Boris Johnson, a leadership candidate for Britain's Conservative Party, visits Wetherspoons Metropolitan Bar in London, Britain, July 10, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/poolLONDON (Reuters) - Boris Johnson, frontrunner to become next prime minister, would be the “patsy” of U.S. President Donald Trump if his lack of support for British ambassador Kim Darroch prompted his resignation, a Labour spokesman said on Wednesday. The opposition party spokesman said he was referring to reports that it was Johnson’s reluctance to express support for Darroch in a war of words with Trump that had prompted the ambassador to resign. “If that’s the case I think it’s clear that Boris Johnson is effectively behaving as Donald Trump’s patsy and he’s doing that clearly because he is banking on a sweetheart trade deal and is putting himself in hock to the U.S. president,” the spokesman told reporters. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Kate HoltonOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Thursday by a U.S. judge to less than four years in prison - far shy of federal sentencing guidelines - for financial crimes uncovered during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis imposed the surprisingly lenient 47-month sentence on Manafort, 69, during a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, in which the veteran Republican political consultant asked for mercy but expressed no remorse for his actions. Manafort was convicted by a jury last August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. Ellis disregarded federal sentencing guidelines cited by prosecutors that called for 19-1/2 to 24 years in prison. The judge ordered Manafort to pay a fine of $50,000 and restitution of just over $24 million. Manafort, brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair because of a condition called gout, listened during the hearing as Ellis extolled his “otherwise blameless” life in which he “earned the admiration of a number of people” and engaged in “a lot of good things.” “Clearly the guidelines were way out of whack on this,” Ellis said. Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket. The judge also said Manafort “is not before the court for any allegations that he, or anyone at his direction, colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” The sentence was even less than the sentence recommended by Manafort’s lawyers of 4-1/4 to 5-1/4 years in prison. “These are serious crimes, we understand that,” said Thomas Zehnle, one of Manafort’s lawyers. “Tax evasion is by no means jaywalking. But it’s not narcotics trafficking.” Related CoverageManafort's luxurious life nowhere in sight at sentencingTimeline: Big moments in Mueller investigation of Russian meddling in 2016 U.S. electionLegal experts expressed surprise over the sentence. “This is a tremendous defeat for the special counsel’s office,” former federal prosecutor David Weinstein said. Manafort’s sentence was less than half of what people who plead guilty and cooperate with the government typically get in similar cases, according to Mark Allenbaugh, a former attorney with the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “Very shocking,” he said. Ellis, appointed to the bench by Republican former President Ronald Reagan, called the sentence “sufficiently punitive,” and noted that Manafort’s time already served would be subtracted from the 47 months. Manafort has been jailed since June 2018. Manafort’s legal troubles are not over. He faces sentencing next Wednesday in Washington in a separate case for two conspiracy charges involving lobbying and money laundering to which he pleaded guilty last September. Legal experts said the light sentence from Ellis could prompt U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a sentence closer to the maximum of 10 years in the Washington case, and order that the sentence run after the current one is completed rather than concurrently. Jackson was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Before the sentencing, Manafort expressed no remorse but talked about how the case had been difficult for him and his family. Manafort, who opted not to testify during his trial, told Ellis that “to say I have been humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” He described his life as “professionally and financially in shambles.” The judge told Manafort: “I was surprised I did not hear you express regret for engaging in wrongful conduct.” Manafort, with noticeably grayer hair than just months ago, came into the courtroom in a wheelchair holding a cane, wearing a green prison jumpsuit emblazoned with the words “Alexandria Inmate” on the back. It was a far cry from Manafort’s usual dapper appearance and stylish garb. During a break shortly before the sentence was handed down, Manafort turned around and blew his wife, Kathleen, a kiss. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort appears for sentencing in this court sketch in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Bill HennessyThe case capped a stunning downfall for Manafort, a prominent figure in Republican Party circles for decades who also worked as a consultant to such international figures as former Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Yanukovych. Ellis had faced criticism by some in the legal community for comments he made during the trial that were widely interpreted as biased against the prosecution. Ellis repeatedly interrupted prosecutors, told them to stop using the word “oligarch” to describe people associated with Manafort because it made him seem “despicable,” and objected to pictures of Manafort’s luxury items they planned to show jurors. “It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” Ellis told prosecutors during the trial. Prosecutor Greg Andres urged Ellis to impose a steep sentence. “This case must stand as a beacon to others that this conduct cannot be accepted,” Andres told the hearing on Thursday. Jackson ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort had breached his agreement to cooperate with Mueller’s office by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent to the Russia probe including his interactions with a business partner they have said has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort is the only one of the 34 people and three companies charged by Mueller to have gone to trial. Several others including former campaign aides Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen have pleaded guilty, while longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone has pleaded not guilty. Trump, a Republican who has called Mueller’s investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt,” has not ruled out giving Manafort a presidential pardon, saying in November: “I wouldn’t take it off the table.” “There’s absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from Russia,” Kevin Downing, another Manafort lawyer, said outside the courthouse. The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, quickly accused Downing of making “a deliberate appeal for a pardon” from Trump. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said after the sentencing: “I believe Manafort has been disproportionately harassed and hopefully soon there will be an investigation of the overzealous prosecutorial intimidation so it doesn’t happen again.” Slideshow (6 Images)Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a report on his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction and Russia has denied U.S. intelligence findings that it interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump. Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign for five pivotal months in 2016 that included the Republican National Convention where Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, three of them as campaign chairman. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Andy Sullivan and Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Eric Beech and Makini Brice; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Sam Levin here in California, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day. My colleague Lauren Gambino has more background on Bernie Sanders’ comments today, saying he does not support expanding the number of justices who serve on the Supreme Court:“My worry is that the next time the Republicans are in power , they’ll do the same thing,” Sanders said at the We The People forum in Washington DC.The idea, known as court-packing, has gained traction in the wake of the confirmation of Brett Kavnauagh, whose appointment sealed a conservative majority on the nation’s highest court. The issue does not fall along ideological lines. So far only one Democratic presidential hopeful has endorsed the move: South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg. But several other candidates, including senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, told the Washington Post that they are open to it. Asked how he would reform the courts, Sanders said he is open to rotating judges from the Appellate Courts through the Supreme Court as a way to bring in “new blood”. The controversial Kavanaugh confirmation was for many liberal Democrats a final straw in a process that began with a decision by Majority leader Mitch McConnell to block many of President Barack Obama’s nominees to lower courts and then his refusal to even hold a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. The Supreme Court vacancy helped rally conservatives around Trump, and he filled the seat with Justice Neil Gorsuch after he was elected. There are currently nine justices on the court, a number that was set in law by 1869. But some liberal advocacy groups have called for an additional four justices to sit on the bench. The last president to embark on this effort was Franklin Roosevelt, who failed in his attempt to expand the court to 15 justices in 1937.Demand Justice, a progressive group that organizes around reforming the nation’s courts, said Sanders’ support for a panel of rotating judges shows that there is a “growing consensus in the Democratic Party now that the Supreme Court must be reformed. The only remaining debate is how to best reform it.” “No one is any longer defending the status quo of just letting the Roberts Court block progressive priorities for the next 30 years,” said the group’s executive director Brian Fallon, who was previously a spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “Progressive activists have awakened to the danger posed by Trump’s packing of the courts, and Democratic candidates for president now see they need a plan to respond to this crisis.”McConnell on Monday dismissed the idea as a “radical proposal”:

Nicholas Kristof writes in an opinion piece for The New York Times about Seattle's "bold approach to narcotics that should be a model for America." Instead of being prosecuted for being caught with small amounts of drugs, that person is steered toward social services to get help. "In effect, Seattleis decriminalizing the use of hard drugs," writes Kristof. "It is relying less on the criminal justice toolbox to deal with hard drugs and more on the public health toolbox." From the report:The report mentions a program calledLaw Enforcement Assisted Diversion(LEAD) that appears to be working. It was started in 2011 by Satterberg and others and has spread across the country, with 59 localities now offering LEAD initiatives or rolling them out. "The idea is that instead of simply arresting drug users for narcotics or prostitution, police officers watch for those who are nonviolent and want help, and divert them to social service programs and intensive case management," writes Kristof.One 2017peer-reviewed studyfound that drug users assigned to the program "were 58 percent less likely to be rearrested, compared with a control group." It also found that "participants were almosttwice as likelyto have housing as they had been before entering LEAD, and 46 percent more likely to be employed or getting job training." And while it costs about $350 per month per participant to provide case managers, it is still cheaper than jail, courts and costs associated with homelessness.

Gruff, iconoclastic and relentlessly on-message, Bernie Sanders thrilled the progressive left when he ran for president in 2016 and came within striking distance of capturing the Democratic nomination.This time around, Sanders’ ideas are shaping the policy debate in the race for the party’s 2020 nomination, but the 77-year-old senator finds himself struggling to stand out in a younger and more diverse field of candidates.His once-sturdy second-place standing in the polls has slipped. This quarter, Sanders was out-raised by Elizabeth Warren, his closest ideological rival who has also rejected high-dollar fundraisers.“Bernie’s ideas aren’t just Bernie’s any more,” said Carolyn Fiddler, the communications director for the progressive politics blog the Daily Kos. “The conversation that he brought to 2016 – the issues that he brought to 2016 – have been co-opted by other candidates. And he alone does not represent the progressive wing of the Democratic party.”And in Miami last month, in the first Democratic presidential debate, Sanders was largely overshadowed by the clash between the former vice-president Joe Biden, seen as the current frontrunner, and Senator Kamala Harris of California, who has been rising in profile and polls.Squeezed by questions over electability and a deep desire among Democrats to elevate women and people of color, Sanders is attempting to reset the debate on his own terms.Last week, he vigorously defended his signature Medicare for All healthcare proposal, sharpening the battle lines over an issue that is animating the Democratic presidential race.“Now is the time not for tinkering around the edges,” Sanders said, an implicit reference to candidates like Biden, who oppose the plan. “Now is the time to do what every other major country on earth does, now is time to do what the American people want us to do, now is the time to pass a Medicare for All, single-payer program.”In his remarks, Sanders also challenged his rivals to join him in rejecting campaign donations from lobbyists, executives and political action committees of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.This pledge targets Biden, whose campaign has accepted money from healthcare executives, according to publicly available financial reports, and includes an aide who has previously lobbied on behalf of pharmaceutical companies and a hospital association.“Candidates who are not willing to take that pledge,” Sanders said, “should explain to the American people why those corporate interests believe their campaigns are a good investment.”In many ways, the speech also served to distinguish Sanders on a central campaign issue from the other candidates, several of whom have backed his healthcare plan or versions of it.“He’s saying this is his issue,” said the progressive strategist Rebecca Katz. “It doesn’t mean that the other candidates aren’t also for Medicare for All, but this speech shows voters that he is willing to fight for it harder than anyone else in the race.”Next week Sanders will appear on a debate stage with Warren. The pair have so far dispatched questions about their rivalry by emphasizing their friendship – and allies of both camps see little to be gained by turning on one another.Sanders’ campaign leaders say they are unfazed by the shifting dynamics of the nomination contest at this early stage.“Progressives know where he stands. They understand the man and they understand his mission,” said Nina Turner, the former Ohio state senator who is co-chair of his campaign.She added: “Whether it’s Medicare for All, student debt or raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, these issues are now part of the mainstream discussion because Senator Sanders had the courage to put them there.”The senator has maintained a devoted base of voters, and entered July with more money than any other Democratic candidate – long-term advantages that could prove crucial.And he has addressed shortcomings from his first run, building a campaign led by women and people of color. He has also made inroads with African Americans and sharpened his message on racial justice. Yet he has struggled to expand his support.Yvette Simpson, the chief executive of the political action committee Democracy for America, said Sanders won the battle of ideas in 2016 – now his challenge is to offer a plan for achieving his vision. Less preacher and more prophet, she suggested.“The question isn’t whether we trust his motivation. It’s: will he show us the way?” she said. “Can he pivot from being a cheerleader to being the guide?”In 2016, Democracy for America endorsed Sanders after he won support from a supermajority of its membership. But a new poll of its members showed Warren and Harris encroaching on Sanders’s top spot.“We need to hear a different voice from him, too,” Simpson said. “We know he’s a fighter and a champion in the issues. But we need to see the emotive and personal side of him.”Sanders dislikes talking about himself, which he believes distracts from the issues driving his campaign. But as he’s challenged by candidates with compelling biographies, some advisers hope he’ll tell more of his personal story – as he did when he launched his 2020 campaign, at rallies in Brooklyn, where grew up poor in a rent-controlled apartment, and in Chicago, where he joined the civil rights movement as a college student.The Sanders campaign believes its path to the nomination rests on its success in “expanding the electorate” – engaging non-traditional and disaffected voters and turning them into supporters.Their approach consists of novel organizing tactics, such as “distributed organizing” that trains volunteers to host events, phone bank and register voters, as well as efforts to turn out his supporters on picket lines and protests.Last week Sanders joined a protest against the planned closure of a hospital in Philadelphia that serves low-income people – a stop he made a day after skipping Netroots Nation, the annual progressive conference held there last week.And the campaign is proud that after Sanders confronted Walmart executives at their annual shareholders’ meeting, the company’s workers were the most frequent contributors by employer to his campaign.Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families party, said: “It’s going to be essential for anybody who wins to be deeply committed to building a multiracial movement that leaves no working person unconsidered. Every single working person is going to matter. That’s the challenge and the test.”As Trump and Republicans escalate their assault on Democrats, accusing them of being a party of “socialists” with a vision for the country that is not only “extreme” but un-American, Biden and an increasingly punchy group of lower-tier moderate candidates are betting that centrism and compromise – not socialism – will win the day.Healthcare has emerged as the latest front in that fight.In Iowa, Biden, who has proposed a healthcare plan that would expand the Affordable Care Act, called Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal “a little risky”. Other presidential hopefuls, such as the Colorado senator Michael Bennet, former congressman John Delaney and former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, have also sought to boost their profiles by assailing Sanders’ healthcare plan.“My worry is the rest of the Democratic party following Bernie Sanders over this cliff,” Bennet said at a forum in Iowa, “re-electing Donald Trump instead of creating conditions where we can actually work to provide universal healthcare in this country.”Sanders, who has long railed against corporate interests, an elite media, the so-called Democratic establishment and, more recently, authoritarianism, welcomes with relish a fight over his politics and his policies.In an interview with the New York Times, Sanders accused Biden of “distorting” his plan and said that his criticism sounded like it could have been leveled by Trump – or the healthcare industry. “Let me make a prediction,” Sanders said during his speech last week. “In order to defeat the Medicare for All movement, powerful special interests will be spending millions on 30-second television ads, full-page magazine ads, and corporate-sponsored ‘studies’ to frighten the American people about Medicare for All – which is exactly what happened before the passage of Medicare in the 1960s.”“But they failed then,” he continued, reaching a thundering pitch. “And they’re going to fail now.” Topics US elections 2020 Democrats US politics US healthcare features

FILE PHOTO: Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on his investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein -/File PhotoATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. progressive groups will stage hundreds of protests nationwide on Thursday to demand that President Donald Trump do nothing to hinder an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling to help him win the 2016 U.S. election. The protests, operating under the banner “Nobody is Above the Law” and led by the activist group MoveOn, called for people to gather in cities at 5 p.m. on Thursday in an effort to protect the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The action was spurred by Trump’s move on Wednesday to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Sessions’ chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, as acting attorney general. Sessions had recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, while Whitaker has called for it to be scaled down. Trump announced the move the day after a Congressional election that saw his Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives but gain seats in the Senate. “Donald Trump has installed a crony to oversee the special counsel’s Trump-Russia investigation,” MoveOn said on its website. It pledged that at least one rally would be held in each state. Mueller has indicted a number of Russian individuals and firms for meddling in the election to help Trump win, and is investigating whether anyone on the Trump campaign collaborated with them. Trump denies collusion and calls the investigation a partisan witch hunt. The Justice Department is separately investigating payments that were made during the campaign to women who said they had affairs with Trump to bar them from speaking. Sessions has long drawn Trump’s ire for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Peter GraffOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Thursday by a U.S. judge to less than four years in prison - far shy of federal sentencing guidelines - for financial crimes uncovered during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis imposed the surprisingly lenient 47-month sentence on Manafort, 69, during a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, in which the veteran Republican political consultant asked for mercy but expressed no remorse for his actions. Manafort was convicted by a jury last August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. Ellis disregarded federal sentencing guidelines cited by prosecutors that called for 19-1/2 to 24 years in prison. The judge ordered Manafort to pay a fine of $50,000 and restitution of just over $24 million. Manafort, brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair because of a condition called gout, listened during the hearing as Ellis extolled his “otherwise blameless” life in which he “earned the admiration of a number of people” and engaged in “a lot of good things.” “Clearly the guidelines were way out of whack on this,” Ellis said. Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket. The judge also said Manafort “is not before the court for any allegations that he, or anyone at his direction, colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” The sentence was even less than the sentence recommended by Manafort’s lawyers of 4-1/4 to 5-1/4 years in prison. “These are serious crimes, we understand that,” said Thomas Zehnle, one of Manafort’s lawyers. “Tax evasion is by no means jaywalking. But it’s not narcotics trafficking.” Related CoverageManafort's luxurious life nowhere in sight at sentencingTimeline: Big moments in Mueller investigation of Russian meddling in 2016 U.S. electionLegal experts expressed surprise over the sentence. “This is a tremendous defeat for the special counsel’s office,” former federal prosecutor David Weinstein said. Manafort’s sentence was less than half of what people who plead guilty and cooperate with the government typically get in similar cases, according to Mark Allenbaugh, a former attorney with the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “Very shocking,” he said. Ellis, appointed to the bench by Republican former President Ronald Reagan, called the sentence “sufficiently punitive,” and noted that Manafort’s time already served would be subtracted from the 47 months. Manafort has been jailed since June 2018. Manafort’s legal troubles are not over. He faces sentencing next Wednesday in Washington in a separate case for two conspiracy charges involving lobbying and money laundering to which he pleaded guilty last September. Legal experts said the light sentence from Ellis could prompt U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a sentence closer to the maximum of 10 years in the Washington case, and order that the sentence run after the current one is completed rather than concurrently. Jackson was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Before the sentencing, Manafort expressed no remorse but talked about how the case had been difficult for him and his family. Manafort, who opted not to testify during his trial, told Ellis that “to say I have been humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” He described his life as “professionally and financially in shambles.” The judge told Manafort: “I was surprised I did not hear you express regret for engaging in wrongful conduct.” Manafort, with noticeably grayer hair than just months ago, came into the courtroom in a wheelchair holding a cane, wearing a green prison jumpsuit emblazoned with the words “Alexandria Inmate” on the back. It was a far cry from Manafort’s usual dapper appearance and stylish garb. During a break shortly before the sentence was handed down, Manafort turned around and blew his wife, Kathleen, a kiss. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort appears for sentencing in this court sketch in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Bill HennessyThe case capped a stunning downfall for Manafort, a prominent figure in Republican Party circles for decades who also worked as a consultant to such international figures as former Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Yanukovych. Ellis had faced criticism by some in the legal community for comments he made during the trial that were widely interpreted as biased against the prosecution. Ellis repeatedly interrupted prosecutors, told them to stop using the word “oligarch” to describe people associated with Manafort because it made him seem “despicable,” and objected to pictures of Manafort’s luxury items they planned to show jurors. “It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” Ellis told prosecutors during the trial. Prosecutor Greg Andres urged Ellis to impose a steep sentence. “This case must stand as a beacon to others that this conduct cannot be accepted,” Andres told the hearing on Thursday. Jackson ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort had breached his agreement to cooperate with Mueller’s office by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent to the Russia probe including his interactions with a business partner they have said has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort is the only one of the 34 people and three companies charged by Mueller to have gone to trial. Several others including former campaign aides Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen have pleaded guilty, while longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone has pleaded not guilty. Trump, a Republican who has called Mueller’s investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt,” has not ruled out giving Manafort a presidential pardon, saying in November: “I wouldn’t take it off the table.” “There’s absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from Russia,” Kevin Downing, another Manafort lawyer, said outside the courthouse. The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, quickly accused Downing of making “a deliberate appeal for a pardon” from Trump. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said after the sentencing: “I believe Manafort has been disproportionately harassed and hopefully soon there will be an investigation of the overzealous prosecutorial intimidation so it doesn’t happen again.” Slideshow (6 Images)Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a report on his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction and Russia has denied U.S. intelligence findings that it interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump. Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign for five pivotal months in 2016 that included the Republican National Convention where Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, three of them as campaign chairman. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Andy Sullivan and Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Eric Beech and Makini Brice; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

We are now in the midst of an epic clash between Donald Trump and fired F.B.I. Director James Comey, neither of whom I hold in high esteem, both men with raging egos and questionable motives.The depth of my contempt differs between the two, but there is contempt for both.Comey is now making the rounds promoting his new book, which will no doubt be a monster best seller. Good for him. But Comey for me is a complicated character, a man of honorable service and flashes of horrendous judgment.His inexplicable handling of the investigations into Clinton’s emails is unforgivable.He made reckless and harmful disclosures and proclamations about the Clinton investigation while not whispering a word about the concurrent investigation into the Trump campaign.He says that the letter he released about a new phase of the Clinton email investigation just days before the election may have been colored by polling suggesting that Clinton was going to win, but that too is problematic.As Nate Silver tweeted Friday: “If Comey’s decision to release the letter on Oct. 28 was influenced by his interpretation of the polls, that really ought to cut against his image as an honorable, principled decision-maker. Instead, he was just being expedient and trying to save his own hide.”There were many factors that played into the 2016 election result.Russian interference. The work of Cambridge Analytica on behalf of the Trump campaign. The exploitation of social media.The Clinton campaign’s miscalculations. The actual content of John Podesta’s emails. Voter suppression. False impressions given by the polls that Clinton was sure to win.Racism, xenophobia, misogyny and ethno- and religious hostility disguised as economic anxiety.But Comey was also in that mix.While we may never be able to weigh the factors that contributed to Clinton’s defeat and Trump’s victory, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Comey’s actions were part of them.So please forgive me if I don’t rise in applause simply because Comey’s revelations are giving Trump agita. Nor expect the dampening of my condemnation of Comey because Trump World seeks to defame him.Then there is Trump, who, in the same week that Comey was on television saying that he could not be sure if the president was in a Russian hotel room with prostitutes peeing on each other, announced that we and a couple of allies had initiated a military campaign in Syria over its use of chemical weapons.To be sure, the situation in Syria is a humanitarian crisis and has been for years.The last report on the Syrian death toll by the United Nations came from 2016, when an official said 400,000 people had been killed. The U.N. said at that time it was virtually impossible to accurately verify how many people had died.In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that there are 5.6 million Syrian refugees and as of July 2016 “6.5 million people, including 2.8 million children, displaced within Syria, the biggest internally displaced population in the world.”Neither the United States nor the international community has developed a sufficient policy and response to this catastrophe. People simply seem to be hoping and praying that it soon comes to an end and trying to ensure that the fighting doesn’t spill out of Syria’s borders.The Trump administration, for its part, says that it has drawn a line in the sand on the use of chemical weapons, but that seems to be, at best, randomly enforced.On Friday, Nikki Haley herself said at the U.N. that “the United States estimates that Assad has used chemical weapons in the Syrian war at least 50 times. Public estimates are as high as 200.”Furthermore, the U.N. human rights office counts a number of chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2017 alone, all during Trump’s time in the White House.Human Rights Watch points out that:“Government forces used at least 13 types of internationally banned cluster munitions in over 400 attacks on opposition-held areas between July 2012 to August 2016, killing and injuring civilians, including children. The Syrian-Russian joint military operations, which began on September 30, 2015, have also extensively used internationally banned cluster munitions.”So why was an attack over the use of banned weapons so necessary right now, particularly since it was just earlier this month when Trump was saying he wanted to pull our troops out of Syria and since he campaigned on anti-interventionism?Again, forgive me if I’m not buying this as a purely humanitarian mission focused on protecting the Syrian people from suffering.This action and its timing stink. It feels like a legitimate crisis is being used as a tool of distraction, and that to me is unspeakably callous.So, I see no need to pick sides between Comey and Trump. I dislike the former, but I despise the latter.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is waging an unprecedented campaign to influence American public opinion ahead of November congressional elections and presents the greatest long-term counterintelligence threat to the United States, U.S. security officials said on Wednesday. Senators on the Homeland Security Committee questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and FBI Director Christopher Wray about President Donald Trump’s assertion that China is interfering in U.S. elections and asked whether Beijing poses a larger threat to the country than Moscow. Nielsen told the panel there were two types of threats to American election security from other nations: hacking or disruption of election infrastructure, which includes voter registration lists or voting machines, and influence campaigns. “China absolutely is on an unprecedented - or exerting unprecedented effort to influence American opinion,” Nielsen said. “We have not seen to date any Chinese attempts to compromise election infrastructure.” Wray went farther when asked whether China posed a larger threat than Russia, whose activities during the 2016 presidential election are the subject of a wide-ranging federal investigation that includes whether Moscow cooperated with the Trump campaign to sway the vote. “China in many ways represents the broadest, most complicated, most long-term counterintelligence threat we face,” affecting every sector of the U.S. economy, Wray said. “Russia is in many ways fighting to stay relevant after the fall of the Soviet Union. They’re fighting today’s fight. China’s is fighting tomorrow’s fight.” Trump last month accused China of seeking to meddle in the Nov. 6 congressional elections, saying Beijing did not want his Republican Party to do well because of his pugnacious stance on trade. “China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November. Against my administration,” Trump told a U.N. Security Council meeting. Trump made no reference to suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 election and provided no evidence for his allegation about China, which Beijing immediately rejected. Responding to the comments at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said maintaining healthy bilateral ties was in the best interests of people in both countries. He also urged the United States to take actions that benefit the relationship, rather than the opposite. Slideshow (4 Images)Trump has been skeptical of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and has repeatedly denied his campaign worked with Moscow to put him into the White House. He has drawn criticism from Democrats and his fellow Republicans that he is ignoring a threat to American democracy. U.S. intelligence officials have said Russia has used widespread influence campaigns, including on social media, that target elections and has tried to hack and steal information from American candidates and officials. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations. Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Philip Wen in BEIJING; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jonathan Oatis and Darren SchuettlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday.Did Al Franken’s fellow Senate Democrats judge him too quickly and harshly?Jane Mayer has written a deeply reported piece in the current New Yorker arguing strongly (if implicitly) that the answer is yes. And the case against Franken — for sexual harassment — looks weaker once Mayer has finished examining it. Still, this isn’t an easy case to evaluate, and I encourage you to read the piece.Here were my main takeaways:Franken’s original accuser, Leeann Tweeden, is not very credible. She has told demonstrable falsehoods and as a conservative radio host and friend of Sean Hannity’s, she had a political motive for damaging Franken. This much is clear: Franken and Tweeden appeared in a ribald skit together, and Franken posed in an inappropriate picture referring to the skit. Many of the other things Tweeden has said about the tour, including her description of the skit, don’t seem to be true.Franken had a pattern of touching women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable (such as kissing them on the mouth as a social greeting). Not all the allegations are clear cut. Taken together, though, they suggest that Franken behaved inappropriately. The Senate shouldn’t have rushed to judgment. Mayer quotes seven different Democrats in the Senate at the time who now regret pushing for Franken’s resignation. And I agree: The fair response would have been a hearing — without delay — to air the allegations against him, as both he and Tweeden favored. A hearing could have helped clarify whether his behavior was merely inappropriate or closer to predatory. Either way, he may have had to resign, because serving in Congress is a privilege not a right, but the complexities of his case would have come out much sooner.Wherever you stand on his case, I think it is worth thinking through. As the country finally begins to grapple with sexual harassment in a serious way, there are no doubt going to be other hard cases, too.[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]For more …Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast: “Democrats did not only him but themselves and liberal values serious harm by forcing Franken out without him getting his due process, and this is all going to come back on them, and those values, and quite possibly the #MeToo movement, in ways we can’t really anticipate.”“Due process exists in criminal proceedings precisely because the stakes are so high,” the lawyer Jill Filipovic writes for CNN. “We must also insist on a fair process when leveraging social and professional, but not criminal, penalties.”Lili Loofbourow acknowledges the holes Mayer pokes in Tweeden’s story but voices skepticism of Franken’s claims of having been “oblivious” to his conduct. “A consummate politician and performer with an ax to grind has done a formidable job of coming across as a clownish but well-meaning oaf,” she writes in Slate. “The question is: Should we buy the portrayal?”None of Franken’s other accusers “are right-wing operatives,” Amanda Marcotte says. “Most of them are clearly involved in Democratic politics and seem to have nothing to gain from lying about Franken,” she writes in Salon. “While a couple of the stories are relatively minor, several — such as the allegations of groping and the allegation of a proposition — are clear-cut examples of sexual harassment of the sort that Mayer has, in the past, put her talents toward exposing.”Vox’s Matthew Yglesias argues that Franken did the right thing, morally and politically, by resigning, and has tarnished that decision by expressing regrets: “Insisting that he is the real victim in all this becomes the opposite of atonement and ultimately makes the public rehabilitation he clearly craves impossible.”And Mayer discussed the article on “Fresh Air,” with Terry Gross.If you are not a subscriber to this newsletter, you can subscribe here. You can also join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

It’s basically your classic men-of-the-world vignette. Lying in business dress in the New York mansion of his friend Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew is receiving a foot massage from a young, well-dressed Russian woman. Other men are in the room while this is happening, and they include Epstein (also being foot-massaged by a Russian woman) and the literary agent John Brockman, who runs a foundation connecting scientists and intellectuals with billionaires. As the young Russians work on their feet, Andy is complaining about his lot. “In Monaco,” he says, according to Brockman’s account, “[Prince] Albert works 12 hours a day but at 9pm, when he goes out, he does whatever he wants, and nobody cares. But, if I do it, I’m in big trouble.”Waa waa waa. What could be a more effective heartstring-tugger than “other European princes have it better than me”? It’s right up there with Chandler’s line from Friends: “My wallet’s too small for my 50s, and my diamond shoes are too tight!”The scene is recalled in an email revealed by Brockman’s soon-to-be former client, the tech author Evgeny Morozov. He is one of many divesting themselves of even tenuous Epstein association in the wake of the billionaire financier’s suicide in a Manhattan jail earlier this month, as he awaited trial for sex trafficking, underage and otherwise.But what of Andy? Under some scrutiny, he and ex-wife Duchess Fergie private-jetted away from Balmoral last week, then on to the luxury bit of Sotogrande, where they are said to be gracing private barbecues. Briefings suggest, distractingly, that they might be getting back together. Andrew has been snapped on an exclusive golf course. His daughter Princess Beatrice might be getting engaged to her boyfriend. “They’re going to get married,” royal expert Ingrid Seward declared this week, divertingly. “I was told by a member of the family.” So, on go the Yorks. It really is the full fairytale. By which I mean: fairly Grimm.Back to the foot massage scene, then, where the chaps seem to have got on to Prince Albert’s night-time freedom via the subject of Julian Assange. Brockman reports Andy saying: “We think they’re liberal in Sweden, but it’s more like northern England as opposed to southern Europe.” Is the implication that Swedish authorities investigating sexual assault allegations are being illiberal?Either way, you don’t get all that nanny state stuff on Epstein’s private Virgin Islands property, reportedly known locally as “Paedophile Island”. Or as Buckingham Palace finally put it in a statement denying any impropriety on behalf of the prince: “The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes.”I’m slightly sorry for the royal flunkies who had to issue this line, given that most of us are suffering eyeball strain from all the rolling we’re doing. Even so, I do feel we need further clarification on what precisely the Duke is appalled by. Is it just the “recent reports”? Because if we’re meant to believe that Prince Andrew is appalled by ALL of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein – both the ones alleged and the ones he served actual jail time for – then allow me to treat this statement with all the dignity it deserves. To wit: BULL. SHIT. Bullshit Prince Andrew didn’t know what sort of guy his friend was when he was snapped walking with the Tier 1 sex offender, after he got out of jail, in a photo the New York Post headlined “PRINCE & PERV”. Bullshit he didn’t know why his close friend WENT TO PRISON FOR A YEAR, but kept hanging out with him anyway. Bullshit if, as Brockman recounts, he lay on his back in that guy’s house, with a Russian attending to his feet, talking over her head to men of the world about the nocturnal licence afforded to minor European royals, and he didn’t know roughly what he was swimming in. Bullshit. I get we have to pay for Andrew’s lifetime of jollies; but we don’t have to have our intelligence insulted by him.I’m not even going to wheel out that old writing device where one says that either Prince Andrew is stupid or deeply compromised, and wonder archly which it is. Guys, he can be both! In fact, the one feeds the other.As for where we go from here, perhaps a multimillion-pound royal wedding would indeed be helpful. It should be quite the opposite. Where Princess Anne pointedly didn’t, Prince Andrew demanded all the titles and trappings for his two daughters – security details, civil list money, full royal weddings – and was furious when denied some of them. Yet Beatrice and Eugenie still live like … well, princesses.So instead of distracting from the miserable stories of the female attendees of various Epstein mansions, these gilded lives should throw them into even more shameful relief. They suggest the kind of man – and we’ve all met them – who has a two-tier view of the female sex. There is a world for their daughters, hopefully insulated from men like their friend Jeffrey, and then there is another world for the girls who service their friend Jeffrey.Yet decent, humane people know there aren’t two kinds of women and girls – there are just women and girls. I’m reminded of the climactic line in All My Sons, where the wartime profiteer Joe Keller has been finally made – by his own son’s suicide note – to see how his actions were responsible for the fate of so many other young men. “I think to him they were all my sons,” Keller reflects. “And I guess they were. I guess they were.”And so with the girls in the stories that swirl around Epstein and his circle, which includes the Duke: either broken, or yet-to-be-broken. But ultimately, breakable. They are all daughters, too, your Royal Highness. The Russian masseuse on your feet, the 17-year-old runaway on whose bare hip you have your hand in that fateful picture in London, the terrified 14-year-old who ran screaming from your great friend’s house in her underwear, who you must have read about at the time, because I did, and I didn’t even know the guy. And all the others. They are each someone’s daughter, or they were once. They all once played at princesses and castles and imagined their own fairytale weddings. Funny how dreams die, isn’t it – and who helps to crush them.• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Topics Jeffrey Epstein Opinion Prince Andrew comment

Donald Trump and his team have been under investigation for months by former FBI-head Robert Mueller. Mueller is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help win the 2016 election and defeat Hillary Clinton. Mueller is also looking into whether the campaign and the president have sought to obstruct justice. Trump’s inner circle has been under increasing pressure from the investigation, but can it hold? Paul Manafort: ex-Trump chair taken into custody after violating bail terms

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications. Customers walk past an Apple logo inside of an Apple store at Grand Central Station in New York, U.S., August 1, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson PAUL NOLTE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, KINGSVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT, CHICAGO, WHO OWNS APPLE: “Do we all get hats for this? To be honest, I don’t know if it has any big implications. Apple is so different than the other tech stocks in the FAANG group... So I don’t know if there are any implications for the FAANG group or technology in general because you had a really very uneven earnings season, with some issues unique to each of those companies, so it’s hard to generalize. “I would expect to see the dividend increase, announced at their annual meeting. For those that hold Apple, it’s reasonably priced here. We’ve owned it for three or four years now, and it’s probably our second- or third-largest holding. I have trimmed it over the last 12 months just because it was large compared to the rest of the portfolio, so I may do that again if it continues to rise. If it goes up to say $250, I’d trim it a little bit. “My concern generally speaking is the FAANG stocks are just incredibly large relative to the rest of the market, and with a lot of passive money going into the S&P 500, ultimately a lot of money goes into those FAANG stocks by default. So it’s a self -perpetuating machine.” “Amazon is the next closest and given the step backwards that Netflix and Facebook and, to a lesser extent, (Alphabet) took, Amazon has a reasonable shot at getting there.” KIM FORREST, SENIOR PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT FORT PITT CAPITAL GROUP IN PITTSBURGH: “It’s something for people to talk about, a number, a threshold to reach. It was inevitable ... this means that Apple did a really good job this quarter.” “The more telling thing is if people should be buying it today if they don’t have a position. I don’t know about that. The more practical approach is just because something hits some sort of milestone it doesn’t mean it needs to be purchased today. Enjoy watching it ... Price is always important and why would you be one of the people buying it on a high.” “It’s a good sign for the market and the economy. Because even though today we’re talking about the impact of trade or currency war, an issue with China, Apple who makes most of their products in China is hitting this.” “If we can look beyond what’s happening today politically and a group of investors says ‘I’m buying into Apple,’ that’s a hugely positive sign.” “There’s enough momentum in the technology sector because we saw that turn around in the past few days that it didn’t feel like a dead cat bounce. We are in the thick of summer where there are fewer investors paying attention to the market and trading but it doesn’t feel like those weird trading days before a holiday where ... lack of volume is really apparent.” “It doesn’t particularly mean a whole lot to a professional investor, like crossing the whole numbers on the Dow. It just doesn’t.” BRAD NEUMAN, DIRECTOR OF MARKET STRATEGY AT ALGER, A GROWTH EQUITY ASSET MANAGEMENT FIRM IN NEW YORK CITY: “It speaks to the power of the company’s platform. We think of Apple as less of a device maker and more of a platform for services, and I think the markets are starting to recognize the value of its platform and services more and more and that’s what is being reflected in the increase in market capitalization.” PETER TUZ, PRESIDENT OF CHASE INVESTMENT COUNSEL IN CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA: “It’s certainly a tremendous achievement to create a company with a $1 trillion market cap. “Steve Jobs and his co-founders... created a company that has lasted a long time and continues to capture the imagination of consumers all around the world with their new products and services. “It is still, compared to many other companies, not an expensive stock. “They still have a long runway with new products and especially getting more people addicted to the various services that they have rolled out. “I am thinking Amazon is going to get there in the not-too-distant future as well. “It’s a tremendous achievement. Ultimately, it’s just a number.” Americas Economics and Markets Desk; +1-646 223-6300Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

But shortly after the Senate report was released, Mr. Kavanaugh convinced Mr. Starr to reopen what he called a “full-fledged” investigation of the Foster matter, telling his colleagues, as justification, that “we have received allegations that Mr. Foster’s death related to President and Mrs. Clinton’s involvement” in Whitewater and other alleged scandals. Who were these unnamed, presumably reliable sources on whose word the case should be reopened? Mr. Kavanaugh’s files in the National Archives make clear that they were some of the most ludicrous hard-right conspiracy-mongers of the time.One was Reed Irvine, a self-appointed debunker of the “fake news” of mainstream media. Another was Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, an English author of a book entitled “The Secret Life of Bill Clinton” that posited that the Oklahoma City bombing was an F.B.I. plot gone awry. A third was Christopher Ruddy, today the chief executive of Newsmax and confidant of President Trump, but at the time on the payroll of the right-wing tycoon Richard Mellon Scaife to promote conspiracies. As inventive as they were vindictive, these partisans concocted all sorts of wild theories to explain why Mr. Foster could not have killed himself. According to one of Mr. Kavanaugh’s sources, Mr. Foster had been working for the National Security Agency and was being blackmailed by the Israelis over a secret Swiss bank account. Carpet fibers had been found on Mr. Foster’s clothing, which was proof positive that he was murdered, his body wrapped in a carpet and then dumped. Another charged that “long blond hairs” on Mr. Foster’s clothing pointed to a cover-up.Mr. Kavanaugh noted in various memos that he personally believed that Mr. Foster had indeed committed suicide — “my thoughts, not the Office’s position,” he clarified at one point. But he did not file away the harebrained theories; instead, he apparently felt obligated to address the conspiracy-mongers’ already disproved fantasies. And for nearly three years at a cost of $2 million he aggressively followed up. He investigated the Swiss bank account connection, down to examining Mr. Foster’s American Express bills for flights to Switzerland. He meticulously examined the White House carpets, old and new. (By now, Mr. Foster had been dead four years.) He sent investigators in search of follicle specimens from Mr. Foster’s bereft, blond, teenage daughter. (“We have Foster’s hair,” one agent working for Mr. Kavanaugh reported in triumph.)

Enlarge this image White House press secretary Sarah Sanders blasted fired FBI Director James Comey's new book at the White House briefing on Friday. Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images White House press secretary Sarah Sanders blasted fired FBI Director James Comey's new book at the White House briefing on Friday. Mark Wilson/Getty Images The White House sought to discredit James Comey ahead of the release of his memoir next week, lashing out at the former FBI director in deeply personal terms on Friday.Calling Comey a "disgraced partisan hack," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that the American people would be able to see through the "lies" in Comey's book, which offers a scathing assessment of President Trump. Politics 5 Insights From Comey's Memoir: Ex-FBI Chief Blasts Trump As Moblike "This is nothing more than a poorly executed PR stunt by Comey to desperately rehabilitate his tattered reputation," Sanders said at a briefing.Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, is set to officially be released next week, but details about the memoir began to leak on Thursday.In the memoir, Comey discusses the circumstances surrounding his dismissal from the Trump administration in May 2017. He describes Trump as "unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values." Book Reviews In 'A Higher Loyalty,' James Comey Describes An 'Unethical, And Untethered' President Asked to describe what the White House felt Comey was lying about, Sanders said he had given differing accounts for why he handled the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server the way he did and about whether he had felt pressure to end any probes.Earlier on Friday, Trump also tried to knock down Comey's book and defended his decision to fire him. He tweeted that Comey was a "proven LEAKER & LIAR" and a "slime ball."This is not the first time that the White House has worked to undercut an unflattering book. In January, Michael Wolff's White House exposé, Fire and Fury, painted a picture of a dysfunctional executive branch and raised questions about Trump's fitness for office. The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books 'People Regret What They Said To Me,' Michael Wolff Tells NPR About Trump Book At that time, White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in statement that the book should be "sold in the bargain fiction section."Sanders used similar language against Comey's book on Friday, saying he was "peddling a book that belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section."

The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US election by the special counsel Robert Mueller has brought to light a secretly financed pro-Russian lobbying effort that employed former senior European politicians.According to new charges filed in a Virginia court on Friday, the Europeans known as the “Hapsburg Group” were led by a “former European chancellor” and allegedly covertly paid by Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager. At the time of the alleged payments, in 2012 and 2013, Manafort was working on behalf of the then Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his pro-Moscow Party of Regions. In the new charges against Manafort and his business partner, the Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, Mueller stated that the two men “secretly retained a group of former senior European politicians to take positions favourable to Ukraine, including by lobbying in the United States”.“The plan was for the former politicians, informally called the ‘Hapsburg Group’ [an alternative spelling of Habsburg, the royal family of the Austro-Hungarian empire] to appear to be providing their independent assessments of Government of Ukraine actions, when in fact they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine.” In a June 2012 memo, labeled “Eyes Only”, Manafort outlined what he described as a “Super VIP” part of the effort, to “assemble a small group of high-level European highly influential champions and politically credible friends who can act informally and without any visible relationship with the Government of Ukraine”. The group was to managed by a “former European chancellor” who is referred to on the charge sheet as “Foreign Politician A”.Chancellor is the title of the head of government in Germany and Austria. Justice department filings – which were filed retroactively – indicate that it was the former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer who went to meet congressmen in 2013 accompanied by two lobbyists working for a company called Mercury.The company was one of two lobbying firms hired to represent the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels thinktank Mueller’s office says was set up by Manafort and Gates to act as a front for Yanukovych. The news was first reported by Politico. Gusenbauer told die Presse he had two coffees with Manafort, one in the US and one in Europe, and did not receive money for it “or at least not consciously so”. He said he had been paid by a US or British company for his engagement on Ukrainian issues but could not remember which.The Social Democrat who was chancellor in 2007 and 2008 told the Austrian Press Agency he had never worked on behalf of Yanukovych or the Party of Regions, but had advocated a Europe-facing future for Ukraine. A Mercury lobbyist also accompanied the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi to meetings on Capitol Hill a few months before Gusenbauer. A Prodi spokeswoman emphasised that the former prime minister had no recollection of being in Washington or meeting with lawmakers.Prodi then defended his work in a statement, saying he had worked for “many years” to improve relations between the European Union and Ukraine and had numerous meetings and given public speeches – some of them paid - in various European capitals. “These are serious and perfectly consistent initiatives for a former president of the European Commission,” the statement said.Prodi said he did not recall the March 2013 meetings in Washington that were noted in the Politico story but said he was sure “that they were simply meant as a chance to expose his point of view on the situation in Ukraine”.Prodi denied lobbying or being part of a “secret lobby” and said he had not received any money for the activities. A spokeswoman for Prodi would not answer questions about whether Prodi knew Manafort. The former prime minister told the New York Times he had received funds from Gusenbauer for their joint work on Ukraine and the EU.Prodi was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. In 2013 – the year Prodi met US lawmakers, according to the lobbyist filing – he wrote an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor in which he called Ukraine an important source of economic growth and energy security for Europe “as well as a bridge to Russia”.Prodi’s ties to Russia have been a source of controversy and intrigue in Italy. He staunchly denied an unfounded and unproven allegation made in 2006 by Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian state security official who was murdered in London later that year, that he had links to the Soviet KGB.Prodi threatened to sue Litvinenko and an inquiry into the matter, led by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, was shut down.After the filing of new indictment in Washington, alleging large-scale bank and tax fraud on top of money-laundering and other charges filed in October, Gates struck a plea agreement with Mueller, agreeing to cooperate with the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign, on which he was a senior official, and the Kremlin.Manafort, who is under house arrest, issued a statement saying: “Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence. I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise.”He added: “This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.” Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Paul Manafort Republicans US politics Russia Europe news

Apple became the first trillion-dollar U.S. company, measured by market capitalization, on Thursday. It’s a largely symbolic moment, but one that invites some reflection on what Apple has been in the past and where it might be headed.The engines—one small, one big—of Apple’s rocket ride to a trillion were the iPod and iPhone. Its other products are important, but those two were money, and each played a distinct role in Apple’s journey. The iPod helped reinvent and reinvigorate the company, while the iPhone would become the epoch-shifting hit that would both anticipate and push forward mobile computing as we know it.In the mid-1990s, many people wondered if Apple would even survive, hard as that is to imagine today. The company had forced out Steve Jobs, who went off to found NeXT. It was being beaten in the market by lower-price Windows PCs. The CEO at the time, Gil Amelio, bought NeXT and brought Jobs back in 1997, and Jobs began to rebuild the company. He tightened belts and product focus. By 2000, Apple—still focused on Mac desktops and laptops—was a healthier company, but not a thriving one.And then Apple started to become a consumer electronics company. Jobs asked Tony Fadell to lead a team that would build a stylish, Apple-flavored MP3 player. MP3 players weren’t new, but Jobs and Fadell knew Apple could make one that looked, felt, and sounded better than the others. They were right; the iPod became a hit. Later Jobs asked Fadell to help build the Apple MP3 player into a new phone. This was a defensive move in a way, because phones from the likes of Motorola and Nokia were starting to incorporate music players.In January 2007–the month the original iPhone was announced–Jobs renamed the company from Apple Computer to Apple Inc., making it official that Apple was more than a computer company.The iPhone wasn’t an immediate smash. Apple’s stock price climbed from the low teens to the mid-twenties after the announcement (the phone went on sale in June 2007), but fell back down to $11.50 by January 2009.In March 2010, Apple reached a market cap of $200 billion, passing Walmart. It became the most valuable company in the world when it hit a valuation of $337 in August 2011, passing ExxonMobil. By April 2012, Apple’s market cap was $600 billion.To $2 trillion and beyondAs I write this, I have AirPods in my ears, an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPhone in my pocket, and a MacBook Pro in front of me. Why? It’s partly because I write about Apple for work, but it’s also because Apple products offer a work and creative environment that feels comfortable to me. Marc Porat, the CEO of General Magic, the early 1990s Apple offshoot that envisioned an era of pocket-sized personal communicators, told me that Apple knew even back then that it wasn’t the greatest hardware company in the world. But it also knew that it understood users better than anyone. That knowledge touches on all kinds of skills, from designing interfaces to defining product road maps to creating marketing messages.Put another way, Apple has specialized in the interface between digital devices and the human brain. In many ways it’s nailed this. Apple products still echo Jobs’s simple and clean design sense and style and Steve Wozniak’s sense of warmth and fun, connecting them back to 1977’s Apple II.This comfortable user interface is enormously valuable. If there is a dominant theme in the 21st century, it will be the radical impact of digital technology on our bodies, our transportation, our entertainment, and entire industries. Apple must continue to play at the human entry points to these new frontiers. Already, it’s working on two such new interfaces–the self-driving car and augmented reality glasses.Over the past year, Apple has spent $13.4 billion on research and development for such products. In the June-ending quarter it spent $3.7 billion–that’s up 42% from the $2.6 billion it spent in the same quarter two years ago. Much of this money is going into product categories we don’t know about yet. But with every new effort, Apple is working to nail the interface that guides the user through a digital experience.It’s far too soon to render a verdict on how Apple will manage its future expansion into additional categories. The central question is whether it still has the stuff that got it from the ash pit of the mid-’90s to the trillion-dollar company it is today. If you look at that first trillion in valuation as the first chapter in Apple’s story, you’d have to say that Jobs was the main character. He was the guy with the Vision Thing.Apple needs a character, or characters, like that to keep growing through chapter 2. But I don’t buy the narrative that the company has turned into a cash machine that just sells services through existing devices and pays stockholder dividends. The Vision Thing is alive in Cupertino—it’s just far more distributed than it used to be, in brains up and down the org chart. The company’s real challenge going forward may be making sure the good ideas rise to the top and don’t get killed off along the way.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Thursday by a U.S. judge to less than four years in prison - far shy of federal sentencing guidelines - for financial crimes uncovered during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis imposed the surprisingly lenient 47-month sentence on Manafort, 69, during a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, in which the veteran Republican political consultant asked for mercy but expressed no remorse for his actions. Manafort was convicted by a jury last August of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. Ellis disregarded federal sentencing guidelines cited by prosecutors that called for 19-1/2 to 24 years in prison. The judge ordered Manafort to pay a fine of $50,000 and restitution of just over $24 million. Manafort, brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair because of a condition called gout, listened during the hearing as Ellis extolled his “otherwise blameless” life in which he “earned the admiration of a number of people” and engaged in “a lot of good things.” “Clearly the guidelines were way out of whack on this,” Ellis said. Manafort was convicted after prosecutors accused him of hiding from the U.S. government millions of dollars he earned as a consultant for Ukraine’s former pro-Russia government. After pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster, prosecutors said, Manafort lied to banks to secure loans and maintain an opulent lifestyle with luxurious homes, designer suits and even a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket. The judge also said Manafort “is not before the court for any allegations that he, or anyone at his direction, colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” The sentence was even less than the sentence recommended by Manafort’s lawyers of 4-1/4 to 5-1/4 years in prison. “These are serious crimes, we understand that,” said Thomas Zehnle, one of Manafort’s lawyers. “Tax evasion is by no means jaywalking. But it’s not narcotics trafficking.” Related CoverageManafort's luxurious life nowhere in sight at sentencingTimeline: Big moments in Mueller investigation of Russian meddling in 2016 U.S. electionLegal experts expressed surprise over the sentence. “This is a tremendous defeat for the special counsel’s office,” former federal prosecutor David Weinstein said. Manafort’s sentence was less than half of what people who plead guilty and cooperate with the government typically get in similar cases, according to Mark Allenbaugh, a former attorney with the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “Very shocking,” he said. Ellis, appointed to the bench by Republican former President Ronald Reagan, called the sentence “sufficiently punitive,” and noted that Manafort’s time already served would be subtracted from the 47 months. Manafort has been jailed since June 2018. Manafort’s legal troubles are not over. He faces sentencing next Wednesday in Washington in a separate case for two conspiracy charges involving lobbying and money laundering to which he pleaded guilty last September. Legal experts said the light sentence from Ellis could prompt U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a sentence closer to the maximum of 10 years in the Washington case, and order that the sentence run after the current one is completed rather than concurrently. Jackson was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Before the sentencing, Manafort expressed no remorse but talked about how the case had been difficult for him and his family. Manafort, who opted not to testify during his trial, told Ellis that “to say I have been humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” He described his life as “professionally and financially in shambles.” The judge told Manafort: “I was surprised I did not hear you express regret for engaging in wrongful conduct.” Manafort, with noticeably grayer hair than just months ago, came into the courtroom in a wheelchair holding a cane, wearing a green prison jumpsuit emblazoned with the words “Alexandria Inmate” on the back. It was a far cry from Manafort’s usual dapper appearance and stylish garb. During a break shortly before the sentence was handed down, Manafort turned around and blew his wife, Kathleen, a kiss. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort appears for sentencing in this court sketch in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Bill HennessyThe case capped a stunning downfall for Manafort, a prominent figure in Republican Party circles for decades who also worked as a consultant to such international figures as former Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and Yanukovych. Ellis had faced criticism by some in the legal community for comments he made during the trial that were widely interpreted as biased against the prosecution. Ellis repeatedly interrupted prosecutors, told them to stop using the word “oligarch” to describe people associated with Manafort because it made him seem “despicable,” and objected to pictures of Manafort’s luxury items they planned to show jurors. “It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” Ellis told prosecutors during the trial. Prosecutor Greg Andres urged Ellis to impose a steep sentence. “This case must stand as a beacon to others that this conduct cannot be accepted,” Andres told the hearing on Thursday. Jackson ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort had breached his agreement to cooperate with Mueller’s office by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent to the Russia probe including his interactions with a business partner they have said has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort is the only one of the 34 people and three companies charged by Mueller to have gone to trial. Several others including former campaign aides Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen have pleaded guilty, while longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone has pleaded not guilty. Trump, a Republican who has called Mueller’s investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt,” has not ruled out giving Manafort a presidential pardon, saying in November: “I wouldn’t take it off the table.” “There’s absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from Russia,” Kevin Downing, another Manafort lawyer, said outside the courthouse. The Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, quickly accused Downing of making “a deliberate appeal for a pardon” from Trump. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said after the sentencing: “I believe Manafort has been disproportionately harassed and hopefully soon there will be an investigation of the overzealous prosecutorial intimidation so it doesn’t happen again.” Slideshow (6 Images)Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a report on his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction and Russia has denied U.S. intelligence findings that it interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump. Manafort worked for Trump’s campaign for five pivotal months in 2016 that included the Republican National Convention where Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, three of them as campaign chairman. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Andy Sullivan and Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne, Eric Beech and Makini Brice; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Other signs of a link to ISIS can be found in 35 videos that one A.D.F. member posted online starting in 2016.The footage shows the rebel group’s flag, which includes the so-called seal of Muhammad, the main visual element of the ISIS banner. Interviews with defectors indicate that the flag was seen flying from camps run by the combatants in eastern Congo, Mr. Poole said.One video shows a man explaining that the group intends to create an Islamic State in Congo and calling on others to join them.The message appears to be working, according to Mr. Poole, who said the recruitment drive appealed especially to Islamists in the region who could not afford a plane ticket to the Middle East and instead could head to Congo for the equivalent of a $20 bus ticket.“In the last year, we have debriefed a South African, a Tanzanian, a Kenyan, a Rwandan, a Burundian, a Brit and a South Sudanese,” he said. “That’s a very worrying trend for an area that has been rocked by violence.”While the evidence points to a concrete connection with the Islamic State, that does not mean the international terrorist group has a viable franchise in Congo. It remains unclear to what extent the A.D.F. is in communication with ISIS, or whether it is also flirting with other jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda.However, the manner in which the affiliation appears to have been forged fits a pattern.In many areas where ISIS has developed active chapters — from the coast of Libya, to the deserts of Sinai in Egypt, to safe houses in Bangladesh — it has grafted itself onto existing militant groups.

Copycat terrorism is on the rise again, this time from the far right.While the victims of these attacks were diverse – from young children to army veterans and mothers of newborn babies – their alleged perpetrators had much in common: radicalised white men who frequented online far-right hotbeds such as the anonymous imageboard website 8chan and the alt-right Twitter equivalent, Gab. And they believed their race to be threatened by an imminent “invasion” or gradual “population replacement”.In the summer of 2016, one Isis-inspired lone-actor attack was followed by the next: first a truck attack in Nice, then several knife attacks and a bombing in Germany, followed by a hostage-taking at a church in Normandy.The ideology driving today’s wave of far-right emulation attacks is, of course, different in nature, but the underlying contagion effect is similar. The spike in jihadi attacks in 2016 came after Isis spokesman Abu Muhammed al-Adnani repeated his call for lone-wolf attacks against western targets in a recording that quickly spread across online channels.The Christchurch shooting suspect is said to have encouraged his audience on 8chan to follow his example. “I only wish to inspire others,” the suspect in the Poway synagogue shooting in California announced in a similar tone in the document he left behind on the same platform. Shortly before the El Paso attack occurred, a post calling for racial separation and denouncing the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” appeared on 8chan.The deadly El Paso attack would be at least the third time in 2019 that 8chan has been accused of acting as a radicalisation engine. Like the Isis attackers, the white supremacist shooters are part of toxic extremist subcultures rather than socially isolated, disturbed individuals.But politicians and security forces have systematically underestimated the risks emerging from inherently violent far-right ideologies. After taking office in 2017, President Trump even cut the funds for anti-racist organisations and far-right extremism prevention programmes. Terrorism is a means, not an end. Its strategy is based on generating attention, inflaming tensions and escalating conflicts. Whether Isis suicide bombings or white supremacist shootings, the shared goal of such acts is usually to spark a war of races, religions or cultures. The alleged Christchurch attacker wrote that he wanted “to add momentum to the pendulum swings of history, further destabilising and polarising western society”. Similar to his jihadi counterparts, he denounced the “nihilistic, hedonistic, individualistic insanity” in contemporary western society.These parallels mean that we neeed to apply what we know about martyrdom operations from previous waves of terrorism. First and foremost, we need to tackle the underlying ideology and its online spread. With Trump and some European politicians echoing the language of the 8chan community and using words such as “invaders” to describe immigrants, it will be challenging to reverse the emboldening of the violent far right and the normalisation of their rhetoric.Our latest report at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue revealed that 8chan and similar sites served as a central hub for the wider dissemination of propaganda related to the so-called great replacement theory. Following slick online operations coordinated by far-right activists on fringe platforms, these conspiracy theories have increasingly entered mainstream discussions on social media. The number of tweets mentioning the theory nearly tripled in four years from just over 120,000 in 2014 to just over 330,000 in 2018.Despite recent changes in the removal policies of bigger platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which now cover white separatist and white nationalist content, there remain vast numbers of websites that are willing to host far-right extremist accounts. Many racist and violence-endorsing pages continue to be operative across the less known alt-tech platforms: from extremist in-house creations to ultra-libertarian social media sites and encrypted messaging apps. In such far-right safe havens, it does not take a user long to come across posts that explicitly incite crimes against Muslims, Jews, black people, Hispanics and leftwing politicians, or step-by-step instructions on how to build weapons at home.Despite a decrease in the number of Islamist extremist attacks across Europe and North America in the last two years and, at the same time, a large increase in the number of far-right-inspired terror attacks, the response provided by the international security community is inadequate. After the emergence of Isis, it did not take long until early warning systems were introduced on a global scale. Removal mechanisms were faster, ample resources were provided and international cooperation was more determined. There is a database that facilitates the removal of extremist photo and video content across tech platforms, but it focuses almost exclusively on al-Qaida and Isis-related propaganda.If we want to protect our communities from more atrocities, we need our governments to step up their efforts for an internationally coordinated response to the online spread of white supremacist propaganda.A first step would be to agree on an international definition of terrorism that is ideologically agnostic and includes not only traditional jihadi organisations but also loose far-right networks. Second, governments will need to look beyond the big tech platforms and introduce legal frameworks that tackle the ongoing migration of extremists to the smaller alt-tech sites.And, finally, we need a stronger international response to condemn political rhetoric that belittles, legitimises or even endorses the dangerous concepts and conspiracy theories of far-right extremists. If we fail to do so, they will continue to destroy innocent lives as well as the fabric that holds together our democratic societies.• Julia Ebner is a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism Topics The far right Opinion El Paso shooting Islamic State Al-Qaida Gun crime comment