Trump Corruption

The Hill reports: President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested on Sunday that former President Barack Obama and his top intelligence officials “knew” the FBI had used an alleged top-secret informant to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign. In an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis, Giuliani insisted that former CIA Director John Brennan and former National Intelligence Director James Clapper were …

Via Mediaite: Even as some Republicans have suggested it may not be entirely accurate, President Trump is standing by his “SpyGate” claim. He also tweeted this afternoon that the FBI and/or DOJ never contacted him about this “phony Russia problem.” However, NBC News reported late last year that “in the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, …

Yahoo News reports: The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin [photo], a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, …

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort lost a bid on Friday to have certain criminal charges by a U.S. special counsel dismissed, including one count that he conspired to launder money. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over Manafort’s case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in a ruling that she …

Mediaite reports: Cellular provider T-Mobile is paying for advice from former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on their upcoming merger with Sprint, according to a Wall Street Journal report. On Thursday, T-Mobile announced that it hired Turnberry Solutions back in August to help secure federal approval of the merging of the two companies in a takeover deal. Along with …

Fast Company reports: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is blocking requests for copies of his office’s correspondence with the real estate company previously managed by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. Christie, whose eight-year administration spent almost $1 million battling to keep public records secret, issued a letter in his last week in Trenton that declared any requests involving his …

The New York Times reports: Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting. In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he …

NBC News reports: Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., says the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., may have provided “false testimony” to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was asked about the Trump campaign’s involvement with foreign governments and foreign nationals. In a two-page letter Thursday to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the panel, Coons said that information in recent …

RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany today confirmed that Michael Cohen is still their Deputy Finance Chairman despite weeks of revelations about Cohen’s lucrative attempts to sell access to the White House. Mediaite reports: The RNC spokesman confirmed the news today while speaking to Cheddar correspondent and Mediaite alum J.D. Durkin. McEnany also brushed off the fact that Cohen has been raided …

The New York Post reports: As this year’s best-seller list continues to be crammed with books on the Trump administration, Page Six has learned that Donald Trump Jr. wants to add his name to the list. Publishing insiders tell Page Six that Trump Jr. is shopping a tome, and is being repped by top agent David Vigliano’s literary firm, AGI …

Buzzfeed News reports: Congressional leaders on Thursday participated in an unusual pair of meetings with administration officials to discuss the FBI’s use of an informant in its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in 2016. Democrats who attended the meetings said there was “no evidence” presented to support the claim repeatedly made by President Donald Trump in …

“He deliberately spun it, distorted it. I mean this is George Orwell — up is down, black is white, peace is war. That’s exactly what I didn’t say. I took aversion to the word spy, it was the most benign version of information gathering. The important thing is the whole reason the FBI was doing this was concern over what …

The Daily Beast reports: Michael Cohen’s legal troubles have claimed another victim: his personal memoir. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer met with a number of publishers in New York, pitching a book which had been tentatively titled Trump Revolution: From The Tower to The White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump. According to two sources with knowledge …

The Hill reports: Emmet Flood, a White House lawyer handling the Russia investigation, was seen Thursday afternoon at a pair of classified meetings between members of Congress and senior Justice Department officials about the FBI’s tactics in the probe. His attendance—along with the similarly brief attendance of Chief of Staff John Kelly—was a reversal from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Thursday attacked former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Twitter, rebuking the former intelligence chief for remarks he made on “The View” about surveillance of Trump’s campaign. In a tweet, the president erroneously claimed that Clapper had “admitted” to placing a spy on his campaign staff, when in reality Clapper had merely acknowledged …

“While we’re sticking to the facts and telling you what we know, President Trump has no constraints since he simply makes stuff up. He frequently lies and has a long and well documented conspiracy theories with no concrete evidence ever provided. For years he perpetuated the myth that Obama was not born in the United States, and that he saw …

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump has branded his latest attempt to discredit the special counsel’s Russia investigation as “spygate,” part of a newly invigorated strategy embraced by his Republican colleagues to raise suspicions about the probe that has dogged his presidency since the start. Trump now is zeroing in on — and at times embellishing — reports that …

The Hill reports: More than half of Americans polled are not aware that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has uncovered crimes, according to a new survey from Navigator Research. The poll found that 59 percent of those surveyed believe Mueller has not discovered any crimes, while 41 percent believe that he has. …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani switched gears Wednesday, saying that he would prefer the president grant an interview to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office and that a decision would be made within “the next couple weeks.” “I guess I’d rather do the interview. It gets it over with it, it makes my client …

Mediaite reports: Trump outright condemned the FBI for embedding an informant to spy on his 2016 campaign in his morning tweetstorm, but he backtracked this afternoon to a more accusatory stance this afternoon by saying “I hope it’s not true, but it looks like it is.” Trump also made a big deal of showing off his fancy, new, totally uninspired …