The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Lois]

78 percent of Puerto Ricans are still without electricity, 28 percent are without water and access to food and fuel is still limited.

Shame on you Trump!

More than 900 have died in Puerto Rico since the hurricane, but the official death toll of hurricane related deaths is 51.

Puerto Rico Is Burning Its Dead, And We May Never Know How Many People The Hurricane Really Killed
People whose bodies are cremated are largely not being counted in the official death toll. The government says it’s the fault of funeral directors, while funeral directors say they’ve received no guidance from the government.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhiprakash/puerto-rico-cremations?utm_term=.ntYqmeKwA#.im7O56kYy

[Athos_131]

Happy Indictment Day!
#Resist

[joan1984]

  Usually, at least in the United States, a medical doctor signs the death certificate, and is responsible to indicate the cause of death. Funeral Director processes the paperwork, and arranges for cremation is that is the families, or whoever is paying for the process, wishes.

  So if the causes of death are reported by Medical Doctors, there is a record, and if not hurricane related, good to hear.  50+ is still a large loss of life.

  FEMA will track such related deaths, would think, and should have the best answers on that subject.

[Athos_131]

Let get to this, shall we?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Three former Trump campaign officials charged by special counsel

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Monday revealed charges against three former Trump campaign officials — including onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort — marking the first criminal allegations to come from probes into possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs.

One of the three men charged, former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, admitted making a false statement to FBI investigators who asked about his contacts with a foreigner who claimed to have high-level Russian connections. The agreement was unsealed Monday.

Court documents described extensive efforts Papadopoulos made to try to broker connections with Russian officials and arrange a meeting between them and the Trump campaign, though some emails show his offers were rebuffed.

The third person charged was Manafort’s longtime business partner, Rick Gates.

The charges collectively show how Mueller is aggressively probing the lives of those in President Trump’s orbit — digging into their personal finances while also exploring whether they might have coordinated, or tried to coordinate, with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

Papadopoulos ultimately admitted to lying to the FBI about his interactions with people he thought had connections with the Russian government. He has been cooperating with investigators for three months — having been first arrested and charged in July after landing at Dulles International Airport on a flight from Germany — and has met with the government on “numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions,” according to a court filing.

Manafort and Gates were charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other charges.

At a court appearance Monday afternoon, Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty.

The charges against Manafort and Gates did not reference the Trump campaign, a point President Trump noted on Twitter Monday. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus??” Trump wrote.

“ . . . Also, there is NO COLLUSION!” he said in a follow-up tweet.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the special counsel’s announcement “has nothing to do with the president” or his campaign. She said there was “no intention or plan to make any changes with regard to the special counsel.”

“We’ve been saying from day one there’s no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment changes that at all,” she said.

Sanders sought to minimize the case involving Papadopoulos — which appears directly related to the investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia — asserting he had an “extremely limited,” volunteer role in the campaign. She said that “no activity was ever done in an official capacity on behalf of the campaign in that regard.”

In a January 2017 interview with the FBI, Papadopoulos told the agency that a London-based professor claimed to him he had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, including “thousands of emails.” But Papadopoulos said initially he viewed the professor as a “nothing.”

In reality, according to his plea, Papadopoulos understood the man had connections to Russian government officials, and he had treated him very seriously as he tried to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

After a March 2016 meeting with the man, who was not identified in court records, Papadopoulos emailed a campaign supervisor and other members of the campaign’s foreign policy team and claimed the professor had introduced him to “Putin’s niece” and the Russian ambassador in London.

Papadopoulos, a low-level member of the Trump campaign and a former intern and researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute, claimed the purpose was “to arrange a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump.”

The government noted, in fact, the woman was not Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s niece, and while Papadopoulos expected the professor would introduce him to the Russian ambassador, that never happened. But in the months that followed, Papadopoulos continued to correspond with the woman and the professor about a possible meeting between the Trump campaign, possibly including Trump himself, and Russian officials.

“The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready,” Papadopoulos wrote to a senior policy adviser for the campaign on April 25. Two days later, he emailed another high-ranking campaign official wanting “to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump.”

The campaign officials were not identified in court records, and there was some indication they were wary of the junior member’s efforts. At one point, a campaign official forwarded one of Papadopoulos’s emails to another campaign official, saying, “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.” DT would appear to be a reference to Donald Trump.

Sanders said: “He asked to do things. He was basically pushed back or not responded to in any way”

Papadopoulos’s effort continued into the summer of 2016, and in August 2016 a campaign supervisor told Papadopoulos and another foreign policy adviser they should take a trip to Russia. That ultimately did not take place, according to the plea.

Lawyers for Papadopoulos said in a statement: “We will have the opportunity to comment on George’s involvement when called upon by the Court at a later date. We look forward to telling all of the details of George’s story at that time.”

The indictment of Manafort and Gates focused on their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine.

The special counsel alleged that for nearly a decade Manafort and Gates laundered money through scores of U.S. and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts, and gave false statements to the Justice Department and others when asked about their work on behalf of a foreign entity.

All told, more than $75 million flowed through offshore accounts, the special counsel alleged. Manafort, the special counsel said, laundered more than $18 million, using his wealth acquired overseas to “enjoy a lavish lifestyle” in the United States, purchasing multimillion dollar properties and paying for home renovation.

Gates did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort. Manafort was spotted walking into the FBI’s Washington Field Office Monday morning; Gates was spotted at the federal courthouse in the District.

Spokespeople for Mueller and the Justice Department declined to comment over the weekend. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Monday, and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not return messages seeking comment.

According to the indictment, Manafort and Gates arranged to hire two Washington-based lobbying firms to work on behalf of their Ukrainian clients, arranging meetings with U.S. officials and boosting their public image in the United States.

Though it was not named, one of the firms referenced in the indictment was The Podesta Group. Tony Podesta, the head of the firm, announced to colleagues Monday he was stepping down.

Prosecutors say that Manafort and Gates arranged for a Brussels-based nonprofit to nominally hire the Washington companies to hide the fact that the two men were working for Ukrainian government officials; otherwise they would have been required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In fact, prosecutors allege, Manafort was communicating directly with then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych about the effort, promising in 2012 to provide him weekly updates about the effort.

To further obscure Ukrainian involvement in the lobbying effort, prosecutors say payments to the Washington firms were routed through obscure offshore companies. Prosecutors say that when the Department of Justice approached Manafort and Gates in 2016 and 2017 about whether they should have registered as foreign agents for the work, they responded with false and misleading letters, indicating they had not directed the lobbying effort and asserting they did not hold records reflecting their work, even though later searches showed they did, according to the indictment.

Manafort and Gates also were accused of willfully and intentionally trying to hide funds kept in foreign bank accounts — Manafort from 2011 to 2014 and Gates from 2012 to 2014. And Manafort was accused of filing fraudulent tax returns — stating on tax forms he filed from 2008 to 2014 that he controlled no foreign bank accounts.

The men made tens of millions of dollars for themselves, the special counsel alleged. From 2008 to 2014, according to the indictment, Manafort arranged to wire $12 million from offshore accounts to pay for personal expenses — including $5 million to a home renovation contractor in the Hamptons, more than $1.3 million to a home entertainment and lighting vendor based in Florida, $934,000 to an antique rug dealer in Alexandria, and $849,000 to a men’s clothier in New York.

While the men were set to first appear before a magistrate judge — as is normal — the case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, 63, a 2011 Barack Obama appointee.

Jackson worked as federal prosecutor in the District after graduating from Harvard Law School and specialized in complex criminal and civil trials and appeals at Trout Cacheris. While at the firm, she represented former Democratic congressman William J. Jefferson at his corruption trial, made famous by the $90,000 in bribe money stuffed into his freezer and a legal battle over the raid of his Washington office.

Jackson contributed $1,000 to Bill Clinton’s 1992 Democratic campaign.

Mueller was appointed in May to oversee the probe of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, taking over work that the FBI had begun in July 2016. Their interest in Manafort, though, dates back to at least 2014 — long before Mueller was appointed or Manafort was connected to the Trump campaign.

While Mueller’s probe has focused on Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, investigators have shown interest in a broad array of other topics.

Those include meetings the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow in December, and a June 2016 meeting at Trump tower involving the president’s son, Donald Jr., and a Russian lawyer. Mueller’s team has requested extensive records from the White House, covering areas including the president’s private discussions about firing James B. Comey as FBI director and his response to news that Flynn was under investigation, according to two people briefed on the requests.

Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice leading up to Comey’s firing. His team has been actively presenting records and bringing witnesses before the grand jury in D.C. for the last three months.

Trump hired Manafort onto his campaign in March 2016, when he was locked in what looked to be a months-long slog against Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to amass delegates and secure the Republican nomination. Manafort’s role early on was to oversee the Trump campaign’s delegate operation and to prepare for a potential floor fight at the Republican National Convention that June.

Manafort, along with his deputy Gates, initially shared a makeshift office on the fifth floor of Trump Tower, taking over a conference room where a giant map of the United States hung on the wall marking the cities and towns where Trump had campaigned.

During their time at Trump Tower, Manafort cultivated close relationships with Trump’s children and quickly earned their internal support. Manafort’s authority over the campaign grew and, with the strong backing of the Trump family, he soon was named the campaign chairman.

Manafort feuded internally with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as they two men jockeyed to gain control over campaign strategy and operations. In June 2016, Trump fired Lewandowski at the urging of Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Manafort assumed full control of the campaign, with Gates operating as his No. 2. Together, they orchestrated the GOP convention in Cleveland, oversaw Trump’s vice presidential selection process and devised the campaign’s strategy for the general election against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In August, however, after news reports investigating Manafort’s past work for Yanukovych in Ukraine, Manafort was sidelined and effectively replaced at the helm by Stephen K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, who respectively were named the campaign’s chief executive officer and manager. Manafort then resigned from the campaign, but Gates, his business partner and protege, continued to play an important role.

After the election Gates directed the inauguration plans, including fundraising, under Tom Barrack, Trump’s close friend and adviser.

FBI agents working for Mueller raided Manafort’s home in Alexandria in late July, armed with a search warrant that allowed them to enter at dawn without warning the occupants. Such an invasive search is only allowed after prosecutors have convinced a federal judge that they have evidence of a crime and they have reasonable concern that key evidence could be destroyed or withheld.

Prosecutors also warned Manafort they planned to indict him, according to two people familiar with the exchange. People close to Manafort and Gates, though, said the indictment came as a surprise to both.

Though both men knew Mueller had been closely scrutinizing their behavior, they had expected some kind of alert when an indictment was imminent. Even over the weekend, they were telling people close to them that they had received no such notification and did not believe they were the subject of the seal charges.

The tactic might suggest Mueller hoped to use the element of surprise against the two men to potentially stun them into a desire to cooperate against other members of Trump’s team.

Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said late Friday, “we are not commenting tonight.” A person familiar with Flynn’s defense said he, too, had received no notice of pending indictment.

Wayne Holland, a McEnearney Associates real estate agent who helped Manafort buy the condo in Alexandria, Va., that was raided by the FBI this summer, testified Oct. 20 before the grand jury in Mueller’s probe after he and his firm were unsuccessful in an effort to quash subpoenas, Holland said Friday.

Holland declined to discuss his testimony, first reported by Politico, but confirmed that an opinion unsealed Friday denied his and his firm’s motion to quash a subpoena by claiming real estate broker records are confidential under Virginia and District laws.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump campaign adviser admitted to lying about Russian contacts

George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser to President Trump, pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to federal officials about contacts he had with people he believed had ties to the Russian government while he was affiliated with Trump’s campaign.

Papadopoulos, who was named by Trump in March 2016 as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign, was first charged under seal in July and ultimately pleaded guilty in October to lying to federal agents investigating Russian interference in the presidential election.

According to court papers released Monday, those contacts included an unnamed overseas professor whom Papadopoulos met in Italy in March, the same month he joined the campaign. In April 2016, the professor told him the Russian government had “dirt” on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, including thousands of Clinton’s emails.

That conversation occurred two months before the Democratic National Committee revealed it had been hacked and believed Russians were behind the attack. It also came about a month after an email account belonging to Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, was targeted with a phishing attempt that may have led to the hack of his emails. Podesta’s emails were released by WikiLeaks in October.

An email quoted in court filings appears to match one described to The Washington Post in August in which Papadopoulos identified the professor with whom he met as Joseph Mifsud, the director of the London Academy of Diplomacy. That document was among more than 20,000 pages the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees after review by White House and defense lawyers.

Papadopoulos, who was arrested when he arrived at Dulles Airport on July 27, signed a plea agreement that indicates he is cooperating with special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, filings show. The charge against him indicates that Mueller is deeply examining any links between Trump aides and Russian officials as part of his probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

In a statement, Papadopoulos’s attorneys Thomas Breen and Robert Stanley said that they would refrain from commenting on the case.

“We will have the opportunity to comment on George’s involvement when called upon by the Court at a later date,” they said. “We look forward to telling all of the details of George’s story at that time.”

According to court filings, Trump was aware of Papadopoulos’s claims that he had pipeline to Moscow: During a March 2016 meeting in Washington of the campaign’s national security advisers, Papadopoulos said he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between the then-candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said she was “not sure that the president recalls specific details of the meeting,” calling it “brief.” She described Papadopoulos’s role with the campaign as “extremely limited.”

Asked about the indictments on Monday evening in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “We don’t know what the charges are.” After being sent a copy of the indictments, he responded, “My office hours are over!”

According to court filings, Papadopoulos updated several Trump campaign officials for months on his efforts to broker meetings between the campaign and the Russian government, forwarding information to unnamed people described as “high-ranking campaign officials” and “campaign supervisor.”

Papadopoulos’s emails began days after he was named to Trump’s campaign team and continued for months. At one point, he offered to set up a meeting directly between Trump and Putin.

In response, one high-ranking campaign official emailed another official Papadopoulos’s offer, adding, “We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

The documents show Papadopoulos lied to federal agents about his interactions with the professor, saying their conversations predated his involvement with the campaign and indicating he believed the professor had low-level contacts in Russia. In fact, he knew that the professor had ties to senior levels of the Russian government, according to court papers.

Mifsud told The Post in an email in August that he had “absolutely no contact with the Russian government” and said he was an academic whose only ties to Russia are through academic links. He did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

In addition, Papadopoulos communicated with a Russian woman with ties to the government and a man in Moscow he believed was connected to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the filings show.

Trump identified Papadopoulos as one of his advisers in a March 2016 meeting with The Washington Post editorial board, during which the then-GOP candidate described Papadopoulos as “an energy consultant. Excellent guy.”

The court papers show that while he was serving as an adviser to the campaign, Papadopoulos met a Russian woman he believed was a niece of Putin and with whom he communicated about setting up a meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian officials.

He told agents that he met the woman a year before joining the Trump campaign, but, in fact, he met her only after he was named to the campaign and communicated with her for months while working with Trump aides, the documents show.

According to court filings, she told Papadopoulos she would like to help set up meetings for the Trump campaign with her associates to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under a future President Trump.

Papadopoulos emailed campaign officials about her offer. A supervisor, who is not named, wrote back, “Great work.”

The Post has reported that Papadopoulos repeatedly emailed top campaign aides to set up such meetings, and some emails show his offers were rebuffed.

However, court documents demonstrate that Papadopoulos had ongoing communications with his Russian contacts and campaign officials about the possibility of an “off the record” trip he might take to Moscow to help facilitate ties.

In one email exchange in August 2016, a campaign supervisor told Papadopoulos that he would “encourage” him and another unnamed foreign policy adviser to “make the trip, if it is feasible,” according to filings. The trip did not ultimately take place.

Prosecutors allege Papadopoulos also obstructed their inquiry by deleting a Facebook page that would have revealed his contacts with Russians not long after learning of the investigation.

At the time Trump identified Papadopoulos as an adviser, the hotel and real estate executive was rising in the field of Republican presidential candidates and his campaign was eager to show it had credible voices offering advice on foreign policy. On the same day, Trump also announced he was being advised by Carter Page, another energy consultant whose ties to Russia have been under scrutiny.

Papadopoulos initially drew attention because of his scant foreign policy background. He had earlier advised the presidential campaign of Ben Carson, but he had graduated from college less than a decade earlier and he appeared to have exaggerated his résumé.

Still, Papadopoulos was present later in March, at a meeting of the team in Washington that included both Trump and then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, who had endorsed the campaign.

Throughout the summer, Papadopoulos met with foreign officials and gave interviews to media in other countries, sometimes describing Trump’s views on Putin on Russia.

He told a group of researchers in Israel that Trump saw Putin as “a responsible actor and potential partner,” according to a column in the Jerusalem Post, while later he met with a British Foreign Office representative in London and a Greek official in New York, British and Greek embassy spokesmen have said. He also criticized U.S. sanctions on Russia in an interview with the Russian news outlet Interfax.

The Post has also reported that Sergei Millian, who was a key source of information contained in a dossier of information about Trump’s ties to Russia, told people around him that he was in contact with Papadopoulos during the campaign.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Paul Manafort: An FAQ about Trump’s indicted former campaign chairman

Early on Monday morning, news broke that Paul Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates were turning themselves in to federal authorities to face charges related to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Below, an overview of why Manafort in particular may have been ensnared by Mueller’s investigation.

Who is Paul Manafort?

Paul Manafort is a longtime political consultant and lobbyist in Washington. His career took two tracks that are important for understanding how we got to this point.

The first is that Manafort helped multiple Republican presidential nominees manage their efforts at their party conventions, including Gerald Ford in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George H. W. Bush in 1988. He also managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential bid.

The second is that Manafort also worked on behalf of a number of questionable international actors, including Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the Russia-backed president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, during the period in which Russia-Ukraine tensions spiked. Much more on this below.

What was his relationship to Trump?

In March 2016, as Donald Trump was trying to ensure his victory in the Republican nomination fight, he hired Manafort to help corral delegates for the upcoming convention. At the time, you may remember, there was a lot of talk about whether or not Republican delegates pledged to Trump would hold steady as the convention unfolded. Manafort had helped Ford with that task in 1976, fending off a challenge from Reagan. The recommendation to hire Manafort came from Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone, who’d formed a lobbying firm with Manafort after the 1980 election.

Manafort accepted a position with the Trump campaign for no salary. Manafort’s questionable business associations were well known, but, at the time, Trump was still having trouble attracting top-tier Republican staffers who were skeptical that Trump was a viable candidate.

Once on the campaign, he butted heads with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. In late June, Trump’s children helped convince him to oust Lewandowski and elevate Manafort, who became campaign chairman. He held that senior position with the campaign until August. On the day he resigned, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this campaign to where it is right now.”

Why did he part ways with Trump?

For this, we need to talk a bit more about Manafort’s background.

In 2006, Manafort’s company (of which Gates was part) signed a multi-year agreement with a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska apparently based on a 2005 proposal in which Manafort outlined a strategy that would “greatly benefit the [Russian president Vladimir] Putin Government.” Deripaska is closely tied to Putin.

That same year, Manafort began working with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions in Ukraine. In 2010, Yanukovych was elected as that country’s president. In 2014, he was ousted during a popular uprising in the country largely because of his sympathies for Russia.

A ledger found in a former Party of Regions office in Kiev reported last year indicated that Manafort may have received nearly $13 million in off-the-record payments from the party during his time working with them. Manafort denied the allegation, but the Associated Press later confirmed some of the payments.

At the time, Trump was facing a number of questions about his relationship with Russia and any financial ties to the country. Revelation that his campaign chairman may have been paid by a Russian-backed political party helped spur Trump to oust Manafort from his position.

Does this news prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia?

No.

It’s important to remember that the investigation by Mueller is looking at Russian meddling in the 2016 election as well as any possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents. But as an arm of the Justice Department, Mueller’s team is also authorized to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Think about it this way. If the police were called to your house to interview you about noise complaint and saw you standing over a dead body holding a knife, that might also come up as a subject of conversation.

What do the charges relate to?

The indictment includes 12 counts, focused on a few things: Misleading the government, failing to register as a foreign agent, laundering money and failing to report foreign income.

It includes a conspiracy charge which is broadly about misleading the government, including that Manafort (and Gates) provided false statements to investigators and failed to register as foreign agents. (Manafort eventually did so in June after his work with the campaign drew attention to himself.) This is not a charge the Manafort conspired against the United States on behalf of Russia during the election.

The financial charges relate to $75 million that Manafort and Gates earned overseas, $18 million of which was then allegedly laundered by Manafort. This money was apparently largely earned through the pair’s work in Ukraine.

It’s important to note that these investigations predate Manafort’s time as head of the Trump campaign. In 2014, the FBI began an investigation into Manafort, including a wiretap. (That same year, Deripaska accused Manafort and Gates of taking $19 million from him that was meant to be invested in a cable network in Ukraine.) The investigation into Manafort was restarted in the spring of last year. BuzzFeed reports that the FBI is investigating wire transfers that were made in 2012 and 2013. In other words, even had he not worked with Trump’s campaign, Manafort might have faced an indictment like this anyway.

Does this close the door on whether or not Manafort was involved in colluding on the campaign?

The main caveat worth remembering here is that Manafort was out of the campaign by August — meaning that he wasn’t there for the closing days of Trump’s effort. That said, there are two ways in which Manafort and Russian interests overlapped during his time on the campaign.

The first relates to Deripaska, the Putin-allied oligarch. Shortly after Manafort started with the campaign, he emailed a business partner in Ukraine and asked how his new position might be used to “get whole,” asking if Deripaska’s team was aware of his new position. Later in the campaign, Manafort sought to pass word to Deripaska that a private briefing on the campaign might be possible. It doesn’t seem to have happened.

(Worth noting: During the campaign, the Trump campaign — then managed by Manafort — worked to remove language in the party platform about arming Ukraine in its efforts against Russia.)

Manafort was also one of the participants in the infamous Trump Tower meeting set up by Donald Trump Jr. and involving a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. During that meeting, Trump Jr. described Manafort as being on his phone the whole time, hinting that the content was not interesting to the campaign chairman. Later, though, Manafort turned over notes from the meeting that he’d taken on his phone.

It is possible that the Manafort indictment is meant to serve as leverage in Mueller’s broader investigation. There is no mention in the indictment of Trump. In 2006, Manafort bought a condominium in Trump Tower. Other New York real estate Manafort purchased in 2012 is listed in the indictment because the money used to buy the properties wasn’t included in his tax returns.

More charges could be filed against Manafort in the future.

Are there still ties between Manafort and Trump?

Trump has a pattern of continuing to talk with people he’d once hired on the campaign, even if they’d been fired. It’s not clear if that was maintained with Manafort, though Manafort did call former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus shortly before Trump’s inauguration. Update: During Monday’s White House press briefing, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said that Manafort and Trump last spoke in February.

The Daily Beast reported in June that Gates was a regular visitor to the White House, working with Trump ally Tom Barrack. (Barrack recently fretted over Trump’s presidency in an interview with The Post.)

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Mueller’s moves send message to other potential targets: Beware, I’m coming

The one-two punch delivered Monday by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — an indictment of President Trump’s former campaign chairman and a guilty plea from a former campaign adviser — is designed to send a powerful message to everyone else caught up in the probe: the prosecutors aren’t bluffing.

“This is the way you kick off a big case,’’ said Patrick Cotter, a white-collar defense lawyer in Chicago who once worked as a federal prosecutor in New York alongside Andrew Weissmann, who is spearheading the prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.

On the same day the indictment was unsealed, prosecutors also announced a guilty plea and cooperation from former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos about his interactions with people linked to the Russian government. Papadopoulos has admitted to lying to FBI agents who questioned him about those contacts, according to court records.

“Oh, man, they couldn’t have sent a message any clearer if they’d rented a revolving neon sign in Times Square,’’ Cotter said. “And the message isn’t just about Manafort. It’s a message to the next five guys they talk to. And the message is: ‘We are coming, and we are not playing, and we are not bluffing.’ ’’

Cotter pointed to several details in the Manafort indictment that suggest how steep a climb it will be to beat the charges. First, $18 million in alleged money laundering carries the likelihood of many years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Second, the charges may be tough to defend because they involve not reporting bank accounts on tax forms for multiple years. And finally, the indictment goes out of its way to kneecap a standard defense argument in such cases — that the defendant got bad advice from their accountant.

The indictment charges that Manafort wrote specifically to his accountant that he did not have such accounts.

“In fighting these kind of cases, the first line of defense is usually, ‘My accountant should have told me,’ or something like that,’’ Cotter said. “Here, the prosecutor is sending a shot across the bow, saying, ‘Don’t even try it.’ And even a really good lawyer will have a hard time getting past that.’’

Cotter said that if he were one of the lawyers for the subjects in the Mueller probe, “I would be telling my clients, ‘This is real, and whatever hope we had that maybe they wouldn’t get anywhere, those rosy scenarios, we need to forget that.’ ’’ Prosecutors, he said, “have now primed the pump, but that doesn’t mean they will get all the way to the top.’’

As important as the Manafort indictment is, the Papadopoulos plea “is a big deal,’’ said Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor with expertise in national security, that “goes much closer to the issue of collusion.’’

And the fact that he’s been cooperating for three months is important, too, he said. “Who else is cooperating that we don’t know about? That’s what people in the White House need to be worried about.’’

Nick Akerman, a former assistant special Watergate prosecutor, said the court filings “all spell bad news for Trump.’’

Akerman said he could not see any defense to the Manafort indictment.

“He has no choice but to plead guilty. That’s what the indictment says to me,’’ he said. “The only defense that you’ve got is to go in there and start singing like a canary to avoid jail time. And once he starts singing, one of the tunes is bound to be Donald Trump.’’

But Jay Nanavati, a former Justice Department tax prosecutor, said the filing of the indictment shows that so far, prosecutors have “not been able to convince Manafort to cooperate, but this is still how you start moving up the ladder in any organization.’’

What’s striking about the indictment, Nanavati said, is the number of people who worked for Manafort — accountants, lawyers and others — who provided key evidence against him. And the unidentified lobbying firms, he said, “are in significant trouble’’ because of the written exchanges referenced in the indictment alleging that some people at the firms were aware that Manafort was lying about their work together.

Nanavati said a key change in U.S. tax enforcement that began in 2008 — going after foreign bank accounts controlled by Americans — probably played an important role in the case against Manafort. Before the Justice Department started cracking Swiss banking secrecy in 2008, he said, the requirement on Americans to declare foreign bank accounts was on the books but “basically, nobody ever did it, and almost no one ever got prosecuted for it. That changed in 2008, and tax-return preparers started asking.’’ With the decline of bank secrecy, Nanavati said, crimes such as tax evasion and money laundering through foreign accounts became harder to hide.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

What you need to know about Manafort indictment, Papadopoulos guilty plea

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Read the Charges Against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates

#Resist

[Elizabeth]

OKAY....??
How Come Joan is So Quiet Now...??

Love,
Liz

[Athos_131]

OKAY....??
How Come Joan is So Quiet Now...??

Love,
Liz

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[joan1984]

  If some being investigated committed crimes, or are alleged to have, they have a problem, and need to get right with the law, one way or another. So far nothing involving the people or even time period of the Trump announcement or his Presidential Campaign.

  Lots being unearthed, and more to be questioned, including Brenann and Clapper, the Podesta Brothers, Debbie Blabermouth Schultz, and more. What did they know, and when did they know it. Oh, and the President, of course, Barack Obama, once the others are on the record.

  Should be interesting getting to the bottom of it all.

[Athos_131]

 So far nothing involving the people or even time period of the Trump announcement or his Presidential Campaign.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

I was just about to post that in the meme thread too.

 

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Lois]

  If some being investigated committed crimes, or are alleged to have, they have a problem, and need to get right with the law, one way or another. So far nothing involving the people or even time period of the Trump announcement or his Presidential Campaign.

  Lots being unearthed, and more to be questioned, including Brenann and Clapper, the Podesta Brothers, Debbie Blabermouth Schultz, and more. What did they know, and when did they know it. Oh, and the President, of course, Barack Obama, once the others are on the record.

  Should be interesting getting to the bottom of it all.

Oh  Joan, you so funny!

[_priapism]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AynRandPaulRyan/status/924556804863827968/video/1

#lockemup
#itsmuellertime