The special counsel Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was made public on Thursday, examining potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow and whether Donald Trump obstructed justice.The special counsel found 10 episodes in which Trump’s own actions may have amounted to obstruction of justice, detailing several instances in which the president’s demands to interfere with the investigation were blocked by his aides. And in a separate instance, it was found there were additional efforts by the Trump campaign before the election to obscure its contacts with Russian figures.The report separately examined the repeated contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals with ties to the Russian government. While Mueller did not find evidence of a criminal conspiracy, investigators made clear the Trump campaign was “receptive” to offers of assistance from the Russians.Here are the key takeaways:Mueller investigated 10 instances in which Trump sought to use the power of the presidency to obstruct justice by either personally interfering with the Russia investigation or directing his aides to do so.They included Trump’s request that the then FBI director, James Comey, drop the investigation of the former national security adviser Michael Flynn; Trump’s attempts to stop the then attorney general Jeff Sessions’ recusal from overseeing the Russia investigation; Trump’s demand that the special counsel’s investigation be limited to election meddling only; and Trump’s efforts behind the scenes to fire Mueller.“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful,” the report states, “but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”In other words, Mueller ultimately did not definitively conclude that Trump obstructed justice, but it was not for a lack of trying. Mueller made clear he was not exonerating Trump of obstruction, writing: The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards however we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. Mueller separately noted that as a candidate, Trump repeatedly denied any connections to Russia even as his business was pursuing a potential real estate deal in Moscow. Trump also voiced skepticism that Russia had hacked Democratic party emails “at the same time as he and other Campaign advisors privately sought information … about any future planned WikiLeaks releases”, the report states.Although Mueller did not find evidence amounting to a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow, the report makes clear that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election “in a sweeping and systematic fashion”. It also notes that Russia was keen for Trump to win the 2016 election, beating Hillary Clinton. “The investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.”Investigators found multiple ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians, which were described as follows: The Russian contacts consisted of business connections, offers of assistance to the Campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for Campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet, and policy positions seeking improved U.S.-Russian relations. Some of the earliest contacts dated back to 2015 and were in connection to a potential real estate project, known as Trump Tower Moscow and negotiated by the Trump Organization. Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen was convicted in part for lying to Congress about the timeline and nature of those discussions, which reportedly entailed gifting Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, a $50m penthouse. The project ultimately did not come to fruition.Among the most notable early contacts with the Russians was through the Trump campaign’s foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, who learned that the Kremlin had “dirt” on Clinton “in the form of thousands of emails”.Although Mueller did not prove that the contacts resulted in collusion, the report states that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”. The investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances , the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away. Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities. One of the most damning revelations in the 400-plus-page report is how Trump reacted to the appointment of a special counsel. Mueller was appointed by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, on 17 May 2017, following the recusal of Sessions and the firing of Comey.Trump was informed of Mueller’s appointment by Sessions while in the midst of conducting interviews for a new FBI director. According to notes written by Jody Hunt, who served at the time as Sessions’ chief of staff, Trump did not take the news well: When Sessions told the President that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, ‘Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.’ Trump then “became angry” and lambasted his attorney general for recusing himself from the investigation after it was revealed Sessions misled Congress about his own contacts with the Russians. “How could you let this happen, Jeff?” Trump asked Sessions. According to Sessions’ recollection, Trump then told him: “You were supposed to protect me,” or words to that effect. The President returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, ‘Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won’t be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.’ Much was made of Donald Trump Jr’s role in arranging the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York with the prospect of receiving incriminating information about Clinton. (According to emails released by the president’s eldest son, when informed of an effort by the Russian government to help elect his father, Trump Jr said: “If it’s what you say I love it.”)Participants included Trump Jr; the president’s son-in-law and senior campaign adviser Jared Kushner; the then campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The Mueller report states that Trump Jr had informed top campaign officials and Trump family members in advance that “he had a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation”.The 9 June 2016 meeting, according to the report, raised “difficult statutory and constitutional questions” relating to “schemes involving the solicitation or receipt of assistance from foreign sources”. But the special counsel ultimately concluded that they could not prove Trump Jr or other participants were knowingly in violation of the law: The Office ultimately concluded that, even if the principal legal questions were resolved favorably to the government, a prosecution would encounter difficulties proving that Campaign officials or individuals connected to the Campaign willfully violated the law. The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has long come under fire for making public statements that are untruthful or misleading. But her role in covering up Trump’s motivations for firing Comey were laid bare in the report, which cited how her statements at a press briefing days after the FBI’s firing were at odds with the facts. Sanders insisted at the briefing that Trump fired Comey at the justice department’s recommendation and repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that rank-and-file members of the FBI had lost confidence in Comey. Sanders acknowledged to the special counsel’s office that her assertion “was not founded on anything”.According to the Mueller report, Trump actually decided to fire Comey before hearing the recommendation of the justice department and further pointed to the Russia investigation in his rationale: The day after firing Comey, the President told Russian officials that he had ‘faced great pressure because of Russia’, which had been ‘taken off’ by Comey’s firing. The attorney general, William Barr, made his own determination that the special counsel lacked sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. He also said he did not know if Mueller intended for Congress to be the arbiter of the matter.Mueller, in fact, left little room for interpretation on Congress’s authority to evaluate the evidence and reach its own decision on obstruction:“We concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,” the report states, adding: The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

US President Donald Trump has said he is worried he might face perjury charges if he gives statements under oath to the investigation into Russia's alleged role in his election victory.He told Reuters news agency he feared any discrepancies between his account and others could be used against him. Mr Trump also suggested he could take over the investigation run by special counsel Robert Mueller, but said he'd decided to stay out of it. He has called the inquiry a witch hunt. Russia also strongly denies claims it interfered in the 2016 election, which saw Mr Trump defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.In the Reuters interview, Mr Trump expressed concern that any statement he made to investigators could be compared with that of others who have testified, such as former FBI chief James Comey, and that any discrepancies could be used against him. Who's who in Trump-Russia drama? All you need to know about Trump Russia story He was echoing previous concerns by his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who said Mr Trump could be "trapped into perjury"."So if I say something and he (Comey) says something, and it's my word against his, and he's best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say: 'Well, I believe Comey,' and even if I'm telling the truth, that makes me a liar. That's no good," President Trump said.Mr Trump also asserted that he could, if he wanted to, intervene in the investigation, but added that he had chosen not to do so for now. "I've decided to stay out. Now I don't have to stay out. I can go in, and I could do whatever - I could run it if I want. But I decided to stay out," he said. "I'm totally allowed to be involved if I wanted to be. So far, I haven't chosen to be involved. I'll stay out."In an interview with NBC on Sunday, Mr Giuliani was asked whether the Trump team was stalling about a possible testimony at the Mueller inquiry.Mr Giuliani said: "I'm not going to be rushed into having him testify so he can be trapped into perjury."He added: "When you tell me that he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he shouldn't worry, well that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth. Not the truth."NBC host Chuck Todd countered: "Truth is truth." Mr Giuliani responded by saying: "Truth isn't truth." That comment was widely mocked on social media.Special counsel Mueller is investigating whether President Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the presidential election.In 2016, US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had used a state-authorised campaign of cyber attacks and fake news stories planted on social media in an attempt to turn the election against Mrs Clinton.Thirty-two people have now been indicted, including four members of Mr Trump's campaign team and 25 Russians.The president's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is the first person to go on trial as a result of Mr Mueller's investigation. However, the charges are not related to the US election but instead to tax evasion and money-laundering stemming from his political consultancy work in Ukraine.The jury in his case is in its fourth day of deliberation to reach a verdict.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said that President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump rails against impeachment in speech to Texas farmers Trump administration planning to crack down on 'birth tourism': report George Conway on Trump adding Dershowitz, Starr to legal team: 'Hard to see how either could help' MORE won't pursue steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil after the two leaders spoke Friday. “He decided not to make good on his plan to impose tariffs on our steel / aluminum,” Bolsonaro said on Facebook, after a call between the presidents, according to a New York Times translation of his post. “Our commercial relations and friendship are getting stronger every day,” the South American leader added Friday. Trump also tweeted after the conversation, saying the pair discussed "many subjects including Trade.""The relationship between the United States and Brazil has never been Stronger," he added, but did not specifically mention his previously threatened tariffs. Trump said earlier this month that the U.S. would resume tariffs on steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina.He said in a tweet that they were "effective immediately" although National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow has said the administration had not arrived at a final decision. The administration previously imposed tariffs last year, but had made deals with countries including Brazil and Argentina to halt the tariffs. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment on Bolsonaro's post.

US President Donald Trump's top lawyer is under criminal investigation, the US justice department has announced.Prosecutors say they are focusing on Michael Cohen's business dealings rather than his work as a lawyer.Mr Cohen has been under investigation for months, the court filing says.The filing was in response to efforts by Mr Cohen's own lawyer to stop prosecutors reviewing material seized from Mr Cohen's office on Monday.Mr Cohen's team argues that the papers are covered by the attorney-client privilege. President Trump has condemned the office raid, calling it "disgraceful" and "an attack on our country".During a court hearing in New York on Friday, prosecutor Tom McKay accused Mr Cohen of trying to use attorney-client privilege "as a sword to challenge the government's ability to review evidence". Trump hits out at 'disgraceful' FBI raid Why the raid on Trump's lawyer is a big deal Government prosecutors also said they believed Mr Cohen had "a low volume of potentially privileged communication" because he seems to only have one client - President Trump."It is neither apparent that Cohen, in his capacity as an attorney, has many, or any, attorney-client relationships other than with President Donald Trump," the filing said.It added that while Mr Cohen was an attorney, "he also has several other business interests and sources of income", and is "being investigated for criminal conduct that largely centres on his personal business dealings".A new lawyer for President Trump, Joanna Hendon, said the president had an "acute interest" in the case. Ms Hendon, who was hired on Wednesday, asked the judge to adjourn the session so she had more time to prepare.According to a New York Times report, the president phoned Mr Cohen to "check in" on him today.Lawyers tend to advise clients not to discuss investigations - which means their discussion could cause them problems, depending on what they talked about.In a separate development, Mr Cohen reportedly negotiated a $1.6 million settlement with a former Playboy model on behalf of a Republican fundraiser, according to a Wall Street Journal article.Elliott Broidy, a Los Angeles investor, acknowledged "a consensual relationship" with the Playmate, who became pregnant.Mr Broidy said it was "unfortunate" that the personal matter was "the subject of national discussion" because of the involvement of Mr Cohen.The investor was previously in the news after he urged President Trump to sack then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson over a diplomatic dispute.The president and the porn star: Why this mattersMr Cohen has admitted to have paid a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, $130,000 before the 2016 US presidential election.Ms Daniels claims she had an affair with Mr Trump, and he and his lawyers made attempts to buy her silence.The president denies the alleged relationship.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he did not fire James Comey “because of the phony Russia investigation,” contradicting his 2017 statement that he ousted the FBI director last year over the probe. A combination of file photos show U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. April 9, 2018 and former FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria, Jonathan Ernst/File Photos “Both of those things can’t be true,” Comey said in response when asked about the president’s comments on ABC, adding that he still does not know why Trump fired him last May. “It matters that the president is not committed to the truth as a central American value,” he said on the television network’s “The View” program. Comey’s ouster came as the FBI investigated alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and Trump’s campaign. The firing prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to lead the inquiry and look at possible obstruction of justice. Trump, who has denied collusion with Moscow, on Wednesday posted a tweet referring to “Slippery James Comey” and said he “was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation.” Trump did not elaborate. American intelligence agencies have said Russia interfered in the 2016 election through a campaign of propaganda and hacking in a scheme to sow U.S. discord and help get Trump elected. Russia has denied interfering in the election. Trump had told Comey in a May 9 dismissal letter that he could not effectively lead the law enforcement agency. Two days later, Trump cited the Russia investigation in a televised interview with NBC News. “In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” he told NBC. “It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.” The Republican president has escalated his attacks on Comey, calling him a liar and a “slimeball,” as the former FBI director embarks on a media tour to promote his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.” Comey’s book chronicles his brief service under Trump, who he described as “morally unfit” to be president, while likening his leadership style to that of a mafia boss. A longtime Republican who said he did not vote in 2016, Comey on Wednesday also said he no longer considered himself a member of the party. He told ABC that Republicans had made “a dangerous bargain” to adopt Trump’s principles instead of maintaining their conservative values. Comey’s 10-year term as FBI director had been scheduled to end in 2023. Reporting by Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Bill TrottOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Donald Trump would drive over you to get to his gold toilet. He probably didn’t watch sex workers urinate in a Moscow hotel. His relationship with Russia is a “love fest” and it’s not out of the question that he colluded to win the 2016 election. His son was certainly willing to try.This much to chew on comes from an hour in the company of Rob Goldstone, the Manchester-born tabloid journalist turned publicist who became a star turn in the never-ending Trump circus, then a piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is the investigation into the president’s links with Moscow.It was Goldstone who set up an ill-starred meeting between Donald Trump Jr and a Russian lawyer in June 2016, promising information that could “incriminate” Trump’s election rival, Hillary Clinton. Months later, after Trump’s shocking win, Goldstone became a person of interest to the FBI and media – as did zany social media posts in which he sported silly hats and acted out a scene from the BBC children’s show Andy Pandy on a cruise ship.Sitting in the basement of an upmarket Washington hotel, the 57-year-old, a dual British and US citizen, is affable and down to earth. His gift of the gab persuaded Muhammad Ali to appear on local radio in Birmingham and got him a place on tour with Michael Jackson. He was manager and publicist for the Azerbaijani-Russian singer Emin Agalarov when he wrote what he describes as “the most famous email in history”. (Agalarov’s father, Aras, is a property developer who joined with Trump to take Miss Universe to Moscow in 2013.)Goldstone, who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, recalls: “Emin called me that morning and just said his father had met with an attorney who he said was either a current or former prosecutor – I can’t remember which one – but who was well-connected and had some potentially damaging information about illegal funding by Russians to the Democrats or the Democratic party and the campaign, which I took to mean Hillary, because she was the candidate, and could I get a meeting with the Trumps?”Goldstone pressed Agalarov for details about the attorney’s identity or the information, but in vain. Nevertheless, in about three minutes he composed the fateful email on his phone and sent it to Trump Jr at 10.36am on 3 June.“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin,” Goldstone wrote.He now says: “I was making scant or vague information better. I puffed it. I used my old journalistic – I’d worked on Fleet Street, I’d worked for the Sun – and a bit of PR hype, but the basic tenets of it were there. All these months or years later, when you look at it, my puffing was pretty spot on, so I puffed very well.”Trump Jr wrote back less than 20 minutes later: “If it’s what you say I love it.”Goldstone continues: “I took it as, ‘If it’s what you say it is, I love it,’ and I thought, ‘Thank God he realises that maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.’ I thought, ‘This is my reason to believe that there’s some doubt’ and I think I read somewhere of late that Don testified that he felt there was an element of showmanship or it almost sounded too good to be true, so we needed to check it out.”The meeting took place on 9 June in a conference room on the 25th floor of Trump Tower in New York. Goldstone had no intention of attending but says Trump Jr ushered him in. He sat next to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on one side of a long table. Opposite them were Agalarov business associate Ike Kaveladze, Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and interpreter Anatoli Samochornov. At the head of the table were Trump Jr and then campaign manager Paul Manafort.According to Goldstone, Veselnitskaya began talking “in very broad terms” about billionaire donors who had contributed to Democrats and Clinton without paying tax on the money. “It was all about how wrong it was to make these donations to the Democrats and the reason it stayed with me was I looked over to where Don Jr was sitting and thought, ‘Didn’t your father used to fund the Democrats also? Why are we listening to this?’ It just sounded like the same thing.”The pitch went down like a lead balloon. “Jared Kushner was sitting next to me, looking very agitated by all of this and fiddling with his phone. As she was talking in this monotonous sort of presentation, he suddenly said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Perhaps you could just focus.’”Veselnitskaya merely picked up where she left off and Kushner looked “ballistic”, Goldstone recalls. “I thought Jared’s head would explode. I later would read that when he was frantically texting he was telling his assistant, ‘Get me out of this meeting.’ Manafort looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. Don Jr started to get out of his chair when she pivoted somewhat and was like, ‘What I really want to talk about is the issue of the Magnitsky Act as it relates to adoption of Russian children by Americans.’”The Magnitsky Act of 2012 imposed sanctions on Russia for human rights abuses. In retaliation, President Vladimir Putin blocked adoption of Russian children by American families. “That’s when my ears pricked up. I was like, Wait, wait, wait, adoption?’ I’d never heard of the Magnitsky Act so I had no idea what she was talking about. Then she started talking about how unfair it was.“I sent a text message to Ike and was like, ‘Why are we talking about adoption, what is this?’ He kind of nodded to me knowingly and then she went on a little bit more about adoption and I could see they all looked really tense and I sent another text and said, ‘You need to stop this meeting, it’s obviously infuriating our hosts.’“He nodded again and before he could do anything Don Jr stood up and said, ‘I just want to say that I think my father is a private citizen, he’s not an elected official, and I really think you should address these concerns to the Obama administration.’ With that I got up and she said, ‘Maybe you could look at it or keep an eye on it if something comes about.’ He never responded. I went, ‘Thank you very much.’“I herded them out like animals and I hung back and I said to Don Jr, ‘Look, I’m really embarrassed.’ He said to me, ‘I just have no idea what that meeting was actually about.’ I said, ‘Inane nonsense.’ I called Emin and said, ‘This is without doubt the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever asked me to do.’”Trump Jr has described the 20-minute meeting as a “bait and switch”, acknowledging that he hoped to get opposition research on Clinton, but claiming this was merely used a premise to talk about the Magnitsky Act. Goldstone agrees – almost.“A year ago I would have said to you 100% that’s what it was. I’ve learned maybe in testifying and with meeting people that I’ll leave open 10% to say let’s see what they come up with, and I just hope that it’s not that I was used in some way either inadvertently or deliberately.”That seemed to be the end of the matter. But in November 2016, Trump shook the world by winning the election.Goldstone claims he was not surprised. “He was so over the top and so ridiculous that the minute he said he was running for president I told everyone he would win not because of his politics but because he had that ability to make you believe he was you, you were him. He’s not you. He would drive over you in his Maybach to get to his gold toilet but he could convince you that he was you.”Then, in July last year, the New York Times broke news of the Trump Tower meeting under the headline: “Russian Dirt on Clinton? ‘I Love It,’ Donald Trump Jr Said.” It was the most vivid evidence yet of at least attempted collusion. Goldstone was mentioned in the article and instantly catapulted to global notoriety.“I went to Manchester to say to everyone, ‘Are you OK?’ And they said, ‘Oh, we’ve had calls.’ I went to see my elderly aunt in her 90s who was in a nursing home and I said to her, ‘I don’t know if you know. I’m sorry.’ She goes, ‘It’s bloody marvellous! I have them all in at night and we watch the news.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, forget what I was going to say.’”Goldstone, who had hoped to spend the year travelling, flew back to voluntarily testify to multiple congressional committees, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and a grand jury.“It’s a lot for a boy from Manchester,” he says. “It’s a lot for anyone, actually.”His interaction with Mueller involved half a dozen people in a windowless room. “I actually was hoping it would be in that J Edgar Hoover Building and it would be fabulous but it wasn’t. They wanted to know about my relationship with the Agalarovs, the Agalarovs’ relationship to the Trumps, the Agalarovs’ relationship to Moscow, and Trump’s relationship to Moscow as I had observed, which is very limited to being with him there for Miss Universe.”Goldstone arranged Trump’s stay at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow during Miss Universe 2013. He is sceptical of the lurid claim, first reported in a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, that Trump was filmed in his room with sex workers urinating. He believes Mueller is sceptical too.“I got the impression that the questioning about the Steele dossier, which is really about the pee tape, was almost a little light relief in the room,” Goldstone says. “They all asked but I got the impression that unless I’d been the one that said I actually cleaned up the pee or whatever then it was really to be taken with a pinch of salt until proven otherwise.”On the same trip, he recalls Trump telling wealthy Russians he admired Putin and considered him stronger than Barack Obama.“If you’re the Russians – and from what I saw being there they’re an extremely xenophobic, patriotic nation – and you’ve got this person who is going, ‘You’re great and your president’s strong’, it’s a love fest. I think he likes Russia because Russia liked him.”So what will Mueller conclude? Goldstone, who has written a book, Pop Stars, Pageants & Presidents: How an Email Trumped My Life, replies: “I’ll say, flippantly, if I was going to collude with someone, the last person I would collude with is Donald Trump because in my opinion he’s your friend at 9.30, he’s in a mood with you at 12 and by five o’clock you’re the devil and he’s tweeted about you. Why would you collude with such a person?”But he cautions: “There may be all sorts of things out there that we have no idea about. That’s the jigsaw puzzle. I am only one of those pieces.“What pisses me off a lot of the time is I’m painted as the same as all of that and I want to scream, ‘What has that got to do with me? I wrote an email for a client.’” Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr Russia features

He has also scouted business opportunities for Mr. Trump in the former Soviet bloc, including a 2010 trip to Georgia on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Cohen has been active in Mr. Trump’s political ventures. When Mr. Trump pondered running for president in 2012, it was Mr. Cohen who went on an early trip to Iowa to meet with Republican operatives and who set up a website called ShouldTrumpRun.org. He even initially sought to pay some of the costs for the site with money raised for his own abortive run for New York State Senate.Mr. Trump never ran in 2012, but Mr. Cohen raised $500,000 in four hours for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign that year during one of their “national call days” — and had campaign officials credit it as money that his boss had raised, one former Romney official recalled. When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen was given no official role on the campaign.He fought with the initial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, later blocked him from coming on board. Mr. Trump never ordered his aides to make a place for Mr. Cohen.Some of Mr. Cohen’s efforts to help only led to embarrassing rebuffs in front of those in charge. A month before the election, Mr. Cohen approached Mr. Trump outside his Trump Tower office with photographs of Bill Clinton and a mixed-race man alleged — without any evidence — to be the former president’s illegitimate son. Mr. Trump knocked the papers away, angrily telling Mr. Cohen to “get that out of my face,” said one former campaign official who witnessed the incident.Particularly hurtful to Mr. Cohen was the way Mr. Trump lavished approval on Mr. Lewandowski in a way he never did for Mr. Cohen. When Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump that he believed that Mr. Lewandowski had been behind a negative story about Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump dismissed the comments as simple jealousy, and didn’t pay attention, according to two people familiar with the incident.Mr. Cohen raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump in the campaign, at a time when the candidate was struggling to attract support. Mr. Cohen tried to soften the edges as Mr. Trump faced a torrent of criticism for decades of racially divisive remarks, forming a “diversity coalition” to give Mr. Trump cover composed of African-Americans, Muslims and other groups.“Nobody else around Donald Trump would have thought to do that for him,” said Darrell Scott, an African-American pastor from Ohio and a friend of Mr. Cohen who helped created the coalition.

Michael Cohen told the committee he had been with Donald Trump when key events in the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election were discussed. His testimony implied that the US president was far more deeply informed about Russian links during the 2016 presidential race than he has so far admitted.The first incident, in early June 2016, involved Cohen overhearing Trump’s son, Donald Jr, whispering in the elder Trump’s ear that “the meeting is all set”. Cohen said he took that remark, and Trump’s reply to it – “OK good … let me know” – to refer to the Trump Tower meeting that followed between Donald Jr and others in the inner Trump circle and a party of Russians peddling dirt on Hillary Clinton.The US president has denied he had any prior knowledge of the meeting.Equally explosive was Cohen’s claim, the first from any Trump associate, that the then presidential candidate knew in advance about the release of stolen Democratic emails by WikiLeaks. Cohen said he had been in Trump’s office on 18 or 19 July 2016 when a phone call came in from Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser.Stone allegedly told Trump on speaker phone that he had just got off the line to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, who had revealed that a dump of emails damaging to Clinton was imminent. WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails, later found by US intelligence to have been hacked by Russian operatives, on 22 July.Asked by Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont, whether Trump’s subsequent denial that he had ever spoken to Stone about the WikiLeaks dump was true, Cohen replied: “No, it was not.”Cohen went into granular detail about a scheme that he said was cooked up by Trump, Donald Jr and the chief finance officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, to pay off Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who has alleged she had an affair with the real estate tycoon. The scheme arranged for Cohen to be paid back the $130,000 he had paid from his own money to buy Daniels’ silence just before the 2016 election, in installments, Cohen said, in order to disguise the purpose of the transactions.Cohen produced for the committee a copy of one of the installments – a $35,000 check signed by Trump from his personal bank account on 1 August 2017, when he was already in the White House. Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California, said this was the “smoking gun document” that proved a conspiracy by Trump to commit criminal fraud by hiding the purpose of company spending.In Cohen’s account, Trump was aware of the scheme at every stage. “Oh, he knew about everything, yes,” he said. The aim was “to keep Trump as far away as possible” from the Daniels payments.In an exchange with Katie Hill, a Democrat from California, Cohen said he had received a call from Trump when the lawyer was in the course of an interview with Vanity Fair. His boss wanted to agree on the “public messaging” about the payments.Cohen was instructed to say that Trump “was not knowledgable of these reimbursements and he was not knowledgable of my actions”. That statement could place the president in severe legal jeopardy under campaign finance laws that prohibit the use of secret funds for political gain during an election.In December, the publisher of the National Enquirer, American Media Inc (AMI), admitted to paying a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, $150,000 in hush money. In a so-called “catch and kill” deal, she agreed to keep silent about her alleged sexual affair with Trump while AMI agreed to suppress the story so that it remained secret.Cohen’s testimony suggested that the practice of “catch and kill” at AMI both long preceded his arrival as Trump’s lawyer in 2007 – they went back at least 12 years he said – and went much wider than the McDougal affair. Under questioning by Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, he revealed that the media group frequently engaged in suppressing stories as a favor to Trump, a personal friend of AMI’s CEO, David Pecker.AMI had tried to “catch and kill” a story that was circulating that Trump had been caught on tape hitting his wife Melania in an elevator. The story, Cohen said, was not true, but the National Enquirer’s owners had nonetheless checked it out with the intention of squashing it.The company had also pursued “catch and kill” with a story over a Trump love child. That rumor was also untrue, to Cohen’s knowledge, but AMI had even so paid $15,000 to prevent it from becoming public.Trump could be in further legal hot water as a result of the Cohen testimony. During the course of questioning, members of the oversight committee learned that the much-feared prosecutors of the southern district of New York were pursuing fresh criminal investigations relating to the president.The Illinois congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi asked Cohen whether he knew of any other “wrongdoing or illegality” by Trump. Cohen, declining to answer the question in detail, replied: “Yes, and those are part of the investigation that’s currently being looked at by the southern district of New York”.It is not known what those investigations might entail, although Cohen did hint that one line of inquiry being pursued by the southern district might be possible criminal fraud committed in the course of the Stormy Daniels payments.Further legal difficulties could arise over a 2013 sworn deposition in which Trump said he hardly knew Felix Sater, a real estate developer who had been involved in plans to build a Trump tower in Moscow. In the deposition, which carries the risk of perjury for anyone giving false testimony, Trump said he hardly knew Sater and that if they were in a room together he “really wouldn’t know what he looked like”.Yet Cohen told the committee that Sater not only had an office in Trump Tower in Manhattan, but that it was on the 26th floor – “Mr Trump’s floor”. Documents held by the Trump Organization would prove the close relationship between the two men, he said.As a third area of potential legal peril, Cohen said that he had in his possession about 100 voice recordings of conversations with those in and around the Trump inner circle. Asked by Speier whether he would be willing to hand them all over, he quipped: “If you really would like them.”In one of the more memorable exchanges, Speier asked Cohen how many times Trump had asked him to threaten anyone on his behalf. “Quite a few times,” he replied.“Fifty times?” Speier pressed. Cohen snapped back: “More.”“One hundred times?”“More.”“Two hundred times?”“More.”“Five hundred times?”“Probably. Over the 10 years.”Cohen clarified that he meant “threatening them with litigation or an argument with a nasty reporter that is writing an article”. Topics Michael Cohen Donald Trump Trump administration US politics features

closeVideoRep. Nadler announces formal impeachment proceedings are underwayReaction and analysis from Fox News contributor Guy Benson and radio host Richard Fowler.Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee suggested in a court filing Monday that they have been carrying out an impeachment investigation of President Trump since before Robert Mueller’s report was even submitted, which appears to contradict previous statements by committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.Nadler first claimed earlier this month that “formal impeachment proceedings” were underway when he filed a petition to get secret grand jury information from the Mueller report. But Monday’s filing in a separate case looking to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn suggested that it had already started on March 4 -- weeks before Mueller sent his report to Attorney General Bill Barr on March 22.IMPEACHMENT CHAOS: POLS CAN'T AGREE ON WHETHER OR NOT THEY'VE LAUNCHED PROCESS TO OUST TRUMP“On March 4, 2019, the Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into ‘threats to the rule of law,’ encompassing alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption and other abuses of power by President Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration,” the filing says, adding that “one critical purpose of the Committee’s investigation is to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the President.”Monday’s motion called for a preliminary injunction or summary judgment so that McGahn would have to testify. McGahn has refused to comply with a committee subpoena, asserting that he has immunity.The March 4 date is in line with an Aug. 1 op-ed for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel by Rep. Ted Deutsche, D-Fla., but it is in stark contrast with previous claims from the Democratic leadership.VideoIn a Washington Post interview published March 11, Pelosi said, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”According to Monday’s court filing, Democrats were already going down that path a week before that interview went to print.It was early August when Nadler first told CNN that “formal impeachment proceedings” were taking place, at the same time that he was initiating the case for the secret grand jury material. In May he said during a WNYC radio appearance that “there certainly is” justification for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, but that it was critical for the American public to agree before launching the process.“We’re going to have to have the investigation,” Nadler said in response to a question from a caller, adding that he was going to talk to colleagues about the possibility of a formal impeachment inquiry.Nadler specifically noted in the May appearance that there is a difference between a “formal impeachment inquiry” and holding hearings outside the context of a formal inquiry. He said that there are “functional differences” between holding hearings in an official impeachment investigation and doing so without one, including “legal powers that we wouldn’t have without it.”Those legal powers include being able to access secret grand jury information, as impeachment investigations have been deemed to fall under an exception that allows disclosure of grand jury material in the context of judicial proceedings.VideoNadler’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News questions about when formal proceedings began, or if they are taking place at all.House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., wrote Monday in a letter to Nadler obtained by Fox News that no such formal proceedings could be taking place, and that Nadler is running afoul of the Rules of the House. According to the letter, Nadler is already preparing for gaining access to the grand jury material by saying that only members of his committee and the House Intelligence Committee could view it. Collins insists that this goes against protocol.“It is beyond the scope of your authority, absent a vote of the full House, to prohibit other Members of the House from reviewing any materials in possession of the Committee,” Collins wrote, also pointing out that Nadler never received House authorization to conduct a “formal impeachment inquiry."“Without these formal steps, the Committee cannot possibly be conducting a ‘formal impeachment inquiry,’ as you claim it is,” Collins said.In their Monday court filing, the Democrats claimed that their authority for conducting their investigation is derived from their constitutional powers.“Pursuant to its Article I powers, the Judiciary Committee is investigating Presidential misconduct,” the motion says. “Its investigation is critical to its determination whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the President, and will also inform its legislative and oversight functions.”Democrats argue that McGahn, in particular, must testify because he is “the most important fact witness in the Judiciary Committee’s investigation into whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the President.” Their motion states that McGahn’s statements to the Special Counsel’s Office are referenced more than 160 times in Mueller’s report, and that “he is uniquely situated to answer factual questions critical to the Judiciary Committee’s investigation[.]”VideoThis was in reference to the report’s discussion of how Trump allegedly asked McGahn to have Mueller fired – a request viewed by Democrats as an obstruction of justice.The White House told the committee that the president directed McGahn not to testify, relying on the Office of Legal Counsel’s determination that McGahn could not be compelled to testify regarding his time working for the administration.The committee argued that “President Trump’s directive that McGahn not testify has no valid basis in law.”Democrats had attempted to have this case assigned to D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who is handling Nadler’s petition for the secret grand jury material in the Mueller report. Their argument was that because both cases are related to their impeachment investigation, they should be heard by the same judge.Howell disagreed, stating that while the two cases may have stemmed from the same investigation, the facts and legal issues involved are totally unrelated.

"The prince is running things over there more so at this stage," Trump said when asked about bin Salman's involvement. "He's running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him."On Monday, Trump told reporters that "we have top intelligence people in Turkey. We're going to see what we have."The Saudis have presented shifting stories about Khashoggi's fate, initially denying any knowledge before arguing that a group of rogue operators, many of whom belong to the crown prince's inner circle, were responsible for Khashoggi's death.JUST WATCHEDTrump on journalist's death: Worst cover-up everReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHTrump on journalist's death: Worst cover-up ever 00:41On Tuesday, Saudi sources claimed to CNN that the original plan had been to urge the dissident journalist to return to Saudi Arabia and if that failed, drug him and whisk him away to a safe house. They offered no evidence to corroborate their claims and no information on the whereabouts of Khashoggi's body, saying a local "collaborator" had disposed of it. Sources have told CNN it is highly unlikely the operation would have taken place without the knowledge of the crown prince, who controls all of Saudi Arabia's security services. That gives Trump some leverage over the33-year-old crown prince, said Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel who's now with the Council on Foreign Relations."The ideal thing for Trump to do is recognize that Mohammed bin Salman is weakened by the outrageous murder of Khashoggi," said Indyk, who argues that the one threat to the crown prince's survival is if the US tells Saudi Arabia's King it cannot work with his heir apparent. "His very survival depends on Trump working with him," Indyk said of bin Salman. "We have the opportunity to sit down with him and say, 'Listen, we can't go on like this. If you're going to be our partner, you have to be a reliable partner.' " That starts, Indyk said, with telling Saudi Arabia to stop the disastrous war in Yemen, where up to 14 million people are at risk of death from famine. In Saudi Arabia, the crown prince addressed the crisis publicly for the first time at an investors conference Wednesday, calling the killing a "heinous" crime that was a "very, very painful incident for all Saudis."Saudi officials said the crown prince also called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday to discuss the investigation. Erdogan, who said Tuesday that the journalist had been the victim of a "ferocious" planned attack, has vowed to bring Khashoggi's killers to justice. Continual leaks from Turkish officials have increased the pressure on Trump to respond.Last Friday, Trump had said the Saudis' story of a rogue operation gone wrong, and their promise to investigate, was a "very important first step." By Monday, he was chafing at the Saudis' monthlong time frame for their probe and telling reporters that "I am not satisfied with what I heard."Saudi Arabia's crown prince says his economic dream will survive The State Department announced Tuesday that 21 Saudi suspects in Khashoggi's death will have their visas revoked or will be ineligible to get one, and Congress has triggered a probe that could result in human rights-related sanctions. British Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday that the UK is also taking action against Saudi suspects. For those who have visas to the UK, she said, "those visas would be revoked today." France will take "appropriate" punitive measures if Saudi Arabia's guilt in Khashoggi's killing is clearly established, a French government spokesman said Wednesday. Trump administration officials and the President himself have couched their growing criticism of Saudi Arabia with caveats about the kingdom's importance as a strategic partner. The Trump administration is relying on Saudi Arabia to help it achieve its goals in the Middle East on an Israeli-Palestinian deal, fighting extremism, rebuilding Syria and countering Iran.Saudi Arabia's ability to sell more oil will be especially crucial when US sanctions against Iranian oil sales come into effect on Nov. 4, taking an estimated 1 million barrels of oil a day off the market.

PLANTATION, Fla. (Reuters) - The man suspected of mailing at least 14 pipe bombs to some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s leading critics was arrested on Friday in Florida on federal charges in a case echoing the rancor of one of the most toxic election campaigns in decades. Cesar Sayoc, 56, a part-time pizza deliveryman, grocery worker and former stripper once charged with threatening to bomb an electric company in a billing dispute, was taken into custody by federal agents outside an auto parts store in Plantation, Florida, near Miami as helicopters flew overhead. Authorities also seized a white van that Sayoc appeared to have used as his dwelling, its windows plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan “CNN SUCKS” and images of Democratic leaders with red cross-hairs over their faces. Fingerprint and DNA evidence helped identify the suspect, but his arrest did not necessarily end the threat, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray warned at a news conference. “There may be other packages in transit now and other packages on the way,” Wray said. One federal law enforcement source told Reuters that authorities were investigating whether other individuals were involved and did not rule out further arrests. Sayoc’s arrest followed an intense four-day manhunt sparked by the discovery of bombs concealed in packages addressed to such leading Democratic figures as former U.S. President Barack Obama and former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race. Some of the parcels also contained photographs of the intended recipients marked with a red X, according to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court. The complaint accused Sayoc of sending 13 bombs to 11 individuals, starting with billionaire Democratic donor George Soros. A package surfaced on Monday near his home in Katonah, New York. A 14th package was found on Friday at a post office outside San Francisco addressed to another wealthy contributor to the Democratic Party and liberal causes, Tom Steyer. The bombs were sent in manila envelopes lined with bubble wrap and consisted of plastic 6-inch pipes packed with explosive material and wired to small clocks and batteries, the complaint said. Related CoverageTrump says 'Bomb' stuff' slowing Republican momentum at pollsFrom tweets to bombs, suspect's rage at Trump foes escalatedWray said investigators had yet to determine whether the bombs were actually “functional,” but added that the devices could be dangerous “if subjected to the right combination of heat or shock or friction.” All were sent through the U.S. Postal Service system and intercepted before reaching their intended targets without exploding. No one has been hurt. But the bombs have heightened tensions during the closing days of a highly contentious campaign ahead of the Nov. 6 elections in which Democrats are battling to seize control of Congress now held by Trump’s Republican Party. Wray said fingerprints on one of two packages sent to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat frequently disparaged by Trump as “low-IQ Maxine,” belonged to Sayoc. The complaint also cited a “possible DNA” link between samples taken from two of the bombs and a sample previously collected from Sayoc. Sayoc was charged with five felony counts, including interstate transportation and illegal mailing of explosives, threatening a former president, making threatening interstate communications and assaulting federal officers. If convicted, Sayoc could be sentenced up to 48 years in prison, officials said. “We will not tolerate such lawlessness, especially political violence,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference. Announcing the arrest to a cheering audience at the White House, Trump said, “We must never allow political violence to take root in America - cannot let it happen,” Trump said. “And I’m committed to doing everything in my power as president to stop it and to stop it now.” A native of New York City’s Brooklyn borough and a registered Republican, Sayoc made his political views evident on social media. In Facebook and Twitter posts, he railed against Democrats, Muslims and liberals, including an anti-Soros tweet two days before a bomb showed up at the financier’s home. The Arizona Republic newspaper reported that Sayoc threatened Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, one of the few Republicans in Congress openly critical of Trump, in a pair of Oct. 1 Twitter posts consisting of violent imagery and a photo of Flake’s Arizona home, with the message, “... very nice house Jeff a lot entrances.” FBI officers escort Cesar Altieri Sayoc into a waiting SUV at FBI headquarters after arresting him in connection with an investigation into a string of parcel bombs in Miramar, Florida, U.S. October 26, 2018. WSVN Ch. 7/Handout via REUTERS Public records showed numerous arrests over the years for domestic violence, theft and other charges, including the alleged bomb threat against a utility company. Sayoc was expected to be held at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and make his first appearance before a judge on Monday, according to former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Weinstein. A public defender listed as Sayoc’s attorney of record in New York, Sarah Baumgartel, could not immediately be reached for comment. Ron Lowy, a former lawyer for Sayoc who now represents his family, told CNN he believed Sayoc was left emotionally scarred as a boy when his father left the home, developing an identity crisis in which he ultimately embraced Trump as a kind of father figure. “It’s my opinion that he was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out, Trump reaching out to these types of outsiders - people who don’t fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them that they have a place at the table, telling them that it’s OK to get angry,” Lowy said. All the individuals targeted by the packages Sayoc is accused of sending have been outspoken critics of Trump and his administration, foils for the president and his right-wing supporters or both. Among intended recipients earlier in the week were former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, actor Robert De Niro and former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance Trump revoked after Brennan lambasted Trump’s Russia summit performance as “nothing short of treasonous.” His package was delivered to the Manhattan bureau of CNN, where he had served as an on-air analyst. On Friday, packages surfaced for Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Democratic U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California. The episode has sparked an outcry from Trump’s critics charging that his inflammatory rhetoric against perceived enemies among Democrats and the press has fostered a climate ripe for politically motivated violence. “If we don’t stop this political mania, this fervor, rancor, hatred, you’ll see this again and again and again,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told MSNBC. “...It starts with the president.” Trump’s supporters have accused Democrats of unfairly suggesting that the president was to blame for the bomb scares, and Trump himself accused the press of using coverage of the investigation to score political points against him. Slideshow (23 Images)After first calling for unity at the White House event, Trump lamented partisan attacks against him and again pointed at the media. “I get attacked all the time ... I can do the greatest thing for our country, and on the networks and on different things it will show bad,” he told the crowd, acknowledging an attendee who shouted “fake news.” Reporting by Zachary Fagenson and Bernie Woodall; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Gabriella Borter and Peter Szekely in New York, Mark Hosenball, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert in Washington, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis and Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Michael PerryOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

One consequence of Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament is to make it more likely that there will be a vote of no confidence in the government. Here, too, old constitutional understandings are in doubt. Since the end of the Second World War, there has been only one instance of a government losing a vote of no confidence. That was in 1979, when Prime Minister James Callaghan lost. At that time, Callaghan effectively had a choice: He could resign immediately, or he could ask the queen to dissolve Parliament for a general election. He chose the latter. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, however, now requires a 14-day period following a vote of no confidence in which the Commons can pass a vote of confidence either in the existing government or in an alternative government led by someone whom MPs have recommended to the queen. If neither occurs, Parliament will be dissolved.If there’s to be an election, Johnson could play fast and loose with the constitution in other ways. He might, for example, choose an election date after the October 31 deadline for Britain to leave the EU, allowing Brexit to happen by default during an election campaign. That would be reckless in the extreme—including for Johnson’s chances of securing an overall majority. Would it also be unconstitutional? During election campaigns, there are so-called caretaker conventions, according to which the government should not make any controversial decisions that would bind a future government. The government would be right to insist that a no-deal Brexit is the legal default, but that does not necessarily mean there would be no duty on the government to change it. If Johnson loses a vote of no confidence, it would be because MPs had rejected a no-deal Brexit. Whatever the conventions of the constitution require, it would be a gross violation of representative democracy to ignore MPs’ wishes.The fact that all of this is up for debate is truly astonishing. To some scholars, such as Vernon Bogdanor, a politics professor at King’s College London, Brexit has demonstrated the need for the U.K. to adopt a codified constitution. The breakdown in parliamentary government—the triumph of populism over pluralism brought about by Brexit—strengthens the case for a codified constitution that would place more obstacles in the way of political power. But a codified constitution is not a panacea. As other countries have discovered, it would not be a guarantee against populist excess, and could even create more problems than it solves. That’s not to say there’s no need for reform. Britain’s constitution is hardly in rude health; in fact, it’s never been more vulnerable.

Whoops.MSNBC’s “The Beat With Ari Melber” erroneously referred to Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang as “John Yang” during a Monday-night segment.The flub didn’t go unnoticed and prompted #WhoIsJohnYang to begin trending on Twitter. One Yang supporter even bought domain whoisjohnyang.com, redirecting visitors to a link for the candidate’s campaign site.Who is John Yang? pic.twitter.com/k1EkbKqPHH— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) September 9, 2019 #WhoIsJohnYang? Let me help you @MSNBC with this graphics. @AndrewYang is running for POTUS and @JohnYangTV is a respected news anchor at a respected news organization. #YangGang pic.twitter.com/lDTXISBMTR— bryanryan (@bryanry22349883) September 9, 2019 The segment had been covering Yang’s crowdsurfing, which occurred Sunday at the first Asian American and Pacific Islander Democratic presidential forum in Costa Mesa, California. The candidate himself caught wind of the mistake and responded to the moniker on Twitter.The show later apologized to the candidate on Twitter and noted that it fixed his name during the segment.Earlier tonight on The Beat we made a mistake in a segment about @AndrewYang. While we fixed his name during the segment, we’d like to apologize, Andrew, for the error.— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) September 10, 2019 The press’ treatment of Yang has been a hot topic among his supporters. Last month, CNN failed to include the candidate in an election poll graphic. The omission prompted his supporters make #YangMediaBlackout to begin trending on Twitter, pointing out outlets’ erasure of the candidate.— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) August 27, 2019

(Reuters) - More than 30 U.S. state attorneys general are readying an investigation into Alphabet Inc’s Google for potential antitrust violations, a source knowledgeable about the probe said on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured at the entrance to the Google offices in London, Britain January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Hannah McKayTexas leads the group of 30-plus attorneys general, which plans to announce the probe on Sept. 9, the source said. Google said that it was cooperating with the state officials. “We continue to work constructively with regulators, including attorneys general, in answering questions about our business and the dynamic technology sector,” Google representative Jose Castaneda said. The probe is focused on the intersection of privacy and antitrust, according to the source, who did not elaborate. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, filed comments along with 42 other state officials in June that urged the Federal Trade Commission to focus on privacy and data collection in investigating potential violations of antitrust law. In the comment, the state officials argued that the big tech firms have so much user data that it is hard for newcomers to compete. Another Texas official, Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer, alleged in an FTC hearing in June that Google and other big tech companies were misleading in representing themselves as neutral, citing Google’s balking at carrying an ad about “what it means to be an American, the Texas attorney general’s office said in a statement in June. Google eventually relented on the ad, the statement said. The tech giants, among the richest and most powerful companies in the world, are facing increasing antitrust scrutiny from Congress, federal agencies and now state attorneys general. The Justice Department said in July that it was opening a broad investigation of major digital technology firms, focusing on whether they engage in anticompetitive practices. The investigation is believed to be aimed at Google, Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc, and potentially Apple Inc. Separately, the Federal Trade Commission, which also enforces antitrust law, is also probing Amazon and Facebook to determine if they abused their massive market power in retail and social media, respectively. The Washington Post was the first to report the development on Tuesday. Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Donald Trump has branded the former FBI director James Comey a “slimeball” during another Twitter tirade. The tweets were a reaction to unfavourable excerpts released in advance of Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, in which Comey likens the president to a mob boss and dismisses “the forest fire that is the Trump presidency”. After Trump’s tweets, Merriam-Webster dictionary reported a 60,000% spike in searches for the definition of “slimeball”, which it defines as “a morally repulsive or odious person”.Just like the mob, Trump likes to dole out nicknames, especially to his opponents. It’s a trick he may have learned from professional wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2013. Its wrestlers go by names such as “Stone Cold Steve Austin” or “The Undertaker” – distinguishing for its predominantly young audience the heroes from the villains.So who else has Trump rebranded?Throughout the 2016 election campaign Trump would often refer to Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary”, usually in reference to her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state in the Obama White House.Marco Rubio earned his moniker after poking fun at Trump’s “small hands” during the 2016 Republican presidential campaign.Bernie Sanders joined the list of nicknames when Trump rounded on the senator during the Democrats’ presidential race. Sanders was doing well against Clinton at the time, when Trump tweeted : “I don’t want to hit Crazy Bernie Sanders too hard yet because I love watching what he is doing to Crooked Hillary. His time will come!”After Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was published, Trump slammed the former White House strategist Steve Bannon in another early-morning rant on Twitter – and “Sloppy Steve” was born.Trump nicknamed North Korea leader Kim Jong-un a “maniac” and a “whack job” before settling on “rocket man” at the 2017 United Nations General Assembly.After Senator Al Franken was accused of sexually harassing Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden in 2006, Trump – who doesn’t seem terribly concerned about appearing hypocritical – lambasted the senator and compared him to Frankenstein, only he spelled it wrong. Topics Donald Trump Shortcuts James Comey US politics features

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump denied allegations of lewd behavior made in an intelligence dossier and asked whether the FBI would consider proving it was a lie, former FBI Director James Comey wrote in an upcoming memoir, according to the Washington Post. Comey, fired by Trump in May 2017, wrote in “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership” that Trump raised the dossier with him at least four times during meetings, the Post said. The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele about Trump’s ties to Russia, and included an allegation that involved prostitutes. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Comey’s publicist also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment. The newspaper said it obtained a copy of the 304-page book, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, and that Comey detailed in it his private interactions with Trump. Comey’s firing led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign. Russia has denied interfering in the election. Trump has said there was no collusion. Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Nearly 24 hours after the release of the Department of Justice inspector general’s investigation, President Trump tweeted his reaction, calling the blistering report a “total disaster” for former FBI Director James Comey and his “minions.” “FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Clinton and Russia investigations, texted to his lover Lisa Page, in the IG Report, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from becoming President,” Trump fired off on Twitter Friday, adding, “Doesn’t get any lower than that!” The nearly 500-page report released Thursday was especially harsh on senior FBI agent Peter Strzok, who exchanged a trove of text messages with an FBI colleague in the months before the presidential election. In one August 2016 text message, Strzok – as he was leading the Clinton probe and the FBI investigation of Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election – said he and his team would "stop" Trump from becoming president if necessary. Inspector General Michael Horowitz said such statements from Strzok and others helped create a "cloud" over the FBI, and Horowitz said he could not discount that political bias played a role in at least one of Strzok's missteps during the Clinton case. In response, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the FBI will review the inspector generals’ findings and will take any appropriate action to hold people accountable. While the president remained mum on the report’s findings, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders offered the first reaction. “It reaffirmed the president’s suspicions about Comey’s conduct and the political bias among some of the members of the FBI,” Sanders said in a press briefing Thursday. Trump continued on Twitter Friday, saying, Comey will “officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI.” “I did a great service to the people in firing him,” the president wrote, justifying his firing of Comey. The report took Comey to task for publicly announcing in July 2016 that Clinton would not face charges, even as he accused her of mishandling classified information. The report also rebuked Comey for disclosing just days before the election that the FBI was reopening the Clinton case to review hundreds of thousands of newly-discovered emails -- emails that turned out to be of little consequence. Comey, however, said he acted appropriately in his handling of the Clinton email investigation. “Nothing in the inspector general’s report makes me think we did the wrong thing,” Comey wrote in an op-ed published Friday by the The New York Times. He added, “I do not agree with all of the inspect general’s conclusions, but I respect the work of his office and salute its professionalism.”

(Reuters) - Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election has ensnared dozens of people, including several advisers to President Donald Trump and a series of Russian nationals and companies. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign chair and convention manager Paul Manafort appears at a press conference at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, U.S., July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File PhotoRod Rosenstein, the No. 2 U.S. Justice Department official, in May 2017 appointed Mueller to look into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia and whether the Republican president has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Mueller has charged 34 individuals and three companies. Trump denies collusion and obstruction. Russia denies election interference. Here is a look at those who have pleaded guilty or have been indicted in Mueller's inquiry. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2RwJarW) In August 2018, a jury in Virginia found Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, guilty of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. Manafort was sentenced in March 2019 in the Virginia case to almost four years in prison. Manafort, who prosecutors said tried to conceal from the U.S. government millions of dollars he was paid as a political consultant for pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, pleaded guilty in September 2018 to two counts of conspiracy in a separate case in Washington and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. The Washington case had focused on accusations of money laundering and failing to report foreign bank accounts, among other charges. He was scheduled to be sentenced in the Washington case on March 13. A judge on Feb. 13 ruled that Manafort had breached his agreement to cooperate with Mueller by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent to the Russia probe including his interactions with a business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, who they have said has ties to Russian intelligence. Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty in August 2018 to crimes including orchestrating “hush money” payments before the 2016 election to women who have said they had sexual encounters with Trump, violating campaign laws. That case was handled by federal prosecutors in New York, not Mueller’s office. As part of a separate agreement with Mueller’s team, Cohen pleaded guilty in November 2018 to lying to Congress about negotiations concerning a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, a project that never materialized. Cohen in February 2019 testified at a public hearing before a House of Representatives committee. He accused Trump of approving the “hush money” payments and knowing in advance about the 2016 release by the WikiLeaks website of emails that prosecutors have said were stolen by Russia to harm Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. He said Trump implicitly directed him to lie about the Moscow real estate project. He promised to keep cooperating with prosecutors and made multiple closed-door appearances before congressional panels. Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month in early 2017, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia during Trump’s presidential transition and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. Trump fired him as national security adviser after it emerged that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI about his dealings with the then-Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. His sentencing is pending. The longtime Trump ally and presidential campaign adviser was charged in January 2019 with seven criminal counts including obstruction of an official proceeding, witness tampering and making false statements, pleading not guilty. Prosecutors said Stone shared with members of the Trump campaign team advance knowledge of the plan by WikiLeaks to release the stolen Democratic emails. Prosecutors also accused him of trying to interfere with a witness, a radio host who matched the profile of Randy Credico. The former deputy chairman of Trump’s campaign, Gates pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators. He agreed to cooperate with Mueller and testified as a prosecution witness against Manafort, his former business partner. A Manafort aide in Ukraine and a political operative described by prosecutors as linked to Russian intelligence, Kilimnik was charged in June 2018 with tampering with witnesses about their past lobbying for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. Prosecutors said in January 2019 that Manafort shared political polling data with Kilimnik in 2016, providing an indication that Trump’s campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians. Twelve Russian intelligence officers were indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2018, accused of hacking the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations as part of a Russian scheme to release emails damaging to Clinton during the 2016 race. They covertly monitored employee computers and planted malicious code, as well as stealing emails and other documents, according to the indictment. Thirteen Russians and three Russian companies were indicted in Mueller’s investigation in February 2018, accused of taking part in an elaborate campaign to sow discord in the United States ahead of the 2016 election and harm Clinton’s candidacy in order to boost Trump. The companies included: the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based propaganda arm known for trolling on social media; Concord Management and Consulting; and Concord Catering. The former Trump campaign adviser was sentenced in September 2018 to 14 days in prison after pleading guilty in October 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials, including a professor who told him the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton. A lawyer who once worked closely with Manafort and Gates, Van Der Zwaan pleaded guilty in February 2018 to lying to Mueller’s investigators about contacts with a Trump campaign official. Van Der Zwaan, the Dutch son-in-law of one of Russia’s richest men, was sentenced in April 2018 to 30 days in prison and fined $20,000. Pinedo was not involved with the Trump campaign, but in February 2018 pleaded guilty to identity fraud in a case related to the Mueller investigation for helping Russian conspirators launder money, purchase Facebook ads and pay for supplies. He was sentenced in October 2018 to six months in jail and six months of home detention. Compiled by Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch, Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham and Grant McCoolOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., is one of four high-ranking Democrats to sign a letter to the FBI requesting an investigation into the actions of Li "Cindy" Yang. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Inc./Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Inc./Getty Images House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., is one of four high-ranking Democrats to sign a letter to the FBI requesting an investigation into the actions of Li "Cindy" Yang. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call Inc./Getty Images High-ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for a counterintelligence investigation into a woman who has peddled access to President Trump and who founded the massage parlor where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is accused of soliciting sex.Li "Cindy" Yang has been the subject of a number of reports in recent weeks, notably in The New York Times and the Miami Herald, which have detailed how she created a business that advertised "entry to events, including White House visits, 'VIP activities at Mar-a-Lago' and Warren Buffett's annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders," according to The Times.She was photographed in February with Trump at a Super Bowl party that Kraft also attended, according to the Herald. And she also reportedly arranged for a group of Chinese business executives to attend a paid fundraiser for the president in late 2017."If true, these allegations raise serious counterintelligence concerns," wrote the highest-ranking Democrats on the intelligence and judiciary committees in both the House and the Senate in a letter dated Friday.The letter, addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Secret Service Director Randolph Alles, contains questions about a number of aspects of Yang's reported activities.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., released on Monday a statement in which they too said they support an investigation.Yang founded the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, where Kraft is accused of visiting and soliciting prostitution twice — an accusation Kraft has called "totally false." Yang told the Herald that she sold it long before the scandal involving the New England Patriots' owner.Democrats want to know the extent to which Yang or her businesses have been investigated by the FBI or state authorities for human trafficking or other violations of the law.They also want a counterintelligence investigation into the extent that Yang or her clients interacted with Trump, Vice President Pence or other senior White House officials and whether those alleged interactions broke laws that govern international lobbying in the United States.Yang met a number of high-level Republicans over the past year, according to the Herald: "In 2018, she attended a Safari Night at Mar-a-Lago hosted by the president's sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, as well as the White House's celebration of the Lunar New Year at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. She took photos with Florida's soon-to-be-governor, Ron DeSantis, at a pro-Israel gala held at Mar-a-Lago, met U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao in Washington, D.C., and posed with Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz and former Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. She also posted a photograph of herself with DeSantis at a restaurant, saying she was having 'brunch this morning with Florida's next Governor.' "She was photographed with Donald Trump Jr. at a winter Mar-a-Lago gala for Turning Points USA, the conservative college organization, and met Eric Trump last month." No one Yang says she met with, or was photographed with, told the Herald that they remembered meeting her."Although Ms. Yang's activities may only be those of an unscrupulous actor allegedly selling access to politicians for profit, her activities also could permit adversary governments or their agents access to these same politicians to acquire potential material for blackmail or other even more nefarious purposes," wrote the Democrats.They are also interested in probing whether Yang or any of her clients illegally contributed to campaigns in an effort to gain access to politicians.You can read the entire letter here:

In an over forty minute-long appearance on "Fox & Friends", President Donald Trump touched on a wide range of topics including the Russia probe into election interference saying he'll do whatever is "necessary to get it over with" claiming the investigation has caused "division" and is "bad for the country." When asked about answering written questions, sitting down for an interview with the special counsel team or some hybrid approach, the president didn't rule it out. The months-long negotiations over a potential presidential interview have gone on through several different iterations of the Trump legal team. Current lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told ABC News in August that his team had submitted a response to special counsel Robert Mueller asking to limit the scope of an interview with Trump especially as it relates to obstruction of justice. The president has said many times in the past tht he would be willing to speak with Mueller but would await his legal team's guidance. The president's comments come after speculation surfaced last month whether he would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. When asked whether he would fire Rosenstein after the midterm elections, Trump reiterated he and Rosenstein have a "good relationship." "Well I actually get along well with Rod," Trump said. Trump said he's "surprised" the deputy attorney general will not appear on Capitol Hill to testify under oath after he was asked by some members of Congress to do so. "Frankly, whether you were under oath or not shouldn't matter," Trump said. "He mentioned things to me that I would think would be fine for him to testify when Congress calls." Monday, the president said he had no intent in firing Rosenstein ahead of their departure together aboard Air Force One to Orlando. During the interview and in preparation for his lunch with hip-hop artist Kanye West, Trump touted the support he says he has received from the African American community since West has publicly backed his "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan. "When Kanye came out very strongly a number of months ago, something happened, my polls went up like 25 percent," Trump said. "The polls went through the roof – I think I can say I've honestly never seen that before to that extent." The president also briefly touched on the recent political fallout over his newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh – echoing his support of Kavanaugh's confirmation and decried calls among some Democrats of impeachment. "How do you impeach him? He's like this incredible person that it turned out to be such false, horrible charges what they did and they want to impeach him?" Trump said. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, a conservative newspaper, Trump said that while any other Republican president would have "abandoned" Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court nominee, he "didn't even think about going the other way" during the Senate confirmation hearings. Trump told the Examiner that "the easier path" would have been to withdraw his nomination while allegations were unfolding, but never thought about doing so. During Kavanaugh's swearing-in ceremony, Trump apologized on behalf of the nation "for the terrible pain and suffering" that he and his family endured during his confirmation process. Trump also said that California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes “should get the Medal of Honor” for his role in pushing back against the Russia probe. "What he's gone through, and his bravery, he should get a very important medal." The Medal of Honor is awarded for military heroism and Trump, shortly after his comments added: "Maybe we'll call it the Medal of Freedom because we actually give them, the high awards for civilians." The Medal of Freedom is traditionally given to people recognized as having contributed to national or international security, arts and culture, or world peace efforts. In the Fox & Friends interview, Trump also said relief efforts for Hurricane Michael “is going to go fast.” On Wednesday, as Hurricane Michael barreled into the Gulf Coast, President Trump made his way to the northern corner of Pennsylvania for a Make America Great Again rally and political fundraiser. “Our thoughts and prayers on behalf of the nation to everyone out there in the path of Hurricane Michael, especially in the Florida Panhandle were it’s hitting, and its hitting hard,” Trump said as the rally began. ”It’s a big one — one of the biggest we’ve ever seen.” ABC News' Meridith McGraw and Alex Mallin contributed to this report.