation of White House security clearance ...
Opinion-Washington Post-Jan 23, 2019
House Democrats probe how Jared Kushner got security clearance
International-<a href="http://NBCNews.com" rel="nofollow">NBCNews.com</a>-Jan 23, 2019 White House official overruled rejection of Jared Kushner's security ...
MarketWatch-1 hour ago
White House specialists who oversee security clearances rejected Jared Kushner's application for top-secret clearance due to concerns he ...
 House Oversight to investigate White House security clearances
Axios-Jan 23, 2019
House Oversight to investigate White House security clearances ... and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who was granted a full clearance after a ...
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| White House official overruled rejection of Jared Kushner's security clearance: report - MarketWatch | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:24:08 -0500
White House specialists who oversee security clearances rejected Jared Kushner's application for top-secret clearance due to concerns he could be compromised by foreign influence, but were overruled by a supervisor, NBC News reported Thursday night. NBC News reported a White House personnel supervisor, Carl Kline, overruled at least 30 other rejected security-clearance applications within the Trump administration in 2017 -- an unprecedented number. Kushner's FBI background check reportedly looked into his family business, foreign contacts and meetings during the campaign, among other things. Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a top adviser. While Kushner ultimately received top-secret clearance, after Kline intervened Kushner attempted to get even higher-level clearance, NBC News said -- SCI, or "sensitive compartmented information." SCI gives access to the nation's most sensitive secrets and intelligence gathering, and the CIA refused to approve his application, with one official reportedly asking how Kushner even got top-secret clearance. NBC News said Kushner still does not have access to SCI-level intelligence, unless Trump chooses to override it and share material with him. The White House refused comment, NBC News said. In July, the Washington Post first reported that Kushner still lacked the highest security clearance.
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| White House official overruled rejection of Jared Kushner's security clearance: report - MarketWatch | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:22:21 -0500
White House official overruled rejection of Jared Kushner's security clearance: report MarketWatch
White House specialists who oversee security clearances rejected Jared Kushner's application for top-secret clearance due to concerns he could be ...
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| Pentagon to review Amazon employee’s influence over $10 billion government contract | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 23:42:31 -0500
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| FBI lawyer’s dual hats raise questions in Russia probe | TheHill - The Hill | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 23:11:00 -0500
FBI lawyer’s dual hats raise questions in Russia probe | TheHill The Hill
James Baker provided independent legal review of a FISA warrant and forwarded politically connected evidence to the FBI investigative team.
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| Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices: Today's Headlines and Commentary | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:24:48 -0500
After Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself president, the U.S. recognized him as the country’s legitimate leader while Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro severed diplomatic ties with Washington, the New York Times reports. Following the U.S. recognition of Guaidó’s presidency, other countries followed suit, including Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and other Central and South American states.
President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen delayed his scheduled February 7th testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, referencing threats against his family from President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, according to the Wall Street Journal. Following the postponement of his House testimony, Cohen was subpoenaed to privately testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 12th, details the Journal.
After a tit-for-tat exchange on Wednesday in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rescinded the invitation for Trump to deliver the State of the Union on January 29th, Trump announced he will wait until the government shutdown ends to give the address, the BBC reports.
With the shutdown entering its 34th day, the Senate voted on two competing bills—one Republican, which included border wall funding, and one Democratic, which did not—to reopen the government, according to the Washington Post. Both bills failed to garner enough support to pass the Senate.
Following Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s accusations that Paul Manafort lied after entering a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, Manafort’s defense team argued their client merely provided inconsistent recollection of facts, NBC News details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a joint Russian-Turkish plan to stabilize Idlib province in Syria following recent territorial gains made there by the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, Reutersreports.
Four Republican senators proposed sending captured Islamic State fighters to Guantánamo Bay, citing less-secure detention centers in Syria, according to the Miami Herald.
An American soldier, Staff Sgt. Joshua Z. Beale, died as a result of injuries sustained in combat operations on Tuesday in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan, the Defense Department announced.
ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare
Andrew Miller analyzed the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
On the Cyberlaw Podcast, Stewart Baker spoke with data scientist Jeff Jonas; the episode also included discussions on biometric phone security and the sunset of FISA provisions.
Nate Cardozo and Seth Schoen unpacked the recent GCHQ proposal regarding surveillance of encrypted platforms.
Rachel Brown and Preston Lim explored U.S. scrutiny of Chinese telecoms in their most recent roundup of U.S.-China technology policy news.
Lev Sugarman shared a report by the FBI Agents Association describing the effects of the partial government shutdown on FBI operations and personnel.
Brenna Gautam and Sarah Grant examined last week’s developments in the military commission trying al-Qaeda commander Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.
Jen Patja Howell shared the most recent edition of the Rational Security podcast in which Susan Hennessey, Benjamin Wittes, Tamara Cofman Wittes and Shane Harris discuss the BuzzFeed reporting on President Trump’s alleged direction to Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, among other topics.
Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.
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| Politics: Witness in special counsel probe, former Stone associate, collected payments from Infowars through job Stone arranged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:10:48 -0500
Investigators have asked questions about payments from the website to author Jerome Corsi, according to a person familiar with the special counsel investigation.    | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| When it comes to Russia, maybe voters do care about facts - SFGate | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:07:02 -0500
When it comes to Russia, maybe voters do care about facts SFGate
President Donald Trump for years has claimed to have had no dealings with Russia, nothing to do with Russia, no business whatsoever with Russia. According ...
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| Jerome Corsi collected payments from Infowars through job Roger Stone arranged - The Washington Post | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:03:38 -0500
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| Poll: More Americans believe Mueller probe justified | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 13:35:43 -0500
(CNN) - More Americans believe special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is justified than politically motivated, according to a CBS News poll released Wednesday, the first time the survey has found more Americans hold that belief.
According to the poll, the percentage of Americans who believe the investigation is justified stands at 50% while 45% believe it is politically motivated. The numbers represent a change from where they stood in late November, when CBS found that 46% of Americans thought the investigation was justified and 51% believed it was politically motivated.
Helping drive the numbers is an increase among Democrats who now say the investigation is justified. In the January poll, CBS found that 84% of Democrats view the probe that way, up from 74% in November. Among independents, 46% told CBS that they thought the investigation was justified, up from 44% in November, though the number of those who believed the investigation was politically motivated -- 52% in November, 47% in January -- tightened.
Meanwhile, the views among Republicans has stayed consistent: a mere 14% of Republicans viewed the investigation as justified in CBS's new poll.
In the period between CBS's two polls, Mueller's investigation has produced a wave of bombshell headlines, from Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, admitting he lied to Congress about a Moscow project to a New York Times report that the FBI opened an investigation into whether Trump was working on Russia's behalf to the "extraordinary lengths" to which Trump went to keep his administration in the dark about his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Last week, Mueller's office publicly disputed an explosive BuzzFeed report that suggested Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, earning plaudits from Trump himself about Mueller's decision to shoot down a story that was potentially highly damaging to him.
The CBS News poll was conducted by telephone between January 18 and 21 and was taken among a random sample of 1,102 adults nationwide. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cellphones and employed random digit dial methodology. The margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 13:28:45 -0500
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 13:16:26 -0500
On May 1, 2003, the day President George W. Bush landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in front of the massive “Mission Accomplished” sign, I was in Baghdad performing what had become a daily ritual. I went to a gate on the side of the Republican Palace, in the Green Zone, where an American soldier was receiving, one by one, a long line of Iraqis who came with questions and complaints. I remember a man complaining that his house had been run over by a tank. There was a woman who had been a government employee and wanted to know about her salary. The soldier had a form he was supposed to fill out with each person’s request and that person’s contact information. I stood there as the man talked to each person and, each time, said, “Phone number?” And each person would answer some version of “The phone system of Iraq has been destroyed and doesn’t work.” Then the soldier would turn to the next person, write down the person’s question or complaint, and then ask, “Phone number?”
I arrived in Baghdad on April 12th of that year, a few days after Saddam’s statue at Firdos Square had been destroyed. There were a couple of weeks of uncertainty as reporters and Iraqis tried to gauge who was in charge of the country and what the general plan was. There was no electricity, no police, no phones, no courts, no schools. More than half of Iraqis worked for the government, and there wasno government, no Army, and so no salaries for most of the country. At first, it seemed possible that the Americans simply needed a bit of time to communicate the new rules. By the end of April, though, it was clear: there was no plan, no new order. Iraq was anarchic.
We journalists were able to use generators and satellite dishes to access outside information, and what we saw was absurd. Americans seemed convinced things were going well in Iraq. The war—and the President who launched it—were seen favorably by seventy per cent of Americans. Then came these pictures of a President touting “Mission Accomplished”—the choice of words that President Trump used in a tweet on Saturday, the morning after he ordered an air strike on Syria. On the ground, we were not prophets or political geniuses. We were sentient adults who were able to see the clear, obvious truth in front of us. The path of Iraq would be decided by those who thrived in chaos.
I had a similar feeling in December, 2007. I came late to the financial crisis. I had spent much of 2006 and 2007 naïvely swatting away warnings from my friends and sources who told me of impending disaster. Finally, I decided to take a deep look at collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.s, those financial instruments that would soon be known as toxic assets. I read technical books, talked to countless experts, and soon learned that these were, in Warren Buffett’s famous phrase, weapons of financial mass destruction. They were engineered in such a way that they could exponentially increase profits but would, also, exponentially increase losses. Worse, they were too complex to be fully understood. It was impossible, even with all the information, to figure out what they were worth once they began to fail. Because these C.D.O.s had come to form the core value of most major banks’ assets, no major bank had clear value. With that understanding, the path was clear. Eventually, people would realize that the essential structure of our financial system was about to implode. Yet many political figures and TV pundits were happily touting the end of a crisis. (Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s chief economic adviser, led the charge of ignorance.)
In Iraq and with the financial crisis, it was helpful, as a reporter, to be able to divide the world into those who actually understand what was happening and those who said hopeful nonsense. The path of both crises turned out to be far worse than I had imagined.
I thought of those earlier experiences this week as I began to feel a familiar clarity about what will unfold next in the Trump Presidency. There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored. Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then have Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the Feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.
This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth. I know dozens of reporters and other investigators who have studied Donald Trump and his business and political ties. Some have been skeptical of the idea that President Trump himself knowingly colluded with Russian officials. It seems not at all Trumpian to participate in a complex plan with a long-term, uncertain payoff. Collusion is an imprecise word, but it does seem close to certain that his son Donald, Jr., and several people who worked for him colluded with people close to the Kremlin; it is up to prosecutors and then the courts to figure out if this was illegal or merely deceitful. We may have a hard time finding out what President Trump himself knew and approved.
However, I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality. In Azerbaijan, he did business with a likely money launderer for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In the Republic of Georgia, he partnered with a group that was being investigated for a possible role in the largest known bank-fraud and money-laundering case in history. In Indonesia, his development partner is “knee-deep in dirty politics”; there are criminal investigations of his deals in Brazil; the F.B.I. is reportedly looking into his daughter Ivanka’s role in the Trump hotel in Vancouver, for which she worked with a Malaysian family that has admitted to financial fraud. Back home, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka were investigated for financial crimes associated with the Trump hotel in SoHo—an investigation that was halted suspiciously. His Taj Mahal casino received what was then the largest fine in history for money-laundering violations.
Listing all the financial misconduct can be overwhelming and tedious. I have limited myself to some of the deals over the past decade, thus ignoring Trump’s long history of links to New York Mafia figures and other financial irregularities. It has become commonplace to say that enough was known about Trump’s shady business before he was elected; his followers voted for him precisely because they liked that he was someone willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, and they also believe that all rich businesspeople have to do shady things from time to time. In this way of thinking, any new information about his corrupt past has no political salience. Those who hate Trump already think he’s a crook; those who love him don’t care.
I believe this assessment is wrong. Sure, many people have a vague sense of Trump’s shadiness, but once the full details are better known and digested, a fundamentally different narrative about Trump will become commonplace. Remember: we knew a lot about problems in Iraq in May, 2003. Americans saw TV footage of looting and heard reports of U.S. forces struggling to gain control of the entire country. We had plenty of reporting, throughout 2007, about various minor financial problems. Somehow, though, these specific details failed to impress upon most Americans the over-all picture. It took a long time for the nation to accept that these were not minor aberrations but, rather, signs of fundamental crisis. Sadly, things had to get much worse before Americans came to see that our occupation of Iraq was disastrous and, a few years later, that our financial system was in tatters.
The narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump did not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and tough guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through fearlessness. He had a small, sad global operation, mostly run by his two oldest children and Michael Cohen, a lousy lawyer who barely keeps up the pretenses of lawyering and who now faces an avalanche of charges, from taxicab-backed bank fraud to money laundering and campaign-finance violations.
Cohen, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka monetized their willingness to sign contracts with people rejected by all sensible partners. Even in this, the Trump Organization left money on the table, taking a million dollars here, five million there, even though the service they provided—giving branding legitimacy to blatantly sketchy projects—was worth far more. It was not a company that built value over decades, accumulating assets and leveraging wealth. It burned through whatever good will and brand value it established as quickly as possible, then moved on to the next scheme.
There are important legal questions that remain. How much did Donald Trump and his children know about the criminality of their partners? How explicit were they in agreeing to put a shiny gold brand on top of corrupt deals? The answers to these questions will play a role in determining whether they go to jail and, if so, for how long.
There is no longer one major investigation into Donald Trump, focussed solely on collusion with Russia. There are now at least two, including a thorough review of Cohen’s correspondence. The information in his office and hotel room will likely make clear precisely how much the Trump family knew. What we already know is disturbing, and it is hard to imagine that the information prosecutors will soon learn will do anything but worsen the picture.
Of course Trump is raging and furious and terrified. Prosecutors are now looking at his core. Cohen was the key intermediary between the Trump family and its partners around the world; he was chief consigliere and dealmaker throughout its period of expansion into global partnerships with sketchy oligarchs. He wasn’t a slick politico who showed up for a few months. He knows everything, he recorded much of it, and now prosecutors will know it, too. It seems inevitable that much will be made public. We don’t know when. We don’t know the precise path the next few months will take. There will be resistance and denial and counterattacks. But it seems likely that, when we look back on this week, we will see it as a turning point. We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 12:50:26 -0500
By Brent Budowsky, opinion contributor — 01/24/19 11:15 AM EST
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
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| Michael Flynn‘s sentencing delayed at least 90 days by judge – Stock Standard | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:40:50 -0500
By and – The Washington Times – Tuesday, December 18, 2018
A federal judge on Tuesday delayed the sentencing of after unleashing a stinging verbal attack on President Trump’s former national security adviser, accusing him of selling out the country.
Judge said he couldn’t hide his “disgust and disdain” with ’s crimes, including working to covertly advance the interests of the during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out,” Judge said.
But the judge agreed to delay sentencing to give a chance to prove he is cooperating with other Justice Department criminal cases.
It was a major reversal for , who strode into the courtroom in the District of Columbia on Tuesday morning with a recommendation from special counsel Robert Mueller that he not serve time for lying to the FBI.
But Judge quickly made clear he wasn’t bound by that recommendation.
“I cannot assure you if you proceed today you will not receive a sentence of incarceration,” the judge said.
’s body tightened and his jaw clenched as Judge continued, telling that his lies caused government officials, including Vice President Mike Pence and others, to lie to the American people.
was fired from the Trump administration for lying to Mr. Pence about his s with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak after the 2016 presidential election. He later lied to FBI investigators about it, too.
“This is a very serious offense,” Judge said. “A high-ranking senior official of the making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while in the White House.”
Prosecutors with Mr. Mueller’s team had urged Judge not to send to prison, citing his cooperation with the Russia probe and other Justice Department investigations. Mr. Mueller said deserves credit for providing substantial assistance during 19 meetings and encouraging others to come forward and cooperate.
The White House stood by its former national security adviser. Mr. Trump wished “good luck” in a tweet, and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said was essentially tricked into lying to the FBI.
“What we do know that was inappropriate … is the way FBI broke standard protocol and the way they came in and ambushed ,” she said.
Mrs. Sanders said former FBI Director James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired, treated the Trump administration unfairly.
’s attorneys have maintained that he did not lie to investigators. They said in a sentencing memo last week that FBI agents duped him into lying and did advise him that making false statements to federal authorities is a crime.
The Mueller team rejected that suggestion and said , a former military intelligence officer, knew he would face criminal prosecution for lying to agents.
“Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI on Jan. 24,” Mr. Mueller wrote in a court filing last week.
On Tuesday, ’s attorneys seemed to agree.
When asked by Judge whether was “entrapped by the FBI,” his attorney responded, “No, your honor.”
The sentencing hearing was held a day after prosecutors unsealed indictments against two of ’s former business associates. The government accuses the former associates of plotting with Turkish officials to pressure the U.S. government to extradite a cleric living in Pennsylvania to Turkey.
The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, is accused of masterminding a failed 2016 coup against the . Prosecutors said the two defendants illegally and covertly hid the ’s involvement in the lobbying effort, which enlisted .
is cooperating in that investigation and is expected to testify if the case goes to trial, said attorney Robert Kelner.
The hope is that ’s assistance in that case will bolster the effort to keep him out of prison.
“We are prepared to take you up on his suggestion of delaying sentencing so he can eke out the last modicum of cooperation in the Eastern District of Virginia,” Mr. Kelner said.
Judge agreed to delay sentencing but said he was “not making any promises would be spared prison at a future sentencing date.”
A status conference is scheduled for March.
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:39:46 -0500
Jan. 24 (UPI) -- The scope of financial crimes unearthed so far by state and federal authorities investigating President Donald Trump and his associates is remarkable.
Paul Manafort was found guilty of bank and tax fraud and faces another trial involving charges of money laundering.
Former campaign adviser Rick Gates pleaded guilty to financial fraud.
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and illegal campaign donations. The Trump Foundation was just dissolved over what the New York attorney general described as "a shocking pattern of illegality."
And authorities opened new investigations following a recent New York Times exposé describing hundreds of millions of dollars of potential financial fraud by the Trump family.
Even more remarkable is what these investigations tell us about the levels of criminality among America's business and political elite.
Tax evasion, money laundering, financial fraud and campaign finance violations: Every turned stone reveals thick webs of financial misdeeds. These white-collar crimes, which often implicate the powerful and the wealthy, notoriously thrive in the loose regulatory environments created when big money exerts undue influence on politics.
Mounting indications
The Trump investigations join a growing body of evidence pointing to lax enforcement of high-level financial crimes.
We know, for example, that massive fraud involved in the 2008 financial collapse -- from mortgage lenders who deceived customers to banks that deceived investors -- went essentially unpunished.
We know that under-enforcement is common with certain big-ticket tax evasion practices -- like misstating the value of assets under the gift tax. Gift tax fraud, which may save millions of dollars to a taxpayer, is a major component of the alleged tax evasion scheme of the Trump family.
Lax enforcement and minor punishments are notoriously common with violations of campaign finance laws -- the point where private and public corruption often meet.
And as for money-laundering: According to congressional testimony, regulations against it are so ineffective that "the bottom-line metrics suggest that money-laundering enforcement fails 99.9 percent of the time."
Executive, legislative and judicial failures
The blame for this loose regulatory environment is not limited to lax executive enforcement. Legislative and judicial actions play a substantial part in the swirling financial illegalities.
Congress, for example, is responsible for the many easily abused tax deductions for the rich thatpopulate our tax code. And legislators have long refused to fund the IRS at levels allowing effective tax enforcement.
It is also Congress that has structured the Federal Election Commission as a weak and conflict-ridden enforcer of campaign finance regulations.
The courts have similarly contributed to the lax regulatory environment. As a professor of constitutional law (and an ex-prosecutor), I have watched with concern as recent Supreme Court cases extended ever-increasing constitutional protections to the alliance between big money and politics.
In recent years, the Supreme Court invalidated numerous campaign finance restrictions by declaring them unconstitutional. In doing so, the court stated that "a substantial and legitimate reason" for making a political campaign contribution is that "the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes the supporter favors."
What many regard as political corruption is constitutionally protected as a staple of democracy by our highest court.
Six months before Trump's election, the Supreme Court reversed the criminal conviction of a former Virginia governor on federal corruption charges. Gov. Robert McDonnell received personal gifts and loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Virginia businessman.
In exchange, McDonnell sought to influence the University of Virginia to conduct free research on the man's commercial product.
A jury convicted the governor on federal corruption charges, and a federal court of appeals affirmed. But the Supreme Court reversed the conviction after narrowing the definition of what counts as criminal corruption under federal law.
The conviction, said the court, raised serious constitutional concerns because it could chill interactions between politicians and their supporters.
As in McDonnell's own case, the decision's significance extends beyond matters of campaign finance. The case was recently cited as a cause for the acquittal, on federal bribery charges, of a high-ranking New York City police official who for years received lavish gifts from wealthy businessmen.
Business and political elite
The rich rewards of the Trump investigations suggest that big-money illegalities are rife in America. And while Trump may be in a league of his own, the problem is not limited to Trump.
Indeed, some of the people embroiled in the Trump scandals have long been situated at the heart of America's business and political elite.
Manafort, for one, also worked on the campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bushand Bob Dole. And the Trumps were always highly politically connected -- contributing millions to leading state and federal politicians, both Democrats and Republicans.
"As a business person," explained Trump in a 2015 interview, "you wanna get along with all sides because you're gonna need things from everybody."
Consider the recently disclosed episode involving Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. -- son of the late former secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter.
In 2012, Vance ordered prosecutors to drop a promising fraud case against Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. for lying to investors in a Trump project in Manhattan. The order was made after their father's attorney paid Vance a visit.
Weeks later, the attorney became one of Vance's largest donors for his re-election campaign.
That is the wider scandal suggested by the investigations of Trump and his cronies: The high levels of brazen big-money illegalities that ordinarily go unaddressed and unpunished. Indeed many of the alleged crimes are no longer chargeable due to the statute of limitations.
"Zero tolerance" and "broken windows" policies are terms frequently used by law enforcement in discussing low-level crime. But American law enforcement appears to avoid the penthouses.
There is deep irony in the fact that Trump and his cronies are being pursued for the sort of crimes whose chronic under-enforcement generated the inequality and resentment that helped catapult Trump to the presidency.
Ofer Raban is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Oregon.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Thu, 24 Jan 2019 10:38:19 -0500
By – – Tuesday, December 18, 2018
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Once again former FBI Director slithers into our collective consciousness with his tap-dancing appearances before the oversight committees of the House of Representatives. We are reminded — though we had not forgotten — why the inspector general of the Department of Justice found ’s self-promoting, stage-hogging performance as FBI director to be, among other blistering criticisms, “insubordinate.”
did more to mess up the 2016 election than the ham-handed Russians could ever do. President Obama should have fired the guy long before President Trump so rightfully did so. Had Mr. Obama fired , we would have been spared the Mueller circus with his clown car of deep-state careerists trying hard to undo a democratically elected president based on payments to shady ladies for Trump dalliances many years ago. They were hoping to nail Mr. Trump for being a KGB agent, but that doesn’t seem to be working out.
Much of this sorry affair, which has the potential to be so much more dangerous than the petulant political and media establishments realize, started with the bumbling and ubiquitous . He is like Anthony Weiner in how his mischief making far exceeds any real import he ever had. Now he is the one who is going to rescue the FBI’s soiled reputation? Give me a break. should just go get a job at MSNBC, fail there, and then go away. Please.
JON KETZNER
Cumberland, Md.
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| 10:37 AM 1/24/2019 - Michael Novakhov - SharedNewsLinks℠: German Intelligence Chief Wilhelm Franz Canaris - The Operation Trump and The New Abwehr: A Study In Psychohistory by Michael Novakhov - Google Search | German Intelligence Chief Wilhelm Franz Cana | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 09:41:37 -0500
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