Trump Corruption

CNN reports: Two weeks ago when they were arrested, Parnas and Fruman were preparing to fly to Vienna, Austria, to meet Giuliani and another key figure in the impeachment investigation, Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, according to four sources familiar with their trip. Shokin is the same Ukrainian official who former Vice President Joe Biden — along with other …

Mediaite reports: The Wall Street Journal editorial board made the argument that even if President Donald Trump sought a quid pro quo with Ukraine, he shouldn’t be impeached because he was “too inept” to make it happen. The newest op-ed from the Journal’s editorial board acknowledges that Trump’s defenses have taken a hit now that the testimony from top Ukraine …

Axios reports: The White House plans to order all federal agencies not to renew their subscriptions to the New York Times and the Washington Post, two papers that President Trump has repeatedly attacked for their critical coverage of his administration, the Wall Street Journal reports. The White House said on Tuesday that it would cancel its own subscriptions to the …

Politico reports: Conservative lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who this year took on as a client an oligarch at the center of the Ukraine scandal, also represent the conservative columnist who has advanced Trump-friendly claims of corruption in Kyiv. “John Solomon has been a client of our firm for a very long time,” Joe diGenova told POLITICO on Thursday. …

The Hill reports: White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Thursday that President Trump does not regret calling “Never Trump” Republicans “human scum” and said they “deserve strong language like that.” “The people who are against him, and who have been against him and working against him since the day they took office are just that,” Grisham said during an …

Just Security reports: While the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued legal opinions that a sitting president cannot be indicted, there is no similar prohibition on indicting a president’s personal lawyer or other potential co-conspirators involved in committing a federal crime. Based on facts already in the public record, we believe that Rudolph Giuliani could be indicted …

Mediaite reports: According to Chad Pergram of Fox News, the Republicans who entered the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) Wednesday — where Democrats were holding a hearing with Pentagon staffer Laura Cooper on matters related to Ukraine — asked to be arrested. According to Pergram, those Republicans were hoping to use the visual of being taken away to paint Democrats …

Law & Crime reports: The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump would veto a bill requiring federal election campaigns to report “illicit offers” of campaign assistance from foreign governments and their agents. House Democrats earlier in the day passed the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy Act (SHIELD), an election security bill which would require …

The New York Times reports: It’s been more than a year since any sort of war room has been run out of the basement of Stephen K. Bannon’s Capitol Hill townhouse. And it’s been even longer since Mr. Bannon, who was pushed out as White House chief strategist in August 2017, ran a war room for President Trump. But everyday …

Talking Points Memo reports: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) walked back his earlier comments that called out a group of House Republicans for storming into a closed-door deposition that is part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump on Wednesday. Graham tweeted a “correction” saying that when he told reporters “that’s nuts” in response to his fellow Republican lawmakers’ actions, …

The Hill reports: Rep. Alex Mooney (R. W.Va.) shared audio of a phone call he made from inside a secure room at the Capitol where Democrats were attempting to interview a witness as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The interview was delayed for hours after a group of conservative Republican lawmakers, including Mooney, stormed into the room …

The National Law Journal reports: A federal judge on Wednesday said he wants the State Department to produce certain documents on Ukraine, including communications between President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and State Department officials, to a watchdog group within 30 days. American Oversight filed an open records request about five months ago for State Department communications with Giuliani, …

The New York Times reports: Senior White House officials suspected that a colleague whom they viewed as a political partisan was ferrying documents about Ukraine in recent months to President Trump, effectively creating another back channel to him that could warp American policy, according to congressional testimony and interviews. Colleagues grew alarmed after hearing that Mr. Trump had referred to …

The New York Law Journal reports: The New York City Bar Association in a statement Wednesday called on U.S. Attorney General William Barr to stand aside in any ongoing or future review by the Department of Justice of issues stemming from the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, in which Barr has allegedly involved. If Barr does not recuse himself, the …

NPR reports: Two of Rudy Giuliani’s associates appeared in federal court Wednesday in Manhattan, where they pleaded not guilty to charges of illegally funneling foreign donations to U.S. political candidates. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are both U.S. citizens born in the former Soviet Union: Parnas in Ukraine, and Fruman in Belarus. They face charges of conspiring to violate the …

The Associated Press reports: More than two months before the phone call that launched the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Ukraine’s newly elected leader was already worried about pressure from the U.S. president to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden. Volodymyr Zelenskiy gathered a small group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv for a meeting that was supposed …

Politico reports: A lawyer for Donald Trump argued in federal court on Wednesday that the president could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City and not be prosecuted. The lawyer, William Consovoy, was responding to a question by Judge Denny Chin of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, who asked, “What’s your view on the 5th …

The Hill reports: President Trump is set to deliver remarks on Syria Wednesday morning. Trump withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria earlier this month in a move that sparked fierce bipartisan pushback from lawmakers who worried the it would be seen as a betrayal to Kurdish allies in the region. Turkey launched a military operation targeting the Kurds shortly after …

The New York Times reports: Since becoming ambassador in June 2018, David Cornstein has assiduously courted Mr. Orban, giving the Hungarian leader unexpected influence in the Trump administration. Mr. Cornstein used his decades-long friendship with President Trump to help broker a coveted Oval Office meeting for Mr. Orban last May — a meeting now under scrutiny by impeachment investigators in …

The Daily Beast reports: The White House issued a statement late Tuesday lashing out at “far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats” after President Trump’s acting ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, told Congress that U.S. military aid to Ukraine was made contingent on the Ukrainian president formally announcing investigations into U.S. domestic affairs. “President Trump has done nothing wrong—this is a …