Trump Corruption

Via press release from the watchdog group CREW: In less than a year, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway appears to have violated the Hatch Act on more than 50 occasions using her @KellyannePolls Twitter account which she uses for both personal and official government business. On June 13, 2019, Special Counsel Henry Kerner, a Trump appointee, took the unprecedented …

CNN’s ever intrepid Daniel Dale reports: President Donald Trump made at least 26 false claims in his 87-minute rally speech in Dallas on Thursday, including an inaccurate declaration that Texas had somehow profited from one of the costliest hurricanes in American history. Touting the “billions and billions of dollars” in relief money he authorized for Texas in the wake of …

From the right wing Washington Examiner: Outraged by secretly-taped anti-Trump comments attributed to CNN President Jeff Zucker and others at the cable network, President Trump’s campaign is vowing to sue the company for “a substantial payment of damages.” In a four-page letter to CNN, Zucker, and Executive Vice President David Vigilante, Trump attorney Charles J. Harder cited years of anti-Trump …

“In Washington, you know, there is this toxic atmosphere — some of it created, fairly, by the president himself, with some of these policies. I mean, why in the world he wants to host Doral National golf club in Miami. Why does the president want to host the G-7 there? It just flies in the face of the Constitution. I …

Mediaite reports: An anti-Trump Republican group is airing an absolutely brutal ad knocking President Donald Trump’s decision to hold the next G7 summit at his own resort, and they’re hitting Trump where it hurts: on Fox & Friends. A group called “Republicans for the Rule of Law” cut an ad pegged to Thursday’s announcement that the next G7 Summit will …

The Washington Post reports: Sen. Mitt Romney delivered perhaps the most thorough Republican rebuke of President Trump’s Syria withdrawal Thursday, calling Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds there “a bloodstain on the annals of American history.” But while that line will get a lot of play, there’s something else Romney said that shouldn’t escape notice. He also floated a theory about …

The Hill reports: White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that the flow of security assistance to Ukraine was not conditioned on Kiev investigating a conspiracy related to 2016 election interference, walking back statements he made earlier in the day. Mulvaney issued a statement Thursday afternoon accusing the media of “misconstruing” his earlier remarks to the press at …

Talking Points Memo reports: Two out of four defendants in the Rudy Giuliani-linked alleged campaign finance scheme were arraigned in Manhattan federal court on Thursday. David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy before District Judge J. Paul Oetken for the Southern District of New York. Kukushkin was arrested last week. Correia surrendered to U.S. authorities …

Bloomberg reports: Energy Secretary Rick Perry notified President Donald Trump Thursday that he will soon be leaving the post, according to two people familiar with the matter. Perry, one of the administration’s original cabinet secretaries, enjoyed good rapport with Trump. The former Texas governor has recently come under scrutiny in the House impeachment inquiry over his discussions with Ukraine. Perry’s …

Axios reports: Jared Kushner will travel to Israel during the last week of October, Israeli officials tell me. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Benny Gantz, the man seeking to replace Netanyahu as prime minister. Why it matters: Kushner knows Netanyahu well after their many meetings, but this will be his first meeting with …

The New York Times reports: Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters that the release of military aid to Ukraine this summer was linked in part to White House demands that Ukraine’s government investigate what he called corruption by Democrats in the 2016 American presidential campaign. It was the first time a White House official has …

NPR reports: Next year’s G-7 gathering of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies will take place at a President Trump’s Doral golf resort outside of Miami, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney announced on Thursday. “We used a lot of the same criteria used by past administrations,” Mulvaney said. He later said it was almost as though …

ABC News reports: The U.S. ambassador to the European Union will tell Congress that President Donald Trump directed him and others to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to push Ukraine to announce investigations, but that he was in the dark on the extent of Giuliani’s efforts and the political motive behind it, according to his opening statement obtained …

Fox News reports: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose name has been mentioned in connection with President Trump’s Ukraine dealings, said in an interview published late Wednesday that the president told him to seek out Rudy Giuliani earlier this year to look into possible Ukrainian corruption. The Wall Street Journal sat down with Perry for an extensive interview and reported that …

The Hill reports: Senate Republicans are cautioning Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) against the prospect of bringing former Vice President Joe Biden before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about Ukrainian corruption, saying such a move could backfire. Graham initially ruled out the possibility of having Biden or his son Hunter testify before the Judiciary panel about their actions related to …

ABC News reports: When two Rudy Giuliani associates were arrested last week and charged with funneling foreign money into political campaigns, two big questions lingered: Which foreigners were they working for, and what was their ultimate goal? There are growing indications that a Ukrainian-backed oligarch who is fighting extradition to the United States figures in the answers. The evidence is …

Politico reports: A former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told House impeachment investigators on Wednesday that he abruptly resigned last week because of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the State Department’s unwillingness to protect career diplomats from political pressure, according to two people familiar with the testimony. Michael McKinley, a …

The Washington Post reports: In late May, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting that stripped control of the country’s relationship with Ukraine from those who had the most expertise at the National Security Council and the State Department. Instead, Mulvaney put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S.-Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of …

Pro Publica reports: Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set …

The New York Times reports: A former top White House foreign policy adviser told House impeachment investigators this week that she viewed Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, as a potential national security risk because he was so unprepared for his job, according to two people familiar with her private testimony. The adviser, Fiona Hill, …