Trump’s Lawyer Raised Prospect Of Pardons For Flynn And Manafort

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/us/politics/trump-pardon-michael-flynn-paul-manafort-john-dowd.html

Maxine Waters On Impeachment: We Can't Wait For 2020

"We cannot wait" for the 2020 elections to do something about Donald Trump, says Rep. Maxine Waters. "It is too dangerous."

COLLUSION

Majority wish Obama were president, as Trump labeled 'mentally unstable'

A majority of Americans wish former President Barack Obama was still in the White House and in charge of the nation according to a new poll.

A new survey from Public Policy Polling found that 52 percent of respondents wish Obama were in the midst of his third term. By comparison, only 41 percent prefer having President Donald Trump over Obama.

But it's not uncommon for a former president to see his popularity jump after he leaves office. 

A 2009 Gallup poll showed that only 35 percent of people liked former President George W. Bush, but after he'd left office and the news that he had taken up painting emerged, his approval rating has jumped up to 59 percent.

Unfortunately for the current resident, the poll included many other negative ratings. The survey found 54 percent of people claim Trump is dishonest, 47 percent say he's mentally unstable and 48 percent call for his impeachment. 

Former President Obama has made only a handful of forays into the political conversation, but has joined his fellow ex-presidents to call for relief after Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria battered parts of the United States.

He's also continued to occasionally speak to the press on his personal life, recently admitting that he cried while dropping his daughter Malia Obama off at Harvard University this year.

Obama even found some time to hang out at The Presidents Cup golf tournament with former president’s Bush and Bill Clinton.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-majority-wish-obama-were-150337409.html 

Will Trump's Republican lackeys in Congress reverse course on disaster response cuts?

By Joan McCarter

Now would be a good time to break with him, guys.

 As the slow disaster of Harvey continues to roll over southeast Texas and into Louisiana, bringing record-shattering rainfall over the region, the Republican Congress is pondering $1 billion in cuts to federal disaster response programs to fulfill Donald Trump's demands for a border wall.

The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305 page measure’s homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump’s down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall. 

It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week. The optics are politically bad and there’s only $2.3 billion remaining in disaster coffers.

One would like to think that they'd reverse those cuts. But don't forget the request they're working with from the White House.

The proposal, drawn up by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), also would slash the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief after hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. The Coast Guard’s $9.1 billion budget in 2017 would be cut 14 percent to about $7.8 billion, while the TSA and FEMA budgets would be reduced about 11 percent each to $4.5 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively.

All so Trump can hire more border agents, build his wall, and more effectively terrorize people of color. Given the disproportionate hit people of color are taking from this natural disaster, don't bet on Trump changing his mind about pushing for these cuts.

North Carolina County Official Indicted For Rigging The 2016 Election For Donald Trump

A former elections worker in North Carolina was indicted by a grand jury on Monday for purposefully changing ballot results during the March 2016 primary election.

Richard Robert Rawling, 59, of Cary, was charged with felony counts of failing his duties and obstruction of justice after allegedly skewing the vote tallies to help elect Donald Trump and other conservative candidates.

Rawling allegedly ordered subordinates to run provisional ballots through tabulators more than the correct number of times, and then made manual changes so that the results of the provisional canvass would match the tally of total ballots.

Elections board officials found the smoking gun during an audit of primary results in April.

According to the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, Rawling’s actions were a desperate attempt to hide his tampering with results. Rawling resigned less than a month after the primary results were tallied.

“The State Board’s top priority is ensuring the integrity of elections so voters have confidence in the process,” the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement said in its remarks to the media.

http://www.rawprogressive.com/2017/08/22/breaking-north-carolina-county-official-indicted-rigging-2016-election-donald-trump/

Donald Trump Race Crisis A Test For Congress To Take Real Action

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, talks with Rachel Maddow about how Congress can do more than the bare minimum of tweeting condemnation of racism to address the actual problem with legislation.

PREDICTION: Trump Will Resign In Disgrace...Soon

Trump’s days in office are numbered. Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.

Anthony Scaramucci Out As White House Communications Director After 10 Days On The Job

By Lindsay Kimble

Just over a week into his new role as White House communications director, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci has been removed from the position, according to the New York Times and other outlets.

Multiple sources told the Times that President Donald Trump chose to remove Scaramucci at the request of the administration’s new chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly.

Scaramucci’s short tenure was certainly a whirlwind: after giving an expletive-laden interview to the New Yorker about his colleagues, Scaramucci’s wife filed for divorce on Friday.

It is unclear at this time whether Scaramucci is being completely removed from the White House, or whether he is taking on a different role in the administration, reports CNN.

This is a developing story, please check back for more information.

Cartoon Roundup

Russian Mob Money Helped Build Donald Trump Business Empire - Trump’s Russian Laundromat

A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.



Trump's Russian Laundromat

John McCain Is The Perfect American Lie

By Drew Magary

Seventeen years ago I gave John McCain’s Presidential campaign five bucks. It was my first time donating to a political campaign, much less a Republican one. But like a lot of people, I marveled at his backstory of surviving years and years in Viet Cong captivity (I even read, like, three pages of that big David Foster Wallace story about him), and—more important—I eagerly took all his Straight Talk Express horseshit to heart. Hey, that Republican is saying stuff about other Republicans! He seems like a real rebel!

Back in 2000, McCain scratched that itch for anyone like me who enjoyed pretending to be politically independent, and who happily latched onto McCain as a talisman of that independence. You see, guys! I can vote for a Republican when it’s the RIGHT Republican! And over the course of this century, McCain has dined out on his reputation as The Good Conservative. He’s the senator who gives thunderous copy to reporters, and does SNL, and issues bipartisan reports on the military giving the NFL promo money, and does the occasional cameo on Parks &Rec. He fulfills every Brokawian wet dream certain members of the press still have about politicians setting aside their differences and doing the RIGHT THING, by God.

Today, Senate Republicans moved one step closer to dismantling Obamacare, potentially leaving millions of people uninsured, jacking up their premiums, and letting insurance companies cover only what they feel like covering. John McCain voted for that bill because of course he did. He has always been a big talker, but when it comes to the actual meat-and-potatoes voting process, he falls in line.

He didn’t do the right thing. He didn’t even come within 500 yards of doing the right thing. For the past two decades, he has never done the right thing. He’s a fraud. Alex Pareene had him nailed ages ago. In fact, it’s “nice” Republicans like McCain who provide cover for evil swine like Mitch McConnell, allowing them to gut the American security net and fuck over anyone who doesn’t live behind an iron gate.

But that didn’t stop McCain from having the gall—the unmitigated, repulsive GALL—to stand up in front of the Senate today and put on his Maverick jammies and deliver a sermon bashing the very non-legislation that, only minutes earlier, he had flown cross-country to help will into being:

https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/889928867468775424

This is the part where I point out that McCain has brain cancer and is likely dying. And while I wouldn’t wish brain cancer on my worst enemy, McCain’s illness shouldn’t act as some magical shield that absolves him from abetting—no wait, LEADING—a GOP whose appetite for brazen monstrousness grows by the day. And yet, there were Senate Democrats giving our man a standing O right after he gleefully fucked their constituents, because Democrats would happily set aside differences with Godzilla for the sake of gentility. There was scumbag opportunist Cory Booker, hugging McCain and acting like this was some kind of heartwarming meeting of the minds. And of course, there were the usual political access merchants who were more than happy to line up and shine McCain’s boots:

https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/889927208646701058

https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/889923333982232576

This is vile. John McCain was never anyone’s white knight. This is the man who ushered in the age of troll candidacies by tapping Sarah Palin as his running mate. This is the man who caved to Donald Trump even after Trump had the audacity to mock his time as a POW. This is the man who called his own wife a cunt in public. This is a man who has spent all this time acting as if all the Bad Republicans were forcing him to go along with their nefarious deeds while voting in lockstep with them. He is not a reluctant Republican. He’s a shitbag, same as the rest of them.

If you’re some Pollyanna offering your support to John McCain as he hollows out Medicaid, you’re a naïve dupe. As this guy said, The West Wing wasn’t real. It was never real. The twin illusions of bipartisanship and decorum have always provided handy cover for anyone looking to willfully ignore the fiendish inequalities of the American political infrastructure and the GOP’s rapturous thirst for cruelty; a thirst that has only recently emerged in the foreground thanks to the existence of President Trump.

"John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things."

I was duped when I gave McCain my pitiable little sum all those years ago, but I know better today. Everyone should know better. Everyone should realize that John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things. He served his country honorably in combat, but in no other fashion. And he serves out his time in the Senate, and here on planet Earth, as a pathetic enabler. Never the lion; always the sheep. For seventeen years, gullible people have been waiting for him to make his face turn, to make some grand defiant move for the sake of God and country. But that was always just clever branding on his part, and today should serve as a cold slap in the face to anyone who still thought he might have that kind of political courage left in him.

He's a fucking disgrace.

Another Big Republican Lie On The ACA: They Can Give You Something Better

Posted by Rude One

We know that Republicans have lied nonstop about the Affordable Care Act ever since it was passed into law by a Democratic-led Congress and signed by the Negro President.

We know that Republicans are stuck because the ACA is mostly based on Massachusetts's Romneycare and both come from plans from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

We know that Republicans lied and continue to lie about the effects of the AHCA and then the BCRA, the House and Senate versions of their "repeal and replace" bills.

But there is one more thing, one more set of lies, that is responsible for sticking a shiv into the GOP's dream of murdering a bunch of poor people so rich people can be richer.

See, Republicans keep trying to put the blame for the fix they're in on American voters. "We have to keep our promises to the American people," Republicans say. "We won the last three elections by promising to repeal and replace Obamacare," they whine like a dog that caught a cat only to realize it was a fucking mountain lion. Yeah, they're right. Voters did put Republicans in power over the promise of getting rid of the Obamacare horror and torture or whatever drama queen word you wanna use. But, and this is important, they only wanted to get rid of it because Republicans said they'd do better. Or, to put it another way, they lied about what they could do for people if the Affordable Care Act was overturned.

Senator after senator told you how you were enslaved by Obamacare and that the GOP would set you free. John McCain proclaimed, "Families in Arizona and across the country should have the power to make their own medical decisions – not Washington bureaucrats. This bill puts patients and doctors back in charge of their health care by fully repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a free-market approach that strengthens the quality and accessibility of care." John Thune promised, "It’s time to repeal this law and replace it with something that works. And that’s precisely what we’re going to do."

Others got even more explicit. For instance, here's Wyoming Senator John Barrasso (campaign slogan: "If you can't trust a man whose name includes the phrase 'bare ass,' who can you trust?"), from a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate in November, shortly after the election: "First of all, nobody is talking about taking people off of insurance without a replacement plan in place." Except that's exactly what they talked about. While Republicans will constantly mention how President Obama said, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" (which, to be fair, was an absurd promise), they simply aren't owning that they got voters all excited about this new fantasy health care plan where they wouldn't lose coverage despite repealing the very law that gave them coverage.

In fact, when you get to what President Donald Trump said, Republicans were promising something amazing. Put aside that Trump repeatedly said he wouldn't cut Medicaid and then, immediately after inauguration, put out a plan to cut Medicaid. Trump and his people consistently promised that Americans would have better health insurance coverage, that all Americans would be covered, and that it would cost them less in premiums and deductibles. He literally said this: "You will end up with great health care for a fraction of the price." And he told Americans that we would have a "beautiful picture" in the future of health care.

Republicans like to say that Democrats promise that they'll give people "free stuff" and that people on government programs like Medicaid are "moochers." But Republicans didn't win on the Obamacare issue because people didn't want free stuff. They didn't win because they said they would take away their health insurance. They won because they promised people more free stuff and better free stuff.

In other words, they lied. But voters believed them. They wanted to mooch more.

And the vast majority of Americans realize now that it was a lie because the Trumpcare plan that the Senate may vote to move forward tomorrow does none of the things they promised other than get rid of the health insurance they have now or make it worse and more expensive. So, of course, now we get articles like "These Americans Hated the Health Law. Until the Idea of Repeal Sank In." In that New York Times piece, Pennsylvania dumb shits who once thought Obamacare was the worst thing since the theory of evolution say things like "I can’t even remember why I opposed it" and "Everybody needs some sort of health insurance." One stupid fuck went from opposing the law to "Now that you’ve insured an additional 20 million people, you can’t just take the insurance away from these people. It’s just not the right thing to do."

But we knew all along that people liked the Affordable Care Act. They liked the elimination of spending caps and of pre-existing conditions determining premiums. They liked keeping their kids on insurance until age 26. And a shit-ton of people got to live because of the Medicaid expansion. Yeah, the ACA was fine. What they hated was Obamacare, which is exactly what Republicans wanted people to think of for a very simple reason:

Most Republican voters don't hate the ACA. They hate that their white asses were saved by a black man.

They resented the shit out of that fact. It put a lie to all the racism they've clung to for generations. The GOP used that racism for years. Now that the black man is gone, though, they're totally fine with the law and its benefits. They gave Republicans a chance to give them more stuff, but they don't want their stuff taken away. Especially when that "stuff" is the right to live a healthy life.

Be careful this week, dear dumb shits and dearer smart asses. Republicans are going to keep coming after the Affordable Care Act, no matter how many shivs you stick in it. Stay on the phones. Keep the pressure up on the few Republican senators who can make the difference. Don't let the liars win. It's life and death, motherfuckers, life and death.

And once we finally put this beast down, let's turn our attention to single payer.

(Fun extra part of Barrasso's speech: "Democrats promised that they would listen to other people’s ideas, and then they went behind a closed door in an office back there, and they wrote the law ignoring all of the suggestions by Republicans, and without any Republican support at all. We’re not going to make that same mistake. We will be looking for Democrats’ help, we will be looking for Democrats to work with. We will be listening to Democrats’ ideas, and we will be working very hard to win Democrat votes for any new law." Insert your own rolling-with-laughter emoji here.)

Trump Voters Were Wrong, So Fuck Their Opinions

Posted by Rude One

In just six short months, it's become absolutely clear: Everyone who didn't vote for Donald Trump was right and everyone who voted for him was wrong. Yeah, yeah, they weren't wrong in that Trump won the election, just as someone isn't wrong for supporting a shitty baseball team. But it's incredibly clear now that the poor suckers and greedy fuckers who wanted to nuzzle up to Trump's man-teats for a suckle were wrong on just about every account regarding who he is and what he'd do.

They were wrong that he's a man of his word, they were wrong that he would look out for working people, they were wrong that he would make the nation respected "again" (as if it wasn't before), they were wrong that he wouldn't have scandals, and they were just wrong about him being a human being worthy of the office. They were wrong and we who voted against him (and I'm tossing anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Deez Nutz into the category of "voted against him") were right.

Trump voters fucked the goat, and so everything they say should be framed within the fact that they are goatfuckers. "Oh, you have an opinion on health care? Sorry, you fucked a goat. I don't give a shit about your goat-fucking opinion," we should think. But that's not what we do. We don't shun the goatfuckers, no matter how savagely they fucked that goat. We see that most clearly by the fact that the news networks and other media outlets still entertain the opinions of people who supported the Iraq war and never said they were wrong about it. Goatfuckers get away with it.

So we're treated on an almost daily basis to articles and stories about Trump voters and what they think about some issue and whether or not Trump's evil, batshit incompetence is enough for them to bail on the Orange King. Every single one of these stories is the same: Here are some assholes who voted for Trump. Let's treat them with reverence, as if they have hard-won wisdom because they shovel shit or work at Wal-Mart. Let's tell them about all the fuckery that Donald Trump has been up to and see what they think. Oh, look, they don't give a shit because he still hates the Mooslems and Messicans. And what might change their minds about Trumpochet? "I don’t know what he would have to do...I guess maybe kill someone. Just in cold blood."

That's an actual quote from an actual person in a Tennesseean article on Wayne County, Tennessee, an almost entirely white rural area with less people than my neighborhood. The thrust of the piece is that Trump voters couldn't give a happy monkey fuck about the Russia scandal. In fact, they think Trump is being maligned and Don Jr. is awesome. This is the newest wrinkle in the genre: What do stupid people think about something they don't understand at all? In the last week, Vox has done a story on Michigan Trump voters, who don't think the Russian connections are any big deal. The BBC sent a reporter to the Nebraska State Fair to get some American color (yes, ironic, I know) and some video of deluded shit heels sharing their delusions.

As Newsweek's Alexander Nazaryn wrote, "The real story here is how thoroughly Trump supporters have been deceived, both by Trump and tireless boot-lickers like Hannity and Jones. Every quote from an Ohioan who declares the Russia investigation is irrelevant is a testament to the delusive brand of Republicanism that now reigns supreme." Joshua Green said much the same in the New York Times.

Each of the Trump voter pieces generally has a token interview with someone who doesn't support Trump. But they are presented as curiosities, the two-headed cow that shouldn't exist but somehow does. But the reality is, obviously, people who think Trump is full of shit vastly outnumber the aforementioned suckers and fuckers who stand by their man. How about interviewing some of us? How about asking us, "How did you know?" And we can say, "Anyone with a fuckin' brain knew." Ask us, "What do you think about the Russia dealie?" And we can say, "Either we do something about it or we're fucked."

Hell, you don't even have to stick to the cities, where the majority of the country lives. Since you've got a rural jones, you can head to Bolivar, Tennessee, a town in the ass-crack of nowhere, near to the Alabama border, as Deep South as you can get. They went for Hillary Clinton, as did nearby Whiteville. Of course, those are majority African American towns, so you'd have to change the whole goddamned narrative away from the mighty white working class.

Or, here's an idea, why not go to the communities that went for Trump and find the people who didn't. Talk to them. See if they're feeling smug or sad or angry. See what their ideas are for getting us out of this or through this goddamn bullshit time. Find out how they're feeling about Trump's relationship with Russia. Ask them because they, like the majority of the country, were right.

Let's spend a little time and energy, dear, sweet reporters, on people who aren't barking mad or madly barking.

(Note: If you didn't vote at all, go suck a donkey's dick.)

(Note: If you wanna write to me about "goatfucker shaming," I hate you already. Same for "donkey-dick sucker shaming." Some things are just fucking shameful. Sucking a donkey's dick, fucking a goat, and voting for Donald Trump, for examples.)

Trump’s Son Met With Russian Lawyer After Being Promised Damaging Information On Clinton

By JO BECKER, MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN JULY 9, 2017

A meeting arranged by Donald Trump Jr. was held at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.

The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in confidential government documents described to The New York Times.

The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.

The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican nomination — points to the central question in federal investigations of the Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

And while Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.

It is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the expectation was that she would do so.

In a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

He said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Mr. Trump said.

When he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, he said only that it was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.

President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting last year at Trump Tower. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that “Trump was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”

Lawyers and spokesmen for Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them what the meeting was about.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the material on July 22.

A special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his administration.

Mr. Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post: “I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.....” He also tweeted that they had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded...””

On Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”

“Talking about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.

But Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that was at that meeting.”

“There’s no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times report.

Ms. Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting, is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act.

The adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.

Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

Ms. Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all about the presidential campaign” was discussed. She recalled that after about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort walked out.

She said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and “never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”

The Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent days, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance.

The Times reported in April that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss of access to classified information and even, if information is knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.

Mr. Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error, and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be revising the filing.

In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said: “He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”

Mr. Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner was required to disclose the content of the meeting.

A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.

Since the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign contacts.

Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian contacts.

Ms. Veselnitskaya is a formidable operator with a history of pushing the Kremlin’s agenda. Most notable is her campaign against the Magnitsky Act, which provoked a Cold War-style, tit-for-tat dispute with the Kremlin when President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2012.

Under the law, about 44 Russian citizens have been put on a list that allows the United States to seize their American assets and deny them visas. The United States asserts that many of them are connected to the fraud exposed by Mr. Magnitsky, who after being jailed for more than a year was found dead in his cell. A Russian human rights panel found that he had been assaulted. To critics of Mr. Putin, Mr. Magnitsky, in death, became a symbol of corruption and brutality in the Russian state.

An infuriated Mr. Putin has called the law an “outrageous act,” and, in addition to banning American adoptions, he compiled what became known as an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.

Among those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, who led notable convictions of Russian arms and drug dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by President Trump.

One of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in New York real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Ms. Veselnitskaya and her client also hired a team of political and legal operatives to press the case for repeal. And they tried but failed to keep Mr. Magnitsky’s name off a new law that takes aim at human-rights abusers across the globe. The team included Rinat Akhmetshin, an émigré to the United States who once served as a Soviet military officer and who has been called a Russian political gun for hire. Fusion GPS, a consulting firm that produced an intelligence dossier that contained unverified allegations about Mr. Trump, was also hired to do research for Prevezon.

Ms. Veselnitskaya was also deeply involved in the making of a film that disputes the widely accepted version of Mr. Magnitsky’s life and death. In the film and in her statement, she said the true culprit of the fraud was William F. Browder, an American-born financier who hired Mr. Magnitsky to investigate the fraud after three of his investment funds companies in Russia were seized.

Mr. Browder called the film a state-sponsored smear campaign.

“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”

John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, testified in May that he had been concerned last year by Russian government efforts to contact and manipulate members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Russian intelligence agencies do not hesitate at all to use private companies and Russian persons who are unaffiliated with the Russian government to support their objectives,” he said.

The F.B.I. began a counterintelligence investigation last year into Russian contacts with any Trump associates. Agents focused on Mr. Manafort and a pair of advisers, Carter Page and Roger J. Stone Jr.

Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.

Congress later discovered that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an additional background check to join the White House staff.

In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.

The status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any possible collusion.

Follow Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on Twitter.
Maggie Haberman, Sophia Kishkovsky and Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Dem challenging Paul Ryan raises $430K in campaign's first 12 days

By Max Greenwood

Randy Bryce, a Democrat challenging House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for his seat, raised more than $430,000 in the first 12 days of his campaign.


That money, according to Bryce's campaign, came from more than 16,000 donations, amounting to an average contribution of a little more than $25.

Bryce, a labor activist and iron worker who stumped for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during his 2016 presidential bid, launched his congressional campaign last month.

"Just a few weeks into this race, we have seen what can happen when you have the power of working people on your side, and I am excited to work with everyone as we continue this fight through next November," Bryce said in a statement.

Bryce's campaign pulled in more than $100,000 in just over 24 hours after declaring his candidacy.

Bryce will face off against two other Democrats, political activist David Yankovich and Janesville School Board member Cathy Myers, in the district's Democratic primary early next year.

Any Democrat challenging Ryan to represent Wisconsin's 1st District is likely to face a tough election battle. The House Speaker has held the seat for nearly 20 years and is among the most well-connected and influential Republicans in the country.

What's more, Speakers of the House are rarely voted out by their constituents. The last to be turned out was Tom Foley (D-Wash.), who lost his reelection bid in 1994.

Bryce and other Democrats are hoping to capitalize on President Trump's poor poll numbers to mount competitive races in Republican-held districts.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams pleads guilty in his federal corruption trial

By Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams abruptly pleaded guilty Thursday, nearly two weeks into a federal bribery trial that dragged embarrassing details about his messy personal life and financial struggles out into open court.

Williams will resign as the city’s top prosecutor as part of a deal under which he pleaded guilty to one count related to accepting a bribe from Bucks County businessman Mohammad Ali.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond whether he intended to follow through with his resignation, Williams choked up and answered, “humbly, sincerely and effective immediately.”

Diamond said he wanted Williams’ resignation letter couriered to Mayor Kenny’s office as soon as the hearing was over.

Williams remained somber looking throughout the guilty plea hearing.

“I’m just very sorry for all of this, your honor,” he said.

At a followup hearing to determine whether Williams should be jailed immediately, defense attorney Thomas F. Burke argued the disgraced prosecutor was not a flight risk.

“He has no means as the court can see to go anywhere. He has no support. He’s deeply in debt and he doesn’t even have a car,” Burke said.

Taking the witness stand to plead with a judge not to send him directly to prison before sentencing, tears welled up in Williams’ eyes while discussing his daughters.

He acknowledged he was broke, saying he had “probably about $150 to $200” in his bank account.

In addition to accepting that he could face a maximum 5 year term when he is sentenced Oct. 24, Williams agreed to forfeit $64,878.22

While the 28 remaining counts against Williams were dismissed, he “admits that he committed all of the conduct in those 29 counts,”  Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer said.

“Williams took benefits repeatedly from Mr. Ali knowing that those benefits were offered – at least in part – to influence him to take official actions,”  said Zauzmer.

Williams notified prosecutors he wanted to take the plea deal at 1 a.m.Thursday, said Zauzmer.

Sources close to the case say the deal is similar to one Williams was offered – and turned down – one day before his indictment earlier this year on 29 corruption-related counts including bribery, extortion and honest services fraud.

Prior to his admission, prosecutors and Williams’ defense lawyers – Thomas F. Burke and Trevan Borum – spent more than an hour huddled in quiet conversation in the courtroom, while the district attorney was nowhere to be seen.

His decision came after weeks of damaging testimony in which government witnesses characterized him a shameless beggar who repeatedly turned to the money of others to fund a lifestyle he couldn’t afford.

Two wealthy businessmen testified that they had showered the district attorney with gifts of all-expenses-paid travel, luxury goods and even cash in anticipation of the legal favors they might need from him.

And prosecutors had alleged that Williams delivered for them – writing letters to throw his weight into their legal problems and promising in one instance to intervene in a drug case brought by his office.

Additionally, Williams was accused of misspending thousands of dollars from his campaign fund on memberships to exclusive Philadelphia social clubs, misusing city vehicles as if they were his own and misappropriating money intended to fund his mother’s nursing home care.

Read a recap of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’ trial with our day-by-day updates and learn more with our explainer on everything you need to know about the case.

Read more by Jeremy Roebuck

Donald Trump: The Art Of The Fight

By John Dean

When Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey he made the worst mistake of his young presidency, because the ham-fisted manner in which he handled it resulted in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who is filling in for the recused Attorney General—having no choice but to select a special counsel to continue the Justice Department’s investigation into the hacking of the 2016 presidential election by the Russians. Rosenstein, of course, selected an unusually well-qualified investigator/prosecutor, Robert Mueller, the former head of the FBI and former U.S. Attorney for San Francisco. This, in turn, has annoyed Trump to no end. He clearly feels the pressure of being under investigation by someone with both the resources and skills to uncover any wrongdoing by him or his family. Trump’s reaction suggests Mueller may find that the president is not an honest businessman, even if he does not find direct collusion by Trump himself with the Russians.

Much of Donald Trump’s life has involved being in fights—with wives, business partners, vendors, tenants, the news media, and countless others. Trump the politician expanded his fights to include political opponents, and now as president, he is in a fight with the federal intelligence community, the Washington press corps, the “deep state” (otherwise known as career government bureaucrats) and Democrats, along with a few Republicans and even some of his staff. But what is shaping up as the biggest fight of his life, because it could end his presidency and send his family to jail (if he is unable to pardon them), is the investigation (and potential prosecutions emanating from it) being undertaken by Special Counsel Mueller.

For anyone who has observed Trump in a fight—which was once to be limited to those living in New York City who read the tabloids where they were regularly front-page features but he is now on the world stage so we are all his audience, like it or not—the pattern of these brawls is very consistent. While Trump has done many deals, it seems he has done more fights, and rather than writing about deals he should have done a book titled The Art of the Fight.

Background as a Fighter

Trump’s biographers have most all noted that he displayed a pugnacious nature from an early age, but his adult mentor (and role model) in all conflicts, from squabbles to domestic disputes to business survival battles, was the infamous New York City attorney Roy Cohn. Before becoming the New York City fixer of choice, Cohn, the son of a prominent New York judge, displayed his legal acumen by graduating from law school at twenty years of age, quickly rising in the ranks of the U.S. Attorney’s office, and developing close ties to New York’s most important crime families. He became a national figure as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation of the U.S. Senate employing smear tactics that gave the world “McCarthyism.”

According to legend, Trump and Cohn met shortly after Cohn had published an op-ed in the form of a letter to Spiro Agnew in The New York Times on October 15, 1973 castigating the former vice president for pleading guilty to tax evasion, a charge Cohn had beaten on three occasions. “How could a man who made courage a household word lose his? How could one of this decade’s shrewdest leaders make a dumb mistake such as you did in quitting and accepting a criminal conviction?” Cohn asked. No more had Cohn’s letter been published than Trump encountered him at a New York night spot of the time, and Trump explained that he and his father were being sued by the Department of Justice for discrimination in one of their housing projects. Cohn encouraged the young businessman to fight the charges, and a friendship was born.

Watching Cohn, Donald Trump soon embraced his never surrender, always counterattack, philosophy, not to mention tactics not sanctioned by the Queensberry rules. Never was there a more vicious and dirty a fighter than Roy Cohn. Never was there a worse role model for anyone, not to mention a President of the United States.

Trump Tactics

Donald Trump’s tactics are conspicuous to anyone who follows his actions, and can be reduced to two overriding activities: (1) He lies consistently and persistently; (2) he cheats whenever the opportunity presents itself to do so, and (3) he tries to intimidate everyone with whom he deals. The lawsuits filed by the former students of Trump University revealed these tactics at work, where he lured them into taking courses, often beyond their means, with false statements and promises, then gave them hokum taught by people with no credentials whatsoever, constantly pushing them to take more expensive courses. All one need to do is read a few of the depositions of the students who joined in the action. Trump hires lawyers who act more like thugs than litigators to abuse those who filed against him, and forced several out of the case for they were not up for the expense of the endless fight, not to mention the nasty press leaks spread by team Trump. When Trump was elected this litigation was ready to go to trial. It was a class action RICO case accusing Trump of criminal fraud, albeit in a civil action. President-elect Trump broke his golden rule of fighting when he surrendered—settling the cases for $25 million.

Someone will undoubtedly fill a book with Trump’s business tactics, for they are found in the 3,500 lawsuits in which he has engaged. Regularly, he filed actions knowing he could not win, thus simply to intimidate his opponent. This was a favored tactic when he thought someone had defamed him by saying something he did not want said. As a public figure, who has had case after case dismissed, he knows that public people have a high standard to meet. He also understood that even answering a complaint and getting the case dismissed by the targeted defendant was expensive, so he could inflict pain even if he could not win the case. Undoubtedly some of his current frustration as president is that he cannot threaten such lawsuits at a time he is probably getting more negative press coverage than at any time in his career.

We watched Trump’s fight tactics during both the Republican primary, and the general election, campaigns. The most dominant memory most people have of his campaigning was the lying, and efforts to belittle his opponents: “Low energy Jeb,” “Little Marko,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Crooked Hillary.” Because Trump creates constant conflict, he is a train wreck happening, the news media has great difficulty turning away from him. He is the very definition of modern entertainment. As was true during the campaigns, it is with his presidency. Because the man cannot be shamed, and he has the largest ego ever to enter the Oval Office, all this plays in his favor—so far. But how will Trump’s fight tactics play as his campaign is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

Trump in the Crosshairs of a Federal Investigation

As President of the United States, under current Department of Justice policy, Donald Trump cannot be indicted so long as he holds the office, or unless the U.S. Supreme Court rules otherwise. But make no mistake, he and his campaign to win the office are under investigation which started in July 2016, when the FBI learned the Russia government was hacking the presidential election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. Presidential immunity is not retroactive, thus making his campaign and his personal activities susceptible to investigation and prosecution.

The investigation that Special Counsel Mueller has taken charge of is the FBI inquiry that commenced in July 2016, not activities President Trump undertook in May 2017 in firing former FBI Director Comey, although that too is expressly included in the charter issued by the Deputy Attorney General in establishing the inquiry. Because it was issued notwithstanding the fact that it is the policy of the Department to not indict a sitting president, there is no policy not to investigate a sitting president. So, Trump is clearly subject to the special counsel inquiry—a fact of which he appears acutely aware, and has commenced fighting.

Trump is employing his standard fight tactics: lying, cheating, and seeking to intimidate. For example: He has lied about his dealing with former director Comey, not to mention tried to intimidate this potential witness against him by employing standard Trump name-calling is accusing Comey of “showboating,” concocting a false narrative via Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein about Comey’s Hillary Clinton email investigation as the reason for dismissal when later admitting to newsman Lester Holt that he fired Comey because he refused to back off the investigation of the campaign and Michael Flynn; and most recently admitting that, contrary to claiming he had tapes of conversations with Comey, he had no such tapes. One could fill pages with examples. But the point has been made and the issue is how these tactics will play with Mueller.

In business and politics, and now in government, Trump is operating at about the level of a precocious eight grader. The games he has played in the past are not going to work in the league he now finds himself. Mueller and Company are sophisticated and experienced federal prosecutors who have dealt with miscreants far more sophisticated and clever than Donald Trump. In fact, in the end Trump’s tactics, which are obvious and recorded, will be used against him. His lawyers seem unable to stop him, but they have surely told him.

Today, we are watching a very frightened Donald Trump. He knows he is in a fight way above his league, but he does not know how to play above that league. Nor does he understand Washington and the presidency sufficiently well to know how to use it—and keeping his disapproval rating at 60 percent is not effectively using the high office he holds.

Undoubtedly, Trump has never written the art of the fight, because he does not know how to fight fairly, nor well. With Special Counsel Mueller on his case there is more chance he will lose in 2020 than win reelection, unless Trump discovers that the way these fights are won is with the truth, for with the truth he might have a chance to survive. Without it, he will be a one term president, if he is lucky.

John Dean

John W. Dean, a Justia columnist, is a former counsel to the president.

Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. 

Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent.

Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.12a31b9dd507&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_russiaobama-banner-7a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

RANDY BRYCE wants to unseat Paul Ryan. #BRYCE2018

A unionized iron worker is taking on Paul Ryan in a 2018 showdown in Wisconsin. Randy Bryce's every man charm has taken the political world by storm, and could be the key to refreshing the Democratic Party. Ring of Fire's Josh Gay discusses how.