Trump Corruption

ABC News reports: President Trump on Monday complained about the process that led to his impeachment and lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over her decision to delay sending articles of impeachment to the Senate. Trump inaccurately described the House impeachment inquiry as a “trial,” railing against the process in the lower chamber as “unfair” and claiming that …

The Hill reports: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for an opinion on the legality of President Trump’s decision to hold up Ukraine aid. Van Hollen sent a letter on Monday to Gene Dodaro, the GAO comptroller general, outlining why he believes Trump’s decision violated the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which restricts a president’s …

The Huffington Post reports: President Donald Trump has pushed his taxpayer-funded golf tab past $118 million on his 26th visit to Mar-a-Lago, his for-profit resort in Palm Beach, Florida, with a Saturday visit to his course in neighboring West Palm Beach. The new total is the equivalent of 296 years of the $400,000 presidential salary that his supporters often boast …

CNN’s Daniel Dale reports: President Donald Trump made 99 false claims over the two weeks that ended last Sunday. Trump made 22 of the false claims at a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He made 16 of them in a lengthy exchange with reporters during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The economy was Trump’s top subject of …

The Hill reports: Newly released documents from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Pentagon provide further insight into the timeline regarding the White House’s freezing of congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine. According to the documents, shortly after President Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, White House aides were tasked with halting the $391 …

The Associated Press reports: One of President Donald Trump’s top re-election advisers told influential Republicans in swing state Wisconsin that the party has “traditionally” relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states but will be able to “start playing offense” in 2020 due to relaxed Election Day rules, according to an audio recording of a private event obtained by …

Politico reports: Roger Stone secured a partial win Friday when a federal judge agreed to postpone his February sentencing for two weeks because of a slowdown in paperwork tied to the longtime Donald Trump adviser’s finances. A jury convicted Stone in November on seven felony counts of lying to investigators, obstructing a congressional probe and witness tampering — crimes that …

The Washington Post reports: Almost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House. After meeting privately in July 2017 with Putin at the G20 summit, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat …

Bloomberg News reports: Lawyers close to President Donald Trump are exploring whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to temporarily withhold articles of impeachment from the Senate could mean that the president hasn’t actually been impeached. The case is a rhetorical one following Wednesday night’s vote to impeach the president on two articles. The U.S. Constitution grants the House of Representatives …

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports: Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, told thousands of conservative students in West Palm Beach on Thursday night that Democrats are “trying to destroy the Constitution” by impeaching President Donald Trump. During a speech at the Turning Point USA Student Summit, Giuliani said, “This coup and this impeachment is about … taking our Constitution and …

Talking Points Memo reports: Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is widely expected to leave his current position once the Senate wraps up its impeachment trial and the intense scrutiny of the West Wing settles down, according to five aides and confidants to President Donald Trump. Trump allies and White House aides, who have been nudging the president …

Fox News reports: One of the nation’s top Christian magazine publications called for the removal of President Trump on Thursday, one day after the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against him. In an editorial titled “Trump Should Be Removed From Office,” Christianity Today editor-in-chief Mark Galli invoked the mission of the magazine’s founder, Billy Graham, to “help …

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump administration is quietly fighting a new package of sanctions on Russia, The Daily Beast has learned. A Trump State Department official sent a 22-page letter to a top Senate chairman on Tuesday making a wide-ranging case against a new sanctions bill. Sen. Lindsey Graham—usually a staunch ally of the White House—introduced the legislation earlier …

Just in from the watchdog group CREW: In November, we noticed a mysterious spike in the price of available rooms at Trump’s DC hotel for a Saturday night in December. The minimum cost was 13 times the average, but we couldn’t identify a reason for the spike, until photos surfaced of the Trump Victory Committee’s winter retreat at Trump’s Hotel …

The Independent reports: Donald Trump has lashed out against what he calls the “ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT” in a tweet sent just moments after the White House press secretary claimed the president would be working all day, and only able to catch bits of the ongoing impeachment debate between meetings. The president’s all-caps tweet came just after a …

Roll Call reports: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will review allegations that Donald Trump Jr., may have illegally killed a rare sheep during a recent trip to Mongolia and imported parts of the animal back to the U.S. Animal conservation activists said President Donald Trump’s eldest son may have violated a federal wildlife anti-trafficking law after ProPublica …

CNBC reports: A judge on Wednesday dismissed New York state criminal charges filed against Paul Manafort, the fallen Republican lobbyist who served for several months as President Donald Trump’s campaign chief in 2016. Judge Maxwell Wiley said during a hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court that New York’s double-jeopardy law barred the state indictment against Manafort. The Washington Post reports: Manafort, …

The Independent reports: Kentucky’s largest transportation grant application under the Trump administration benefited from a process that the government’s top watchdog said lacked “the assurance of fairness.” The $67.4 million grant application for Boone County — a rapidly growing suburban district of political importance to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the husband of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — was initially …

Mediaite reports: In brief comments to reporters today, President Donald Trump said he feels he has “zero” responsibility for his likely impeachment. CNN’s Jim Acosta asked, “Mr. President, do you take any responsibility for the fact that you are about to be impeached?” “No. I don’t take any. Zero, to put it mildly,” Trump responded, insisting again his phone call …

Reuters reports: U.S. prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that Lev Parnas, an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, received a $1 million payment from a lawyer for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Prosecutors said that Parnas, who has been charged with campaign finance violations, should have his bail revoked because he concealed the payment from them, …