WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI director James Comey said in an ABC News interview on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump is a dangerous, “morally unfit” leader doing “tremendous damage” to institutional and cultural norms. Comey, fired by Trump in May last year, was worried the president may be open to blackmail by Russia given claims he was present when prostitutes urinated on each other during a 2013 Moscow visit. Comey’s firing came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing possible connections between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia’s meddling in the U.S. election. Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion or improper activity. Comey said in the exclusive interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, which aired at 10 p.m. on Sunday, that it is “possible, but I don’t know” whether Russia has evidence to back up the allegations about Trump’s Moscow trip. Trump told Comey that he had not stayed overnight in the Moscow hotel and that the claims related to the prostitutes were not true, Comey said. “A person ... who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement,” Comey said. “He is morally unfit to be president,” he added. Comey has a tell-all book, “A Higher Loyalty,” due out on Tuesday. The book’s imminent release - and the slated ABC News interview - prompted Trump to hurl a new set of insults at Comey earlier on Sunday, challenging accusations made in the book, and insisting that he never pressed Comey to be loyal to him. “Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!” Trump wrote early on Sunday in one of five Twitter posts aimed directly at Comey. Reuters and other news outlets have obtained copies of Comey’s book before its formal release. In it, Comey wrote that Trump, in a private meeting, pressed the then-FBI director for his loyalty. A copy of former FBI director James Comey's book "A Higher Loyalty" is seen in New York City, New York, U.S. April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Soren LarsonComey told ABC News that the title of the book came from that “bizarre conversation” he had with Trump at the White House in January 2017, shortly after his inauguration. “He asked for my loyalty personally as the F.B.I. director. My loyalty’s supposed to be to the American people and to the institution,” Comey said in the interview. The FBI has long tried to operate as an independent law enforcement agency. “I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies,” Trump said on Twitter. Comey is now a crucial witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump has tried to obstruct the Russia probe. Comey told ABC News that he believes there is “certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice.” Comey also defended his decision to publicly disclose the FBI’s re-opening of its investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of email when she was secretary of state. The Clinton probe was already public, Comey said, whereas the FBI’s examination of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was in its early stages. It did not become publicly known until after the 2016 presidential election. Despite his myriad of reservations about Trump, Comey told ABC News that he did not believe the U.S. Congress should impeach him, as it would let the American people “off the hook” for something “they’re duty bound to do directly.” “People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values,” he said. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, expressed qualified support for Comey. Asked whether Comey was a man of integrity, the Republican speaker said: “As far as I know,” but added that he did not know him well. Asked about Trump’s use last week of the words “slime ball” to describe Comey, Ryan said: “I don’t use words like that.” Slideshow (2 Images)Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the ABC interview reaffirms that Comey’s “higher loyalty is to himself.” “He has no credibility and President Trump was right to follow through on the bipartisan calls for him to be fired,” McDaniel said in a statement. (Refiles to add dropped article “A” from book title, paragraph 9.) Reporting by Amanda Becker and Sarah Lynch; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA Director John Brennan said on Thursday he would not be silenced by Donald Trump, a day after the president revoked the Obama-era official’s security clearance and said the move was directly tied to the Russia investigation. FILE PHOTO: Former CIA Director John Brennan arrives for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing evaluating the intelligence community assessment on "Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 16, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File PhotoRetired Navy Admiral William McRaven, who oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, responded to Trump’s move by praising Brennan and asking the president to revoke his security clearance as well. In a statement on Wednesday, Trump said he revoked Brennan’s authorization for making what he called “unfounded and outrageous allegations” about his administration and was evaluating whether to strip clearances from other former top officials. Brennan and the others have criticized the Republican president. Trump later told the Wall Street Journal his decision was connected to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and alleged collusion by his campaign. “I call it the rigged witch hunt, (it) is a sham,” Trump told the newspaper in an interview on Wednesday. “And these people led it. “It’s something that had to be done,” Trump added. The president has denied any collusion. Russia has said it did not interfere, contrary to U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings. Brennan, who led the CIA under Democratic President Barack Obama, on Thursday called Trump’s denials “hogwash” and vowed not to be silenced. “The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of ‘Trump Incorporated’ attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets,” Brennan wrote in an opinion article in the New York Times. Former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, another critic whose clearance Trump said he might target, cautioned that Brennan was expressing “an informed opinion.” It remained up to Mueller to make a final conclusion, Clapper told CNN. Mueller has indicted or secured guilty pleas from 32 people and three companies, including Russian intelligence officials and former Trump aides. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said in a statement that if Brennan’s conclusion that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians was based on intelligence he has seen since leaving office, “it constitutes an intelligence breach.” The Republican senator also said Trump has “full authority” to revoke Brennan’s security clearance. High-ranking government officials sometimes retain security clearances after leaving office to advise their successors as needed, and some private-sector companies can also require them. Former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, among others, could also see their clearances revoked. Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official currently in the criminal division, was also on the White House list. “I don’t trust many of those people on that list,” Trump told the Journal. “I think that they’re very duplicitous. I think they’re not good people.” In a letter to Trump published in the Washington Post, retired Admiral McRaven, calling Brennan "one of the finest public servants I have ever known," said he "would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency." McRaven's name was not on Trump's list. (wapo.st/2PaA0AK) “Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” wrote McRaven, who led the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014. Brennan does not face any formal charges of violating any regulations or laws. He has frequently criticized the president on television news shows and in blistering tweets that Trump on Wednesday called “wild outbursts.” Reactions from Republican lawmakers were mixed, with some critical of Trump while others blamed Brennan for acting inappropriately. Democratic lawmakers blasted the president’s move as dangerous. U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro said Mueller should also investigate the issue now that Trump has tied it to the Russia probe. “It’s an abuse of power because he’s not doing it for a legitimate reason,” Castro told CNN. Reporting by Susan Heavey, Makini Brice; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason, Jonathan Landay and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jeffrey BenkoeOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr is due on Thursday to release a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 22-month investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election and contacts between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Moscow. The special counsel and U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russia used a campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States, denigrate Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump’s candidacy. Russia has denied election interference. Barr said on March 24 Mueller did not establish that Trump’s 2016 campaign team engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia. Here are some key interactions between Trump advisers and Russian figures that have been unearthed by Mueller’s probe and investigations in Congress. Several top Trump aides, including campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, son-in-law Jared Kushner and son Donald Trump Jr., met in June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York with a Russian lawyer who had offered damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. U.S. prosecutors said the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was an agent for the Kremlin. The meeting was arranged by Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist. Participants in the meeting said nothing improper occurred and that Veselnitskaya discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia and adoption policy, not election issues. The president said he did not know about the meeting beforehand. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, said he pursued a deal to build a Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow until June 2016, after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. Cohen said in a guilty plea that he spoke with an assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary in January of that year and briefed Trump on the project more than three times. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said the Moscow skyscraper talks continued until Trump won the November 2016 election, but later said he misspoke. Trump, who repeatedly said during the campaign that he had no contacts with Russia, said after Cohen’s guilty plea in November 2018 there was nothing wrong with pursuing the deal. Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos worked between March 2016 and August 2016 to set up a meeting with Russian leadership, according to prosecutors. They said a London-based professor with ties to the Russian government told him in April 2016 that Moscow had compromising information on Clinton. Papadopoulos served 14 days in prison after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about those efforts. Manafort shared election campaign polling data in August 2016 with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former business partner who Mueller has described as having ties to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing inadvertently made public by Manafort’s lawyers. The two also discussed a plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, a major Kremlin foreign policy goal as it seeks relief from U.S. economic sanctions, according to court filings. Manafort, a veteran Republican political consultant who earned million of dollars working for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, also offered private briefings about the campaign to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who is close to Putin, in an effort to collect past debts, according to the Washington Post. Roger Stone, a veteran Republican political consultant who has worked on and off with Trump for decades, shared with Trump campaign officials advance knowledge he had of a plan by the WikiLeaks website to release emails stolen from the Clinton campaign by Russians, prosecutors said. The charging document mentions that a senior Trump campaign official “was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about the Clinton campaign, raising the possibility Trump himself made the request. Stone pleaded not guilty to lying to Congress and witness tampering. Several Trump advisers met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, before Trump became president. They included: Michael Flynn, who served as Trump’s first White House national security advisor. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Kislyak in December 2016, after Trump won the election but before he took office. During those calls, according to the indictment, Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia and asked Kislyak to help delay a U.N. vote seen as damaging to Israel, a move that ran counter to the policies of then-President Barack Obama. Jeff Sessions, a U.S. senator serving as a campaign adviser who Trump later named attorney general, said he met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016 after initially telling Congress he was unaware of any communications between the campaign and Russia. As attorney general, Sessions recused himself from oversight of the Russia investigation, drawing Trump’s ire. The recusal by Sessions left Rod Rosenstein, the No. 2 Justice Department official, with oversight over the probe, which at the time was headed by the FBI. After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel to take over the probe. Kushner said he asked Kislyak if he could set up a secure communications channel at the Russian Embassy after Trump won the election. Kushner also said he met with Sergei Gorkov, the head of Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, during that period at Kislyak’s insistence. Vnesheconombank has been subjected to U.S. economic sanctions since mid-2014. Compiled by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan OatisOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

FILE PHOTO: People walk by the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2018. REUTERS/ Leah Millis WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives committee will vote on Friday on whether to release dozens of transcripts of interviews from its investigation of Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, including conversations with senior associates of President Donald Trump. The House Intelligence Committee is expected to agree to send transcripts of the 53 interviews to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for review before they are made public, congressional aides said on Thursday. That would pave the way for the public to see thousands of pages of conversations with people including the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law and close adviser Jared Kushner, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Interviews with officials from former President Barack Obama’s administration, including former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power are also among the transcripts. The transcripts are likely to provide the first public look at how some key witnesses described events such as a June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in New York at which a group of Russians offered to provide damaging information about Trump’s Democratic rival at the election, Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. and Kushner were among attendees at the meeting with Nataliya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties. Trump’s fellow Republicans, who hold majorities in Congress and control the committee, announced in March that the panel’s investigation was over and they had found no evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow’s efforts to influence U.S. politics. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion with Russia. Moscow denies meddling in the 2016 U.S. campaign, but U.S. intelligence agencies found that it did so in order to boost Trump. Committee Democrats disagreed with the Republicans’ conclusion and vowed to continue the probe. Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair BellOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Mr. Epstein’s death is the subject of four federal investigations, including by the Justice Department’s inspector general and the F.B.I. The attorney general, William P. Barr, said there were “serious irregularities” in how prison officials handled his supervision.On July 23, Mr. Epstein was found on the floor of his cell with bruises on his neck and was placed in the prison’s suicide prevention program, where he was under a 24-hour watch in a special cell in which there were no bedclothes or other material that could be fashioned into a noose. But six days later, prison officials determined he was no longer a threat to himself and returned him to a cell in a special housing unit known as 9 South. He was supposed to have been housed with a cellmate and to have been monitored every half-hour by the two guards who patrolled the wing.The night before he was found, however, he had been left alone after his cellmate was transferred. The two employees assigned to guard him had not checked on him for about three hours before he was discovered.Officials said the employees, who have been placed on leave, were sleeping for some or all of that time. Mr. Epstein had pleaded not guilty and been denied bail. Prosecutors in Manhattan said he lured dozens of underage girls into giving him erotic massages and engaging in other sexual acts in the early 2000s at his mansions in New York City and Palm Beach, Fla.The girls were paid hundreds of dollars in cash for the encounters and, once recruited, were asked to return to his homes several times, where they were abused again, the indictment against him said.

FILE PHOTO: Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File PhotoWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election did not conclude President Donald Trump committed a crime but also did not exonerate him, Mueller’s report said. Writing by Bill Trott Editing by Bill RigbyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Donald Trump lashed out at James Comey on Monday again following an explosive TV interview in which the former FBI director labeled the president “morally unfit” for office.“Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!”Trump’s tweet came the morning after Comey gave his first televised interview since he was unceremoniously fired last May while overseeing the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the US election. In a lengthy sit-down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to discuss his new book, A Higher Loyalty, Comey offered his sharpest rebuke yet of Trump’s presidency and labeled his former boss a “stain” on those who worked for him.“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Comey said.He later added that Trump may have committed obstruction of justice by repeatedly pressing him to drop his inquiry into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.“There’s certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice,” Comey said, adding that if Trump were to fire the special counsel Robert Mueller it would “set off alarm bells that this is his most serious attack yet on the rule of law”.Trump was probably referring in his tweet to Comey’s decision in July 2016 to clear Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private email server as secretary of state. On Sunday, Trump similarly suggested Comey’s handling of the Clinton case seemed to be based on the assumption she would win.He also appeared to cite Comey’s testimony before Congress last year, in which he told Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, that he had never been an anonymous source to the press nor had he authorized someone else to do the same.On Monday, it emerged that Trump saw portions of Comey’s interview. But he did not watch the entire program, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Sanders said Comey was “a self-admitted leaker”. “I think that his credibility is really at hand, and it’s quite interesting that he would question someone else’s when he has such a lack of credibility himself,” Sanders said.Trump has also repeatedly zeroed in on the former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s admission that he authorized an agent to speak anonymously to the press. McCabe was fired last month, two days before he was due to retire. Comey was fired by Trump in May last year because of his investigation into “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia”.There is no evidence Comey or McCabe committed any crimes.The Trump administration, with the support of the Republican National Committee, has mounted a campaign to discredit Comey amid the release of his book.On Monday, as Trump prepared to head off to Florida for a week, his senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway, sought to undermine Comey’s credibility by questioning his controversial decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private emails server 11 days before the November 2016 presidential election.“This guy swung an election,” Conway said on ABC’s Good Morning America, seeming to suggest that Comey had contributed to Trump’s victory – a theory unlikely to find favor with the president. “He thought the wrong person would win.” She quickly rowed back on that in a tweet, writing: “He did not. He swung and miss [sic]. I was putting to bed that he was even capable of such a thing. Add sarcasm and stir.”In his interview, Comey defended the 28 October letter announcing the reopening of the investigation, which Clinton has said lost her the election to Trump. “If I ever start considering whose political fortunes will be affected by a decision, we’re done,” Comey said of his thinking at the time, referring to what he believed was the FBI’s responsibility to act as an independent law enforcement agency. “We’re no longer that group in America that is apart from the partisans, and that can be trusted. We’re just another player in the tribal battle.” Topics James Comey Donald Trump Trump-Russia investigation US politics Trump administration news

Mr. Whitaker has been focused on Mrs. Clinton for years, and denounced her publicly in his role as executive director of FACT. In March 2016, he wrote an op-ed article for The Hill that argued that Obama administration officials needed to appoint a special counsel to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while working as secretary of state.“Perhaps the need for special counsel would not be as clear and urgent without the troubling track record Clinton has had with the truth in this matter,” he wrote.In May 2017, Mr. Whitaker wrote an op-ed for The Hill in which he praised Mr. Trump’s decision to fire James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director. He said he disagreed with Mr. Comey’s assessment that “no reasonable prosecutor” would have brought a criminal case against Mrs. Clinton.It is not clear whether the president intends to nominate Mr. Whitaker to be the next attorney general, or whether he will choose someone of greater stature and experience. But Mr. Whitaker has the support of Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Grassley supported Mr. Whitaker to be appointed United States attorney in Iowa in 2004 and was pleased with the decision on Wednesday to name him acting attorney general.“I look forward to working with Matt Whitaker as he takes the helm of the Justice Department,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. “A fellow Iowan, who I’ve known for many years, Matt will work hard and make us proud. The Justice Department is in good hands during this time of transition.”It is likely that Mr. Whitaker will be in the position until at least early next year because the Senate legislative calendar would make it nearly impossible to confirm a new attorney general before the current term ends in December.Mr. Whitaker’s rise comes after a New York Times article disclosed in September that Mr. Rosenstein had discussed secretly taping his conversations with the president and talked about using the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. prosecutor on Friday attacked a claim by President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen that many of the materials seized this week in FBI raids on Cohen’s office and home as part of a criminal investigation should remain private. Prosecutors also confirmed in a court filing on Friday that they have been investigating Cohen for months, largely over his business dealings rather than his legal work. Uncertainty over exactly what FBI agents seized from Cohen comes as Trump faces an intensifying probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether his presidential campaign colluded with Russia. The raids were partly a referral by Mueller’s office. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan ordered Cohen to appear in court on Monday afternoon, after holding three hearings on Friday into his request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking prosecutors from reviewing seized materials. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom McKay accused Cohen of trying to invoking “wildly overbroad” claims of attorney-client privilege to avoid the disclosure of thousands of allegedly privileged communications related to the president and other cases. These could include claims by Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, wants to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement under which she was paid $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about that encounter. Cohen wants Wood to let them or a “special master” review the seized materials to decide what can be turned over, without violating the right of his clients to shield communications with their lawyers. “We’re pretty confident there are thousands of privileged communications,” Cohen’s lawyer Todd Harrison told the judge. But “the attorney-client privilege can’t at the same time be used as a sword and as a shield,” McKay told Wood. “What they are trying to do is use attorney-client privilege as a sword to challenge the government’s ability to review evidence” obtained lawfully, McKay added. He called Cohen’s failure to provide “basic facts” about what might be privileged was “fatal” to his request for a TRO. U.S. President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen exits a hotel in New York City, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Jeenah MoonMichael Avenatti, a lawyer for Daniels, suggested at one of the hearings that his client might be the subject of some of the seized materials, and her interests needed protection as well. The judge also heard from a new lawyer for Trump, Joanna Hendon, who said the president had “an acute interest” in the case. Hendon, who said Trump hired her on Wednesday evening, urged Wood not to decide who gets first shot to review seized documents until after she files a brief by Sunday night. “I’m not trying to delay anything but nor do I see a particular rush,” Hendon said. In Friday’s filing, prosecutors said it would be “unprecedented” to allow Cohen’s lawyers to decide what it is privileged, and that the government should be allowed to use its own “taint team,” or “filter team,” to do the job. They also downplayed the scope of potential privilege, saying they had before Monday secretly searched multiple email accounts belonging to Cohen, and which they said indicated that Cohen “is in fact performing little to no legal work.” Slideshow (7 Images)The raids infuriated Trump, who tweeted “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” on Tuesday. McKay said Trump’s ability to invoke the privilege is “no different” from anyone else’s. FBI agents who conducted the raids were seeking information on payments to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claims to have had a sexual relationship with Trump, a person familiar with the matter has said. Investigators have also looked for a possible broader pattern of fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes in Cohen’s private dealings, including his work for Trump and real estate purchased by Russian buyers, the person said. Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Brendan Pierson and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Frances Kerry and Clive McKeefOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Under these circumstances, the House has to keep fighting, including by suing civilly to enforce its committees’ subpoenas. During the period that I served in the Office of General Counsel, only two House-subpoena cases ended up in court: Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers (during George W. Bush’s presidency) and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform v. Holder (during Barack Obama’s presidency). I worked on both. These cases provide some guidance on how the current suits will likely unfold, at least at the lower-court level.In 2007, when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to testify about, and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to produce records relating to, the White House’s firing of an unusual number of U.S. attorneys. The Bush White House directed Miers not to appear and Bolten not to provide records, claiming that senior White House aides were absolutely immune from congressional subpoenas (the same claim the Trump White House now makes with respect to McGahn). Ultimately, the committee, after being so authorized by the full House, sued to compel compliance.U.S. District Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, ruled in 2008 in the Miers case that senior White House aides are not immune from congressional subpoenas, that Miers had to appear before the committee but could raise privilege objections in response to specific questions, and that Bolten had to either produce the documents subpoenaed or provide to the committee a log of the documents as to which he claimed privilege. Bates also indicated that if further disputes ensued regarding specific privilege objections, he would help resolve them. Miers and Bolten appealed. But shortly thereafter, President Obama was sworn in, and the parties settled: The Judiciary Committee took Miers’s testimony and Bolten produced some, although not all, of the subpoenaed documents.In 2011, when John Boehner was speaker, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subpoenaed Attorney General Eric Holder for documents that concerned “Fast and Furious,” an undercover Justice Department law-enforcement operation that went awry and resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. After months of back-and-forth and the production of a small number of documents to the committee, Holder claimed that the remaining documents were protected by a common-law privilege little understood outside legal circles, known as the deliberative-process privilege. As before, the committee, after being so authorized by the full House, sued, this time to compel compliance with certain specific aspects of its document subpoena.In 2013, U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson, an Obama appointee, ruled that the House had standing to sue. On the merits, however, the case dragged on for several more years—because of the volume of documents at issue, because Jackson allowed the Justice Department to assert new privileges as the case proceeded, and because she concluded that the deliberative-process privilege had some constitutional roots. Ultimately, the committee obtained many, although not all, of the documents it had sought.

(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: Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort departs from U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri GripasRod Rosenstein, the No. 2 U.S. Justice Department official, in May 2017 appointed Mueller to look into Russian interference, whether members of Trump’s campaign coordinated with Moscow officials and whether the Republican president had unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Mueller has charged 34 people and three companies. Attorney General William Barr issued a summary of Mueller’s report on March 24, saying it did not find any evidence that Trump or his associates broke the law in an election that was marked by extensive interference by Russia. Trump denies collusion and obstruction. Russia denies election interference. The following are those who have pleaded guilty or have been indicted in Mueller's inquiry. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2RwJarW) Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman was sentenced to a combined 7-1/2 years in prison in two cases brought by Mueller in which he was convicted by a jury in Virginia in August 2018 and pleaded guilty a month later in Washington. In Virginia, he was found guilty of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. 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 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. 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 is due to report to prison on May 6 to begin serving a three-year prison sentence. 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. He pleaded not guilty. His trial date has been set for Nov. 5. Prosecutors said Stone shared with members of the Trump campaign team advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plan 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. His sentencing is pending. 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. Slideshow (6 Images)He was sentenced in October 2018 to six months in jail and six months of home detention. Patten, a veteran political consultant and business partner of Kilimnik, pleaded guilty in August to unregistered lobbying for a pro-Kremlin political party in Ukraine and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe. Patten also admitted to arranging for a U.S. citizen to act as a straw purchaser for tickets to Trump’s inauguration on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch, thereby circumventing a law prohibiting foreigners form providing money to the inaugural. The case stemmed from a referral from Mueller to the Justice Department. Compiled by Susan Heavey, Sarah N. Lynch, Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham, Grant McCool and Jonathan OatisOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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.

BEIRUT -- Lebanese prosecutors have issued a travel ban for fugitive ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn, following an Interpol-issued notice, a judicial official said Thursday. Lebanon last week received an Interpol-issued wanted notice, which is a non-binding request to law enforcement agencies worldwide that they locate and provisionally arrest a fugitive. Ghosn arrived in Lebanon on Dec. 30 after being smuggled out of Japan. According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, Ghosn was currently being interrogated on a separate report against him over a 2008 visit to Israel. Lebanon and Israel are technically at war. Lebanon and Japan do not have an extradition treaty, and the Interpol notice does not require that Lebanese authorities arrest him. Lebanese authorities say Ghosn entered the country on a valid passport, casting doubt on the possibility they would hand him over to Japan. THIS IS A MAJOR NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story is below. The lawyer for the fugitive ex-Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn appeared before Lebanese prosecutors on Thursday over a non-binding Interpol-issued request to locate and provisionally arrest his client after his brazen escape from Japan. It was not immediately clear if Ghosn himself was at the hearing, though local media reported that he was and that he had entered through a side door, reserved for judges and lawyers, to avoid reporters. Lebanon last week received an Interpol-issued wanted notice, which is a non-binding request to law enforcement agencies worldwide that they locate and provisionally arrest a fugitive. Ghosn showed up in Lebanon on Dec. 30, after an audacious and improbable escape from surveillance in Japan. On Wednesday, Ghosn spoke to the media for the first time since his escape in a two-and-a-half hour-long press conference in which he railed at the Japanese justice system, accusing it of violating his basic rights. Ghosn said he had no trust he would get a fair trial in Japan, disputing all allegations against him as “untrue and baseless.” Tokyo prosecutors, who arrested him in late 2018, said Ghosn had “only himself to blame” for for four-month-long detention and for the strict bail conditions that followed, such as being banned from seeing his wife. “Defendant Ghosn was deemed a high-profile risk, which is obvious from the fact that he actually fled,” they said. Lebanon and Japan do not have an extradition treaty, and the Interpol notice does not require that Lebanese authorities arrest him. Lebanese authorities say Ghosn entered the country on a valid passport, casting doubt on the possibility they would hand him over to Japan. Interpol cannot compel Lebanon to arrest Ghosn and it will be up to the local law enforcement authorities to decide what to do next. Separately, Ghosn faces possible legal action over a business visit to Israel in 2008 after two Lebanese lawyers submitted a report to the Public Prosecutor’s Office saying the trip violated Lebanese law. The two neighboring countries are technically in a state of war. At Wednesday's conference, Ghosn apologized to the Lebanese, saying he never wished to offend anyone when he traveled to Israel as a French national after Nissan asked him to announce the launch of electric cars there. Ghosn, who holds Lebanese, French and Brazilian citizenship, thanked the Lebanese authorities for their hospitality and defended its judicial system, which has long faced accusations of corruption and favoritism. He said he would be ready to stand trial “anywhere where I think I can have a fair trial.” He declined to say where that might be. With big gestures and a five-part slide presentation, Ghosn brought his case to the global media in a performance that at times resembled a corporate presentation. Combative, spirited, and at times rambling, he described conditions of detention in Japan that made him feel “dead ... like an animal” in a country where he asserted he had “zero chance” of a fair trial. He said he was held in solitary confinement for 130 days, was interrogated day and night for hours, appeared in handcuffs and a leash around his waist and was denied rights to see his wife for months.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're going to talk about a trove of secret Iranian intelligence reports and cables that were leaked to the news organization The Intercept. They reveal the unique military and political role played by General Qassem Soleimani, who led Iran's elite Quds Force and oversaw Iran's proxy wars in Iraq and Syria. Soleimani is the general the U.S. killed earlier this month in a drone strike. The leaked documents also reveal how Iran has embedded itself in the politics of its neighbor Iraq by co-opting Iraqi leaders and buying off Iraqi agents who had worked for the Americans, getting them to cross over to the Iranian side and reveal American intelligence secrets. Last year, the U.S. Army released its official history of the Iraq War, which concluded that the only victor appeared to be an emboldened and expansionist Iran. These leaked documents help explain why.My guest is James Risen, senior national security correspondent for The Intercept. He's part of the team of reporters examining these documents. The Intercept shared the documents with The New York Times, and they published the first story simultaneously last November. Risen used to cover intelligence and national security for the Times and won two Pulitzers. He's also the author of the book "State Of War: The Secret History Of The CIA And The Bush Administration."James Risen, welcome back to FRESH AIR.JAMES RISEN: Thanks for having me.GROSS: Can you explain what the documents are that you acquired?RISEN: Yeah. The Intercept received from an anonymous source a large file - about 700 pages - which amounts to several hundred reports and cables of the Iranian intelligence service, known as MOIS or Ministry of Intelligence and Security, of the Iranian government. It's the first time that a Western news organization has ever received a leak like this from the Iranian national security apparatus. And it's a phenomenal archive of documents that date primarily from 2013 through 2015, and they are essentially almost all cables between MOIS intelligence officers - in other words, Iranian spies working in Iraq. And they are filing cables back to headquarters in Tehran about their operations in Iraq.And the - this provides an amazing picture of the degree to which Iran has gained dominance over Iraq, and it shows that Iran's spies kind of had the run of Iraq. And the really interesting aspect of this is that the documents reveal by name many of the top officials in Iraq, top Iraqi government officials who are secretly working for the Iranians and have secret intelligence relationships with Iran. And many of the reports are about private meetings between Iranian MOIS officers, what we - what the CIA would call a case officer, someone who goes out and meets a source. And they're reports back to headquarters about meeting all kinds of Iraqi officials at the highest levels and then down into the lower levels, as well as reports about things going on in Iraq at the time.GROSS: One of the things of note in these documents is that General Soleimani, who the U.S. recently killed - you say he just, like, leaps off the pages.RISEN: Yeah.GROSS: And I was surprised to read you consider him, like, the - you consider him Iran's political fixer in the whole Middle East. I thought he was just more of a military leader, but he was both?RISEN: Yes. I mean, that's one of the things that jumps off the page in these documents is - Qassem Soleimani was the commander of what's called the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. It is the interesting thing from these documents is it's - the IRGC is a parallel organization to the MOIS. The MOIS are the - is the professional spy service. The IRGC is more of a paramilitary ideologically driven intelligence and military organization. The Quds Force, which Soleimani was the head of, was the foreign entity, the foreign unit of the IRGC, the most - kind of the Special Forces of the Special Forces. So he had a military leadership role, but after the invasion - the U.S. invasion of Iraq where we kind of threw out Saddam Hussein and there was chaos that developed, Soleimani and the Quds Force became a very dominant political player in Iraq. He did transform himself over the last 15 years or so from just being a kind of a military figure into also being the political godfather of Iraq, where Iran had enormous power. He was the representative of Iran in Iraq in virtually all ways, and he was the man you went to see in Iraq if you had a problem.And there's one great document I can read briefly from where he - the Iraqi - top Iraqi officials are so intimidated by him and his power that there was one document where he - where the Iraqi transportation minister describes Soleimani coming to see him because Soleimani wanted clearance from the Iraqi Transportation Ministry to have flights - Iranian flights go through Iraqi airspace to Syria to help in the Iranian involvement in Syria. And he - this one - this Iraqi official is telling an MOIS officer about his meeting with Soleimani, and he's - it's just - it reads like something out of "The Godfather." It says, Soleimani came to me and requested that we let Iranian airplanes use the Iraqi airspace to pass on to Syria, the Iraqi Transportation Ministry official said. Then the official tells the MOIS, I put my hands on my eyes and said, absolutely - as you wish. Then he stood up and came close and kissed my forehead.And that's Soleimani, the power he had. He could walk into any room in Baghdad and in the government and get what he wanted.GROSS: But then the transportation minister basically rats out Soleimani...RISEN: Yeah.GROSS: Right? - by reporting him..RISEN: Yeah, and that's the...GROSS: ...To the rival group in Iran.RISEN: That's the fascinating thing about these documents - is that it reveals that the MOIS, the professional spy service, hated Soleimani and they hated the IRGC. They saw them as the - you know, the roughneck paramilitary militia types. And there's a lot of reports in this where they are criticizing Soleimani and criticizing the IRGC for the atrocities that they committed in the war against ISIS.GROSS: Soleimani's critics in Iran saw him as a showboat.RISEN: Yes, and that becomes clear in these documents. There's one document where an MOIS officer is reporting back to Tehran, and at the top of the document, it says, do not share with the IRGC. And he's attacking Soleimani for going to every battlefield in the ISIS war and having his picture taken and making it clear that Iran is behind these Shiite militias that are attacking ISIS. And he says, he's clearly running for president of Iran.GROSS: While we're on the subject of Soleimani, this isn't from the documents, but you've reported on what Soleimani did in Iraq to try to stop the protests against the Iraqi government and tried to protect the Iraq - the then-Iraqi prime minister.RISEN: Right. The really interesting thing is that as the protest built in the fall of last year in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, it became clear that the protesters in the streets were anti-Iranian. One of the goals of the protests has been to get rid of Iranian influence in Iraq, and Soleimani was backing the Iraqi government against these protesters.GROSS: How was he backing them?RISEN: The prime minister Abdul-Mahdi was being pressured to resign in the face of these protests because he was seen as being too close to Iran. And Soleimani came to Baghdad, met with him and met with a lot of other top Iraqi officials in October of 2019 and negotiated among the top Iraqi officials to keep Abdul-Mahdi in power. The interesting thing about that is that in the documents that we do have, there is one document that describes Abdul-Mahdi as having a, quote, "special relationship" with Iran. And so that really provides the context for why Soleimani felt so determined to keep Abdul-Mahdi in power - was he had a special relationship with Iran. And they didn't want somebody else who didn't have that kind of relationship in power.GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist James Risen. He's the senior national security correspondent for The Intercept, formerly reported on national security and intelligence for The New York Times. We're talking about a trove of secret Iranian intelligence cables that were obtained by The Intercept and shared with The New York Times. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN'S "WHEN WAR WAS KING")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is James Risen, a senior national security correspondent for The Intercept and a former reporter for The New York Times on national security and intelligence. He won two Pulitzers at The New York Times. He's part of a team of reporters who reported on documents and an archive of secret Iranian intelligence cables that were obtained by The Intercept. This is hundreds of reports and cables written mainly between 2013 and 2015 by officers of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security who were serving in the field in Iraq. Their reporting on this was published simultaneously by both The Intercept and The New York Times.So what did you learn about Soleimani's role in driving ISIS out of Iraq? And that's a goal that Iran and the U.S. shared, although...RISEN: Right.GROSS: ...We're on opposite sides of so many other issues.RISEN: Yeah. I mean, that's the fascinating thing to me - is that, you know, the United States just killed a guy who, in many ways, was as responsible as anyone else for the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The Shia militias of Iraq were organized largely by the IRGC and by the Quds Force, and they were - they really were run and directed by Qassem Soleimani. The...GROSS: Wait. So you're saying that Soleimani really was responsible for overseeing the Iraqi forces that were trying to drive ISIS out of Iraq.RISEN: Yes, to a great degree. The Shiite militias, which, in many of the early - especially the early battles, took a real lead role in fighting ISIS on the ground, along with, you know, some Iraqi military units, were really responsible to Soleimani. Soleimani helped develop and create them, and he ran them and paid for them, and he directed them. And he was, through the Quds force, basically running the ground - you know, a large chunk of the ground war against ISIS at the same time the United States was conducting the air war. Now, there's no evidence in these documents of cooperation between American forces and Iranian forces in the ISIS war, but it's clear that we were fighting the same war in parallel. And we were going along with a campaign by Soleimani that was filled with awful atrocities against Sunni villages in their campaign against ISIS.GROSS: The U.S. strike that killed Soleimani was in Baghdad. How much time did Soleimani actually spend in Iraq when he was overseeing the ground war in Iraq against ISIS?RISEN: A lot. I mean, I don't know exactly, but he was - he was a constant presence in Iraq, in Baghdad. He was completely out in the open. He was never - he wasn't trying to hide. You know, he was a top government official of Iran, and he was constantly welcome at the highest levels of the Iraqi government. I talked to a State Department official for a project, and one of them said, you know, one of the things that the U.S. was irked about was that Abdul-Mahdi, the prime minister - when Donald Trump came to Iraq, I think, in - for Christmas 2018, Abdul-Mahdi refused to meet him. And then when Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo went to Iraq, I think in November, Abdul-Mahdi refused to meet them.But Abdul-Mahdi was constantly traveling between Tehran and Baghdad meeting with Soleimani and other Iranian officials. And so the - it's fair to say the Iranians, and Soleimani in particular, had a better relationship with the prime minister of Iraq than President Trump did.GROSS: You mentioned that Soleimani was responsible for some atrocities while fighting ISIS in Iraq. An example that you learned about from these leaked documents was in a place called Jurf al-Sakhar, and this was in late 2014. You described it as the first major victory over ISIS in Iraq. What did he do, and what were the consequences?RISEN: Well, that was a classic example of the use of the Shia militias backed by the Quds Force to basically launch a campaign of ethnic - I think you have to call it ethnic cleansing, almost genocidal cleansing. Jurf al-Sakhar was basically on the - in the way of the road between Baghdad and the holy cities of the Shiite world. And there were a lot of pilgrims from Iran going down those roads, and they were afraid of Sunni extremists attacking Iranian pilgrims. And so it was this brutal campaign to wipe out the entire village. And they - after they killed any male who they thought was part of ISIS, they forced all of the Sunnis out of the city, and it turned into a ghost town. I think it's still a ghost town today. And they changed the name of the town.And it was just an example of the level of atrocity that has never been - no one has been held to account for it. And I think, to me, this is one of the cases where we as an - the United States allowed this kind of atrocity to happen as part of the larger anti-ISIS campaign.GROSS: You're saying no one was held to account for it, but the U.S. did kill Soleimani.RISEN: Well, yeah. That's true, although it wasn't because of that. Anyway, it's - there was a document in the files where the Iranian ambassador to Iraq goes to Jurf al-Sakhar, and an MOIS officer accompanies him. And the document is just one of the most heart-wrenching things I've ever read from - you know, that you will find in these files where they - he talks about how they've even slaughtered the cattle and the - and torn - you know, cut down all the trees and the orchards. And it's just a phenomenal description of what the anti-ISIS campaign was like.GROSS: And you write that tens of thousands of people were displaced...RISEN: Right.GROSS: ...From this town. You say that Iran's Intelligence Ministry was afraid that Iran's gains in Iraq were being squandered because Iraqis resented the Shia militias like the Quds Force...RISEN: Right.GROSS: ...That sponsored these kinds of massacres.RISEN: Right. Yeah. I mean, at first, it led to, you know, a lot of resentment among Sunnis. But now I think what you've seen is - in these protests in Iraq in the fall was a more general uprising by all Iraqis against Iranian influence in the country. And I think that was one of the key drivers of these protests - was that you saw Shia Iraqis for the first time really protest Iranian influence. It's not just Sunnis anymore.GROSS: And what are they protesting against?RISEN: Well, you know, the - there's a lot of complaints they have against the government about corruption and the lack of services, but overall, behind that is a sense that they are angry at continued Iranian influence in the country and that Iran runs their - they're angry that Iran runs their government.GROSS: And what was Soleimani's role in running the Iraqi government?RISEN: He was the No. 1 guy. He was the top Iranian official in the country.GROSS: The top Iranian official in Iraq?RISEN: In Iraq. What I didn't realize until we got into this was that the Iranian ambassador to Iraq was a former Quds Force officer who worked for Soleimani. You know, so the top Iranian diplomat worked for Soleimani or had previously worked for Soleimani. And so the Quds Force not only ran the militia, the Shiite militias. They also ran the Iranian embassy.GROSS: So since Iran helped drive ISIS out of Iraq, why are Shia in Iraq protesting against Iran or Iranian influence now?RISEN: They believe that the government, the Iraqi government, is deeply corrupt, that they're not getting public services that they should be getting based on the level of oil that they - wealth that they should have. And they believe that a big part of that is because Iran has a de facto occupation of the country through its control of the government and top government officials. And they believe that there needs to be basic reform in the political system, and a big part of that is to get Iranian influence out.GROSS: My guest is James Risen, senior national security correspondent for The Intercept who has been reporting on secret Iranian intelligence documents that were leaked to The Intercept. We'll talk more after a break, and David Bianculli will review the new BBC nature documentary, "Seven Worlds, One Planet," which explores the land and creatures of each continent, starting with Australia. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF AVISHAI COHEN'S "FACE ME")GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with James Risen, senior national security correspondent for The Intercept. We're talking about his reporting on secret Iranian intelligence documents that were leaked to The Intercept. The Intercept shared the documents with The New York Times, where Risen formerly reported on national security and intelligence and won two Pulitzer Prizes. The Intercept and The Times worked together and simultaneously published their first story on the documents in November.Those documents have become even more relevant in the aftermath of the U.S. drone strike that targeted and killed General Qassem Soleimani, who headed Iran's elite Quds Force and oversaw Iran's proxy wars in Iraq and Syria. The leaked documents reveal how Iran has embedded itself in the politics economy and military of its neighbor Iraq and reveals unintended consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.So among the many things you learned from these leaked documents is that after the U.S. pulled out our troops in 2011, that a lot of the people who were working with the U.S., often secretly, felt abandoned by the U.S. and switched sides and told the Iranians secrets about American intelligence in Iraq.RISEN: Right. Yeah, I mean, there's a great story about an Iraqi who worked for a secret CIA program called AMAX (ph), which was a counterterrorism program. And basically, as you said, in 2011, he was left unemployed by the CIA. The CIA was pulling out or reducing its presence in Iraq as U.S. troops were pulled out, and he was left without a job. And so he applied to the MOIS to become their sources - paid sources.And it's really interesting that - the way the Iranians deal with these Iraqis is fascinating because they tell them, look. If you want to work for us, you're going to have to tell us everything you did for the CIA. And we want a written report from you. Before we agree to bring you on and make you a source - a paid source - we want a written report describing everybody you worked with at the CIA and everything you did for them. And this guy says, oh, sure, here. And he tells them all the things that he did.And then there's other people. One of the really interesting characters is a guy who had worked for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service. And then when Saddam was overthrown, he went to work for the CIA. And then when the CIA left, he goes to apply to the Iranians. And the Iranians say, even though he's a Sunni, and he hates us, he wants to work for us because he needs the money.GROSS: So what are some of the things that you learn from these people who used to work with the U.S. and then felt abandoned when we pulled out and they had no more income from the U.S. so they switched sides and went to the Iranians? What did they tell the Iranians?RISEN: Well, they told them everything about every individual from the CIA that they had worked with, every kind of program they'd done, every kind of technical secret that they knew. They gave them basically chapter and verse on every operation they'd ever run.GROSS: Did they leak, like, where the safe houses were?RISEN: Oh, sure. Yeah, they told them exactly everything, and they...GROSS: Did they name names of people who...RISEN: Yes. Yeah. And then they - at the end, they say I swear - basically, I swear to God that I've told you everything I know and I will never again work for the Americans. And it's like a formal vow.What these documents also show is that Iran was using Iraq as a espionage platform against the United States. In at least one case we know of where they had a - they were developing or trying to develop a spy inside the State Department, someone who had been working in Iraq. We don't have the name of that person.And also, there's a really fascinating case of a top Iraqi military intelligence official going to the Iranians and telling them, I want to - he basically just shows up one day at one of their consulates and says, I want to give you everything I know about what we do and what the Americans have done here. And he then shocks the Iranians by telling them, you know, before I came here, I went and told my boss that I'm coming to spy for you and they go what? And he says, yes, and my boss said, oh, greet the brothers, and tell them that we're - we are at your service.So it just shows you, like, the Iraqi intelligence service that the United States helped create after the fall of Saddam - you know, we tried to create a new service - is completely it open and accessible to the Iranians.GROSS: Let me quote what this guy says his boss said to tell the Iranians. "Tell them we are at your service. Whatever you need is at their disposal. We are Shia and have a common enemy. We are now in conflict with ISIS, and we must cooperate to eliminate it. All of the Iraqi Army's intelligence - consider it yours. If you have a new laptop, give it to me so I can upload the program onto it." What program?RISEN: Yeah. I think that was a targeting program. It's fascinating. And I remember when we went to the U.S. government to get responses, they just kind of shook their heads. But this is something...GROSS: Wait. Shook their heads indicating, wow, that's crazy, or, no, we didn't do it, or, we don't know about it?RISEN: Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I think it was like this sense that, well, you know, what are you going to do? It's - I think the American government kind of knows they've been had in Iraq by the Iranians, and there's a deep anger and resentment over that but also a sense of resignation that they now know, you know, the U.S. invaded Iraq and Iran won the war.GROSS: Yeah. I mean, in one article of yours, you quote a recent two-volume history of the Iraq War published by the U.S. Army that details our campaign's missteps and its staggering cost in lives and money. And this report says - this report from the U.S. Army says that "an emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor..."RISEN: Yeah.GROSS: "...In the Iraq War."RISEN: Yeah, that's the official U.S. Army history of the war in Iraq that was - its publication was delayed for a long time because it was kind of considered controversial within the army. And they finally published it when they, you know, realized, well, we've got to just tell the truth.GROSS: Do you think we're any closer now to a military conflict with Iran or do you think that Iraq is any closer now to a military conflict with Iran?RISEN: I think - well, one of the things that's interesting to me is that Abdul-Mahdi, the prime minister of Iraq, who said he was going to resign in November, is still prime minister. The Parliament and the Iraqi government still hasn't figured out what they want to do, the leadership situation there is still kind of paralyzed.GROSS: So the prime minister is still aligned with Iran?RISEN: Yeah. So where things go in Iraq is going to be fascinating. I think one of the things that a lot of people explain to me, which I think is fascinating, is that one reason why Soleimani had gained so much power in Iraq, and why being essentially the viceroy of - Iran's viceroy in Iraq was such a powerful position for an Iranian leader, was that Iraq is the outlet for the way Iran gets around Western sanctions. They go through - Iraq provides the money laundering, the oil smuggling, the currency manipulation, and all kinds of other economic benefits for the Iranian regime. And it's the primary outlet for Iran to get out from under American sanctions.And so to Iran, Iraq is a critical part of its survival, you know, its control over Iraq is very important. And I think that's why Soleimani was so adamant on keeping Abdul-Mahdi in power, and it's why he played such a central role and why I think he saw himself as - that his success in Iraq was something that could elevate him to president of Iran because Iraq had become so important to Iran's survival. And that'll be interesting to see if Iraq gets a government that's willing to shut down some of Iran's access to Iraq, what that will mean for Iran and what - how Iran will respond.GROSS: Let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us my guest is journalist James Risen. He is the senior national security correspondent for The Intercept, formerly reported on national security and intelligence for The New York Times, where he won two Pulitzer Prizes. He's part of a team of reporters who reported on documents in an archive of secret Iranian intelligence cables that were obtained by The Intercept. Let's take a short break and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is James Risen. He's a senior national security correspondent for The Intercept and formerly reported on national security and intelligence for The New York Times, where he won two Pulitzers. He's part of a team of reporters who's reported on documents in an archive of secret Iranian intelligence cables obtained by The Intercept and then shared with The New York Times. These are hundreds of reports and cables written mainly between 2013 and '15 by officers of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security who were serving in the field in Iraq. And this reporting was published simultaneously in The Intercept and The New York Times.So the U.S. killed General Soleimani, and the word that one uses to describe what they did to Soleimani is very loaded. If you say assassination, that we assassinated him, assassination is illegal. If you say it was a targeted killing, that's a different story. So the language is very charged.RISEN: Right.GROSS: Assassination has been illegal since when? Assassinating a foreign leader.RISEN: Well, the United States, in the wake of the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, created a ban on assassinations. It's an executive order, 12333 I think it's the name of it. And it's never been taken off the books since the days of the Church Committee, so it's still in place.GROSS: And this was the committee that was formed after the discoveries of how the U.S. tried to assassinate Castro and had their eyes on other political leaders in Latin America.RISEN: Right. The Church Committee was basically the first congressional investigation into CIA and FBI abuses in the post-war world. There was virtually no congressional oversight of the CIA before the Church Committee. And they uncovered all of these assassination plots that had taken place years earlier by the CIA against Castro and other leaders. And their investigation led to this executive order being passed banning assassinations, and that is still on the books.The problem is that since Sept. 11 in particular, the U.S. has engaged in countless targeted killings of terrorists. And they have - the U.S. has used the - with the authorization for the use of military force, the AUMF, the congressional resolution that was passed right after Sept. 11 for - to allow for the war on terror and the war in Afghanistan. That's the legal justification, the legal legislation that allows for targeted killings in - against terrorists. But the AUMF was never envisioned as something that would allow the assassination of foreign government leaders like Soleimani. That's the clear red line between the targeted killings of terrorists in the war on terror and what Trump did in the case of Soleimani.GROSS: This is what made you suspicious when the Trump administration declared the Quds Force, which was led by Soleimani, and the Revolutionary Guard, which oversaw the Quds Force, when the Trump administration declared them terrorists groups. So by declaring them terrorist groups, do you think that kind of opened the door to killing Soleimani and legally justifying it?RISEN: I believe that's probably part of the legal - the secret legal justification. I - you know, the, you know, in all these kind of cases what happens usually is that the Justice Department in the White House and the Pentagon or the CIA. The lawyers for all of those organizations get together and they create a legal opinion that approves whatever action the president wants to take.And we've seen time and time again what we call now Office of Legal Counsel legal opinions. The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel is the final drafter of these legal opinions after they consult with the lawyers throughout the national security apparatus. And these legal opinions have very rarely been made public, only occasionally. The whole point of those things is to find loopholes in the law, of all the various laws that govern the way war is supposed to be conducted.And I believe that there was probably a legal opinion of some kind or a memo of some kind that claimed that the designation of the Quds Force as a terrorist organization last April meant that it was legal to kill Soleimani under the auspices of the AUMF, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in the war on terror. I can't prove that. But, to me, that's the most logical legal justification that they have.GROSS: So you've described Soleimani as having been Iran's political representative in Iraq and in other parts of the Middle East in that he had a lot of political control in the Middle East, as well as military because he ran the Quds Force, the elite force from Iran. Hard guy to replace. Who is his replacement? What do you know about him?RISEN: I think that's the biggest question, is why do they think that getting rid of one guy is going to make a real significant difference, when it's not a terrorist organization? It's a state. It'll be - you know, the Quds Force isn't going away. The Iranians are not going away. They're right next to Iraq. So that, to me, was - I mean, you could argue that Soleimani had a real force of personality and that he built his power base largely on that force of personality, in addition to his ability to intimidate people with - through the Quds Force. But it's something that, you know, other officials could do as well, I would think.GROSS: It's not like it was a cult group, and you killed the leader...RISEN: Right.GROSS: ...And the cult has no leader anymore.RISEN: Right.GROSS: He's a leader in a very large country and a very large government.RISEN: Yeah. I think one of the closest - I mean, there's no person in the U.S. government who has the same kind of role that he did because he was - had such a hybrid role. But it's as if you're saying, you know, you're going to assassinate the commander of CENTCOM, Central Command, who is the military representative of the United States in the Middle East. But, you know, CENTCOM also has other - you know, it's - has semi - quasi-diplomatic and political roles, too, where they, you know, meet with leaders. But, you know, the United States could replace the CENTCOM leader in a couple days.GROSS: Do you think the killing of Soleimani was a big setback for Iran?RISEN: I think it's a - I don't know. And I think that's, to me, what's so dangerous about the decision to do it, is I don't think the U.S. knows, either. I don't think they know what the consequences are going to be. And that, to me, was why this was so reckless, was that they made this decision without, I don't think, any real knowledge of what the long-term effect is going to be.GROSS: Getting back to the secret documents that you got from Iran, secret intelligence documents, my understanding is you don't really know who leaked it or why they leaked it. Is that correct?RISEN: Right. We got it leaked to us, and then we were able to communicate - I was able to communicate with the source every once in a while. And we attempted to get together and meet, but he or she refused.GROSS: How do you ensure that the documents are real before reporting on them?RISEN: Well, that took a long time. We did a lot of verification of the documents. First, as you know, we translated them with different translators, who then checked each other's work. Then we did a lot of reporting in various ways to verify the documents. Both we and The New York Times were confident that they were real.GROSS: What is it like for you when you get your hands on something like this?RISEN: It's pretty amazing. I mean, it's - to me, this was phenomenal because it's the first leak of this kind from Iran or from a country like Iran. You know, we've had a lot of mass leaks over the last few years, but they mostly have been, you know, from the U.S. government. But these really opened a window onto a whole - very secretive government that I thought was - it was fascinating.GROSS: Well, James Risen, thank you so much for talking with us. It's a pleasure to talk with you again.RISEN: Sure. Thank you for having me.GROSS: James Risen is senior national security correspondent for The Intercept. After we take a short break, David Bianculli will review the new BBC nature documentary series "Seven Worlds, One Planet," exploring the land and creatures of each continent, starting with Australia. This is FRESH AIR.(SOUNDBITE OF FAREED HAQUE AND KAIA STRING QUARTET'S "EL ALEVIN ALLEGRO ASSAI (THE MINNOW)")Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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.

(Reuters) - In the most dramatic day yet in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, federal prosecutors on Tuesday secured the conviction of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and a plea agreement from the president’s longtime attorney. U.S. President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, leaves the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Court House in lower Manhattan, New York City, U.S. August 21, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidAs Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues his Russia probe, the following is a list of people who have indicted or convicted or are being investigated. The court documents related to Mueller's investigation are at www.justice.gov/sco. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign and has long denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt. Mueller told Trump’s attorneys in March he was continuing to investigate the president but did not consider him a criminal target “at this point,” the Washington Post reported in early April. In federal court in New York on Tuesday, Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other charges, saying he made payments to influence the 2016 election at the direction of a candidate for federal office. The deal included a possible prison sentence of up to five years and three months. Also on Tuesday, a jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia found former Trump election campaign chairman Paul Manafort, guilty on eight of 18 charges of filing false tax returns, failing to disclose his offshore bank accounts and bank fraud. The judge declared a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts and gave prosecutors until Aug. 29 to decide whether to retry him on the deadlocked charges. Manafort still faces separate charges brought by Mueller in federal court in Washington. Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump who was also a close campaign aide, pleaded guilty in December to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation. On Tuesday, Mueller and Flynn’s defense team asked for more time before Flynn is sentenced. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia. According to documents released with his guilty plea, Papadopoulos offered to help set up a meeting with then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been cooperating with Mueller. On Aug. 17, Mueller’s office recommended that Papadopoulos serve up to six months in prison for lying to federal investigators and impeding the investigation. Rick Gates, a former deputy campaign chairman, pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy against the United States and lying to investigators, and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller probe. Alex Van der Zwaan, a lawyer who once worked closely with Manafort and Gates, pleaded guilty in February to lying to Mueller’s investigators about contacts with an official in the Trump election campaign. Van der Zwaan, the Dutch son-in-law of one of Russia’s richest men, was sentenced on April 3 to 30 days in prison and fined $20,000. Twelve Russian intelligence officers were indicted by a federal grand jury on July 13, accused of hacking Democratic computer networks in 2016, in the most detailed U.S. accusation yet that Moscow meddled in the presidential election to help Trump. The Russian government has repeatedly denied meddling in the election. Thirteen Russians and three Russian entities were indicted in Mueller’s investigation in February, accused of tampering in the 2016 election to support Trump. Richard Pinedo, who was not involved with the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty in a case related to the Mueller probe in February to aiding and abetting interstate and foreign identity fraud by creating, buying and stealing hundreds of bank account numbers that he sold to individuals to use with large digital payment companies. Pinedo “made a mistake” but “had absolutely no knowledge” about who was buying the information or their motivations, his lawyer said. Sources familiar with the indictment said Pinedo was named as helping Russian conspirators launder money as well as purchase Facebook ads and pay for rally supplies. Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort aide in Ukraine and political operative with alleged ties to Russian intelligence, was charged on June 8 with tampering with witnesses about their past lobbying for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government. Compiled by Frances Kerry and Cynthia Osterman; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has told Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, that the bloc’s member nations will not give in to his demand to renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal treaty.Juncker called the existing deal “the best and only agreement possible.” Juncker and Johnson had their first phone conversation late Thursday since Johnson took over from Theresa May as Britain’s leader.Johnson has insisted that the current agreement to leave the EU and arrangements regarding the Irish border were not good enough and had to be renegotiated. An EU official with knowledge of the exchange said that despite Juncker’s refusal to reopen the legal 585-page legal agreement, Juncker said he “remains at the disposal of the United Kingdom to add language” to a political text on future relations and “to analyze any ideas put forward by the United Kingdom, providing they are compatible with the withdrawal agreement.”

Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected the special counsel Robert Mueller’s latest terms for an interview with the president as part of the Russia investigation, and put forward a counter-offer, according to US media reports.“We have now given him an answer. Obviously, he should take a few days to consider it, but we should get this resolved,” Trump’s lawyer, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, said on Wednesday on a radio show hosted by a fellow Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow.Mueller and his team have been seeking to grill Trump as they investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, as part of the effort to determine whether anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian efforts and whether Trump has obstructed justice.Trump has said he wants to sit down with the investigators but his lawyers have resisted, fearing he could end up accused of lying to investigators based on his statements in an interview.Giuliani said negotiations over a potential sitdown should wrap up by the end of the month.“We do not want to run into the November elections. So back up from that, this should be over by September 1,” he said in the radio appearance. “If there is going to be an interview, let’s have it. If there’s not going to be an interview, let him write his report.”The special counsel’s team and the Trump lawyers have long wrangled over the terms of a potential interview.In their latest letter to Mueller’s investigators, the Trump team rejected Mueller’s proposed interview terms but suggested narrow conditions under which Trump would agree to talk, the New York Times reported. The lawyers did not want Trump answering questions about potential obstruction of justice, the report said.“He has got all the information he needs. The interview would provide nothing in addition to what he already has so he can write his report. And we have been willing to cross it, in other words we have been willing to say this is the answer he will give,” Giuliani said. “And we’ll be stuck with it.”Trump has a history of making false statements in public, and his lawyers worry he could get himself in trouble by answering questions in the Russia inquiry. Giuliani has warned the questions could be “perjury traps”.Trump, meanwhile, has railed against the investigation as a “witch-hunt” and demanded that it come to an end.If the sides don’t reach an agreement for a voluntary interview, Mueller could subpoena Trump to force him to answer questions – a move that would probably set off an unprecedented legal battle.Giuliani said in May that “we don’t have to” answer a subpoena – arguing that Trump could assert the privilege of his office to quash such a move.Legal experts said Giuliani’s argument was unlikely to succeed, but the ultimate decision could be made by the supreme court.Bill Clinton was subpoenaed to testify during the investigation into his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but he ultimately agreed to testify voluntarily so the order was not put to the legal test.The high court ruled that executive privilege could not be used to avoid a subpoena for White House tapes in a 1974 case involving President Richard Nixon. Topics Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani US politics news

“This is not rhetoric, it comes from my heart,” sings Damon Albarn on the title track of this latest album by the Good, the Bad & the Queen. Nearly 12 years on from their self-titled debut – an atmospheric ode to west London that united Clash bassist Paul Simonon with Nigerian funk drummer Tony Allen – fellow traveller of Fela Kuti – and guitarist Simon Tong, most notably of the Verve – Albarn’s haunted supergroup have returned, like a more urbane, slightly more louche version of King Arthur and his knights, to an imperilled country.What exactly is that country, though? “Are we green, are we pleasant?” wonders Albarn bitterly, “We are not either of those, father / We are a shaking wreck where nothing grows / Lost in the sky-coloured oils of Merrie Land.” It’s a vision of Britain that crosses a Turner painting with Banksy’s Dismaland theme park.In the music, there’s plenty of what you might term “Anglicana”: the wheeze of fairgrounds, the birdsong of music hall piano and the dissipated, three-legged lurch of folk, undercut by the rumbling resonance of Simonon’s post-Windrush bass-playing.Gun to the Head, one of two tracks released online, recalls an inquiry into Englishness being played by Madness in medieval costume. Queasy irresolution is everywhere, on purpose. Tony Visconti is the producer tasked with inserting space into the arrangements, of overlaying Albarn’s piano-playing with a faint touch of David Bowie here and there.In the lyrics, meanwhile, Albarn is appalled at how we have got to where we are now: an “Anglo-Saxostentialist crisis”, as he has called it in interviews. How can the good, decent burghers of England have thrown their lot in with Etonian Brexit-mongers to leave a confederation dedicated to end wars between neighbours, and usher in an era of bleached chicken? Or as Albarn puts it: “They are graceless and you shouldn’t be with them / Because they are all disconnected and raised up in mansions.”If the impassioned invective of Merrie Land doesn’t exactly read like exquisite poetry on the page, Albarn has explained that, like Lou Reed, he often wrote these lyrics as stream-of-consciousness prose. Even if his latterday output has gestured, rather than shouted – playing with an orchestra of Syrian musicians, getting funky with Gorillaz, or proffering elliptical melancholy on his solo albums – Albarn is not here to mince words.It follows that the emotional temperature here is righteous, the sorrowful exasperation writ large across 11 tracks. From its title on, though, Merrie Land is an engrossing, if frustrating record, whose thrust is grandiloquent and noble, sad and nuanced, but whose execution does become mired in some churned-up turf, metres (it’ll be yards again soon enough) short of glory.Conceived as a kind of pilgrim’s progress around the UK, taking in Blackpool and Banbury, Penrhyn and ancient Dorset, Albarn has put together a series of moodboards that contrast myth with reality, unfurling vignettes out of time and impressionistic collages of ills.Some of these are full of inspired juxtapositions and ghostly gravitas. Assured and genuinely transporting, the magnificent The Great Fire contrasts Tony Allen’s ticklish rattle with Albarn singing, in an almost Brechtian fugue state, of “the deep dead laughter of the yellow stars”, and “sticky brown Chinese, coke and a dummy”.Also seductive, if that’s the right word, is The Last Man to Leave, a bleak operetta whose oblique outpourings and sound effects carry you along. Nestled within is more candour, and even self-flagellation. “I’m taking it personally,” howls Albarn, “ I’ve got to rewrite/ The story that they flaunted around and hoicked us all/ I was just getting on with my business.” Translation: Brexit caught Albarn off-guard as he juggled projects. You want to hug him and tell him it’s really not his fault: we know who the villains are.When Merrie Land is this good, it’s a tragic breakup album starring two hunks of land and some anguished narrators (as on the album-closer The Poison Tree). It is the grownup companion to Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish, strewn with some of the arcane paraphernalia Albarn picked up researching the magical Dr Dee, the subject of Albarn’s 2011 opera. There are references to Blackpool pubs, and the Horned Ooser, a mysterious Dorset bogeyman.When it is less convincing, Merrie Land often has the air of an attempt to rewrite Dorset native PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake with added dubby basslines, but a little less of what Dylan called “that thin, wild mercury sound”. Nineteen Seventeen examines a French war cemetery. For all Albarn’s despair at human folly (“why are we not brought to book?”), the song never quite gels into Harvey’s heroism. (Better is Drifters & Trawlers, whose easy melody and narrow focus on a tired sailor paints a more moving period picture).There is nowhere near enough Tony Allen, a man made of sensuous movement, restricted here to a kind of discordant jazz. There is a desperate dearth of the “rub-a-dub” that Simonon has dangled so tantalisingly in interviews. The Truce of Twilight is like the Specials playing buzzword bingo (care homes, fly tips); it’s a song saved by the call-and-response interplay of the band, and a generous application of horns.The album’s cover art features a 1950s-style image of a ventriloquist trying to silence his dummy; the dummy recurs in the videos, lending the entire project a cliched aesthetic whose creepiness is knowingly deployed, but overplayed. Just when you’re most of the way through the album, relaxing into the fact that you’ve got this far without mention of a maypole, the cloying Ribbons raises one up.Mid-album, though, is such sweet sorrow. Lady Boston aches beautifully as it considers the end of an era, the complicatedness of so many things, and a sense of “what now?” The alto recorders are, mercifully, also a little lower in the mix here.A partial answer, and some honeyed balm, comes in the form of a Welsh choir. And although Merrie Land has its flaws, this son of Colchester is usually right about the important stuff. “Dwi wrth dy gefn, dwi wth dy gefen di,” they sing. “I’m on the back of you,” Albarn translates, meaning: “We’re all in this together.” Topics Pop and rock Kitty Empire's artist of the week Damon Albarn Tony Allen album reviews

But his explanations for his decisions have largely fallen flat, at least among those who lived through the stories.Mr. Comey writes in the book that he grew to believe that Loretta E. Lynch, the attorney general and his boss, was too close to the Clintons and did not have the credibility with the American people to announce a verdict in the email investigation.Ms. Lynch, in a statement, disagreed.“I did what I always do: rise above politics and uphold the law,” she wrote. Of Mr. Comey, she said: “If he had any concerns regarding the email investigation, classified or not, he had ample opportunities to raise them with me both privately and in meetings. He never did.”Mr. Comey writes at length about his decision to hold a news conference in the summer of 2016 announcing that Mrs. Clinton would not be prosecuted, but also condemning her handling of classified materials as “extremely reckless.”“I would do the same thing again at that announcement,” he writes in his book, “because I still believe it was the best available alternative to protect and preserve the Department of Justice’s and the F.B.I.’s reservoir of trust with the American people.”For Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, this was Mr. Comey’s original sin — the moment that he broke with F.B.I. traditions that usually call for nothing more than a brief, one-sentence declaration when the decision is made not to prosecute. And that declaration is usually made by Justice Department officials, not the F.B.I.In a tweet after parts of Mr. Comey’s book were released last week, Mr. Reines wrote: “‘A Higher Loyalty’ to whom @Comey? FBI? No. Set Bureau back years. DOJ? No. Broke every rule. USA? No. Blew up a candidate. Your Oath? No. Didn’t quit. Fired. Only one thing left: $$$? ding ding ding.”