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President Trump on Monday denied the hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election were campaign contributions, instead calling them a "simple private transaction.” “So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,” Trump tweeted. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, recently admitted in a plea deal to violating federal campaign finance laws by arranging payments to Daniels and McDougal on Trump's behalf, according to the plea. Prosecutors on Friday released a sentencing memo calling for Cohen to a “substantial term...

Theresa May is to make a statement to MP's at 15:30 GMT amid reports Tuesday's vote on her Brexit deal is being delayed. That will be followed by a statement from the Commons leader Andrea Leadsom-and then a statement from the Brexit secretary on Article 50. Two cabinet sources have told the BBC's Laura Keunssberg Tuesday's planned Brexit vote will be delayed. There is not yet any official confirmation of the move. Downing Street had been insisting the vote would go ahead, despite Mrs. May being widely expected to lose it.....

The United States became a net oil exporter last week for the first time in almost 75 years, a significant step toward achieving “energy independence and dominance,” as promoted by President Donald Trump. The United States had been a net oil importer since 1949. In the last week of November, however, weekly U.S. net imports of crude oil and petroleum products fell to minus 211,000 barrels per day (bpd), meaning the country became a net exporter of that amount, according to data from U.S. Energy Information and Administration. The news came on the back of a surge in crude exports...

The French government on Sunday (Dec 9) urged Mr Donald Trump not to interfere in French politics after the US president posted tweets about the protests rocking the country and attacked the Paris climate agreement. "We do not take domestic American politics into account and we want that to be reciprocated," Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told LCI television. "I say this to Donald Trump and the French president says it too: leave our nation be.

US prosecutors have charged Huawei's chief financial officer with fraud, saying she had used at least seven passports in 11 years. - ...she was charged with conspiracy to defraud multiple financial institutions between 2009 and 2014. It is alleged she used Hong Kong company Skycom to access the Iranian market in deals that violated US sanctions. She allegedly assured US banks that Huawei and Skycom were different companies but prosecutors say they were one and the same. - Mr Gibb-Carsley said she had been aware of the US investigation and had avoided entering the country since March 2017, despite the...

An attorney for President Trump requested the court obtain $800,000 in legal fees and penalties from porn star actress Stormy Daniels for her unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against the president. Attorney Charles Harder said his firm spent more than 500 hours and $390,000 in legal fees defending the president and asked the court to press for just as much money in sanctions to deter “frivolous defamation cases.” “This action is virtually unprecedented in American legal history,” Harder wrote in court papers. Daniels “not only brought a meritless claim for defamation against the sitting president of the United States, but she also...

President Trump was not aware of the unusual arrest of a major Chinese technology executive when he sat down to dinner recently with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow. Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 on a U.S. extradition warrant. Huawei is suspected of evading American sanctions on Iran, a possibility that U.S. prosecutors have been investigating since 2016. The arrest was made on the same day that Trump and Xi met for dinner amid high-level trade and national security talks in Buenos Aires. An unnamed...

<p>For Republicans in Virginia, it’s time to face facts. We’re slowly becoming Maryland. Yes, we may have a Republican state legislature, but majorities in both houses hang by a thread. The Northern Virginia suburbs, where I live, are chock full of insufferable liberals who drive the direction of the whole state. The days of this state going to the GOP are over. The Obamaites infested the Old Dominion and never left. The next gubernatorial election is not until 2021, but we already have one anti-gun voice that says he’s in: state Attorney General Mark Herring.</p>

French President Emmanuel Macron will address the country on Monday as he seeks to placate "yellow vest" anti-government protesters who wreaked havoc in Paris this weekend. On Sunday, workers in Paris and other cities swept up broken glass and towed away burnt-out cars while the government warned of slower economic growth and the judiciary said it would come down hard on looting and attacks on police. On Saturday, protesters, for the fourth weekend in a row, threw stones, torched cars and vandalised shops and restaurants in a protest against Macron's economic policies. The Elysee palace said on Sunday that Macron,...

Republican Senator Ted Cruz has just upped the ante on the contentious battle with the newly-emboldened Democrats over President Trump’s proposed border wall.The Texan who is fresh off of his defeat of liberal rock star Beto O’Rourke just introduced a bill to fully fund the wall at $25 billion which will infuriate Democrats who are already engaged in a game of guts poker with Republicans over shutting down the government. Trump has been firm in his request for the funding of a key election promise and as recently as Friday blasted Democrats for “playing games” over what given the recent...

WASHINGTON—U.S. manufacturers increased their capacity for the 16th straight month in September, fresh evidence that a strengthening economy is helping to propel a U.S. industrial rebound. The Trump Administration has prioritized increasing manufacturing investment in the U.S. with tax cuts and tariffs on a range of imported goods.

President Donald Trump said Saturday that court filings in the Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen cases showed no collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. "We're very happy with what we're reading because there was no collusion whatsoever," Trump told reporters Saturday at the White House before boarding Marine One for the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia. Trump told reporters he has not read the court filings, which detail alleged lies Cohen and Manafort told publicly and to investigators.

...Bundy naturally just disavowed the militia movement in solidarity with the migrant caravan, suggested that nationalism is actually the opposite of patriotism, and said that Trump’s America resembles nothing so much as 1930s Germany. Last week, Bundy posted a video to Facebook in which he criticized President Trump for demonizing the Central American migrants who were traveling in a caravan to seek asylum in the United States. “To group them all up like, frankly, our president has done — you know, trying to speak respectfully — but he has basically called them all criminals and said they’re not coming in...

President Trump on Saturday said that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will leave his position at the end of the year. Developing

It’s Friday and that means another FBI doc dump. New FBI docs were released Friday on the Hillary Clinton private server/email investigation. New FBI Docs Released on Hillary Clinton Email Investigation – Clinton Insiders Questioned by Feds Used Identical Talking Points Cristina Laila by Cristina Laila December 7, 2018 65 Comments 364Share 80Tweet Email It’s Friday and that means another FBI doc dump. New FBI docs were released Friday on the Hillary Clinton private server/email investigation. 102 pages were omitted and many of the pages had redactions, however the notes revealed that people connected to Hillary Clinton acted surprised about...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who will likely become the next Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, praised President Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, William Barr, on Friday, saying he is “highly capable, highly respected and will provide new and much-needed leadership for the Department of Justice.” President Trump confirmed that on Friday, he will nominate as his next attorney general the man who served as attorney general from 1991-1993 during the George H.W. Bush administration. “He was my first choice since day one,” Trump said on Friday morning. Sen. Graham, who will likely replace the outgoing Judiciary chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA),...

President Trump confirmed he will nominate former attorney general William P. Barr to lead the Justice Department again, telling reporters Friday that Barr was “my first choice since day one.” He also said he would nominate Heather Nauert as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the State Department spokeswoman, a relative novice on foreign policy, is “very talented, very smart, very quick.”

President Trump has offered State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert the role of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official told Fox News. It is not clear yet is whether she has accepted the offer to replace the outgoing Nikki Haley as ambassador.

The whistleblower submission cited many of the same concerns as the internal legal reviews, but also alleged that evidence from foreign governments showed that some charity transactions were commercial in nature and therefore should have been taxed. The evidence amassed by the private investigators should give Congress plenty to explore at its hearing next week, and put the Trump Justice Department on the spot to answer what it has done to address concerns that the foundation’s lawyers raised and the private investigators uncovered. Quid pro quo donations, a culture of noncompliance, travel abuses and commingling of personal with charitable business...

This is terrific news for American workers and consumers… Unless, of course, Democrats ever regain control of government. Science Daily reported: Today, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced the Wolfcamp Shale and overlying Bone Spring Formation in the Delaware Basin portion of Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin province contain an estimated mean of 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 20 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is for continuous (unconventional) oil, and consists of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. “Christmas...