Trump Corruption

The New York Times reports: Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives on Tuesday that they should press lawmakers hard to pursue their agenda, and revealed that, as a congressman, he would meet only with lobbyists if they had contributed to his campaign. “We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would limit the kinds of scientific research it can use in crafting regulations, an apparent concession to big business that has long requested such restrictions. Under the new proposals, the EPA will no longer be able to rely on scientific research that is underpinned by confidential medical …

Bloomberg reports: Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided against recusing himself from the investigation into President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, but will consider stepping back from specific questions tied to the probe, according to a person familiar with the matter. By contrast, Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election that’s now led …

Talking Points Memo reports: President Donald Trump on Tuesday said it was a “stupid question” for a reporter to ask if he’d consider a pardon for his personal attorney, Michael Cohen. “Are you considering a pardon for Michael Cohen,” a reporter was heard asking during a pool spray in the Oval Office, as Trump sat next to French President Emmanuel …

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump twice gave James Comey an alibi for why a salacious report about the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow couldn’t be true: He never even spent the night in Russia during that trip, Trump told the former FBI director, according to Comey’s memos about the conversations. Yet the broad timeline of Trump’s stay, stretching from …

Last night the Guardian reported that Sean Hannity created multiple shell companies to invest millions in low income housing via an Obama-era loan program now overseen by HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Hannity never disclosed the deals when Carson appeared on his show. This afternoon Hannity has issued a furious reaction. It is ironic that I am being attacked for investing …

Raw Story reports: White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on Monday declined to say President Donald Trump will not pardon his attorney, Michael Cohen, who is reportedly being investigated by federal prosecutors in New York. During a Monday morning press gaggle, Sanders was asked about a potential pardon for Cohen, who has been called president’s “fixer” for authoring non-disclosure agreements …

The Hill reports: Stormy Daniels’s attorney said on Sunday that Fox News host Sean Hannity’s work with Michael Cohen is likely to be “far more extensive” than the conservative media personality has let on. “I think that the relationship is going to be far more extensive than Mr. Hannity has led people to believe,” the attorney, Michael Avenatti, said on …

The Hill reports: White House legislative director Marc Short said on Sunday that President Trump has full confidence in embattled Environmental Protection Administrator (EPA) Scott Pruitt. “Scott Pruitt is doing a phenomenal job and the president is happy with him,” Short told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” Short refused to say what it would take for Trump to …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Saturday attacked The New York Times for its reporting on his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and expressed confidence Cohen will remain loyal to him while under federal investigation. Trump, who has spoken with Haberman on the record for multiple stories in the past, appeared to be referencing a New York Times report on Friday …

The Huffington Post reports: The Twitterverse was transfixed Friday night by the sound of millions of Americans scratching their heads as they tried to decipher Donald Trump’s latest tweet Friday night from Mar-a-Lago. He again attacked his former FBI director, accusing him of a kind of convoluted conspiracy theory. Tweets pointed out — repeatedly — that it’s special “counsel” — …

The New York Times reports: For years, a joke among Trump Tower employees was that the boss was like Manhattan’s First Avenue, where the traffic goes only one way. That one-sidedness has always been at the heart of President Trump’s relationship with his longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who has said he would “take a bullet” for Mr. …

The Manila Mail reports: This year’s Independence Day celebration on June 12 will be held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, a go-to establishment favored by foreign delegations from Brazil to Turkey and lobbyists seeking to build ties with the Trump administration. No doubt this is all thanks to our new Ambassador Jose Manuel ‘Babe’ Romualdez. He assumed …

Jonathan Greenblatt writes for the Washington Post: In May 1984, an official from the Trump Organization called to tell me how rich Donald J. Trump was. I was reporting for the Forbes 400, the magazine’s annual ranking of America’s richest people, for the third year. In the previous edition, we’d valued Trump’s holdings at $200 million, only one-fifth of what …

The Hill reports: President Trump was displeased with his short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn last year after Flynn failed to tell him for several days that he had received a congratulatory phone call from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, according to memos written by former FBI director James Comey. Comey claims in memos released Thursday that Trump was unhappy with his …

“President Putin could not say such a thing and did not say it to President Trump, taking in to account that they had never communicated before Trump became President. As for the main content of the book, I do not presume to judge. We did not read it.” – Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a statement released today.  The Comey …

The New York Times reports: Memos written by the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, that were released on Thursday revealed several new details about his relationship with President Trump and the president’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus. Though much of what the memos describe was already public, the documents themselves provided an intimate portrait of the early months …

Betsy Woodruff reports at the Daily Beast: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been in talks to join the President Donald Trump’s personal legal team, according to a person familiar with the matter. No decision is currently final. A slew of foreign policy matters which Trump has had to deal with has slowed the process of expanding the …

Bloomberg reports: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort stemmed in part from his suspected role as a “back channel” between the campaign and Russians intent on meddling in the election, a Justice Department lawyer told a judge. The disclosure by U.S. prosecutors came Thursday during a hearing on whether Mueller exceeded his authority in …

“I will say he left the Republican Party, we did not leave him. He has left. We’re glad to see him go at this point with what done with this self-serving book tour — monetizing his relationship with the president. We know now how unfit he was to be FBI director with the mistruths that he’s put forward. And I …