Court Sets Dec. 7 Manafort Date As Trump Russian Scandals Mount

A federal judge on Friday set Dec. 7 as a key date for prosecutors to submit their reportedly explosive evidence of recent wrongdoing by the corrupt former Trump 2016 Campaign Chair  Paul J. Manafort.

As evidence mounted of a conspiracy by President Trump’s former aides to advance his business and election interests with the help of Russians, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, right, also set March 5 as a tentative sentencing date for Manafort. He pleaded guilty in September before her to extensive bank and tax fraud charges brought by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Our project covered Manafort’s trial in Virginia where he was convicted of massive tax and bank frauds largely occurring before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016.

He pleaded guilty just before a second trial in Washington, DC of criminal charges based largely on his actions during the presidential campaign. He reportedly cooperated with authorities, seeking leniency.

But prosecutors accused him early last wee of lying to them. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani created another surpise by telling New York Times reporters that Manafort was coooperating with other defendants through his attorneys even after his guilty plea and cooperation with authorities. Commentators said they have rarely if ever heard of such actions, which could create legal problems for defense attorneys.

This is the week that the Mueller probe publicly transitioned to one in which the president and his family became potential targets with a “laser” focus said Georgetown law professor  Paul Butler to MSNBC host Steve Kornacki on Nov. 30.

“The President is in considerable legal jeopardy,” continued Butler, a frequent MSNBC contributor who earlier in the day had sat next to this reporter in the public gallery of Judge Jackson’s courtroom. The crimes committed by president, Butler said in summarizing the week’s disclosures, might include obstruction of justice, fraud and campaign finance violations.

Trump has reacted to growing pressure by prosecutors and their witnesses, including Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, now a government witness, by increasingly angry denunciations of the Mueller probe and the failure in his mind of the U.S. Justice Department to imprison Trump’s own political enemies.

Trump retweeted this week, for example, a graphic at left by conservative commentators portraying former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her husband Bill, and others as deserving convictions.

As noted by CNN in Donald Trump, Internet troll, the president’s message to his tens of millions of Twitter followers seemingly endorsed the argument “Now that Russia’s collusion is a proven lie, when to the trials for treason begin?” The targets shown behind bars included Mueller and Deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein, both of whom are Republicans and career prosecutors who won their current posts under Trump’s own administration.

Meanwhile, Trump denounced “McCarthyite” tactics by prosecutors without recognizing, of course this hislate mentor, fixer and attorney Roy Cohn had previously served as the ruthless  chief counsel of Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) during the early 1950s and  that Trump himself has complained that he needs a “Roy Cohn” to serve his political interests in the Justice Department.

The tweet, Trump’s other actions and most importantly the accumulating evidence against him and his inner-circle paint an appalling portrait of corruption, incompetence and anti-American conduct seemingly without parallel at high levels of government in recent decades, including the Watergate scandals.

That evidence is fast accumulating in the public eye following a hiatus from  mid-September to early November that was likely in keeping with Justice Department policy to refrain from politically sensitive prosecution news shortly before federal elections. Another complication has been the still-little-known scope of control that Trump’s new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, is exerting over Mueller after Trump forced his first attorney general, Jeffrey Sessions, off the job after the elections because Sessions had recused himself.

The Justice Integrity Project excerpts each daily major news articles and commentaries about the Mueller probe on a special subsite here. Shown below are selected recent news items.

Last week’s major developments included continuing revelations regarding Cohen’s disclosures against the Trump team and about Whitaker’s oft-stated opposition to Mueller and Democrats — and Whitaker’s own vulnerability to challenges on both his legal status as an unconfirmed nominee and a director previously of a scam fined $26 million by the Federal Trade Commission and now under criminal investigation by the FBI that Whitaker ostensibly directs.

What Changed Last Week

This commentator is among a number of others who believe that last week’s legal developments marked a major advance in showing publicly a roadmap of how the special counsel is on the pathway to demonstrating lying, greed, unethical conduct, vulnerability to Russian blackmail by Trump and /or his team, as well as the likelihood of specific crimes such as obstruction of justice and campaign financing violations, plus vulnerability to impeachment under the Constitution, which need not be specific statutory crimes.

As we reported in our column on Manafort’s corruption trial last August in Virginia, these vulnerabilities are becoming apparent even though Trump retains many defenders in Congress, the pundit class and the public.

Longtime Democratic strategist Mark Penn, for example, argued to a Fox News audience on Friday, The Mueller investigation has come up empty on Russia.  “The investigation, I believe,” wrote Penn, “has come up truly empty on its central charge related to the president — collusion with the Russian government. They are now trying to find someone, anyone who had any contact with Julian Assange with the aim of calling that collusion-lite.”

Yet closer review of Penn’s argument shows that it relies on highly selective facts to advance a seemingly pre-selected conclusion: That Trump and his team are blameless. That Penn would use such methods is hardly rare. The pundit class if filled with those willing to say almost anything to get visibility, usually to advance their businesses or political grudges.

The picture is further clouded by the inherent secrecy of the investigative process (with no significant leaks so far by the Mueller team).

Another such factor is the recent vehement protests against Mueller by Trump, several of his supporters who have  either pleaded guilty or otherwise denounced prosecutors. The latter group involves Trump’s longtime supporters Roger Stone and Dr.Jerome Corsi, earch of them authors and each suspected by authorities of trying ensure that WikiLeaks disclosure in 2016 of Democratic emails hacked by Russians would create maximum damage to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Stone, Corsi, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others have denied conspiring and other wrongdoing.

Corsi rejected a plea deal last week on a false statement charge with a denunciation of Mueller following extensive interviews with prosecutors. He is among the defendants who may be holding out for a presidential pardon, a difficult process because such a pardon of a witness could be used by Congress and the public as evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump.

More substantively, federal prosecutors obtained a guilty plea Thursday from Cohen in which he admitted lying to Congress to hide his actions in 2016 to help his longtime boss in unsucessful efforts to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow with the help of Russia’s state bank VBT, then as now under U.S. sanctions and thus forbidden to do business with an American such as Trump.

Cohen identified the key American behind the plan as “Individual 1,” later described as Trump. The Washington Post reported in ‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe that the Cohen release cast fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. “Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign,” said Post reporters, who continued this way:.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.

A major issue in Manafort sentencing — and the topic of the government’s submission due on Dec. 7 — is whether Manafort, 69, should receive extra punishment for violating his cooperation agreement by lying to prosecutors and sharing information about their probe with President Trump’s legal team.

Mueller has charged that  Manafort committed misconduct in what many legal observers have described as a serious, rare breach of legal norms that could bring reprisal both upon Manafort and his attorneys. Manafort’s attorneys deny wrongdoing and will respond to the government’s Dec. 7 filing at an unspecified date before sentencing.

Contact the author Andrew Kreig

  Related News Coverage

Dec. 1

Paul Manafort

New York Times, Analysis: Mueller Exposes the Culture of Lying That Surrounds Trump, Sharon LaFraniere, Dec. 1, 2018. The president has demanded loyalty of advisers, including an embrace of his habitual boasts, misstatements and outright falsehoods; Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, asked a judge that he be allowed to avoid prison when he is sentenced.

When Michael D. Cohen admitted this past week to lying to Congress about a Russian business deal, he said he had testified falsely out of loyalty to President Trump. When he admitted this summer to lying on campaign finance records about payments to cover up a sex scandal during the campaign, he said it was at Mr. Trump’s direction.

Paul Manafort, left, and Rick Gates, former senior Trump campaign officials, lied to cover up financial fraud. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, lied in hopes of landing an administration job. And Michael T. Flynn, another adviser, lied about his interactions with a Russian official and about other matters for reasons that remain unclear.

If the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, right, has proved anything in his 18-month-long investigation — besides how intensely Russia meddled in an American presidential election — it is that Mr. Trump surrounded himself throughout 2016 and early 2017 with people to whom lying seemed to be second nature.

They lied to federal authorities even when they had lawyers advising them, even when the risk of getting caught was high and even when the consequences for them were dire.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen’s new sentencing memo may have just taken down some of Trump’s White House advisers, Daniel Cotter, Dec. 1, 2018. Late on Friday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer and keeper of secrets beyond imagination, filed his Sentencing Memorandum with the Southern District of New York. In the memo, which refers to Trump as “Client 1,” Cohen through his lawyers writes about the false statements:

“Michael’s false statements to Congress likewise sprung regrettably from Michael’s effort, as a loyal ally and then champion of Client-1, to support and advance Client-1’s political messaging. At the time that he was requested to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Michael was serving as personal attorney to the President, and followed daily the political messages that both Client-1 and his staff and supporters repeatedly and forcefully broadcast.

Furthermore, in the weeks during which his then-counsel prepared his written response to the Congressional Committees, Michael remained in close and regular contact with White House based-staff and legal counsel to Client-1.”

What the last paragraph does not directly state, but alludes to, is that both White House staff and legal counsel to Trump were fully aware of what Cohen was preparing to submit to Congress. It also suggests that they may have been involved assisting Cohen in drafting such responses.

Acting Attorney General Whitaker

Washington Post, Acting AG Whitaker has suggested that Trump plays with the truth, Aaron C. Davis and Ilana Marcus, Dec. 1, 20189 (print edition). A review of hundreds of public comments by acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker shows that while he has primarily functioned as a defender of President Trump, he has also criticized the president on numerous occasions, sometimes harshly, while working as a commentator on radio and television.

Whitaker has repeatedly suggested that Trump plays with the truth. He has said Trump should release his tax returns and was “self-serving” in the way he fired FBI Director James B. Comey. Whitaker said during the run-up to the 2016 election that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton were very good options for the presidency. “I mean, both these candidates are unlikable,” he said.

The critique of the president by Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who rose to prominence over the past four years as the head of a conservative nonprofit group, has often come in unguarded moments, and sometimes late into on-air discussions. “Sometimes I wonder if anybody has the president’s ear or if he just kind of watches news accounts and responds to, which is a little dangerous,” Whitaker said in June 2017 on a radio show.

New York Times, Whitaker’s Ascent Surprised Investigators of Firm Accused of Fraud, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, Dec. 1, 2018 (print edition). Matthew G. Whitaker, right, the acting attorney general, sat on the board of a patent firm that was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. Newly disclosed documents shed light on Mr. Whitaker’s involvement with the company and investigators’ stunned reaction to his rise at the Justice Department.

As Federal Trade Commission lawyers investigated a Miami company accused of defrauding thousands of customers, they were stunned to learn last year about a new job for a figure in their inquiry, Matthew G. Whitaker: He had been named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“You’re not going to believe this… Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States,” James Evans, an F.T.C. lawyer, wrote to colleagues in an email on Oct. 24, 2017.

The emails were part of a trove of files the trade commission made public on Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents about its investigation into the company, World Patent Marketing. Mr. Whitaker sat on its advisory board.

In early November, President Trump fired Mr. Sessions and installed Mr. Whitaker as the acting attorney general.

His appointment immediately prompted outcry in part because Mr. Whitaker had sharply criticized the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible ties to Trump associates, which he now oversees as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Democrats have expressed alarm and vowed to investigate Mr. Whitaker when they take over the House of Representatives in January.

Wikileaks Angle

Raw Story, Trump pal Jerome Corsi has only raised $3,500 of his $250K legal defense fund after 4 days of begging, Bob Brigham, Dec. 1, 2018. Jerome Corsi, right, expects to be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller. Corsi is known as the “birther king” for launching the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He has refused a plea deal and has said he’s going to file a “criminal complaint” against the special counsel.

Corsi’s legal defense team has at least two attorneys, David Gray and Larry Klayman. In an attempt to create a war chest for legal battle against the special prosecutor, Corsi has taken to the online fundraising site GoFundMe to raise money.

However, in the four days since the page was launched, only 69 people have contributed. While Corsi set the goal of raising $250,000, only $3,510 has been raised as of publication.

Nov. 30

Putin, Trump, Collusion

Palmer Report, Opinion: Vladimir Putin signals the end of Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, Dec. 1, 2018. It’s difficult to tell who was trying harder to avoid whom, when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin all but pretended they didn’t know each other at the opening of the G20 summit.

But the telling moment came when Putin then walked over and high-fived the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a clear show of excited solidarity between two murderous leaders who each hold puppet strings over the “President of the United States.” Ultimately, however, the real upshot came when Putin issued a statement about his canceled G20 meeting with Trump.

Moments after Michael Cohen revealed in court that Donald Trump had been plotting with Russian election riggers to build Trump Tower Moscow during the election, Trump announced that he was canceling his planned one-on-one meeting with Putin at the G20. There was no doubt as to the real reason, but Trump used the convenient cover story of Russia’s recent military aggression against Ukraine. It turns out Putin wasn’t happy with that explanation.

Putin’s spokesperson announced during the G20 summit that Donald Trump had more likely canceled the meeting due to “the U.S. domestic political situation” – which was a clear reference to the developments in the Trump-Russia scandal. Here’s the thing.

Putin knowns that the best way he could help Trump right now would be to go along with the cover story that this was about Ukraine. Instead, Putin decided to deliver a dagger by pointing out that Trump, rather obviously, canceled the meeting because of his own worsening scandals. It’s now clear that Putin isn’t even willing to provide Trump any cover on these things. And if Putin isn’t willing to prop Trump up anymore, then it signals the end of Trump. Putin must now be calculating that he’s personally better off if Trump sinks than swims.

New York Times, Opinion: Trump Is Compromised by Russia, Michelle Goldberg, Nov. 30, 2018 (print edition). Michael Cohen’s latest plea is proof. One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. (Putin aide Dmitry Peskov is shown at right.)

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.

Fox Defends Trump

Fox News, Opinion: The Mueller investigation has come up empty on Russia — You won’t believe what’s coming next, Mark Penn, Nov. 30, 2018. The pattern and purpose of Mueller’s investigation and the endgame is becoming clear, and yes, it’s clearly get the president at all costs. The team Mueller hired really foretold the story — Andrew Weissmann as the stop-at-nothing pit bull and a group of Democratic-leaning lawyers, including some who have represented the Clintons, had the obstruction of justice charge ready to go on day one.

Trump’s first team of lawyers with their “don’t worry and cooperate” strategy set the president back, and let the whole thing spiral out of control. The investigation, I believe, has come up truly empty on its central charge related to the president — collusion with the Russian government. They are now trying to find someone, anyone who had any contact with Julian Assange with the aim of calling that collusion-lite. But mostly what Mueller’s team is doing is bludgeoning witnesses on unrelated charges to piece together a case against the president. They are shaping that case through the indictments — and threats of indictments — that are being used to get guilty pleas to make the president seem like an obstructor or co-conspirator. They are literally creating the crimes. Let’s review what Mueller and his team are doing:

Michael Cohen

New York Times, Opinion: Cohen Lied. Here’s Why It Matters, Editorial Board, Nov. 30, 2019 (print edition). With Michael Cohen’s latest deal, the special counsel shows he is unafraid of crossing Donald Trump’s red lines on Russia. When all is said and done, the April raids by federal prosecutors targeting Michael Cohen’s office and other premises in Manhattan may be seen as a turning point for Donald Trump’s presidency.

Those raids — and Mr. Cohen’s own malfeasance — opened the door for Robert Mueller, on Thursday, to convict President Trump’s longtime loyalist and personal lawyer of lying to Congress.

What the special counsel has gathered since the raids provides the clearest proof yet to the American public that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry — derided by the president and his allies as an aimless fishing expedition — is rooted in the law and facts. To those critics, this latest move was surely meant to send another message as well: He’s not about to back down.

MSNBC: The Rachel Maddow Show, Mueller Probe Updates, Host Rachel Maddow, Nov. 30, 2018. If other evidence in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s possession were to connect any dots showing that Trump and/or his White House advisers influenced Cohen’s false testimony, many people will be facing some difficult legal issues. The week of the weak president continues to get worse, and it is no wonder that while others are smiling at the G20, Trump seems distracted.

Matthew Whitaker

Washington Post, Whitaker fielded complaints about patent company yet promoted it, records show, Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, Nov. 30, 2018. Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, records show.

Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years — even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.

Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker’s support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company’s behavior.

Donald Trump

Washington Post, ‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe, Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey, Nov. 30, 2018 (print edition). In two major developments this week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: “Individual 1.”

New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.

Money Laundering?

WhoWhatWhy, Deutsche Bank, Trump, and Russia: A WhoWhatWhy Primer, Staff report, Nov. 30, 2018. Early Thursday morning German authorities raided the global powerhouse Deutsche Bank in relation to a money laundering investigation. The raid was reportedly spurred by information garnered from the Panama Papers — the 2015 document leak that revealed how wealthy international figures hide their riches via offshore bank accounts and shady shell companies. The new House Democratic leadership may also investigate.

At WhoWhatWhy, we’ve been watching Deutsche for quite a while — particularly its activities in the United States, its involvement with Russia, and its ties to Donald Trump. Here’s our Deutsche primer:

A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 1 (1/08/2018); Part 2 (1/15/2018); Part 3 (2/01/2018); Where the Dots of Russiagate Connect (1/24/2018); and House GOP Leads Russia Probe … Away From Deutsche Bank (2/27/2018).

Nov. 29

Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney (shown above during a 2016 cable news appearance backing his boss’s candidacy).

New York Times, Michael Cohen Admits Talks for Trump Over Moscow Tower Occurred Well Into Campaign, Benjamin Weiser, Ben Protess, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, Nov. 29, 2018. Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, admitted that he had engaged in negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow well into the 2016 presidential campaign, far later than previously known. After Mr. Cohen’s plea, Mr. Trump said his former fixer was once again lying in order to get a reduced sentence for the crimes he pleaded guilty to earlier this year.

The revelations, which came as Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, were a startling turn in the special counsel’s investigation of Mr. Trump and his inner circle.

Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea comes at a particularly perilous time for Mr. Trump, whose presidency has been threatened by Mr. Cohen’s statements to investigators. In recent days, the president and his lawyers have increased their attacks on the Justice Department and the special counsel’s office.

Shortly after Mr. Cohen’s plea, Mr. Trump said his former fixer was once again lying in order to get a reduced sentence for the crimes he pleaded guilty to earlier this year. Under the earlier plea agreement, Mr. Cohen faced about four or five years in prison.

Mr. Cohen concluded his statement in court by saying, “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1.”

“Individual 1” is President Trump, officials said.

 Washington Post, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress, Rosalind S. Helderman, Nov. 29, 2018. Michael Cohen, a former personal attorney to President Trump, pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project Trump pursued during the months he was running for president, according to the Associated Press. During the campaign, Cohen acted as Trump’s point person in an attempt to built a Trump-branded development in Moscow. He has said the project was in its early stages in the fall of 2015, as Trump’s presidential campaign heated up.

But he has said the project stalled in January 2016 prompting him to email a top aide to Russian President Vladi¬mir Putin to ask for help. Cohen previously has said he never received a response and the project was halted in January 2016.

Cohen’s new guilty plea is the latest development in a wide-ranging investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, right, into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump had insisted in the summer of 2016 that he had no business interests in Russia, statements that would be undermined if Cohen is now asserting conversations about the project continued past January 2016.

Related commentary: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell described the guilty pleas significance as the first time that Cohen had described Trump Organization financial dealings with Russia and a potential gateway to Cohen’s cooperation in prosecution focus on members of the Trump family. Former Justice Department executive Chuck Rosenberg, an MSNBC regular contributor, agreed with Mitchell’s analysis on the noon interview.

Washington Post, Analysis: 4 key takeaways from Michael Cohen’s new plea deal, Aaron Blake, Nov. 29, 2018. Michael Cohen reached a new plea deal Thursday with the team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, in which he admitted to lying to Congress about an effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Below are a few takeaways about what’s significant.

1. There are conspicuous mentions of Trump and his family2. Putin’s spokesman appears to have helped cover this up3. This ties the Trump family’s efforts to the Russian government4) The deal apparently died the day The Post broke a story about Russian hacking.

Russian Trump Building

Presidents Trump and Putin meet last July (White House photo).

Buzzfeed, The Trump Organization Planned To Give Vladimir Putin The $50 Million Penthouse In Trump Tower Moscow, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold, Nov. 29, 2018. During the presidential campaign, Michael Cohen discussed the matter with a representative of Putin’s press secretary, according to two US sources.

President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan.

Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.

The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Cohen acknowledged in court that he had lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign.

The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about President Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin. The plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled, and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse. But Cohen said in court documents that he regularly briefed Trump and his family on the Moscow negotiations.

Trump Cancels Putin Meeting

New York Times, Trump Cancels Meeting With Putin Over Russia’s Hostilities With Ukraine, Peter Baker, Nov. 29, 2018. President Trump on Thursday abruptly canceled his planned meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, citing the unresolved naval standoff between Russia and Ukraine and upending his hopes of further cementing the relationship between the two leaders.

The president’s decision, announced on Twitter barely an hour after he told reporters he still expected to go through with the meeting, came shortly after new revelations that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer was secretly negotiating to build a tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump Tax Lawyer Raided

Palmer Report, Opinion: Feds invade office of Donald Trump’s former longtime tax attorney, Bill Palmer, Nov. 29, 2018.  The Feds have invaded the office of Chicago Alderman Edward Burke, ordered everyone out, and placed brown paper over the doors, according to a tweet from Chicago Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman. Here’s the thing about Burke. He’s not just an Alderman for the city of Chicago. He also runs a law firm that did tax work for Donald Trump for twelve years, only to sever the relationship a few months ago. So what’s going on here?

The raid strongly suggests that Burke is being criminally investigated by the Feds. There are any number of potential reason for such an investigation, ranging from Burke’s political activities, to his various law firm clients. But when you factor in that Burke did tax work for Trump, and he’s being raided on the same day that Trump’s money guy Michael Cohen is incriminating Trump, and on the same day Trump’s favorite money laundering bank is being raided for money laundering, is this all one big coincidence?

Trump-linked Bank Under Scrutiny

New York Times, Deutsche Bank Offices Are Searched in Money Laundering Investigation, Melissa Eddy and Amie Tsang, Nov. 29, 2018. The company’s headquarters in Frankfurt were searched as part of an inquiry related to the so-called Panama Papers. The money-laundering investigation involves hundreds of millions of euros.

One hundred seventy officers searched the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and five other sites in the area early Thursday as part of a money-laundering investigation involving hundreds of millions of euros, prosecutors in Frankfurt said.

Two employees, who were not publicly identified but whose ages were given as 50 and 46, and other “unidentified people in positions of authority” are suspected of failing to report possible money laundering for transactions worth 311 million euros, or more than $350 million.

The money flowed to organizations in the British Virgin Islands before spring 2016, prosecutors said in an emailed statement.

The German bank confirmed in a statement that the police were investigating several of its offices in Germany and said the investigation related to the Panama Papers, a trove of files that put a spotlight on global money laundering. “We are cooperating fully with the authorities,” Deutsche said in the statement.

In April 2016, news organizations in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the Panama Papers, which revealed how some of the world’s wealthiest individuals, including more than 900 customers of Deutsche Bank, dodged taxes in their home countries by transferring money to offshore accounts.

Prosecutors said the documents indicated “that Deutsche Bank helped customers found offshore organizations in tax havens by transferring illegally acquired money without alerting authorities to suspected money laundering.”

Deutsche Bank, once known for its aggressive efforts to compete with Wall Street institutions, has shrunk after years of losses as a result of problems including a bloated investment bank and trading desk and costly legal settlements tied to the sale of toxic mortgage securities.

Even as its competitors have recovered from the 2008 financial crisis, Deutsche Bank has struggled. This year, the bank’s arm in the United States failed a Federal Reserve stress test, which found that it had “material weaknesses” in its operations.

JIP Editor’s Note: Deutsche Bank has been widely reported elsewhere to have been the major bank financing the Trump Organization after most major banks withheld financing. Justin Kennedy, son of the recently retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was formerly a key liaison at the bank between it and organizations led by the future president and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Mueller Probe: Russian Ties

The Atlantic, Papadopoulos’s Russia Ties Continue to Intrigue the FBI, Natasha Bertrand, right, and Scott Stedman, Nov. 28, 2018. The former foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign boasted of a Russia business deal even after the election, according a new letter under review.

George Papadopoulos, a Trump-campaign adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his interactions with a Russia-linked professor in 2016, went to jail on Monday after fighting, and failing, to delay the start of his two-week prison sentence. But a letter now being investigated by the House Intelligence Committee and the FBI indicates that Papadopoulos is still in the crosshairs of investigators probing a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

 Washington Post, Opinion: The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline, Harry Litman, Nov. 29, 2018 (print edition). Harry Litman teaches constitutional law at the University of California at San Diego. He has served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and deputy assistant attorney general.

Following the implosion of Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a lawyer for President Trump casually announced that Manafort’s lawyers had been briefing Trump’s lawyers about his sessions with the Mueller team all along.

This revelation, far from routine, in fact is jaw-dropping — and it has significant legal and political implications.

First, and least, it represents another breach of the demolished cooperation agreement that Manafort entered into to avoid the expense and near-certain conviction in a second trial.

Second, whatever Team Trump may assert, the conversations between some combination of Manafort (shown in a mug shot), Trump and the lawyers for both of them were not privileged, and Mueller is entitled to know their contents. Thus, Mueller is fully entitled to subpoena Manafort counsel Kevin Downing and whichever Trump counsel spoke with him (one trusts it wasn’t Emmet Flood, who is too savvy for such shenanigans) and force them to reveal every word of the discussions.

Finally, the open pipeline between cooperator Manafort and suspect Trump may have been not only extraordinary but also criminal. On Manafort and Downing’s end, there is a circumstantial case for obstruction of justice.

Matthew Whitaker

Palmer Report, Opinion: Is this the part where Matt Whitaker gets fired? Bill Palmer, Nov. 29, 2018. In all the surreal developments today surrounding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to have Michael Cohen publicly implicate Donald Trump in the Trump Tower Moscow election scandal, one of the most noteworthy aspects was that Mueller did anything at all. Trump installed Matthew Whitaker at Acting Attorney General specifically to hamstring Mueller, yet here was Mueller, pulling off a huge swing at Trump.

We don’t know why Matt Whitaker rolled over today, but we do know that he did in fact roll over. Multiple major news outlets reported that Robert Mueller had Rod Rosenstein sign off on the Michael Cohen move, and while Whitaker was informed before it happened, he clearly didn’t stop it from happening. Did he try to stop it and fail? Did he fail to try? We don’t have any way of knowing. But the bottom line is that he utterly, crucially, failed Trump today.

Now Donald Trump has a decision to make. His scheme to stop Robert Mueller, by installing Matt Whitaker, is not working. So now what? Does Trump give Whitaker a stern talking to about his expectations going forward? Does Trump fire the guy, and try to find someone else to be his new Acting Attorney General?

Donald Trump could surely get away with firing Matthew Whitaker, because no one thinks the Whitaker appointment was appropriate or legal anyway. But unless Trump can immediately find some other corrupt lackey to install in his place, Rod Rosenstein would become the new Acting Attorney General, which would only serve to further strengthen Robert Mueller’s position. So will Trump sit tight on an apparent busted hand, or will he fire Whitaker out of spite, knowing it could cost him even more? Stay tuned.

Money Laundering Claim

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s favorite money laundering bank, Deutsche Bank, just got its headquarters raided, Bill Palmer, Nov. 29, 2018. This morning, Special Counsel Robert Mueller made a major move against Donald Trump by having cooperating witness Michael Cohen plead guilty to having lied about the timeframe for the ill-fated Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 election. Even as this plays out, another major scandal has come to a head with Deutsche Bank – and while it’s not yet clear what’s happening, it would be one heck of a coincidence if the two aren’t related.

Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt just got raided by the authorities as part of what the New York Times says is a massive money laundering investigation. The Times story does not mention Donald Trump or Russia. But if you’ve been paying attention these past two years, you know two things about Trump, Russia, and Deutsche Bank.

First, Deutsche Bank has routinely loaned major sums of money to Donald Trump over the years, even after he became such a poor credit risk that other banks wouldn’t touch him, and even after Deutsche ran into financial troubles of its own.

Second, Deutsche Bank was busted by U.S. and UK authorities in early 2017 for having laundered massive sums of money from Russia into the hands of people in places like New York City. It’s never been proven, but it’s long been widely suspected that these two stories are the same, and that Deutsche Bank was using these “loans” to launder Russian money to Trump in New York.

WikiLeaks Angle

Washington Post, Trump’s night-owl calls to Roger Stone in 2016 draw scrutiny in Mueller probe, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Manuel Roig-Franzia, Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey, Nov. 29, 2018 (print edition). The calls almost always came deep into the night. Caller ID labeled them “unknown,” but Roger Stone said he knew to pick up quickly during those harried months of the 2016 presidential campaign. There would be a good chance that the voice on the other end of the line would belong to his decades-long friend — the restless, insomniac candidate Donald Trump — dialing from a blocked phone number.

Those nocturnal chats and other contacts between the man who now occupies the Oval Office and an infamous political trickster have come under intensifying scrutiny as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation bores into whether Stone served as a bridge between Trump and WikiLeaks as the group was publishing hacked Democratic emails.

Mueller’s keen interest in their relationship was laid out in a draft court document revealed this week in which prosecutors drew a direct line between the two men — referring to Stone as someone understood to be in regular contact with senior Trump campaign officials, “including with then-candidate Donald J. Trump.”

DCReport, Opinion: Donald Trump May Have Just Lied His Way to Prison, David Cay Johnston (right, DCReport Editor-in-Chief and author of two books on President Trump’s career), Nov. 29, 2018. How the Mueller Team Has Played Two Con Artists, Unmasking a Double Agent and Enticing the Other to Perjury.

Pay close attention to the front page story in Wednesday’s New York Times about Paul Manafort’s lawyer cooperating with Trump’s lawyers (Manafort’s Lawyer Is Said to Have Briefed Trump Team on Mueller Talks). It may well prove to be very important news just a short way down the road.

Its sole named source is Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s television lawyer. Giuliani acknowledged that information gleaned from Manafort’s meetings with FBI agents and prosecutors as a cooperating witness was being passed to Team Trump by Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing.

That one fact could well doom Trump’s presidency and perhaps land Trump and others behind bars. After Manafort was convicted of eight federal felonies last August and was about to endure the costs of a second federal trial, the former Trump campaign manager agreed in September to cooperate with Muller’s prosecution team.

We call that “flipping” because you switch sides, from criminal to law enforcement. Flipping requires criminals to be completely truthful in every detail with prosecutors about known crimes as well as disclosing still hidden criminal activity.

If Trump and his lawyer relied on what Manafort’s lawyer passed on from meetings with Team Mueller, this double-agent legal game may blow up in Trump’s face.

More On Trump

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Opinion: 48 hours of Trump lies in a few tweets, Wayne Madsen, Nov. 29, 2018. In a mere 48 hours, incessant Donald Trump lies, communicated via Twitter, have rocked the stock market, enraged union workers, and have further eroded public confidence in the ability of the White House and its enablers in Congress to govern.

Nov. 28

Paul Manafort

New York Times, Manafort’s Lawyer Is Said to Have Briefed Trump Team on Mueller Talks, Michael S. Schmidt, Sharon LaFraniere and Maggie Haberman, Nov. 28, 2018 (print edition). A lawyer for Paul Manafort, the president’s onetime campaign chairman shown above in a 2016 photo, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with the special counsel’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal experts speculated that it was a bid by Mr. Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, left, one of the president’s personal lawyers, acknowledged the arrangement on Tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed. Such information could help shape a legal defense strategy, and it also appeared to give Mr. Trump and his legal advisers ammunition in their public relations campaign against Mr. Mueller’s office.

For example, Mr. Giuliani said, Mr. Manafort’s lawyer Kevin M. Downing, right, told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

The president has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance. “He wants Manafort to incriminate Trump,” Mr. Giuliani declared of Mr. Mueller

New York Times, Opinion: What Was Paul Manafort Thinking? Harry Litman (former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general), Nov. 28, 2018 (print edition). There’s no good explanation for why he lied to Mueller.

How to make sense of the bizarre turn of events involving Paul Manafort?

Two months ago, he struck a plea deal with Robert Mueller, right, the special counsel — he pleaded guilty but agreed to provide full and truthful information in exchange for a more lenient sentence. But according to a filing by Mr. Mueller’s team on Monday, Mr. Manafort lied to them repeatedly, and after multiple warnings. He is now in a far worse position than if he had never elected to cooperate, or if he had followed through on his agreement.

What was he thinking? All of the available explanations for Mr. Manafort’s self-destructive path seem highly implausible, at best. So which hypothesis is the least implausible?

Hypothesis No. 1: The Pardon PromiseHypothesis No. 2: The Assassination FixationHypothesis No. 3: The Bad Gambler

New York Post, Trump says pardon for Paul Manafort still a possibility, Marisa Schultz and Nikki Schwab, Nov. 28, 2018. Trump compares Mueller’s investigation to McCarthyism; Manafort lawyer shared Mueller probe details with Trump’s legal team. He’s never discussed a pardon for Paul Manafort, President Trump said Wednesday — but it’s “not off the table.” “It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?” the president said during an Oval Office interview.

He ripped special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and charged that Manafort, former political adviser Roger Stone and Stone’s associate Jerome Corsi were all asked to lie by the special counsel. “If you told the truth, you go to jail,” Trump said.

“You know this flipping stuff is terrible. You flip and you lie and you get — the prosecutors will tell you 99 percent of the time they can get people to flip. It’s rare that they can’t,” Trump said.

“But I had three people: Manafort, Corsi — I don’t know Corsi, but he refuses to say what they demanded. Manafort, Corsi and Roger Stone.”

“It’s actually very brave,” he said of the trio. “And I’m telling you, this is McCarthyism. We are in the McCarthy era. This is no better than McCarthy. And that was a bad situation for the country. But this is where we are. And it’s a terrible thing,” Trump added.

Mueller’s team has accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them “on a variety of subject matters.”

Trump v. Mueller

CNN, Donald Trump, Internet troll, Chris Cillizza, Nov. 28, 2018. Donald Trump has always had some Internet troll in him. He loves to provoke. He often traffics in half-truths (or less). He’s a big fan of memes. But of late — and with regard to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation in particular — the President is embracing his inner troll. Consider how Trump spent his Wednesday morning.

The image features a series of people behind prison bars — including special counsel Mueller, former President Barack Obama and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — with the words, “Now that Russian collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials for treason begin?” written across the picture.

Then, Trump retweeted a set of month-old tweets from conservative commentators — Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk — featuring Hillary Clinton cracking a joke after Recode’s Kara Swisher mixed up Eric Holder and Cory Booker. “I know they all look alike,” Clinton joked of the two African-American men.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump throws deranged fit about “treason,” Bill Palmer, right, Nov. 28, 2018. Now that we’ve learned that Paul Manafort reportedly met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during the 2016 election, the mainstream media is finally beginning to cautiously use the word “treason” to characterize the Trump-Russia scandal. After all, we’re talking about Donald Trump’s campaign boss conspiring with a foreign enemy to try to alter the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor – and it’s difficult to imagine that Trump wasn’t in on the plot. Now Trump is the one throwing around the word “treason” – in typically deranged fashion.

This morning, after Donald Trump finished hyperbolically comparing Special Counsel Robert Mueller to Joseph McCarthy, he then retweeted a post which said “Now that Russia collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials begin for treason?” Included was an image which depicted Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and a number of other people in prison.

With this retweet, Donald Trump – the supposed President of the United States – unquestionably accused all of his political opponents, and the people investigating his crimes, of committing “treason.” This is, of course, egregious beyond characterization, and should result in immediate impeachment and ouster.

But the real upshot here is that Trump now feels compelled to preemptively accuse his adversaries of treason because he knows that’s what his own people – and eventually himself – are going to be accused of having committed.

We can spend all day parsing the legal definition of the word treason. Many people mistakenly think treason charges require a declaration of war, when prosecutorial history reveals that such charges only require an act of war, and that the definition of an “act of war” has tended to be pliable. For instance, the Russian hacking of the elections could be defined as an act of cyber war.

USA Today, Senate again blocks Senate bill that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller, Eliza Collins and Bart Jansen, Nov. 28, 2018. The Senate again blocked an expedited vote on legislation that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller from being fired.

Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. (right); Chris Coons, D-Del., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., urged brisk debate on the legislation in an effort to prevent President Donald Trump from firing Mueller Wednesday. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah objected to the request, blocking immediate action. Lee said the bill was unconstitutional.

The bill had passed on a bipartisan basis out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but has been kept off the floor by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who said there is no need to bring it up. Before calling for unanimous consent, Flake said he worried that his colleagues who said there was no need for legislation because “there hasn’t been any indication that Mr. Mueller be removed from office” were making a mistake.

“With the president tweeting on a regular basis, a daily basis, that the special counsel is conflicted, that he is leading the so-called 12 angry Democrats and demeaning and ridiculing him in every way, to be so sanguine about the chances of him getting fired is folly for us, I believe,” Flake said.

NBC News, Trump’s legal team has joint defense agreement with Stone ally Corsi, Anna Schecter, Nov. 28, 2018. President Donald Trump’s legal team has a mutual defense agreement in place with conservative author Jerome Corsi amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the 2016 election, according to Corsi and the president’s lawyer.

Corsi, an associate of Roger Stone, said his lawyer David Gray has spoken with Trump attorney Jay Sekulow on more than one occasion about his dealings with Mueller.

“I wanted Jay Sekulow as the president’s attorney to know what was happening to me with the Mueller investigation,” said Corsi.

“I did this because I support Donald Trump…I wanted him to survive the Mueller investigation unscathed, which I believe he will, and I want him to be reelected in 2020.”

Washington Post, Losing cooperators is a blow, but not a fatal one, for Mueller, analysts say, Matt Zapotosky, Nov. 28, 2018 (print edition). Prosecutors said former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort violated his plea agreement by lying, while another possible witness declined to take a deal.

Roger Stone on C-SPAN

Lawfare, Opinion: Roger Stone’s ‘Time in the Barrel’: Campaign Dirty Tricks, Political Sabotage and the Law, Bob Bauer, Nov. 28, 2018. Bob Bauer served as White House Counsel to President Obama. In 2013, the President named Bob to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of the university’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic.

Roger Stone is pleased to be known as a campaign “dirty trickster.” A former Trump campaign aide and Republican operative, he has embraced his past as practitioner of the political dark arts. “One man’s dirty tricks,” he has said, are “another man’s political, civic action. He has warned that “Politics ain’t bean bag, and losers don’t legislate.” Going still further, he has articulated as one of his “rules” for success that “To win you must do everything.” Yet he has also insisted that, “Everything I do, everything I’ve ever done has been legal.”

This claim is now likely to be put to the test. News reports increasingly suggest that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is circling around Roger Stone and his associates in the Russia matter and that the legality of his “dirty tricks” is very much in question.

Stone’s argument that ”it’s all just politics” is close in kind to the First Amendment protection defenses that the Trump campaign has claimed it enjoys even if, as alleged, it had contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks. Like those defenses, Stone’s claims will be evaluated in the light of the still emerging but increasingly troubling facts of the campaign and its associates’ active connivance with the Russian cyber attack on the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. As the Watergate prosecutions showed, dirty tricks pursued to sabotage an opposing campaign are very much a legal issue. They are not easily passed off as good old-fashioned hardball politics, the kind that “ain’t beanbag”—especially when, as in this case, the fellow tricksters are a foreign government and its agents.

Nov. 27

Palmer Report, Commentary: Looks like Robert Mueller just busted Paul Manafort, Julian Assange, and Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, Nov. 27, 2018. This morning The Guardian revealed that Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange three times at the Ecuadorian embassy, according to its visitor logs, including once while Manafort was running Donald Trump’s campaign. This isn’t some zany coincidence. This is, rather obviously, what Manafort lied to Robert Mueller about.

Let’s be clear here about what Paul Manafort was doing. [I]t’s engaging in an international treason plot to systematically rig an election. It’s not something you do unless the candidate is on board. So yeah, Trump had to have known.

Robert Mueller’s ten-day delay is still the linchpin to all of this. He could have busted Manafort for lying ten days ago, when the status update was originally due. Instead he made a point of briefly delaying the news. As we pointed out last night, the only relevant item that transpired during those ten days was that Donald Trump reached his deadline and turned in his written answers about Trump-Russia collusion.

It’s not difficult to parse that Mueller was looking to bait Trump into lying, in writing, about Manafort and Assange. This means Mueller has Trump nailed for not only being in on the election collusion conspiracy, but then committing the additional crime of lying about it in writing. As we’ve seen, even when Mueller has strong evidence to prove that someone committed a complex crime, he likes initially nailing them on simpler crimes instead, because it’s quicker and easier.

The plot between the Trump campaign, Russia, and WikiLeaks wasn’t merely being run by sideshow clowns like Roger Stone or Jerome Corsi. It was being run by Donald Trump’s campaign boss, who was meeting with the enemy in person, and there’s no doubt Trump knew all about it.

More On Mueller Probe

Guardian, Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, Nov. 27, 2018. Trump ally met WikiLeaks founder months before emails hacked by Russia were published. Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.

Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.

It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016. Months later WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.

Manafort, 69, denies involvement in the hack and says the claim is “100% false.” His lawyers declined to answer the Guardian’s questions about the visits. The revelation could shed new light on the sequence of events in the run-up to summer 2016, when WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of emails hacked by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Hillary Clinton has said the hack contributed to her defeat.

Nov. 26

New York Times, Manafort Breached Plea Deal by Repeatedly Lying, Mueller Says, Sharon LaFraniere, Nov. 26, 2018. Paul Manafort, above, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, the special counsel’s office said in a court filing late on Monday. Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said Mr. Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters” relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement. But under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Manafort cannot withdraw his guilty plea.

Defense lawyers disagreed that Mr. Manafort, shown at right in a mug shot, has violated the deal. In the same filing, they said that Mr. Manafort has met repeatedly with the special counsel’s office and “believes he has provided truthful information.”

But given the impasse between the two sides, they asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to set a sentencing date for Mr. Manafort, who has been in solitary confinement in a detention center in Alexandria, Va., since June.

The dramatic development in the 11th hour of Mr. Manafort’s case is a fresh sign of the prosecutors’ aggressive approach in investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race and whether anyone in the Trump campaign knew about or assisted Moscow’s effort.

Mr. Manafort had hoped that in agreeing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller’s team, prosecutors would argue that he deserved a lighter punishment. He is expected to face at least a decade-long prison term for 10 felony counts ranging from financial fraud to conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Instead, after at least a dozen sessions with him, federal prosecutors have not only decided Mr. Manafort does not deserve leniency, but also could seek to refile other charges that they had agreed to dismiss as part of the plea deal.

More On Mueller Probe

ABC News, Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi says he is rejecting a plea deal from Robert Mueller, Ali Dukakis, Pierre Thomas, Lucien Bruggeman, Nov. 26, 2018. Jerome Corsi, an associate of former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, has decided to reject a plea deal he says was offered to him by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Corsi, right, said the special counsel offered to allow him to plead guilty to one count of lying to federal investigators in exchange for cooperation in the probe and leniency at sentencing.

He provided ABC News with copies of a plea agreement he says was drafted by Mueller’s prosecutors that would have exposed Corsi to a prison sentence of up to five years for “knowingly [making] materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI about communications with an unidentified “associate’s request to get in touch with an organization that he understood to be in possession of stolen emails and other documents pertaining to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” The unknown associate mentioned by Mueller matches the description of Roger Stone, who hired Corsi to do research for him during the 2016 election.

Corsi, a former Infowars bureau chief known for promulgating political smear campaigns and conspiracy theories, told ABC News that he could not sign on to a plea deal for a crime he says he did not commit.

“If I have to go to jail for the rest of my life, so be it,” Corsi said. “Have at it. I will not tell a lie to a federal judge or anybody else.”

Nov. 25

Former Trump Team advisor George Papadopoulos (now a convicted felon), his wife Simona Mangiante, an outspoken critic of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III, right (file photos).

Palmer Report, Opinion: Judge in George Papadopoulos case hands major victory to Robert Mueller, Bill Palmer, Nov. 25, 2018. The judge in the George Papadopoulos case has ruled that he must start his fourteen day prison sentence tomorrow. This is not a big deal in and of itself, as he’ll be released with plenty of time left to go Christmas shopping. The big deal is the defense strategy that Papadopoulos (shown in a mug shot) was trying to use, and the fact that the judge rejected it out of hand.

In a separate ongoing legal battle, Robert Mueller tried to force Andrew Miller to testify before the grand jury about his longtime associate Roger Stone. Miller responded by challenging Mueller’s overall prosecutorial authority, and the battle is still playing out in court.

George Papadopoulos tried making the argument that his prison sentence should be delayed indefinitely, until a ruling is made in the Mueller/Miller matter. The logic was that if Mueller’s authority is struck down, then the charges against Papadopoulos would vanish anyway.

September

Sept. 17

Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, left, and Deputy Campaign Manager Rick Gates, a former aide and business partner to Manafort for a decade.

Justice Integrity Project, Five Notable Nuggets From Manafort Scandal, Andrew Kreig, Sept. 17, 2018.  An analysis of the guilty plea on Sept. 14 by the corrupt global strategist Paul Manafort features five notable crime scenarios easy to overlook by busy readers or even many reporters.

The former 2016 Trump campaign chairman admitted during his federal court plea deal too many crimes to mention here or in any other news commentary of reasonable length, as described here in a court filing.

This editor covered Manafort’s guilty pleas on Sept. 14 at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC and the defendant’s trial last month at the federal courthouse across the Potomac River from the District in Alexandria, Virginia.

Sept. 16

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump goes berserk about the demise of his presidency, Bill Palmer, Sept. 16, 2018. As of 4pm eastern time [Saturday], Donald Trump hadn’t tweeted anything at all – leaving some to wonder if perhaps his handlers had slipped a sedative in his coffee to keep him from exploding about the Paul Manafort plea deal against him.

Trump came alive by late afternoon, bragging about what a great job he was doing with Hurricane Florence, even while failing to acknowledge the Americans who were dying in the storm. Then around 6 pm, he remembered that Robert Mueller and Manafort had just destroyed his life, and he went off the deep end about it. It also included admissions to charges that the Virginia jury hung on, though Friday’s cooperation deal agreed to dismiss them after Manafort is sentenced.

Sept. 15

Washington Post, Opinion: I was a prosecutor. Here’s what stands out to me about Manafort’s deal with Mueller, Deanna Paul, Sept. 15, 2018. What’s clear is that Paul Manafort was out of cards to play. Unlike the other criminally charged former Trump aides, Manafort’s problem was that he was facing a functional life sentence.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, a prison term is determined by a defendant’s criminal history and his conduct during the charged crime.

In the D.C. plea deal, that calculation did not work out well for Manafort, handing him a particularly onerous sentence. In addition to a court-imposed fine, according to court documents, the range for Manafort was 210 to 262 months imprisonment, or 17 to 20 years.

Washington Post, Guilty plea exposes hardball tactics Manafort used to thrive in ‘swamp,’ Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Matt Zapotosky, Sept. 16, 2018 (print edition). Before he was the Trump campaign chairman, the lobbyist went to extreme lengths in a secret effort to help a Ukrainian politician, court papers show.

Before he was Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort embraced extreme tactics in his lobbying efforts: He schemed “to plant some stink” and spread stories that a jailed Ukrainian politician was a murderer. He enlisted a foreign politician who was secretly on his payroll to deliver a message to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. And he gleefully fueled allegations that an Obama Cabinet member who had spoken out against his Ukrainian client was an anti-Semite, according to court papers.

With his guilty plea Friday, Manafort admitted the lengths to which he went to manipulate the American political system and the media for massive profit, exposing how he thrived in the Washington swamp that Trump railed against during his campaign.

The president has dismissed the allegations against his former campaign chairman as run-of-the-mill lobbying — and has even contemplated pardoning him. But new details revealed Friday show how far beyond the law Manafort went in pursuit of his goals.

By pleading guilty, Manafort agreed that he knew he was required by law to publicly report that a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party was paying him and his stable of lobbyists, which included former leaders of Austria, Poland and Italy.

Instead, he operated in the dark, working diligently to keep his lobbying for Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych, right, a secret and pocketing millions routed through offshore bank accounts to hide his work and avoid paying taxes.

“This is extraordinary,” said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow.

“I was well aware at the time that Manafort was making efforts to present Yanukovych in the best light,” McFaul said, but added that he had no idea of the extent of Manafort’s elaborate schemes.

Washington Post, Opinion: I was a prosecutor. Here’s what stands out to me about Manafort’s deal with Mueller, Deanna Paul, Sept. 15, 2018. What’s clear is that Paul Manafort was out of cards to play. Unlike the other criminally charged former Trump aides, Manafort’s problem was that he was facing a functional life sentence.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, a prison term is determined by a defendant’s criminal history and his conduct during the charged crime.

In the D.C. plea deal, that calculation did not work out well for Manafort, handing him a particularly onerous sentence. In addition to a court-imposed fine, according to court documents, the range for Manafort was 210 to 262 months imprisonment, or 17 to 20 years.

Washington Post, Analysis, Robert Mueller may have just eliminated one of Trump’s biggest complaints, Philip Bump, Sept. 15, 2018 (print edition). Trump likes to complain about the cost of the Mueller probe. It might just have paid for itself.

If we assume the same cost-per-day for the investigation that was reported through March of this year, the probe has so far cost the government about $26 million. That’s the $17 million through March and another $9 million since.

But here’s the thing, pointed out by journalist Marcy Wheeler on her personal site: The Mueller probe may have just paid for itself.

Why? Because part of the plea agreement reached between Mueller and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort includes forfeiture of certain property to the government. While it’s not clear how much value will be extracted from that forfeiture, there’s reason to think that it could more than pay for what Mueller has incurred so far.

New York Times, Paul Manafort Forfeits $22 Million in New York Real Estate in Plea Deal, Julia Jacobs, Sept. 15, 2018. Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, is forfeiting an estimated $22 million worth of real estate in New York — including three Manhattan apartments, a Brooklyn townhouse and a home in the Hamptons — as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors announced on Friday.

Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Manafort agreed to tell all he knows to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mr. Manafort, 69, said he would turn over to the government the five properties in New York, including an apartment in Trump Tower, as well as the contents of three bank accounts and his life insurance policy.Two of the Manhattan apartments, in SoHo, are estimated to be worth $3.2 million and $4.1 million, according to an estimate by Zillow, the online real estate company. Mr. Manafort’s apartment in Trump Tower in Midtown has an estimated value of $3 million.

The first four and a half months of the special counsel investigation cost taxpayers nearly $7 million, including $3.2 million in direct spending by Mr. Mueller’s team. The investigation has lasted about 16 months.

Sept. 14

CBS News, Paul Manafort will cooperate with special counsel, Paula Reid, Clare Hymes, Steven Portnoy and Jeff Pegues, Sept. 14, 2018 (4:16 min. video). Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort entered a guilty plea to two felonies Friday. He will also be cooperating with the special counsel in its Russia investigation, prosecutor Andrew Weissman told the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Friday.

Weissman referred to Manafort’s plea deal as a cooperation agreement in court Friday, which could jeopardize his chances of a presidential pardon. In late July, an attorney for Manafort told CBS News’ Paula Reid that there was “no chance” his client would cooperate with the special counsel in its Russia probe. It is not yet clear whether Manafort’s cooperation is related to President Trump or whether he would provide information on some other aspect of the investigation.

Manafort appeared at the hearing with three attorneys, including Kevin Downing, who said nothing during the hearing. The government brought a large contingent, though special counsel Robert Mueller was not present. Several lawyers, FBI and IRS agents who had worked on the case attended the hearing, occupying two-and-a-half rows in the audience. They were all hugging and congratulating each other at the end of the hearing.

The president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was asked by Reid (CBS Washington correspondent) whether he had been told by Manafort’s attorneys that the cooperation deal will not require him to share anything related to the president. “I’m confident,” he replied, without saying whether Manafort’s lawyers had given him this assurance.

Manafort is pleading guilty to charges the special counsel filed Friday on conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The former includes money laundering, tax fraud, failing to file Foreign Bank Accounts, and the latter includes the charge of witness tampering.

Manafort is still subject to whatever sentence is imposed in the Virginia trial. And the judge may decide to run those sentences consecutively or concurrently. In Washington, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that based on the guidelines, which are determined based on factors such as Manafort’s involvement and the nature of the crimes, he faces a range of 210 to 262 months and a $400,000 fine. But that is more than the statutory maximum, which is five years, which the judge cannot exceed.

The charges were filed in a superseding criminal information — a formal criminal charge — which lays out the facts of the offense and is often the precursor to the announcement of a deal.

In the courtroom, Manafort stared straight ahead, while Weissman read a condensed version of the litany of illegal acts to which Manafort is pleading guilty. Jackson called it the “longest and most detailed” reading of criminal information she had ever heard.

The Atlantic, What Paul Manafort Knows, Franklin Foer, Sept. 14, 2018. What kind of threat does Paul Manafort now pose to Donald Trump? Robert Mueller’s indictment of the fallen lobbyist is a masterful portrait of a craven man and his methods.

But the chronology contained in the document filed this morning takes us right up to the eve of Manafort joining the Trump campaign, and then leaves the reader bursting with curiosity about what comes next. While Mueller has tied up all sorts of narratives about Manafort’s strange career in Ukraine, so many strands of the Manafort story remain maddeningly untidy.

Perhaps not even Mueller fully knows what Manafort has to offer about his time in the Trump campaign. But in the unresolved threads of the tale, there are hints of the subjects that Manafort could clarify.

Washington Post, Manafort to plead guilty to second set of charges in Mueller probe, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, Sept. 14, 2018. The signal of a plea by Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, came not long before his trial in D.C. on charges of money laundering and lobbying violations and after his August conviction in federal court in Virginia.

• Read the new court filing in Manafort’s case, with excerpt at the top below. Some conduct extended into 2017, according to the plea document:

 PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR. (MANAFORT) served for years as a political consultant and lobbyist. Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT conspired with Richard W. Gates (Gates), Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik), and others to act, and acted, as unregistered agents of a foreign government and political party.

Specifically, MANAFORT conspired to act and acted as an agent of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was President from 2010 to 2014), President Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions that formed in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Russia).

MANAFORT generated more than 60 million dollars in income as a result of his Ukraine work. In order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, MANAFORT, with the assistance of Gates and Kilimnik, laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts.

Sept. 13

Convicted felon and former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, shown in a 2016 campaign photo by Gage Skidmore

Daily Beast, Opinion: Michael Flynn to Appear at Far-Right Conference With Pizzagaters, Racist YouTube Stars, Kelly Weill, Sept. 13, 2018. President Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser will be picking up an award from conspiracy-mongering outlet The Gateway Pundit.

While he awaits sentencing for lying to the FBI, former national security advisor Michael Flynn will take his awards where he can get them — even if that means appearing alongside Pizzagate pushers and racist YouTubers.

Flynn, a former lieutenant general who resigned as Trump’s national security advisor after he was revealed to have lied about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, could spend up to six months in prison for lying to the FBI. That hasn’t stopped the Gateway Pundit, a far-right, conspiracy-mongering news outlet, from presenting Flynn with a “Award for Service to America” at its upcoming conference this weekend. The conference features Pizzagate conspiracy theorists, an alt-right YouTuber accused of leading a “cult,” and members of far-right European parties.Advertisement

Flynn is scheduled to appear Friday night, following a series of speeches on why “President Trump Is #Winning.” Flynn, whose contacts with Russian and Turkish officials have brought scrutiny on the Trump administration, is arguably not the best spokesperson for #Winning.

But the Gateway Pundit has a history of playing loose with facts. The website falsely named a young Michigan man as the killer who drove a car into a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia last year. Gateway Pundit smeared the man as an “anti-Trump druggie” before the actual driver was revealed as neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. The Michigan man and his family are suing the Gateway Pundit, as is a man who uploaded a video of the car attack. The Gateway Pundit accused him of being a deep state plant who orchestrated the attack. After the smear campaign, conspiracy theorists harassed the man’s family and mailed him white powder, he alleges. The Gateway Pundit responded to the second lawsuit by calling the plaintiff an “unhinged leftie hack.” Both cases are ongoing.

The Gateway Pundit has also variously misidentified bomb-makers and shooters as anti-Trumpers, and peddled conspiracies about Hillary Clinton’s health during the 2016 election.

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/1584-court-sets-dec-7-manafort-date-as-trump-russian-scandals-mount