Trump Corruption

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 …

“I’m a former prosecutor and what I know is this is a perfect time for a preliminary hearing, where you would say, ‘Show us your evidence. What evidence of a crime do you have?’ I mean, the Constitution, you know, sort of — abuse of power is not a crime. Let’s fundamentally boil it down to — you know, the …

Vanity Fair reports: Michael Cohen, according to people familiar with the situation, has information that could be pertinent to the SDNY’s investigation into Lev Parnas, one of the men who worked with Giuliani to dig up dirt on Trump’s political opponents. Parnas, according to these sources, contacted Cohen in the first few weeks after Trump took office. He introduced himself …

Courthouse News reports: A Justice Department lawyer faced an uphill battle Tuesday in arguing that lawmakers lack standing to access financials on the president’s eponymous hotel, located just blocks from the White House. “They do not have a private right to information,” Justice Department attorney Hashim Mooppan told the three-judge panel this morning. In asserting otherwise, David Charney Vladeck, an …

CBS News reports: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied telling President Trump his July phone call with the Ukrainian president was “innocent,” as the president had indicated earlier this month. Asked on Tuesday whether he believes the president has handled the U.S. relationship with Ukraine “perfectly,” McConnell told CBS News he had not spoken to the president about the July …

The New York Times reports: An anonymous Trump administration official who published a September 2018 essay in The New York Times, about the active resistance to the president’s agenda and behavior from within his own administration, will publish a book next month. The author, who has not been publicly identified, created an uproar when he or she wrote in an …

The Washington Post reports: The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain. Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. testified behind closed doors …

Bloomberg reports: Donald Trump has for weeks been privately testing the idea of replacing his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who’s swiftly fallen out of favor with some of the president’s allies after high-profile stumbles handling the House impeachment inquiry. About a month ago, Trump said to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in front of a roomful of staff: “You have …

CNBC reports: A top diplomat testified Tuesday in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump after House Democrats issued a subpoena to him following State Department attempts to block his appearance, an official working on the probe told NBC News. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor appeared Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill for a scheduled deposition in the House …

The Miami Herald reports: Congressional Democrats will file a legal brief in federal court on Tuesday asserting that President Trump’s promotion of his Doral resort for the G-7 summit was further evidence he has violated the Emoluments Clause, despite his decision to reverse course. The initial announcement last week — from Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, as he …

Politico reports: Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman accused of funneling foreign money into U.S. elections, attended a string of events with Ron DeSantis in the closing moments of the Republican candidate’s 2018 campaign for governor in Florida. In a photograph taken Nov. 4, two days before the election that propelled DeSantis to victory, Parnas is next to the smiling …

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump compared the impeachment process to “a lynching” on Twitter Tuesday morning. “So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” he wrote. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing …