Free Republic

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends” in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter. The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump...

Contrary to media speculation that Robert Mueller is closing in on President Trump, the special prosecutor’s plea deal with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen offers further evidence that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russians during the 2016 election, according to congressional investigators and former prosecutors. Cohen pleaded guilty last week to making false statements in 2017 to the Senate intelligence committee about the Trump Organization’s failed efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Discussions about the so-called Moscow Project continued five months longer in 2016 than Cohen had initially stated under oath. The nine-page charging document filed...

Last week, Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower complex in Moscow. Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Trump Organization stopped pursuing the project in January 2016, but in pleading guilty Cohen stated that he continued to pursue the Trump Tower project into June of that year. Cohen claimed he lied out of loyalty to Trump and to be consistent with then-candidate Trump’s political messaging. Following Cohen’s surprise guilty plea, the media and critics of the president wasted no time pushing collusion narratives, conspiracy theories, and...

Still Winning This week the President signed a new trade deal with Mexico, Canada, and Argentina, a deal far more favorable to our interests than the now discarded NAFTA deal. In the same time frame, our master negotiator hosted the first trilateral meeting with Japan and India, which should also boost the economy and which includes defense and military purchases. Merry Christmas, Xi. Comey: Still a Loser On the home front, Mueller and Comey keep looking worse and worse. Previously, former FBI Director James Comey refused to answer 100 questions when he testified before Congress because the hearings were public....

President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen begged a federal judge not to lock him after pleading guilty to crimes allegedly involving the man he once said he would “take a bullet’’ for. In a sentencing memo filed by Cohen’s legal team, the disgraced attorney promised to continue cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose probe Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt.” Cohen’s legal filings, released late Friday, include praise from associates and relatives, including his father Maurice. The 83-year-old Holocaust survivor wrote that his son “is the oxygen in the air that I breathe,” the New York Times...

President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen was in “close and regular contact” with White House staff and Trump’s legal team while he was crafting misstatements to Congress, according to a new court filing late Friday night. Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to making misstatements before congressional intelligence committees while testifying about his contacts with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. In the court filing in the Southern District of New York, Cohen’s lawyers wrote that the false statements “sprung regrettably from Michael’s effort, as a loyal ally and then-champion” to help push forward Trump’s political messaging. Cohen followed the political...

Democrats in the House want Michael Cohen, the president's longtime attorney, to testify on a number of investigations they plan to launch upon taking control of the House in January. Several key House Democrats on committees such as the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told Politico that Cohen could be an invaluable witness for questions related to the Trump campaign and the president's business dealings. “He’s been at the nexus of so many different issues for so long, and given that Mr. Cohen was the president’s confidant and attorney, he knows a lot and...

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Thursday that Michael Cohen's new guilty plea is another example of crimes being created as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, made a second plea agreement with federal prosecutors in New York, reportedly admitting to lying to Congress in 2017 about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Thursday that the guilty plea by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen should be the final straw that pushes Congress to vote on legislation to protect the special counsel probe from being ended. Mr. Cohen’s plea included the claim that President Trump’s personal business empire was trying to strike business deals with Russia even during the heart of the 2016 campaign — contradicting Mr. Trump’s own indications of how things played out. ~snip~ Democrats and some Republicans have been fearful Mr. Trump would attempt to fire Mr. Mueller. They’re seeking to approve legislation that...

President Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is reportedly set to plead guilty for misstatements he made to Congress while testifying about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign. ABC, citing anonymous sources, reported that Cohen is expected to appear in a federal court in Manhattan on Thursday after reaching a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. The misstatements stem from testimony he gave in 2017. The plea from Cohen marks the first time he has been charged by Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian election interference.

Qatari former diplomat claims Michael Cohen asked him for a fee of $1 million for his services amid a conversation about a potential Qatari investment in U.S. infrastructure. Washington D.C. is abuzz with speculation of a new Trump - Qatar scandal this week, after photos were posted on Twitter Sunday by attorney Michael Avenatti, who is representing porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer. The photos show Ahmed al-Rumaihi, a former Qatari diplomat in the United States and the current head of Qatar Investments - a division of the world’s...

Clean House at Justice Department Major New Lawsuit on Awan Brothers Democratic IT Scandal Judicial Watch Sues for Docs on Influence Peddling Scandal At Energy Department Government Warning: Narco-Terrorism will Worsen Under New Leftist Leader Clean House at Justice Department Attorney General Jeff Sessions has resigned , bringing an end to his controversial tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. He advanced some significant policy advances for the rule of law, but made a terrible mistake in recusing himself needlessly from the so-called Russia investigation. This led to the abusive, unconstitutional Mueller special counsel investigation of President Trump....

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen has accused Trump of claiming blacks were “too stupid” to vote for him, in addition to using other racist language. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cohen stated that Trump made multiple derogatory comments about blacks. Cohen said that after watching a rally as part of the 2016 campaign, he told Trump that the crowd was predominately white. “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me,’” Cohen said, according to Vanity Fair. Similar language had been used before...

You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation. Today, a U.S. Treasury employee named Natalie Mayflower Sours-Edwards was arrested and charged with leaking to numerous reporters multiple financial reports about suspicious financial transactions related to: Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, Maria Butina, and others.

The Donald Trump loyalist who famously said he'd take a bullet for the President is now willing to publicly fight his former boss. Michael Cohen, the President's former lawyer, is prepared to campaign against Trump and Republicans in the midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race, a Democrat with knowledge told CNN. Marking the latest escalation in Cohen's growing animosity towards Trump, the source said he is open to doing a range of things to try to help the Democratic Party, including stumping for candidates, giving speeches and helping raise money.

Prosecutors for the southern district of New York are pushing back against an effort by The New York Times to unseal search warrants that authorized the raid against President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to Bloomberg. The Times sent a letter this past week to U.S. District Judge William Pauley requesting documents related to the search of Cohen’s Park Avenue hotel room and Rockefeller Center office in April. Bloomberg reported that The Times requested that the search warrants, related affidavits and court orders be unsealed. Federal prosecutors replied with a letter dated Friday announcing they would oppose the...

Texas authorities have suspended a suburban Dallas notary for botching her role in Stormy Daniels’ agreement to stay silent about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump. The disciplinary action faults the Forney notary for not properly witnessing and documenting the porn star's’ signature on the agreement struck with Trump's personal attorney just days before the presidential election, according to records obtained Wednesday by The Dallas Morning News. But the Texas Secretary of State office said the notary’s sloppy work has no bearing on the legal validity of the hush-money deal, which is under intense scrutiny by U.S. prosecutors investigating...

Despite the guilty plea he entered Aug. 21 to charges of campaign finance law violations, it appears that President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, did not actually violate the Federal Election Campaign Act. It is hard to continue to have faith in the objectivity of the Justice Department in the face of what seems like politically driven prosecution decisions to throw the book at Cohen – and implicate President Trump in allegedly illegal conduct – while ignoring clear lawbreaking by the Clinton campaign. Many election law experts, including former commissioners on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), say his conduct, however...

Michael Cohen's decision to plead guilty for making hush-money payments on Donald Trump's behalf has raised the prospect that if Democrats take control of Congress, they might try to impeach the president over a matter completely unrelated to a perceived criminal conspiracy with Russia. Good luck with that: Even if Democrats win back both the House and Senate, there is zero chance a two-thirds majority of senators will convict President Trump for paying off an adult-film star. It would be the height of hypocrisy if Democrats tried to remove the president over allegations of illegality relating to extramarital affairs. During...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/08/30/donald-trump-impeachment-indicting-manafort-verdict-cohen-plea-column/1084474002/