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WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Friday said he had "very easily" completed his written answers for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. election, but had not yet submitted them to Mueller's office. The Republican president did not specify when his legal team would submit his written responses. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment. "I'm sure they're tricked-up because, you know, they like to catch people," Trump said, referring to questions that he suggested could be designed to result in perjury charges. "You have to always be careful...

Harvard scientists reexamined the bizarre, interstellar space object known as “Oumuamua,” which rocketed through our solar system late last year, resurrecting the possibility that it may be an alien probe. Academics and scientists were quick to write off the cigar-shaped object as a previously unknown type of bolide – a comet or asteroid – propelled in a highly unusual manner, but their observations are once again, being challenged. Oumuamua, which means “a messenger sent to reach out in advance,” was first observed by Robert Weryk at the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. He measured the object to be several hundred...

The Justice Department stated Wednesday that acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker will overtake supervision of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday afternoon and replaced him with Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff. We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018 Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe...

(CNN)Last month, when President Donald Trump was asked by The New York Times if special counsel Robert Mueller would be crossing a line if he started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, the President said, "I think that's a violation. Look, this is about Russia." The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing. According to a CNN article, Mueller's investigators could be looking into financial records relating to the Trump Organization that are unrelated to the 2016 election. According to...

Special counsel Robert Mueller has referred to the FBI allegations that women were "offered money" to make "false claims" about him, a spokesman said Tuesday. "When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation." spokesman Peter Carr says. Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between the Kremlin and Trump's campaign. ________________________________________________________________ Special counsel Robert Mueller has referred to the FBI allegations that women were "offered money" to make "false claims" about him,...

WASHINGTON—The White House has found no corroboration of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after examining interview reports from the FBI’s latest probe into the judge's background, according to people familiar with the matter.

People familiar with the process said Tuesday that the FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh could wrap up very soon, well ahead of the its end-of week deadline. GOP aides on the Hill and another person familiar with the process said they were expecting the bureau to conclude its report as soon as late Tuesday or early Wednesday. Agents had interviewed at least four key people as of Tuesday in its background investigation of Judge Kavanaugh. The White House had given the bureau until Friday to wrap up the probe. Senators would then be shown...

"The FBI will do a supplemental background investigation, then I'm going to call for an investigation of what happened in this committee. Who betrayed Dr. Ford's trust? Who in Feinstein's office recommended Katz as a lawyer? Why did Ms. Ford not know that the committee was willing to go to California?" Graham continued, referring to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Debra Katz, one of Ford's attorneys who has been involved in Democratic politics in the past.

Just like their other tactics throughout this confirmation process, Senate Democrats’ demands for an FBI investigation have never been about getting the facts or finding the truth. If they were, they would have alerted law enforcement months ago, as soon as they learned of the claims. Instead, they waited until the last minute to leak them in order to delay the vote. That is why any FBI investigation of the allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh should include potential coordination between the Democrat operatives and lawyers that assisted in bringing them forth. What Senate Democrats really want is more time to...

Democrats taking to the airwaves to denounce Judge Brett Kavanaugh have been considerably less focused on their own abuse investigation into Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party said a month ago it would investigate after a former girlfriend accused Mr. Ellison of emotional and physical abuse, but since then the party has said nothing as the probe fades largely from view. That’s undoubtedly by design, said Larry Jacobs, professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, who characterized the investigation as an exercise in damage control aimed at providing the party with political...

Japan's Hayabusa2 probe, which has been circling the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) asteroid Ryugu since late June, deployed two little "rovers" called MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B at 12:05 a.m. EDT (0405 GMT) today (Sept. 21). The event occurred when the mother ship was about 180 feet (55 meters) above Ryugu's pockmarked, boulder-strewn surface, mission team members said. "The separation of MINERVA-II1 has been confirmed! The state of the spacecraft is normal," JAXA officials announced via Twitter just after the rovers deployed. That confirmation came after an apparently tense descent for Hayabusa2 flight controllers. "In the control room, you can hear the sound...

Former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers on Tuesday disputed a report published in May 2017 alleging that President Donald Trump asked him to push back against the FBI’s collusion investigation. “I’ve never had a discussion with collusion with the president of the United States,” Rogers said at an event held at George Mason University, according to CBS News. “I’ve never been directed to do anything, coerced — any time I had a discussion I felt I was able to say, ‘Hey, here’s my view on that.'” (RELATED: Director Of National Intelligence Says He Can’t Comment On Report That Trump...

Bruce Ohr is scheduled to testify Tuesday behind a closed-door session of the House Oversight Committee. Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes outed Ohr as an overlooked, but important, figure in the Obama administration’s targeting of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Recent revelations confirm Nunes’ characterization of Ohr: In his former position as the associate deputy attorney general under then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates, Ohr began feeding the FBI information from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who put together the unverified Trump dossier. Steele continued providing information to the FBI through Ohr, after the FBI had officially cut him...

**SNIP** "Bruce Ohr is instrumental and wife Nelly Ohr are instrumental in the investigation and what we need to find out whether through closed-door testimony next week through Congress or in an open hearing later, the American people deserve to know what Bruce Ohr was doing." He questioned whether anyone from the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign or the Obama administration recommended Ohr’s wife go to work for Fusion. "Why didn't Bruce Ohr disclose his wife's work on his financial disclosure form?" he said. "Why didn't he say she worked at Fusion? Why didn’t he talk about her...

White House counsel Donald McGahn has been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller in his probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to an explosive New York Times report published Saturday. McGahn has reportedly discussed accounts of multiple episodes at the center of Mueller's probe into whether President Trump obstructed justice. Sources told the Times that McGahn has had three voluntary interviews with Mueller's team totaling 30 hours. Among the episodes McGahn reportedly discussed with investigators is Trump’s firing last year of former FBI Director James Comey and the president's repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff...

A federal judge in Virginia agreed Monday to grant immunity to five potential witnesses in Paul Manafort’s upcoming trial — but, in a blow to special counsel Robert Mueller, said their identities would be made public. Mueller’s team wanted the identities of their witnesses to remain confidential, saying in a filing last week that they haven’t been criminally charged and not naming them would avoid “undue harassment.” But Judge T.S. Ellis, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said they would be identified. He also ordered Mueller’s office to provide a list of about 30 witnesses to Manafort’s lawyers. President Trump’s ex-campaign chairman...

Rep. Devin Nunes is referring 42 Obama administration officials, FBI agents and outside political activists to a House task force for as investigation into how the Obama Justice Department targeted the Donald Trump campaign. If the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee agree, their task force would conduct the most extensive probe to date on anti-Trump government operations in 2016. Mr. Nunes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has sent letters to Oversight head Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and Judiciary’s Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. The California Republican is asking his fellow GOP legislators...

Court documents approved for release in the lead-up to a massive Justice Department watchdog report on the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email account offer fodder for both critics and defenders of the bureau's work. The newly-unsealed court filings, obtained by POLITICO, may well serve as a Rorschach test about the Clinton email probe. They demonstrate that the FBI's investigation did not rely solely on the voluntary cooperation of those involved, since agents and prosecutors used a combination of search warrants and other court orders to gain evidence relevant to the probe. At the same time, the records do...

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent facing criticism following a series of anti-Trump text messages, was subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee next week, Fox News confirmed Friday. Even though Strzok was already willing to go before Congress, the committee issued the order because he wouldn’t confirm a specific date to appear. He’s now been subpoenaed to Capitol Hill on June 27 at 10 a.m. and his appearance will be closed, Fox News has learned. An attorney for the embattled FBI agent confirmed to The Washington Post on Sunday that Strzok wouldn’t plead the Fifth and was willing to...

The bridge to the Russia investigation wasn’t erected in Moscow during the summer of the 2016 election. It originated earlier, 1,700 miles away in London, where foreign figures contacted Trump campaign advisers and provided the FBI with hearsay allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, bureau documents and interviews of government insiders reveal. These contacts in spring 2016 — some from trusted intelligence sources, others from Hillary Clinton supporters — occurred well before FBI headquarters authorized an official counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016. The new timeline makes one wonder: Did the FBI follow its rules governing informants?