Free Republic

by Joe Callen In a stunning, unexpected ruling, a judge on Wednesday tossed out New York State charges of mortgage fraud against Paul Manafort because of ‘double jeopardy’ laws. This is a huge victory for Paul Manafort, who remains in custody on federal charges, because this opens a way for Trump to issue him a presidential pardon. And not just for Manafort: this ruling throws a legal hand grenade into the entire Democrat strategy of punishing former Trump aides and supporters with state charges to bypass his pardon powers. Manafort, 70, is currently serving a seven and half year prison sentence...

Paul Manafort has New York state fraud prosecution DISMISSED because of 'double jeopardy' - opening way for Donald Trump to set him free with a pardon Manhattan judge rules that state attorney general Letitia James' attempt to prosecute disgraced Trump campaign chairman is invalid Judge Maxwell Wiley agreed with Manafort's attorneys that double jeopardy laws prevent the prosecution going ahead James had charged Manafort with mortgage fraud but Wiley ruled that he had already been convicted of 'overlapping' crime in federal court Manafort is serving federal sentence and not due for release until Christmas Day 2024 but is currently in...

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been hospitalized for a cardiac event while serving his over seven year sentence for charges related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, according to two sources familiar with his situation. Manafort has been serving out his sentence as of late in a federal correction institute in central Pennsylvania.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, as he explains, is bound to assume good faith unless given “documentary or testimonial evidence” otherwise. Yet he has compiled a factually damning report that even a thick-headed and biased press will have to take account of. A shorthand version of his report: Here are 50 facts that can be explained only by FBI incompetence or political bias. We find no documentary or testimonial evidence of bias. The mystique of Christopher Steele has gone poof, along with the reputations of many pundits. The FBI saw that he was being paid to sell claims to...

Politico that she began researching Manafort in 2014. In 2014, the FBI investigated, and then reportedly wiretapped, Manafort for allegedly not properly disclosing Russia-related work. FBI failed to make a case at the time, according to CNN, and discontinued the wiretap. On March 25, 2016, according to Politico, Chalupa–who previously worked in the Clinton administration–met with top Ukrainian officials at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington D.C. in an effort to tarnish the Trump campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton by exposing “ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia.” The Ukrainian embassy proceeded to work “directly with reporters...

Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office. This isn’t what I thought two months ago, when the impeachment inquiry began. I argued that the evidence fell short of the standards of a prosecutable criminal act. I also feared impeachment might ultimately help Trump politically, as it had helped Bill Clinton in 1998. That second worry might still prove true. But if the congressional testimonies of Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman and especially Fiona Hill make anything clear, it’s that the president’s highest crime isn’t what he tried to do to, or with, Ukraine. It’s...

A Ukrainian court revealed Wednesday that two Ukrainian officials had violated the law by revealing information about illegal cash payments made to Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former presidential election campaign chair. The disclosure amounted to interference in a foreign election. A Kiev district court ruled Wednesday that Artem Sytnik, director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, and member of parliament Serhiy Leshchenko acted illegally when they disclosed Manafort's name from among the documents of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, the Kyiv Post reported. By doing so, they acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. In response to the ruling, Leshchenko wrote...

iIntelligence sources in Kyiv have informed CD Media that the ‘witness’ narrative of LT COL Alexander Vindman was created by corrupt U.S. State Department officials in Kyiv, Ukraine. According to our sources, “Alexander Vindman [recent witness in favor of Trump impeachment], Gordon Sondland [US ambassador to the EU and Trump supporter] and Oleksandr Danilyuk [Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine from late May until 30 September 2019 before being fired] had a meeting in July 2019. Sondland asked Danilyuk as head of National Security Bureau of Ukraine to investigate Biden, Burisma, and Manafort related investigations. Apparently,...

President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, suggested as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians might have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign rather than Russians, a key witness told federal investigators last year. Newly released documents show that Manafort’s protege, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, told the FBI of Manafort’s theory during interviews conducted as part of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Gates told the FBI that Manafort had shared his theory of Ukrainian culpability with him and other campaign...

Alexandra Chalupa is a former Democratic National Committee contractor and staffer who calls herself a “human rights hobbyist” and runs a Washington D.C. political consulting firm. Chalupa is Ukrainian-American. Her investigations, focusing on former Donald Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, have provoked controversy.“Chalupa’s actions appear to show that she was simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign government, Ukraine, and on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign, in an effort to influence not only the U.S voting population but U.S. government officials,” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary Committee...

AP Reporters Pushed FBI to prosecute Manafort New Benghazi Documents Confirm Clinton Email Cover-Up The State Department Monitored People It Didn’t Like AP Reporters Pushed FBI to prosecute Manafort The Associated Press, founded in 1846 as a cooperative association of newspapers, has enjoyed a reputation for independence and fairness over the years. Lately, however, it has come under criticism for what some see as a left/liberal bias. Certainly, what we have just learned about its dealings with anti-Trump partisans in the Justice Department does nothing to improve our perception of the news service. We have released two sets of...

Full title: Judicial Watch: AP Reporters Gave DOJ/FBI Ukraine Info and Code to Private Locker of Paul Manafort in Apparent Effort to Push Criminal Prosecution Andrew Weissmann organized off-the-record DOJ/FBI meeting with AP to exchange ‘clarification’ and ‘assistance’ in their investigation for details on former Trump Campaign Director Paul Manafort (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released two productions of heavily redacted FBI documents – 28 pages and 38 pages – about an April 11, 2017, “off-the-record” meeting set up by then-Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section Andrew Weissmann, between the DOJ, the FBI and the Associated Press...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed a measure Wednesday permitting New York state to press charges against those who have received presidential pardons. The measure was passed to prevent President Trump's ex-aides facing prison time or potential sentencing from receiving pardons and avoiding criminal punishment, NBC News reported. The network added that the legislation was a direct response to the president's consideration of giving his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, a pardon. Manafort is serving in a federal prison after being convicted on bank fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy charges. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has also indicted him on state...

In February 2017, the Washington Post’s Miller had the lead byline on a story based on leaks of Trump’s conversations with Australia’s prime minister and Mexico’s president. Six months later, the Post published the entire transcripts of both conversations in another Miller story. It was through such national security correspondents that anti-Trump sources -- intelligence officials -- pushed leaks of classified information and other tidbits intended to damage Trump into the media. There it merged with other anti-Trump currents in nearly every corner of the press, where it blossomed into Russiagate. After a nearly two-year investigation, the special counsel found...

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted at National Review on Thursday that then-President Barack Obama’s administration asked Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor. The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ). The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included...

If I were a Democrat, I would be afraid, I would be very afraid, after reading former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's Monday WSJ oped: "John Durham's Ukrainian Leads." The subtitle is "What the prosecutor has found may be quite different from what the Democrats are looking for." Mukasey begins: "Americans often boast that we are a nation of laws, but for the moment laws appear to play a decidedly secondary role in the drama we are living in and—hopefully—through." True enough, but the nub of the article, which returns us to the rule of law, comes further on: "True, much...

As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor. The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ). The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included...

The boomerang from the Democratic Party’s failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia’s 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow’s pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton. In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help. In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's...

The FBI released 34 pages of notes, known as “302s,” of its 2016 and 2017 interviews with Bruce Ohr, the DOJ official who met with the British dossier author Christopher Steele and opposition research firm Fusion GPS’s Glen Simpson. Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, when they were hired by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Convention. The FBI was sued by the watchdog group Judicial Watch to comply with their requests for access to the notes via Freedom of Information Act. Read the documents below: