WTF Community

Day 683

Updated 12/3/2018 2:08 PM PST

1/ Trump called for a "full and complete" sentence for Michael Cohen after his former lawyer asked to not be sent to prison. Cohen's lawyers argued that his cooperation with Robert Mueller warranted a sentence of "time-served." Cohen was also in "close and regular contact" with White House staff and Trump's legal team while preparing his statement to Congress about Trump's efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. In seeking leniency, Cohen's attorneys claim his false statement to Congress was based on Trump and his team's attempts to paint interactions with Russian representatives "as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016." Cohen's attorneys, however, say he had a "lengthy substantive conversation with the personal assistant to a Kremlin official following his outreach in January 2016, engaged in additional communications concerning the project as late as June 2016, and kept [Trump] apprised of these communications." Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 12 after pleading guilty to tax evasion, making false statements to a bank, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. Trump tweeted that all of those chargers were "unrelated to Trump." (Reuters /Politico / Washington Post / Bloomberg)


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2018/12/03/day-683/
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Bigly news…Subpoenaes will be going out to T owned entities as part of the ‘discovery’ process…The financial records for T properties, should provide a treasure trove of news and evidence.

YAY :man_dancing:

The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland said Monday that they are moving forward with subpoenas for records in their case accusing President Donald Trump of profiting off the presidency.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter J. Messitte approved the legal discovery schedule in an order Monday. Such information would likely provide the first clear picture of the finances of Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel.

Trump’s Justice Department lawyers filed a notice to the court Friday that appeared to challenge the Maryland judge’s decision to allow the case to move forward. The president’s notice that he may seek a writ of mandamus — to have the appeal heard by a higher court — is considered an “extraordinary remedy” that’s hard to prove and partly rests on showing Messitte’s decisions to be clearly wrong.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

We’ve got the discovery ready to go,” said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. “Their objective at this point is just to keep the doors shut, they don’t want any of this information out in public and they don’t want our case to move forward. So they’re going to be be obstructing as much as they can.”

District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine said in a statement that the subpoenas would go out to third-party organizations and federal agencies “to gather the necessary evidence to prove that President Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clauses — our nation’s original anti-corruption laws.”
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Trump has been fighting multiple lawsuits that argue foreign representatives’ spending money at the Trump International Hotel are violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bans federal officials from accepting benefits from foreign or state governments without congressional approval.

A clue as to what entities may receive subpoenas may can be found in preservation subpoenas filed more than a year ago with 23 Trump-related entities, including The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, The Trump Organization, the Mar-a-Lago Club Inc. and entities related to his D.C. hotel and its management, among others.

The subpoena requires the majority of documents to be preserved from Jan. 1, 2015, on an ongoing basis. The court filings cite document categories for preservation, including those from Nov. 8, 2016, onward concerning “marketing to foreign or domestic governments, including members of the diplomatic community.” Other noted categories for preservation include documents that would identify guests of the hotel and those who have rented event space, details on all finances, and “operating leases, permits, licenses, tax payments or credits to or from foreign or domestic governments.”

According to the agreed-upon schedule, if there are no delays, legal discovery would conclude in early August.

The president is engaging in very serious constitutional violations every day in our view, so we’re glad to have the opportunity to bring this case to closure promptly in 2019,” said Norman Eisen, chairman of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is co-counsel with the two jurisdictions.

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More Manafort clues about his international reach…hoping to get Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy. Nothing came of these meetings, but just another line in on what Manafort was up to…

WASHINGTON — In mid-May 2017, Paul Manafort, facing intensifying pressure to settle debts and pay mounting legal bills, flew to Ecuador to offer his services to a potentially lucrative new client — the country’s incoming president, Lenín Moreno.

Mr. Manafort made the trip mainly to see if he could broker a deal under which China would invest in Ecuador’s power system, possibly yielding a fat commission for Mr. Manafort.

But the talks turned to a diplomatic sticking point between the United States and Ecuador: the fate of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In at least two meetings with Mr. Manafort, Mr. Moreno and his aides discussed their desire to rid themselves of Mr. Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, in exchange for concessions like debt relief from the United States, according to three people familiar with the talks, the details of which have not been previously reported.

They said Mr. Manafort suggested he could help negotiate a deal for the handover of Mr. Assange to the United States, which has long investigated Mr. Assange for the disclosure of secret documents and which later filed charges against him that have not yet been made public.

Within a couple of days of Mr. Manafort’s final meeting in Quito, Robert S. Mueller III was appointed as the special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters, and it quickly became clear that Mr. Manafort was a primary target. His talks with Ecuador ended without any deals.
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There is no evidence that Mr. Manafort was working with — or even briefing — President Trump or other administration officials on his discussions with the Ecuadoreans about Mr. Assange. Nor is there any evidence that his brief involvement in the talks was motivated by concerns about the role that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks played in facilitating the Russian effort to help Mr. Trump in the 2016 presidential election, or the investigation into possible coordination between Mr. Assange and Mr. Trump’s associates, which has become a focus for Mr. Mueller.

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Roger Stone not interested in talking with the Senate Intell committee. He is NOT singing.

President Donald Trump’s longtime political ally Roger Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment protection as he declined to share documents and testimony with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a letter posted Tuesday by the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“Mr. Stone’s invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege must be understood by all to be the assertion of a Constitutional right by an innocent citizen who denounces secrecy,” Stone’s attorney, Grant Smith, said in the letter, dated Dec. 3.

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