Cleveland Sports Forum

The media’s hatred of Trump is only hurting itself

By Michael Goodwin NY Post

August 18, 2018

This month marks the two-year anniversary of one of the most important articles ever written on journalism. On Aug. 7, 2016, after Donald Trump formally secured the Republican nomination and the general election campaign was under way, New York Times media columnist James Rutenberg began with a question:

“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

Under the Times’ traditional standards, the right answer is that you wouldn’t be allowed to cover any candidate you were so biased against. But that’s not the answer Rutenberg gave.

Instead, quoting an editor who called Hillary Clinton “normal” and Trump “abnormal,” Rutenberg suggested “normal standards” didn’t apply. He admitted that “balance has been on vacation” since Trump began to campaign and ended by declaring that it is “journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment.”

I wrote then that the article was a failed attempt to justify the lopsided anti-Trump coverage in the Times and other news organizations. It was indeed that — and more, for it also served as a dog whistle for anti-Trump journalists, telling them it was acceptable to reveal their biases. After all, history would judge them.

Weeks later, Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, told an interviewer the Rutenberg article “nailed” his thinking and convinced him that the struggle for fairness was over.

“I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” Baquet boasted. “I think we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”

Because the Times is the liberal media’s bell cow, the floodgates were flung open to routinely call Trump a liar, a racist and a traitor. Standards of fairness were trashed as nearly every prominent news organization demonized Trump and effectively endorsed Clinton. This open partisanship was a disgraceful chapter in the history of American journalism.

Yet the shocking failure of that effort produced no change in behavior. After the briefest of mea culpas for failing to see even the possibility of a Trump victory, the warped coverage continued and became the media wing of the resistance movement.

Which is how we arrived at the latest low moment in journalism. This one involved the more than 300 newspapers (including The Post) that followed the Boston Globe and, especially his accusation that they are “the ­enemy of the people.”

The high-minded among the media mob insisted they were joining together to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press. In fact, the effort looked, smelled and felt like self-interest and rank partisanship masquerading as principle.

True to their habit, most of the papers expressed contempt for the president and some extended that contempt to his supporters.

Nancy Ancrum, the editorial page editor of the Miami Herald, told Fox News her paper joined the effort without any hope of changing the minds of Trump supporters because “they are just too far gone.”

Imagine that — 63 million Americans are written off because they disagree with the media elite’s politics. Echoes of Clinton’s “deplorables” comment ring loud and clear.

I agree that Trump is wrong to call the media the “enemy of the people” and wish he would stick to less inflammatory words. His ­favorite charge of “fake news” makes his point well enough without any hint that he favors retribution on individual journalists.

But I am also concerned that media leaders refuse to see their destructive role in the war with the president. Few show any remorse over how the relentlessly hostile coverage of Trump is damaging the nation and changing journalism for the worse.

One obvious consequence is increased political polarization, with many media outlets making it their mission to denounce Trump from first page to last, day in and day out. Studies show 90 percent of TV news coverage is negative and the Times, Washington Post and CNN, among others, appear addicted to Trump ­hatred as if it is a narcotic.

This lack of balance permits little or no coverage of any of his achievements. How many people, for example, know about the employment records shattered by the jobs boom unleashed by Trump’s policies?

Black unemployment stands at 5.9 percent, the lowest rate on record. For Latinos, it is 4.5 percent, also the lowest on record. For women, it’s the lowest rate in 65 years and for young people, it’s the lowest since 1966.

Those statistics mean millions of people are getting their shot at the American dream. How can that not be newsworthy?

Rest assured that if Barack Obama had achieved those milestones, they and he would have been celebrated to the high heavens.

Yet when it comes to Trump, nothing is ever good. Having decided he is unfit to be president, most news groups act as propagandists, ignoring or distorting facts that contradict their view of him.

While media manipulation hurts Trump’s popularity, there is a second, ironic impact: The skewed coverage is doing even more damage to public trust in the media itself.

A Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of 1,440 panelists earlier this year found adults estimating that “62 percent of the news they read in newspapers, see on television or hear on the radio is biased” and that 44 percent of “news” is inaccurate.

Separately, Axios and SurveyMonkey polled nearly 4,000 adults in June and found that 70 percent believe mainline news organizations report as news things “they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading.”

Among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, an astonishing 92 percent harbor that distrust, as do 53 percent of Democrats.

And get this: Two-thirds of those who believe there is rampant false news say it usually happens because journalists “have an agenda.” Clearly, the distrust is not limited to Trump supporters.

These numbers reflect an urgent crisis of confidence in the press. And it’s getting worse.

A Gallup survey three years ago found that 40 percent trusted the media; two years ago, the trust meter declined by 8 points, to 32 percent. Now even that low bar looks like the good old days.

Yet instead of soberly examining their conduct, most in the media ratchet up the vitriol, apparently believing that screaming louder and longer will lead the public to hate Trump as much as they do.

But as the surveys show, their bias is a boomerang. With media behavior undermining public trust more than anything Trump says or does, a return to traditional standards of fairness and a separation of news from opinion are essential.

And urgent — for the good of a free press and America.

Workers are about to take home their biggest checks in years: study

By John Aidan Byrne NY Post

August 18, 2018

Workers will finally be bringing home the bacon — salaries are about to break out of a decade-long slump.

US professionals nationwide will soon be taking home their biggest paychecks, as the tightening labor market and economic recovery will spur companies to confidently raise salaries and pay bigger bonuses, according to a new study by Willis Towers Watson Data Services.

“Employers tend to pay more when they feel confident about the future,” said Murray Gunn, an analyst at Elliott Wave International. “This survey certainly reflects an ebullient mood among business leaders.”

Employers haven’t paid an increase like this since 2008, when the financial crisis torpedoed company coffers.

The Willis Towers Watson survey reported big gains for the most-coveted jobs: Top-rated professionals in finance and corporations were awarded average increases of 4.6 percent this year, 70 percent higher than the 2.7 percent picked up by the average worker.

Average pay increases for non-management workers will reach 3.1 percent in 2019, compared with 3.0 this year, the Willis Towers Watson study projects. The data are based on historical, current and next year’s projected salary budget increase percentages.

The average salary bump, though seemingly small, comes amid huge surges in payouts for numerous categories of US workers, as revealed by other studies.

For example, salaries for registered nurses rose by 4 percent in the past 12 months, customer service managers notched an increase of 7.4 percent and delivery drivers saw gains of 5.4 percent.

A rise in the minimum wage is also contributing to the pay bump nationwide, according to analysts.

“After a decade of consistently flat pay raises, we are witnessing a slight uptick as companies are feeling pressure to boost salaries, given the low unemployment rate and the best job market in many years,” said Sandra McLellan of Willis Towers Watson.

But, of course, adjusted for inflation — and factoring the vast expansion in the ranks of low-paid workers nationwide — it’s not a picnic for everyone.

Today’s average US wage has about the same purchasing power as it did 40 years ago, according to Drew DeSilver, an expert at the Pew Research Center. Most gains have flowed to the top tier of workers, like bankers and dealmakers on Wall Street.

Among the cream of the crop, the top tenth of the curve, real wages have soared a cumulative 15.7 percent, to $2,112 weekly — nearly five times the usual weekly earnings of $426 of the bottom tenth, according to DeSilver.

Stocks rise as bull market approaches milestones

Fred Imbert | Michael Sheetz | Alexandra Gibbs

Published 5 Hours Ago Updated 12 Mins Ago CNBC.com

U.S. stocks traded higher on Tuesday, with the current bull market on track to become the longest in history.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4 percent, led by consumer discretionary and energy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 76 points, with Intel and Caterpillar leading the index. The Dow Transports hit its first intraday record high since Jan. 16. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, rising 0.6 percent as Micron and Netflix rose. The Russell 2000, which is made up of small cap stocks, reached a record high.

The bull market turns 3,453 days oldon Wednesday, which would make it the longest on record by most definitions. The S&P 500 has risen more than 300 percent since hitting its financial crisis bottom. The index entered Tuesday's session less than 1 percent away from its all-time high of 2,872 set in January. Surpassing that record without a 20 percent decline would confirm it as the longest bull.
Traders and financial professionals work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ahead of the opening bell.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Traders and financial professionals work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ahead of the opening bell.

"It looks like the market wants to inch higher and perhaps take out the earlier highs," Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, told CNBC. "You still have hovering over the markets issues that could cause fundamental change – and above all else it is the Fed."

... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/us-mark ... genda.html

I deleted all my social media accounts a couple weeks ago, and signed up at GAB. Which is a platform similar to Twitter, and growing with conservatives like me fed up with the liberal social media commies limiting free speech. Not shocked at all that Soros may be behind the push. (By the way, Baron, you will have to post more at the forums now since we won't get to chat at Facebook any more!)

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Memo reveals Soros-funded social-media censorship plan

Plotted with Google, Facebook to eliminate 'right wing propaganda'

Published: 14 hours ago

The recent wave of censorship of conservative voices on the internet by tech giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Apple mirrors a plan concocted by a coalition of George Soros-funded, progressive groups to take back power in Washington from President Trump’s administration.

A confidential, 49-page memo for defeating Trump by working with the major social-media platforms to eliminate “right wing propaganda and fake news” was presented in January 2017 by Media Matters founder David Brock at a retreat in Florida with about 100 donors, the Washington Free Beacon reported at the time.

On Monday, the Gateway Pundit blog noted the memo’s relationship with recent moves by Silicon Valley tech giants to “shadow ban” conservative political candidates and pundits and remove content.

The Free Beacon obtained a copy of the memo, “Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action,” by attending the retreat.

The memo spells out a four-year agenda that deployed Media Matters along with American Bridge, Shareblue and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to attack Trump and Republicans.

The strategies are impeachment, expanding Media Matters’ mission to combat “government misinformation,” ensuring Democratic control of the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections, filing lawsuits against the Trump administration, monetizing political advocacy, using a “digital attacker” to delegitimize Trump’s presidency and damage Republicans, and partnering with Facebook to combat “fake news.”

Quashing ‘fake news’ with ‘mathematical precision’

The Free Beacon in its January 2017 story said Brock sought to raise $40 million in 2017 for his organizations.

The document claims Media Matters and far-left groups have “access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites” so they can “systemically monitor and analyze this unfiltered data.”

“The earlier we can identify a fake news story, the more effectively we can quash it,” the memo states. “With this new technology at our fingertips, researchers monitoring news in real time will be able to identify the origins of a lie with mathematical precision, creating an early warning system for fake news and disinformation.”

Media Matters met with Facebook, which boasts some 2 billion members worldwide, to discuss how to crack down on fake news, according to the memo.

The social media giant was provided with “a detailed map of the constellation of right-wing Facebook pages that had been the biggest purveyors of fake news.”

Brock’s memo also says Media Matters gave Google “the information necessary to identify 40 of the worst fake new sites” so they could be banned from Google’s advertising network.

The Gateway Pundit pointed out that in 2016, Google carried out that plan on the Gateway Pundit blog and other conservative sites, including Breitbart, the Drudge Report, Infowars, Zero Hedge and Conservative Treehouse.

Facebook, meanwhile has changed its newsfeed algorithm, ostensibly to combat “fake news,” causing a precipitous decline in traffic for many conservative sites.

President Donald Trump himself was affected, with his engagement on Facebook dropping by 45 percent.

A study in June by Gateway Pundit found Facebook had eliminated 93 percent of the traffic of top conservative news outlets.

Western Journal, in its own study, found that while left-wing publishers saw a roughly 2 percent increase in web traffic from Facebook following the algorithm changes, conservative sites saw a loss of traffic averaging around 14 percent.

‘Totalitarian impulse’ of the left

President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, charged last week the giants of Silicon Valley are stifling free speech, particularly conservative speech, manifesting the “inherent totalitarian impulse” of the left.

On Friday, Facebook appeared to be “shadow banning” the non-profit education site PragerU, founded by talk-host Dennis Prager, causing a drop in engagement of 99.9999 percent while removing two videos regarded as “hate speech.”

After Facebook rejected a highly inspirational ad for a Republican congressional candidate that included images depicting her parents’ persecution under the Khmer Rouge communist regime in Cambodia, Twitter followed up with its own ban.

WND reported earlier this month Facebook banned a pro-life video ad by a judicial candidate, giving the same explanation.

On Aug. 6, WND reported, Facebook, YouTube and Apple banned commentator Alex Jones and his Infowars website within hours of each other.

Last month, WND reported moderate Muslims and counter-terrorist activists were increasingly being restricted by Silicon Valley, while terrorist content remains on social-media platforms, according to researchers.

Trump campaign chief Parscale said last week the banning of Jones “will inevitably lead to the silencing of those with far less controversial opinions.”

“What we are seeing in Big Tech is the inherent totalitarian impulse of the Left come into full focus,” Parscale said.

“DONALD TRUMP DIRECTED HIM TO COMMIT A CRIME”: MICHAEL COHEN NAILS THE CASKET SHUT ON HIS FORMER BOSS

The president’s former attorney wanted to avoid a perp walk at all costs, according to people familiar with his thinking. But he did not hesitate to take Trump down with him.

BY EMILY JANE FOX

AUGUST 21, 2018 7:32 PM

When Michael Cohen entered the courtroom on the 20th floor in the federal courthouse in the Southern District of New York at just after 4 P.M. on Tuesday, his eyes darted to the small crowd that had gathered to watch the former personal attorney to the resident of the United States plead guilty to 8 counts of tax evasion, lying to a bank, and campaign finance violations. He took a seat at a long table by himself, in a black suit and gold tie—Trump colors. Four months earlier, more than three dozen agents had executed search warrants for Cohen’s home, hotel room, and office, carting off more than 3 million documents and beginning a formal investigation of Cohen, who worked as Donald Trump’s fixer and a Trump Organization attorney, for criminal wrongdoing. In the ensuing months, Cohen went from a man who once told me he would take a bullet for Trump to one aiming directly at his former boss, making no secret of the fact that he felt he was being hung out to dry by the president and those around him, that he was strapped for cash, that he was willing to do whatever it took to protect his family.

On Tuesday, that meant turning himself in to agents at the courthouse on Worth Street around 2 p.m., after several days of conversations with the S.D.N.Y. Cohen was processed before he entered the courtroom hours later, where, alongside his attorney, he signed the agreement and handed it back over to the government. The plea agreement doesn’t call for him to cooperate with federal prosecutors, as many had expected, but it does leave open the possibility that he could provide information to special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into the Trump campaign’s activities during the 2016 presidential election.

Whether Cohen would be able to surrender voluntarily was a matter of concern for him, according to people familiar with his thinking. He had wanted avoid a perp walk, which his children, who are around college-age, would inevitably have had to witness. Last week, he made jokes about setting up a chair in front of the court house in the middle of the night so as to allow agents to take him in immediately, these people said.

Until earlier this month, investigators and Cohen’s attorneys had little direct communication, according to the people familiar with the situation. His lead attorney, Guy Petrillo had reached out, but until last week there were no detailed, formal talks about cooperation or charges, these people said. In fact, communication was so limited that although prosecutors filed a letter in court noting that they couldn’t access one of Cohen’s Blackberry devices, they didn’t even reach out to ask for the password.

While he waited to see what investigators might charge him with or if he would, in fact, be able to serve as a cooperating witness, Cohen had attempted to keep his life consistent, despite the obvious holes: he no longer had a law office; Trump was no longer his client, or his friend, or even his ally; he had resigned from his post at the Republican National Committee; his consulting clients had long taken their business elsewhere. So he filled his days by fuming to lawyers and advisers over the coverage of his case. Earlier this month, he moved out of the Regency Hotel, where he had been living since early this year while his apartment underwent renovations after a flood, and back into the fixed-up apartment in a Trump-owned building. In recent weeks, he tweeted that the story in Omarosa Manigualt Newman’s new book, in which she wrote that after Cohen’s 2017 visit to the Oval Office, she witnessed Trump chewing up a piece of paper, wasn’t true. Early last week, he traveled to Florida for a family matter.

When he returned, his legal situation escalated. Prosecutors reached out mid-week, and people close to Cohen began to believe that an arrest was imminent because the government was approaching him with a tight timetable. By week’s end, just before Petrillo and prosecutors began to talk, there was a sense that Cohen could be arrested early this week. Cohen made plans to spend time with family and friends over the weekend; there were talks amongst his advisers about setting up a war room of sorts to handle the P.R. battle should he, in fact, get arrested.

Talks continued over the weekend and earlier this week, and those closest to Cohen went quiet—an indication that the situation had intensified. Sources close to Cohen and from the Southern District emphasized that the situation was “fluid”—that it could go in a number of different directions, and that the timing could vary widely. On Sunday evening, The New York Times reported that investigators were looking at charges of bank and tax fraud, and that the government would likely seek to bring these charges as far in advance of the midterm elections as possible. The reaction was immediate: the S.D.N.Y. had not gotten so many press inquiries in such a short timespan since the day President Trump fired former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

An hour before Tuesday afternoon’s court hearing, the line of reporters vying for a spot in the room snaked all the way down from the 20th floor. The room was quiet as a federal judge ran through a series of questions to ensure that Cohen was both sound of mind and understood the agreement, with one of the only moments of levity coming when Cohen answered that he had, in fact, had a glass of Glenlivet on the rocks at dinner last night—an aberration from the typically teetotaling soon-to-be 52-year-old. He was visibly shaken at several points: when the judge asked him if he understood that he was waiving his right to a trial; when he asked if Cohen understood that he would not be able to vote, serve on a jury, or possess a firearm; and when he asked Cohen if he wished to plead guilty because he was guilty. In all, the president’s ex-fixer pled guilty to five counts of evasion of income tax, one count of false statements to a bank, and one count each of causing an unlawful corporate contribution and making an excessive campaign contribution. All told, when Cohen is sentenced on December 12, he could serve more than 60 years in prison, though he is expected to be sentenced to far fewer.

The most remarkable moment came as the judge asked Cohen to delineate his crimes as they related to each charge. Referencing handwritten notes to “keep focus,” Cohen reached the final two counts—the ones pertaining to payments he’d made to silence women who alleged affairs with Trump. Under oath, Cohen told the court that the payments had been made “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” Trump was not named, but the inference was unambiguous, and a statement released by Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, after the hearing made it even less so. “Today [Michael Cohen] stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election,” the statement read. “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08 ... ormer-boss

Cohen more than happy to tell Mueller all that he knows: attorney

08/21/18 09:29PM

Lanny Davis, attorney for former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen, tells Rachel Maddow that Cohen has knowledge that should be of interest to Robert Mueller and he is happy to tell Mueller what he knows about the "possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election" and also what Trump knew about computer hacking.

WATCH LANNY DAVIS INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL MADDOW

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watc ... 3813187974

http://www.msnbc.com/maddowblog

NEWS ROUNDUP

Michael Cohen says he arranged payments to women at Trump’s direction

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former fixer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges. He made the extraordinary statement that he arranged payments to two women "at the direction of the candidate," referring to Trump, to secure their silence about affairs they said they had with Trump.

Cohen told a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the payments were "for the principal purpose of influencing the election" for president in 2016.

Cohen also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, bringing to a close a monthslong investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors who examined his personal business dealings and his role in helping to arrange financial deals with women connected to Trump.

The plea came shortly before another blow to the president: His former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted in his financial fraud trial in Virginia. The special counsel had built a case that Manafort hid millions of dollars in foreign accounts to evade taxes and lied to banks to obtain $20 million in loans.

In Manhattan, Cohen made the admission about Trump’s role in the payments to an adult film actress and a former Playboy playmate as he pleaded guilty to two campaign finance crimes.

One of those charges stemmed from a $130,000 payment he made to the adult film actress, Stephanie Clifford, who is better known as Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The other concerned a complicated arrangement in which a tabloid bought the rights to the story about a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, then killed it.

The guilty plea and Cohen’s statements in court represent a pivotal moment in the investigation into the president: a once-loyal aide admitting that he made payments at the behest of the president to shield him from politically damaging disclosures.

Trump’s lawyers have, for months, said privately that they considered Cohen’s case to be potentially more problematic for the president than the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, issued a statement after Cohen’s plea. "There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen," Giuliani said. "It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen’s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time."

In the Cohen case, the plea agreement does not call for him to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Still, it does not preclude him from providing information to the special counsel, who is examining the Trump campaign’s possible involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. If Cohen were to substantially assist the special counsel’s investigation, Mueller could recommend a reduction in his sentence.

Cohen had been the president’s longtime fixer, handling his most sensitive business and personal matters. He once said he would take a bullet for Trump.

The charges against Cohen were not a surprise, but he had signaled recently he might be willing to cooperate with investigators who for months have been conducting an extensive investigation of his personal business dealings.

Indeed, his guilty plea comes slightly more than a month after he gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News and said he would put "his family and country first" if prosecutors offered him leniency in exchange for incriminating information on Trump.

In July, in what appeared to another public break with Trump, one of Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny J. Davis, released a secret audio recording that Cohen had made of the president in which it seems that Trump admits knowledge of a payment made to Karen McDougal, a model who said she had an affair with him.

As part of their investigation, prosecutors had been looking into whether Cohen violated any campaign-finance laws by making the $130,000 payment to Clifford in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen’s plea culminates a long-running inquiry that became publicly known in April when FBI agents armed with search warrants raided his office, apartment and hotel room, hauling away reams of documents, including pieces of paper salvaged from a shredder, and millions of electronic files contained on a series of cellphones, iPads and computers.

Lawyers for Cohen and Trump spent the next four months working with a court-appointed special master to review the documents and data files to determine whether any of the materials were subject to attorney-client privilege and should not be made available to the government.

The special master, Barbara S. Jones, who completed her review last week, issued a series of reports in recent months, finding that only a fraction of the materials were privileged and the rest could be provided to prosecutors for their investigation.

On Monday, the judge overseeing the review, Kimba M. Wood of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, issued an order adopting Jones’ findings and ending the review process.

It was unclear Tuesday what role the materials that Jones reviewed, which were made available to prosecutors on a rolling basis during her review, may have had in the charges against Cohen.

One collateral effect of Cohen’s plea agreement is that it may allow Michael Avenatti, Clifford’s lawyer, to proceed with a deposition of Trump in a lawsuit that Clifford filed accusing the president of breaking a nondisclosure agreement concerning their affair.

The lawsuit had been stayed by a judge pending the resolution of Cohen’s criminal case. Avenatti wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that he would now seek to force Trump to testify "under oath about what he knew, when he knew it and what he did about it."

https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/cr ... _171094129

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Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, convicted on 8 counts

08/21/18 05:06 PM—UPDATED 08/21/18 05:58 PM

By Steve Benen

Just two days ago, while complaining about the investigation into the Russia scandal, Donald Trump wrote, “So many lives have been ruined over nothing.”

Perhaps “nothing” wasn’t the best choice of words.

A federal jury in Virginia convicted Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, on eight counts involving bank and tax fraud on Tuesday, but no verdicts could be reached on the 10 other charges he faced.

The trial was the first public test of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and while the special counsel was vindicated, the victory wasn’t total.

For those keeping score, Manafort was on trial on 18 counts, and he was found guilty on eight of them: five related to tax fraud, one related to failure to file reports on foreign bank accounts, and two related to bank fraud. On the other 10 counts – three related to filing reports on foreign-bank accounts and seven related to bank fraud – the jury couldn’t reach a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial on those specific charges.

For Mueller and his special counsel team, this is an important victory, but for the former chairman of the presidential political operation, it’s a very bad day – which will likely be followed by a series of even worse days.

Indeed, let’s not forget that Manafort is poised to go on trial on several related charges next month in a D.C. courtroom, where an entirely different jury will hear a separate case.

Manafort’s attorneys will probably appeal today’s convictions, but it’s also possible Mueller’s team will offer him another opportunity to cooperate with prosecutors.

The fact that this has transpired the same afternoon as Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, surrendered to the FBI and reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors, makes the day that much more extraordinary.

As for the president whose allies keep running into legal trouble, let’s not forget that Trump publicly vouched for Manafort as recently as Friday. Telling reporters that he’s “a very good person. Trump added that it’s “very sad” what federal law enforcement has done to his former campaign chairman.

Evidently, jurors in Virginia disagreed.

The president is scheduled to headline a campaign rally in West Virginia this evening. Whether he’ll comment on today’s developments is not yet clear.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... d-8-counts

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Stormy Daniels Says She and Michael Avenatti Feel Vindicated by Michael Cohen's Guilty Plea

(NEW YORK) — Stormy Daniels’ lawyer says Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to charges involving hush-money payments should open the door to questioning President Donald Trump about “what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it.”

Cohen said in court on Tuesday that he coordinated with Trump to pay Daniels $130,000 and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to influence the election. Both women claimed they had affairs with Trump, which he denies.

Daniels said she and lawyer Michael Avenatti felt vindicated and look forward to apologies “from the people who claimed we were wrong.”

Avenatti is flirting with running for president in 2020 as a Democrat. He said the likelihood of that happening will dwindle if Trump resigns or decides not to run for re-election.

http://time.com/5373953/avenatti-stormy ... -manafort/

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I KNOW IT WAS YOU

‘Watergate on Steroids’: Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty and Implicates Trump

The president has made it known that he hates “rats.” Now, his longtime aide has implicated him in a federal crime.

BETSY WOODRUFF, LACHLAN MARKAY, ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, SAM STEIN

08.21.18 9:13 PM ET

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime public pitbull, famously declared that he would “take a bullet” for the president as a signal of his unbending loyalty. On Tuesday afternoon, the bullet came and Cohen largely ducked it.

Trump’s former personal attorney pleaded guilty to an array of federal criminal charges including bank fraud, tax fraud, and violations of campaign finance laws. But he also explained that he had violated the latter “in coordination and at the direction” of then-candidate Trump—though he refused to actually name his former boss—by arranging hush-money payments to two of the president’s alleged one-time mistresses.

It was a bombshell admission; the president implicated in a federal crime by his former lawyer. It was also a dramatic turn of fortunes for a man who once had visions of serving as Trump’s chief of staff inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and who had spent years at the president’s side. Inside Trump world — were fierce loyalty seems prized (but often not reciprocated) by the president — it left officials on edge. One source close familiar with the situation described it as “Bad Day at Black Rock,” a reference to the Spencer Tracy thriller about a mysterious stranger who finds himself in an increasingly, oddly hostile town.

Others were left searching for silver-linings and explanations.

“Well, this is just Michael Cohen fighting for his own tail because they got him for other issues,” former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a Trump surrogate and a friend of Cohen’s, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “[If there were] malpractice, it would be on [Michael] and not the president.”

“I’m still stunned by the reversal to the degree that Michael has so fervently denied any wrongdoing and that the payments had anything to do with the campaign,” Kingston continued. The former congressman speculated that this “could be what he had to offer up to the prosecution to lighten” the consequences.

The Trump presidency has been filled with moments that seemed bound to lead to his political downfall only to fade into the ether. Tuesday’s drama had a different, more ominous feel, if only for the rapidity of the damaging developments. Minutes after Cohen’s guilty plea, Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, received a guilty verdict on eight counts of bank and tax fraud— another close associate facing time in jail. Moments later, it was reported that Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, had hosted the publisher of white nationalists at his home for his birthday celebration.

For the president’s hardcore supporters, the only silver lining was that none of the drama had anything to do directly with allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“Well now that didn’t go the way the Russia conspiracy fluffers hoped now, did it?” Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo emphasized in text messages with The Daily Beast on Tuesday. “Oh the myriad expectations dashed, the coitus interruptus of the tinfoil hat set.”

But even Caputo conceded that Tuesday was “not a good day for the president… regardless of what you think of the Special Counsel’s strategy.”

While the IRS and the Tax Division at Justice Department headquarters signed off on the charges against Cohen, it remains possible for them to bleed into the Russia investigation too. The office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing that inquiry, was consulted on the charges but did not formally have to sign off on them. More importantly, ex-federal prosecutors told The Daily Beast that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could still attempt to gain information from Cohen (should he deem it worthwhile to do so) in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Even on their own, however, the charges Cohen faces create clear legal and political problems for Trump. “Not only did Cohen make an excessive and unreported contribution to the campaign, the campaign also accepted an excessive contribution and failed to report it,” said Brendan Fischer of the Campaign Legal Center.

A seasoned Washington campaign finance attorney who spoke anonymously because of sensitivities related to his firm said the Cohen plea was a disaster for Trump.

“Right now, the president of the United States is an unindicted co-conspirator in two separate counts of conspiring to violate the Fed Election Campaign Act,” he said. “Nixon didn’t become an unindicted co-conspirator until he was in his second year of his second term. It’s Watergate on steroids. We’re going to do everything much faster.”

The legal controversy stemming from Cohen’s plea deal could even envelop Trump’s business empire, legal experts said, since Cohen admitted to filing falsified invoices with the Trump Organization in order to recoup the money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels and playmate Karen McDougal. That effectively made the company a donor to the campaign, and corporations are legally barred from giving to federal political candidates.

“The Trump Organization could argue that the violation wasn’t knowing and willful—and therefore not criminal—because they were duped into reimbursing Cohen,” Brett Kappel, a campaign finance attorney who’s worked for both Democrats and Republicans, told The Daily Beast. “The Trump Organization’s CFO could be on the hook personally, however, if he approved the use of Trump Organization funds if he knew that they were being used to reimburse Cohen for his contribution—so a very bad day for Allen Weisselberg [the CFO].”

At a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday, and in remarks on the way there, Trump notably left the Cohen saga unmentioned. But, in the past, he has made abundantly clear his disdain for people he deems traitorous. Ruminating over the scandal that ensnared former presidential campaign John Edwards, Trump once said that the Senator’s affair was “bad” but that the actions of Edwards’ aide, Andrew Young, who ultimately refused to take the fall for the affair, was “worse.”

“Not only is [Young] a ‘rat’ but it turns out he stole much of the money for himself,” Trump tweeted in April 2012, in one of his several tweets about “rats.”

During the Obama administration, Trump criticized former Defense Secretary Bob Gates of being “one disloyal dude” after Gates published a book in which was critical of the president’s foreign policy team. And this past weekend, Trump tweeted that the “failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel [sic] Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type ‘RAT.’”

Dean, the White House Counsel during the Richard Nixon administration, famously testified about the coverup of the infamous Watergate burglary, ultimately facilitating Nixon’s downfall. He told The Daily Beast that he had never actually met Trump or had even indirect dealings with him.

“I do know people who know him but they have never had anything nice to say about him,” Dean added. “I think his feelings toward me are based on his admiration of Richard Nixon, who appears to be one of his role models!”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/watergate ... p?ref=home

1. BAD IDEA

GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, Wife Indicted for Allegedly Misusing $250K in Campaign Funds for Personal Expenses

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and his wife, Margaret, have been indicted for allegedly misusing $250,ooo in campaign funds on personal expenses and filing false finance reports, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday. The personal expenses include family vacations to Italy and other domestic locations, school tuition, dental work, theater tickets, and travel costs for relatives, according to the DOJ. They also spent “tens of thousands” of dollars on coffee, groceries, movie tickets, home utilities, and expensive meals, expenses that were listed in reports to the Federal Election Commission under false labels. CNN reports that the myriad charges against the Hunters—which include wire fraud and conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S.—come after a yearlong investigation, throughout which Hunter has insisted upon his innocence. The lawmaker has admitted that “there was wrong campaign spending,” but maintained that “it was not done by me.” His lawyers said last year that “[if] any mistakes were made they were strictly inadvertent and unintentional.” In 2016, Hunter reimbursed his campaign $65,000 after the FEC questioned his use of campaign funds on video games. Hunter is a representative of California’s 50th District, which has traditionally been a safe seat for Republicans but likely now faces a tough election in November.

DUNCAN HUNTER WAS THE SECOND TO ENDORSE THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) told POLITICO on Wednesday that he will support Trump for the Republican nomination, making him one of the first members of Congress to express public support for the Manhattan businessman who is the prohibitive front-runner after his victory in Tuesday's Nevada caucuses.

CHRIS COLLINS WAS THE FIRST TO ENDORSE THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

Also on Wednesday, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) told The Buffalo News that he is backing Trump, saying he has the "guts and fortitude" to get jobs back from China and to take on foreign threats such as the Islamic State and North Korea.

New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins vowed to fight the criminal charges against him in court and win re-election, hours after federal prosecutors arrested him on accusations that he took part in insider trading.

[THE WHITE HOUSE, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND THE GOP ARE LOADED WITH CRIMINALS, PUPPETS, & THUGS; McCONNEL, NUNEZ, JORDAN, ET AL SHOULD BE UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR BEING DERELICT OF DUTY AND UNDERMINING THEIR OATH OF OFFICE ]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-rep-d ... s?ref=home

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Everyone caught up in the Trump investigations

The latest flood of legal news about President Trump's associates — the conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea by Michael Cohen — makes it easy to lose track of the broader storyline of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Here's a map to help you keep every move straight.

How it works:

The map starts with the people who participated in key events and the ones who have been convicted, pleaded guilty or been charged. Expand this story and you'll see the rest. Note that Cohen's guilty pleas and Manafort's conviction were on charges unrelated to Russia — but they highlight Trump's broader legal jeopardy.

Key events

Cohen's guilty plea:

He pleaded guilty to eight counts related to tax fraud, making false statements to a financial institution, excessive campaign contributions, and unlawful corporate contributions. He said he was directed to violate campaign law at the direction of an unnamed candidate — implicating Trump.

Russia:

Trump Tower meeting: The June 2016 meeting between Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian national in which they were expecting damaging information about Hillary Clinton, but didn't get it.

Russian ambassador meeting: Kushner and Michael Flynn met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. Flynn later asked Kislyak not to escalate Russia's response to new sanctions imposed in the last days of the Obama administration, and then lied to the FBI about it.

Page meeting: Carter Page met in Moscow with Russia's deputy prime minister and a Russian oil official in June 2016.

Papadopoulos meeting: George Papadopoulos met in London in March 2016 with a professor who later told him Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Election interference:

13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities were indicted on charges of violating criminal laws to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.

On the same day, Mueller struck a plea deal with California resident Richard Pinedo who was accused of knowingly making tens of thousands of dollars by transferring hundreds of bank account numbers that were ultimately used to commit wire fraud.

The hacking:

12 Russian military officers were indicted for hacking and releasing the emails of Democratic campaign organizations, including the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, in an effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

The Manafort verdict:

Manafort was found guilty on 8 criminal counts, including bank fraud, tax fraud and hiding a foreign bank account. The verdicts were focused on his activities as a lobbyist for Ukraine.

Who's not on the list:

Donald Trump Jr. The bigger intrigue is about why there have been no reports that Mueller's team has questioned Trump Jr., given that he is a key player in one of the biggest events: the Trump Tower meeting with Manafort and Kushner. (He did testify before a Senate committee.)

President Trump. And, of course, Mueller hasn't questioned the president — yet.
This story has been updated to include the Manafort verdict and Cohen's guilty plea, as well as the indictment of the 13 Russian nationals.

Editor's note: Axios' David Nather, Lauren Meier, Haley Britzky, Laz Gamio and Andrew Witherspoon contributed to this story.

[LOOKS LIKE MUELLER IS DOING A PRETTY GOOD JOB OF DRAINING THE SWAMP

https://www.axios.com/tracking-russia-i ... 347b3.html


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KEEP IT

Michael Cohen Will Not Accept Pardon From ‘Criminal’ Trump, Says Lawyer

Michael Cohen will “never accept” a pardon from President Trump, his lawyer has said. Lanny Davis, who attacked Trump as a “criminal” during an interview on NPR, said his client would “under no circumstances” accept a presidential pardon due to his low regard for his former employer. “I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man who he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office,” said Davis. “He has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump, who used the pardon power in a way that no president in American history has ever used a pardon—to relieve people of guilt who committed crimes who are political cronies of his.” Cohen pleaded guilty to an array of criminal charges Tuesday, but also implicated Trump in a federal crime. Davis had strong words for the president, saying in no uncertain terms: “The president of the United States is a criminal. He has not pled guilty to a crime but his own lawyers have described him directing somebody to do something that is a criminal act.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-c ... ays-lawyer

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GOP's midterm nightmare: Party "looks like a criminal enterprise"

Corruption instantly becomes a centerpiece issue in the midterm campaigns — a huge new weight for Republicans in marginal races.

What we're hearing: With a corruption indictment of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) capping Republicans' hell day, a top GOP guru told Axios: "The Republican Party looks like a criminal enterprise."

Hunter was the second member of Congress to endorse Trump. The first was Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), charged two weeks ago with insider trading.

Top Democratic strategists tell me they're poised to exploit this massive vulnerability.

One operative close to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi pointed out that during an April press conference, she was already talking about "the Trump Administration’s culture of corruption."

The key, Dem strategists tell me, will be for campaigns to keep the focus on corruption rather than impeachment, which could backfire.

Be smart ... With all the bad news already swirling, look at what will unfold during the heat of midterm campaigning:

Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer, to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: "Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel, and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows. ... He is now liberated to tell the truth —everything about Donald Trump that he knows."

Mueller prosecutors said in a filing yesterday that Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn is not yet ready to be sentenced, "a sign that Flynn’s cooperation with investigators is continuing," per AP.

A week from today (Aug. 29): Deadline for U.S. "to decide whether it wants to retry the 10 counts that were declared a mistrial," per N.Y. Times.

Sept. 17: Manafort goes on trial in D.C. "on charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, witness tampering and making false statements," per AP.

Dec. 12: Cohen will be sentenced. "The government calculated the sentencing guidelines at from 51 to 63 months and the defense put them at 46 to 57 months," per N.Y. Times.

No sentencing date has been set for Manafort.

https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elec ... 08a7d.html

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Mueller wins more than a conviction in Manafort case

By convincing a jury that he has uncovered criminal behavior, the special counsel has likely insulated his larger probe from political threats.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN and JOSH GERSTEIN 08/21/2018 08:34 PM EDT

Special counsel Robert Mueller may have won only a partial courtroom victory against Paul Manafort, but Tuesday’s guilty verdicts against the former Trump campaign chief strengthen Mueller's hand in his wider probe of President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

Blasted by Trump and his allies as a biased and out-of-control prosecutor, Mueller —through his deputies who argued the case in court — has convinced an Alexandria, Virginia, jury that Manafort is guilty of eight out of 18 federal charges of bank and tax fraud. Manafort faces a maximum of 80 years in jail.

While some pro-Trump conservatives suggested Tuesday that Mueller had won a Pyrrhic victory because jurors deadlocked on a majority of the counts against Manafort, many legal experts called the outcome a clear success that will reassure Mueller’s defenders.

“This is unquestionably a win for the special counsel,” said Timothy Belevetz, a former assistant U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia. “It strengthens the special counsel’s mandate by demonstrating the office is productive and is achieving results.”

Even a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team conceded that the eight guilty verdicts were a victory for Mueller.

“I don’t think it’s ever a black eye to a prosecutor when they get eight guilty verdicts,” said Mark Corallo, who also served as a Justice Department spokesman under President George W. Bush. “That’s a very serious conviction. There’s no defeat to a prosecutor when they get eight out of 10, 15 or 20 charges.”

While the jury failed to convict Manafort on most counts, it did find him guilty of at least one charge in every category of crime that Mueller had identified: tax fraud, bank fraud and hidden foreign bank accounts. So while jurors deadlocked on whether Manafort failed to report all the foreign bank accounts that Mueller identified, they did conclude he had concealed at least one of them. The same applied to the bank fraud charges against him. Jurors convicted him on all five counts of tax fraud.

However, the result was muddy enough to provide Trump, Manafort and their allies with some talking points they can deploy.

One was the implication that Mueller had suffered a net loss because jurors had deadlocked on 10 counts, including seven charges of bank fraud and three involving failure to report foreign bank accounts.

"A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!" Trump tweeted Friday morning.

“Federal Jury Fails to Convict Paul Manafort on Majority of Counts,” crowed a Thursday night headline on the Trump-friendly website The Federalist.

While the jury failed to convict Manafort on most counts, it did find him guilty of at least one charge in every category of crime that Mueller had identified: tax fraud, bank fraud and hidden foreign bank accounts. So while jurors deadlocked on whether Manafort failed to report all the foreign bank accounts that Mueller identified, they did conclude he had concealed at least one of them. The same applied to the bank fraud charges against him. Jurors convicted him on all five counts of tax fraud.

However, the result was muddy enough to provide Trump, Manafort and their allies with some talking points they can deploy.

One was the implication that Mueller had suffered a net loss because jurors had deadlocked on 10 counts, including seven charges of bank fraud and three involving failure to report foreign bank accounts.

"A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!" Trump tweeted Friday morning.

“Federal Jury Fails to Convict Paul Manafort on Majority of Counts,” crowed a Thursday night headline on the Trump-friendly website The Federalist.

Corallo called that argument a winner for Trump and a “political problem” for Mueller.

The mixed verdict will also bolster prior arguments by Manafort's lawyers that Mueller's case amounted to overkill.

During closing arguments, defense attorney Richard Westling accused Mueller's team of seeking to 'stack up the counts....to give you a sense that everything is so overwhelming that there is only one conclusion."

Still, Tuesday’s verdict could give Mueller greater legal leverage as he pursues other avenues of investigation. Some lawyers believe the possibility of decades behind bars could convince Manafort to become more cooperative with Mueller.

“Like the prospect of the guillotine, the actual conviction on eight felony counts should ‘concentrate’ Manafort's mind,” said Phil Lacovara, a former counsel to the Watergate prosecutors. “He took a gamble — that the case would be too complicated to allow conviction beyond a reasonable doubt — and he lost.

“Unless he has an assurance of a presidential pardon, it is now time for Manafort to look to his own interests and those of his family and to try to negotiate a ‘global’ deal with Mueller in return for full cooperation about his relationship with Russia, Ukraine, and the Trump campaign,” he added.

A Manafort acquittal could have been a severe setback for Mueller, an outcome that might have threatened Mueller’s support among Republicans in Congress.

But one defense attorney representing a senior Trump official in the Russia probe said the Manafort convictions may in turn lead some congressional Republicans to “find their backbones.”

The lawyer also dismissed the notion that the mixed verdict could put a damper on other parts of Mueller’s investigation.

“Mueller is going to do his fucking job,” the lawyer added. “Is a conviction or acquittal going to change his mind about issuing a subpoena to Trump? Not at all. He’s going to do the right things he thinks he needs to do to finish this investigation by his standards.”

The pattern of the counts where the jury deadlocked could be seen as a repudiation of Mueller's star witness Rick Gates, whose testimony was more essential to the foreign account and bank fraud charges than to the tax fraud charges where Mueller won across the board convictions.

However, it's hard to know for sure whether those issues led to the stalemate on the jury and whether the concerns were shared by more than one juror.

Mueller himself never stepped foot in the federal courthouse during the three-plus week trial. His team was led by prosecutors Greg Andres, Brandon Van Grack and Uzo Asonye, who argued the case, and FBI special agent Sherine Ebadi, who joined the special counsel attorneys at the main prosecution table during the entire trial.

Several other FBI, IRS and Treasury Department officials detailed to the special counsel probe also were constant presences at the Manafort trial, as was spokesman Peter Carr and Andrew Weissmann, the senior Mueller deputy who frequently sat in the back of the courtroom observing the proceedings and occasionally consulting with his colleagues.

Mueller took over the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in May of last year, after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey. He has since brought charges against 27 people — most of those Russian hackers and Internet trolls — while securing guilty pleas from Manafort deputy Rick Gates, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and two others.

The special counsel’s work has also helped fuel investigations in other federal districts into everyone from longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty on Tuesday in New York to eight tax evasion, financial fraud and campaign finance charges, to Manafort’s former son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai.

And the Mueller probe itself remains a work in progress into Trump associates like Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son. Trump, too, remains the subject of an obstruction of justice probe into his role in the firing of Comey.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/ ... ump-791208

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