Trump Corruption

Axios reports: Steve Bannon, who was inside the White House when FBI Director James Comey was fired and has strong opinions about what happened, “intends to fully cooperate with Mueller,” according to a source familiar with Bannon’s thinking. The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff scooped Bannon’s legal strategy last night. The source said that the White House has placed zero restrictions …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon refused to answer questions Tuesday from the House Intelligence Committee about his time in the White House, prompting panel members to subpoena him on the spot, according to a person familiar with the interview. Bannon appeared before the committee as part of its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential …

The Associated Press reports: The White House will hold a press briefing Tuesday afternoon with press secretary Sarah Sanders. Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician who last week declared President Donald Trump in “excellent health,” will provide more details of the President’s medical exam during a briefing on Tuesday. The White House said last week that Jackson would join …

The New York Times reports: Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, was subpoenaed last week by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to testify before a grand jury as part of the investigation into possible links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The move marked the first …

This morning Hair Furor is using his famed “executive time” from his cheeseburger-strewn bedroom to launch a tweetstorm of bullshit, including retweets of his own rants from over the holiday weekend. He’s apparently especially angry that former sycophant Steve Bannon is testifying on Russian collusion in a closed-door meeting of the House Intelligence Committee. Bannon’s comments in Michael Wolff’s Fire …

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon will meet behind closed doors on Tuesday with a U.S. House of Representatives committee that is probing whether Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. The interview with the House Intelligence Committee comes after Bannon’s public falling out with the president over comments Bannon made to author Michael Wolff for …

The Hill reports: Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe claims in a forthcoming book that President Trump asked him to “get inside” Columbia University and obtain a copy of former President Barack Obama’s college records. O’Keefe writes in his book “American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News,” that Trump “suspected Obama had presented himself as a foreign …

Law & Crime reports: The Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) is allegedly turning a blind eye to influence peddling orchestrated by a private prison company which made illegal contributions to a pro-Trump Super PAC. In response, non-partisan public interest watchdog, the Campaign Legal Center (“CLC”) filed a lawsuit against the FEC alleging the agency violated federal law by unlawfully delaying enforcement …

Yet another Fox & Friends fueled furor: President Donald Trump suggested the FBI used the Russia dossier to “spy on the Trump campaign” and “influence the Election” in an early morning tweet sent out Thursday. He also threw out some speculation in his tweet, asking whether the “Dems or Clinton” paid Russians, of the location of “hidden and smashed DNC …

The Hill reports: President Trump said Wednesday it is “unlikely” he will have to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller for an interview, arguing that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia. Trump repeatedly dodged whether he would submit to an interview with Mueller by citing his claim there was no collusion during the 2016 presidential election. …

Vox reports: Yesterday Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) ignored the objections of her Republican colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee and released the full transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s extensive congressional testimony about Christopher Steele’s famous dossier on Donald Trump and Russia. Today, President Trump woke up angry and tweeting about the situation — pretending that there’s something illegal …

And his first year isn’t even over yet. The Washington Post reports: President Trump has broken 2,000. With just 10 days before he finishes his first year as president, Trump has made 2,001 false or misleading claims in 355 days, according to our database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. That’s an average of …

USA Today reports: President Trump’s companies sold more than $35 million in real estate in 2017, mostly to secretive shell companies that obscure buyers’ identities, continuing a dramatic shift in his customers’ behavior that began during the election, a USA TODAY review found. In Las Vegas alone, Trump sold 41 luxury condo units in 2017, a majority of which used …

Bloomberg reports: Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sued Buzzfeed Inc. on Tuesday for defamation over allegations about him in a dossier the news organization published that was commissioned in 2016 by the president’s political opponents. Cohen said he also filed a second defamation suit against political intelligence firm Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier, in federal court. Buzzfeed published …

Mediaite reports: Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Monday that more convictions and indictments can be expected from Robert Mueller’s special investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Appearing on Morning Joe, the Connecticut Democrat predicted that President Donald Trump will have a face-to-face interview with Mueller (to be a fly on that …

The Los Angeles Times reports: Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has recalled for questioning at least one participant in a controversial meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016, and is looking into President Trump’s misleading claim that the discussion focused on adoption, rather than an offer to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Some …

“Look, I think it’s absolutely insane to think all of these individuals, reporters and others, who suddenly have a medical degree and think that they can diagnose somebody, many times who they’ve never even had a conversation with. It’s absolutely outrageous to make these types of accusations, and it’s simply untrue, and it’s sad that people are going and making …

The New York Times reports: President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member …

Josh Israel reports at Think Progress: The head of the self-described “#1 nail art chain in Russia” visited Washington, D.C. on Tuesday morning for a meeting with her country’s new ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Ivanovich Antonov. A photo posted on Movsisyan’s personal Instagram account and on Nail Sunny’s company Instagram page, shows that the meeting took place at …

The New York Times reports: During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands …