James Comey clearly hoped his televised interview on Sunday would be a go-signal for other principled Republicans to break away from Donald Trump and denounce him. In the interview, Comey declared Trump to be “morally unfit to be president”, and compared him to a mafia don, someone without a scintilla of decency. He provided evidence to support these harsh words.The word “decency” has never been more vital than in this toxic political moment. If James Comey’s book means anything, it is an urgent plea for those in power to come to the defense of decency.At other points in American history, our politics have shifted overnight in defense of decency. One of the most famous moments came in 1954, when the Boston attorney Joseph Welch thundered “Have you no sense of decency?” at the red-baiting demagogue Joseph McCarthy, who had falsely accused one of Welch’s staff lawyers of being a communist.An amazed, large television audience looked on, similar to the millions who tuned in to watch Comey eviscerate Trump. Virtually overnight, McCarthy’s immense national popularity evaporated. His villainous core had at last been exposed and the country, it turned out, had had enough of him.With Comey’s new book and sensational interview, has the country reached a similar tipping point?Alas, there are few signs that it has. Where are the voices of principled Republicans turning against Donald Trump? Have they no decency?I’ve talked to enough highly placed former GOP lawmakers and officials to know that many of them privately believe that Trump should be removed from office. But they are afraid to speak out, afraid to alienate the base of their party, afraid, in fact, of the bully himself, Donald Trump, and the legions of rightwing zealots he can deploy on Twitter or at his large rallies. It’s sad. One former Republican senator told me he couldn’t speak out publicly against Trump because he serves on a non-partisan government commission. Another former Republican cabinet member doesn’t like to speak on the record, period, although in private has muttered that Trump should be impeached.It’s terribly sad that former First Lady Barbara Bush just died. But the Bush family is known to scorn Trump and it’s past time for the two former Presidents Bush, 41 and 43, to speak publicly about a president who makes a mockery of public service.Where is Barack Obama? It is custom for the ex-president to refrain from attacking the new one, but observing such normalcy seems not only quaint but obscene given the reality of a president who disrespects the basic rule of law.Where is John McCain? Yes, he has terrible health problems, too, but he is always the lion in winter and his voice is desperately needed. Instead, some of Trump’s sharpest critics have gone radio silent. During the 2016 primaries, Mitt Romney blasted Trump as a “fraud” and called his proposals “worthless” in an unprecedented attack on the GOP frontrunner. Now he needs conservative support in his bid for a US Senate seat in Utah and has positioned himself to the right of Trump on immigration.Then there is Paul Ryan, who dared to distance himself from Trump when the Access Hollywood tape went public but tried to go along to get along as House speaker. He’s leaving Washington DC with his tail between his legs and, as far as I can tell, keeping his gag rag firmly in place.Supposedly, more Republican lawmakers may speak out if and when Trump dares to fire Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein. Senator Lindsey Graham has said Trump would be signing his own execution papers if he goes through with these firings. Well, what about the behavior and actions that Comey details in his book? The disgraceful loyalty oath he tried to enforce? The chain of lies? The pathetic reaction to disclosures of Russian meddling in the US election as purely a problem of spin?In his book, Comey writes about risking his career when he counselled John Ashcroft, then George W Bush’s attorney general and lying hospitalized, not to sign the re-authorization of the Bush-Cheney domestic surveillance program secretly launched after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This was Comey’s finest hour, and it required him to stand up to the vice-president and his warped legal adviser, David Addington.He knew he had done right, he recalled, when Mueller, his predecessor as FBI director, “came in moments later and he stood and leaned down and spoke to the desperately ill attorney general and told him that, in every man’s life, there comes a time when the good Lord tests him. And then he said, ‘You’ve passed your test tonight.’”Comey added: “I was overcome with emotion hearing that. And had this sense that the law held. The law held. It felt like a dream to me, that we were in a hospital room with senior officials trying to get the desperately ill attorney general to sign something. But it wasn’t a dream. And the law held,” he said.That was a moment when decency won in America. We desperately need another. Jill Abramson is a Guardian US columnist Topics James Comey Opinion Donald Trump US politics Republicans comment

The former national security adviser Michael Flynn will be sentenced on 18 December, more than a year after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia during the presidential transition.A federal judge issued the date on Wednesday for the retired US army lieutenant general to learn his fate in the Russia investigation.The move comes just days after prosecutors working for the special counsel Robert Mueller said they were ready for Flynn’s case to conclude.Flynn, a senior Trump campaign surrogate who gave a speech at the 2016 Republican national convention calling for the jailing of Hillary Clinton, has been a key cooperator in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged coordination with Trump associates.But prosecutors have yet to reveal the extent of his cooperation, and according to the US district judge Emmet Sullivan’s order, the public won’t see any details until after the midterm election in early November.Prosecutors won’t be required to file a sentencing memorandum document, which usually contains the government’s view on the value of the cooperation, until 4 December.When he pleaded guilty last year, Flynn admitted to lying during an FBI interview about the content of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the US.According to his plea , Flynn discussed US sanctions with Kislyak on Trump’s behalf during the presidential transition and said members of the president’s inner circle were aware of, and in some cases directing, his efforts. Flynn had urged Kislyak not to respond to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in response to Russian election interference.When confronted by FBI agents about the conversations, court papers say Flynn made “material false statements and omissions”, which impeded what was then an FBI counter-intelligence investigation.Flynn’s interview occurred in January 2017, shortly after he took his post as national security adviser in the Trump White House. He was forced to resign in February 2017.The White House said he was fired for misleading the vice-president, Mike Pence, and other senior officials about his conversations with Kislyak. Topics Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Russia Europe Trump administration news

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House lawyers are trying to dissuade U.S. President Donald Trump from seeking to get rid of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as Trump weighs options after the FBI raided his personal attorney’s office and home, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday. White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Donald McGahn have been telling Trump that firing Mueller would leave the president vulnerable to charges of obstruction of justice and have said that he must have “good cause” to order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oust Mueller, the officials said. The lawyers repeated those arguments after Monday’s raids targeting Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, but have made little or no progress persuading the president, the officials said. Aides said Trump was fuming on Tuesday over the raids but his future course of action remained unclear. The advice of the lawyers takes on greater significance following the departure of key aides, such as Hope Hicks, who recently resigned as White House communications director. Neither Cobb nor McGahn responded on Tuesday to requests for comment. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment about Cobb and McGahn trying to dissuade Trump. Related CoverageFactbox: Under investigation or indicted - the Trump aides facing scrutinyTimeline of Mueller probe of Trump campaign and RussiaTrump has called Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt.” Russia and Trump both deny any wrongdoing. The raids represent a dramatic escalation of a federal inquiry led by Mueller into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump campaign aides. If Trump tries to scupper the probe, it could set in motion a series of events that eventually threaten his presidency. “The raid is seismic,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC, adding such searches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicate the possibility a crime was committed. A source familiar with the matter said FBI agents were looking in Monday’s raids for information on payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both said they slept with Trump while he was married. U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Daniels got $130,000 from Cohen in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement concerning her relationship with Trump. The New York Times, which first reported the news about the two women, said the search warrant for the FBI raids also sought information about McDougal, who was paid $150,000 by the parent company of The National Enquirer tabloid, which then withheld a story about her relationship with Trump. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, has sued Cohen to be released from a nondisclosure agreement over an alleged one-night stand with Trump in 2006. McDougal has said she had a longer affair with him. Trump officials have denied he had relations with either woman. Investigators were also looking into whether there was a broader pattern of tax fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes in Cohen’s private dealings, including his work for Trump and some real estate transactions that involved Russian buyers and prices that appeared to be well above market values, the source said. Senior members of the U.S. Congress have repeatedly urged Trump not to fire the special counsel. Critics have said any Trump effort to remove Mueller would amount to interference in the investigation. A White House aide said Justice Department guidance that only Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, could fire Mueller did not apply to Trump, who has the authority to fire anyone in the executive branch. Asked on Monday after the FBI raids if he would fire Mueller, Trump replied, “We’ll see what happens.” Slideshow (3 Images)When asked about the issue, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a Tuesday briefing: “He certainly believes he has the power to do so.” Trump’s friends rallied to his defense. “This is about getting Donald Trump at all costs even if it means stretching the boundaries of exceptions to attorney-client privilege,” said former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo. Reporting by Jeff Mason and John Walcott; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Nathan Layne, Amanda Becker, Makini Brice; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Frances Kerry and Howard GollerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image People walk and drive across a bridge on the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas. Thousands of people cross back and forth every day, in cars or on foot. Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images People walk and drive across a bridge on the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas. Thousands of people cross back and forth every day, in cars or on foot. Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images For a moment, Jesus thought his ordeal was coming to an end. Three months after fleeing Venezuela, he got his chance to tell a judge how he and his mother escaped political persecution."The judge asked me three questions," Jesus said in Spanish through an interpreter. "What's your nationality? Why did you leave your country? Why can't you go back?"Jesus asked NPR not to use his last name because he wants to protect relatives who are still in Venezuela. He doesn't speak English, and he didn't have a lawyer at the time of his immigration court hearing. Still, he felt the judge really understood his story."I explained my case to him. And he accepted my experience," Jesus said.The judge granted Jesus withholding of removal, a form of protection from deportation. In other words, he won — something that very few migrants at the border can say these days. Jesus thought he might finally be allowed into the U.S., where he could reunite with his family.Instead, immigration officers told him he was going back to Mexico, where he'd already spent nearly three months waiting to see a judge."I had no idea what was happening," he said. "No one explained it to me."More than 55,000 migrants have been forced to wait in Mexico for their day in U.S. immigration court under the Trump administration program known as Remain in Mexico. It's one of several key changes that have made it extremely difficult to win asylum in the United States. Just a tiny fraction of migrants in the program — less than 1% — have gotten protection. National Few Asylum-Seekers Winning Cases Under 'Remain In Mexico' Program Even when migrants win in immigration court, in some cases they're still not allowed to stay here. Immigrant advocates have identified at least 17 cases of migrants who have been returned to Mexico after being granted protection by an immigration judge.When Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was asked about this case at a news conference in December, he said that any migrants who have won their case should be allowed into the United States."I don't think that should be happening," Morgan said in response to questions about Jesus' case. "If that's happened the way you described that, then that's an anomaly. It's a mistake. But we'll take a look at that." U.S. Customs and Border Protection YouTube Last week, however, Customs and Border Protection offered a different explanation. In a statement, the agency says it can return migrants to Mexico while authorities consider whether to appeal an immigration judge's ruling."When an immigration judge's decision is appealed or under consideration for appeal, immigration proceedings remain underway," a CBP spokesman said.Immigration lawyers disagree with that interpretation."The proceedings in immigration court were finished. There were no more hearings to be held," said Kennji Kizuka, a lawyer with Human Rights First. He took on Jesus' case after he'd already won in immigration court.When immigration authorities returned Jesus to Mexico, the paperwork they gave him listed a court date in November. But that date didn't appear on any court docket."They put a fake date on a piece of paper that says you have an upcoming hearing. And there was no hearing," Kizuka said.The date is important, Kizuka says, because under the rules of Remain in Mexico, migrants can be returned only if their court case is still pending. "They wanted to return him to Mexico again, and they needed to convince the Mexican officials to take him back," Kizuka said.CBP denies using fake court dates. The agency provides migrants "with a date that the individual can check in with U.S. officials about the status of the appeal," according to a spokesperson.But Kizuka says the paperwork CBP provided to Jesus after his final court hearing contains a number of false statements. It says that Jesus was "currently in proceedings before an immigration judge" and that "an immigration judge ordered you to return to court for another hearing."The document does not mention a possible appeal. In fact, the government did not appeal Jesus' case.The Trump administration has been trying to limit asylum at the southern border by discouraging what it considers frivolous claims. But Kizuka says the administration is turning away legitimate cases too."The Trump administration is trying to basically frighten refugees away from the United States," he said. "To make it so scary and dangerous for them to come to the border and ask for help that they just give up and go away or never come to begin with."Jesus says it was too dangerous to stay in Venezuela, a country that has been rocked by political upheaval. He was a police officer there, and he says his superiors ordered him to arrest members of a political opposition party on bogus charges. He refused."They started to persecute me and my family," he said. "They killed my father. My mother was followed. She was threatened with a pistol and beatings."Jesus says that he was jailed and beaten and that his father died after being refused treatment for a heart condition at a local government hospital. That is when he and his mother decided to leave."I had already lost my father, and I didn't want to lose my mother," he said. "So I sold all my belongings in Venezuela."That was the beginning of a five-month saga for Jesus and his mother. They tried to put their names on a waiting list to request asylum at a port of entry in Texas, but they say they were told repeatedly by the keepers of that list in Mexico that it was full.So they crossed illegally and turned themselves over to the Border Patrol. Jesus' mother was detained in Louisiana. But Jesus was sent back to Mexico until his court date."As I was about to leave the Mexican immigration office, one of the officials told me that with the way you look, you won't go 50 steps without being kidnapped," he said. National Criminals Target Migrants In Mexico Seeking U.S. Asylum Jesus was dropped off in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where migrants are frequently targeted by cartels. He says he did witness kidnapping and violence and narrowly avoided being kidnapped himself, when he managed to escape from a group of thugs at the bus station. He was on his way to meet his lawyer, Kizuka, in person for the first time.Together, they tried once again to get Jesus into the United States. Kizuka showed immigration authorities the judge's order granting Jesus protection in the United States."They told us that Jesus was not going to be allowed into the United States," Kizuka said. "One officer told me that by going back to Mexico, his deportation had already been carried out."Kizuka says he spent more than four hours arguing with officers at the border, while the staff at Human Rights First called the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, members of Congress — anyone they could think of for help.Finally, without explanation, Kizuka says immigration officials relented and let Jesus in. He's now in Florida, reunited with his sister and mother. They're all fighting for full asylum protections, which would give them a path to citizenship in the United States."I hoped the treatment would be warmer, more humane," Jesus said. "But the officials are really harsh and insulting to migrants. And the system is really complicated."Still, Jesus is grateful to be here. He knows a lot of people from Venezuela who are still in Mexico, waiting for their day in U.S. immigration court.

Facebook is so big, and its reach so wide, that few rival networks even get out of the starting gates, much less gain the critical mass of members to offer a real alternative. That’s the thing about social networks–people will choose the social network where their friends already are, so that one winning network just keeps growing and growing.As the current incumbent in this most personal and culturally ingrained of tech services, Facebook has proven itself over and over to be less than forthcoming with its members and less that careful about personal data privacy. Despite that, people stay. Research shows that after the Cambridge Analytica scandal many users left Facebook only to return because they could find nothing to take its place. Facebook is entrenched and seemingly unbeatable.It’s this impossible situation that got me thinking. Is there any company that could provide a viable alternative to Facebook? I could think of only one. Apple. Here’s why.Scale and reachBy 2010, Facebook had become fixated on growth at all costs. The value of a social network increases as its membership grows, and chances increase that prospective members will find that their friends are already there. This also creates a barrier to entry to would-be rival networks. Facebook craved that network effect.Maybe more than anything else, a viable Facebook competitor would need access to that same critical mass of members. Apple already has that, with 1.3 billion iDevices in use around the world. The company successfully leveraged that access to a built-in market with Apple Music, which quickly grew large enough to seriously threaten another incumbent, Spotify. Apple could make it easy for iPhone users to say, “I’ll just use the social network that’s already on my phone.”IntegrationIn a 2015 conversation with my colleague Harry McCracken, Mark Zuckerberg lamented that Facebook had missed the chance to control a mobile operating system to compete with iOS and Android. “One of my big regrets,” he said, “is that Facebook hasn’t had a major chance to shape the mobile operating system ecosystem.” On an iPhone or Android device, Facebook has no more power than any other developer. It needs Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store to distribute the Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp apps. Facebook also depends on its apps having full access to the all-important camera in iOS and Android phones.Like all Apple services, an Apple social network would be deeply embedded into the company’s devices and the Apple operating systems they run. This could ease the onboarding of new members. After all, Apple already knows a lot about its users, including their usage of other Apple services, the friends in their Contacts, and even their credit card number. Control of the operating system would let Apple enforce strong security and data privacy principles.Then again, Apple might also want to introduce an Android version of its social network, which would not be without precedent given that Apple Music is already cross-platform. But the company doesn’t have to cater to Android users or aspire to reach 2 billion people to build something valuable. An Apple social network might not be a Facebook killer–but it could be a compelling Facebook alternative.Social networking features might also be integrated within other Apple services, many of which are inherently social. For instance, users might like an easy way to watch Apple TV+ movies together while securely and privately chatting with other folks who are watching at the same time. They might no longer need to go to Facebook to share music. They could be more comfortable talking about sensitive health issues in a social room hosted by Apple than one that an ad-supported service such as Facebook is trying to monetize.TrustSocial networks and data privacy are now entangled in consumers’ minds. For years, Apple has positioned itself as the tech company that cares about user privacy. It even went toe-to-toe with the FBI, refusing to help the agency crack the security on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. Apple’s position has always been that a person’s data resides on their device and Apple has no access to it. People feel okay storing sensitive data on their phone because they trust Apple to protect it. They might trust Apple to protect the information they might put on a social network, too.Social’s futureMark Zuckerberg has said that he believes people will eventually move away from open, public social networks (like Facebook today) and toward smaller private groups. Some people, including Zuckerberg, believe that tomorrow’s social networking experiences may happen within messaging apps–like, for instance, Apple’s Messages app in iOS. Apple has already integrated a variety of functionality into Messages, including Apple Pay. Like the hugely popular WeChat has done, Apple is likely to continue adding more and more features into Messages so that people don’t have to go outside it to get things done. One of these functions could be secure small network rooms where families or groups of friends share their stuff in something that looks like a news feed.If Apple can hire thousands of people to work on its Project Titan autonomous car project, it could likely dip into its war chest to hire the people needed to build a social network. But why would Apple want to? It probably wouldn’t. Running a mainstream social network is a punishing job. The “digital town square” is a magnet for bullies, haters, wackos, zealots, propagandists, and idiots who have to be constantly monitored. Beyond that, Apple would not make money from the service in the way Facebook has, by harvesting data and selling ads.Still, there could be upsides for the company. Apple provides attractive and useful services to make buying its devices more appealing. A social network, done well, might end up being a reason for owning an Apple phone, or tablet, or laptop.Wait–hasn’t Apple tried this before? Yes, with the social music network Ping, which the company launched in 2010, and shut down in 2012. It was so famously unsuccessful that Apple is still stuck with a reputation for being “bad at social.”But it’s short-sighted to dismiss the idea of a 2019 Apple social network based on Ping’s failure. At the time, Facebook was still on the rise and the world wasn’t yet fully aware of the company’s lust for growth and reckless handling of personal data. In fact, one of the things that held Ping back was that Facebook refused Apple unlimited use of its API (so that Ping users could find out who on Facebook was also using Ping). In short, Ping happened a long time ago in a very different world.Also, Coldplay’s Chris Martin endorsed and introduced the service, which may have doomed it.Two years after Cambridge Analytica, the discussion around Big Tech has moved to antitrust issues and the idea of breaking up companies like Facebook into smaller parts. Even if you believe the U.S. federal government would take such a bold step as forcing Facebook to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, that would leave the core Facebook social network itself intact. Washington won’t solve this.Besides, that’s normally not the way things get done in the tech world. The ground shifts because of head-to-head competition–because a company offers something new and better. Facebook is ready to be disrupted. And even if that looks like an impossible task to most companies, Apple has the resources it would take to give it a serious shot. It’s only a question of whether it has the will.

Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about the conclusions made by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have aided the president’s legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings.A sense of paranoia is taking hold among some of Mr. Trump’s aides, some of whom fear his backlash more than the findings themselves, the people said. The report might make clear which of Mr. Trump’s current and former advisers spoke to the special counsel, how much they said and how much damage they did to the president — providing a kind of road map for retaliation.The discussions between Justice Department officials and White House lawyers have also added to questions about the propriety of the decisions by Attorney General William P. Barr since he received Mr. Mueller’s findings late last month.

President Donald Trump has often claimed that the only way to ensure that migrants show up for their court hearings rather than vanish into the US is to keep them in detention or else make sure that they never step foot on American soil in the first place. But the president’s theory doesn’t hold up: About 99 percent of asylum seekers who were not detained or who were previously released from immigration custody showed up for their hearings over the last year, according to new data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, a think tank that tracks data in the immigration courts.Studies from previous years have also disproven the idea that most migrants will choose to live in the US without authorization rather than see their immigration cases through. But it’s nevertheless a central idea in Trump’s immigration policies, including those that aim to keep migrants in Mexico rather than letting them walk free in the US. The latest data from TRAC shows that nearly every migrant who applied for asylum and whose case was completed in 2019 showed up for all of their court hearings. That’s even though the vast majority of asylum seekers — about four in five — were not detained at all or had been released from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody before their court date. TRAC’s report doesn’t account for every migrant in immigration court: those who sought other kinds of relief from deportation or who didn’t apply for any relief at all aren’t included. The Department of Justice has also previously raised concerns about the accuracy of TRAC’s analysis, which relies on data obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, since the organization does not disclose its methodology. A spokesperson for the DOJ declined to comment. Migrants can end up in immigration court in one of two ways: turning themselves in to immigration agents or getting caught while trying to cross the border without authorization. In both cases, officials will initiate deportation proceedings against them and give them a date to appear in court, where they can ask a judge for asylum and other protections that would allow them to remain in the US with legal status, or else be ordered deported. On average, immigrants with currently pending cases have been waiting almost two years for their court hearings, and cases take even longer to complete. Under previous administrations, a migrant who came into contact with immigration agents would have typically been released from custody into the US during that waiting period, unless they were found to be likely to flee or a risk to public safety. But Trump has repeatedly maligned that practice, dubbing it “catch and release,” a concept that predates his presidency but that became a rallying cry during his 2016 campaign. He has falsely claimed that most asylum seekers who are allowed to walk free while their immigration cases are pending will not show up for their court hearings, instead absconding into the US to live as unauthorized immigrants.In an address last January, Trump asserted that as few as 2 percent of asylum seekers who aren’t in detention show up for their court hearings:Tell me, what percentage of people come back? Would you say 100 percent? No, you’re a little off. Like, how about 2 percent? And those people, you almost don’t want, because they cannot be very smart... Those two percent are not going to make America great again, that I can tell you.But data from both TRAC and the Department of Justice clearly refutes Trump’s claim: The rate at which non-detained migrants showed up for their court hearings still far exceeded 2 percent even in the years prior to 2019. Meanwhile, the rate at which migrants’ asylum claims have been denied has steadily grown over the last seven years from just 42 percent in 2012 to 69 percent in 2019. Trump has made efforts to end catch and release, instead keeping migrants in detention or else sending them back to Central America. To do so, he has increased funding for immigration detention, despite Congress’s attempts to rein him in. Congress had sought to decrease the number of migrants in detention to just over 40,000 in its 2019 appropriations bill. But in August, Trump transferred $271 million in Department of Homeland Security disaster relief funds to ICE to pay for more detention capacity — about 50,000 migrants daily — and temporary immigration courts along the southern border. Trump has also rolled out a series of policies that allow immigration agents to send migrants back to Mexico and Guatemala. Under his “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, he has sent about 56,000 migrants back to Mexico to await decisions on their asylum cases in the US. The administration consequently announced that it had ended catch and release for families arriving at the southern border with some limited exceptions, instead sending them all back to Mexico under MPP. And he’s brokered agreements with the countries in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” region — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — that would allow his administration to send migrants back to those countries to seek protection there rather than in the US. Only the agreement with Guatemala is in effect so far, but the agreement with Honduras is weeks away from implementation. There are comparatively low-cost alternatives to keeping immigrants in detention or sending them abroad, including the now-defunct Obama-era Family Case Management Program. Under that program, which Trump ended in June 2017, families were released and assigned to social workers who aided them in finding attorneys and accommodation and ensured that they showed up for their court hearings. The program was small in scale, with no more than 1,600 people enrolled at any one time, but appeared to be successful in ensuring that 99 percent of participants showed up for their court appearances and ICE check-ins.

Ivanka Trump is likely to face new legal scrutiny by Robert Mueller following reports that the special counsel has demanded documents from the Trump Organization, where she served as a senior executive.Trump, who is married to Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser who was recently stripped of his security clearance, has been described by her father as a “natural-born dealmaker” and was known to have played a leading role in deals between the Trump Organization and a Russian national who has come under scrutiny and bragged about his ties to top Kremlin officials.Mueller, the former FBI director who is leading an independent criminal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, has issued the Trump Organization with a subpoena for documents in recent weeks, including documents related to Russia, according to a report in the New York Times. While it is not clear precisely what deal or deals Mueller is examining, Democratic congressional investigators this week claimed in a memo that they had learned that the Trump Organization was “actively negotiating” a deal in Moscow during the election campaign that involved a Russian bank that was under US sanctions. The deal never went through and it is not clear which bank the congressional investigators were referring to. The president has repeatedly denied having had any business dealings with Russia when he has been asked about it by reporters, and has described the criminal investigation into his campaign as a “witch-hunt”.Ivanka Trump served as a senior executive at the Trump Organization, with a special focus on acquisitions, before leaving her post to serve her father in the White House last year. By all accounts, including in flattering business profiles of the first daughter, she has been described as an integral part of her father’s empire.That role has also led to legal trouble in the past.In 2006, when she was 24 years old, Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Trump Jr, signed a licensing deal to build the Trump SoHo with two businessmen who would go on to be close business partners of the Trump Organization, Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif. Sater and Arif ran a real estate group called Bayrock and were born in the former Soviet Union.The SoHo deal is an area of focus for Mueller, according to Bloomberg. Sater, a felon who became an informant against the mafia, did not respond to requests for comment. Last year, the New York Times published emails that showed the Russian emigre boasting in 2015 that he could arrange a deal for the Trump Organization to open a new property in Moscow with the help of Vladimir Putin. In the emails, Sater recalled how he had arranged for Ivanka Trump to “sit in Putin’s private chair” during a visit to Moscow that they took together in 2006. The revelation was interesting in part because it showed that Sater had remained in the Trumps’ orbit even after Donald Trump said in a 2013 deposition that he barely knew Sater.Ivanka Trump has said she was not involved in any discussions about a property deal in Moscow in 2015 – at the time of the presidential election – and has not commented on the claim that she once sat in the Russian president’s chair.An attorney for the Trump Organization said the company was fully cooperating with Mueller’s subpoena request.Although the Trump SoHo project was launched with fanfare and was meant to mark Ivanka Trump and her brother Donald Jr’s full entry into their father’s business, it has been heavily scrutinised by prosecutors and the press since it opened in 2010. A report by the New Yorker, ProPublica and WNYC in 2017 alleged that the Trump project was closely investigated by prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office in 2012.According to the New Yorker account, both Ivanka and Donald Jr were close to being indicted following an investigation into whether the pair misled investors about how well condos in the building were selling. The article alleged that prosecutors had evidence, including emails between the siblings, that showed they were aware they were using inflated figures to lure buyers to purchase condos. The issue also became a subject of a civil lawsuit by investors, which was settled by the Trump Organization.Neither Ivanka Trump nor Donald Jr were ultimately indicted after the New York district attorney, Cy Vance, decided not to move ahead with the charges, according to the New Yorker account. It also described how, weeks after Vance’s office said it would drop the investigation, a top attorney for the Trump family, Marc Kasowitz, contacted Vance about hosting a fundraiser for the district attorney. The lawyer would later donate over $30,000 to Vance’s campaign.“We did the right thing,” Vance told the New Yorker, defending his decision to drop the case. Trump SoHo went into foreclosure in 2014 and was taken over by a creditor. There is no suggestion that Ivanka Trump is under criminal investigation. A separate report by CNN early this month said that US counterintelligence officials were scrutinising one of Ivanka Trump’s other deals: the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver. Officials who spoke to CNN said that the scrutiny could be a hurdle for Ivanka Trump as she tries to obtain security clearance for her role in the White House. The Vancouver property is one of a few properties that have opened since Trump took office.Alan Garten, executive vice-president and chief legal officer for the Trump Organization, told CNN that the company’s role in the property was limited to licencing and managing the hotel, but was not involved in financing. Topics Ivanka Trump Donald Trump Jr FBI Robert Mueller New York Russia Donald Trump news

Experts say an increase in far-right figures like Anning in the mainstream media has led to a normalization of racism -- and encouraged far-right groups out from the shadows. In recent years, the "mainstream media has started presenting far-right figures and ideas as part of conventional public debate," Tim Soutphommasane, Australia's former Race Discrimination Commissioner, told CNN."The default seems to be that racist ideas deserve an airing. Yet when this happens, it's not given the scrutiny or questioning that is warranted," he told CNN.During the Anninginterview on KIIS FM,presenters did question the senator's logic, with Kyle Sandilands putting to the politician that terrorist attacks were not due to "a whole culture, it's just extreme mental cases."Is Australia becoming a more racist country?KIIS FM declined to comment on its decision to have Anning on the entertainment radio show.Despite the Australian Senate -- the upper house of Parliament -- formally censuring Anning for what lawmakers variously described as his "appalling," and "shameful" Christchurch comments, he doesn't appear to be apologizing anytime soon, telling Reuters the censure was "a blatant attack on free speech."CNN contacted Anning's office but had not received a reply at time of publishing.Australia's white supremacists "would certainly feel emboldened by Anning's remarks," said Stephen Morgan, a film lecturer at King's College London's Menzies Australia Institute, whose work has focused on historical representations of Australian identity in the media. Now in the wake of the Christchurch attacks, some Australian journalists are questioning the role their profession played in fostering racial division.Immigration has been a hot-button issue in Australian politics for decades, with the anti-asylum seeker rhetoric that emerged under former Prime Minister John Howard in the 1990s and 2000s -- his famous quote: "We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" -- becoming a key election issue in almost every federal election since then, Morgan told CNN.Today, that rhetoric has surged amid government figures and right-wing media commentators "singing from the same hymn sheet," he said.Morgan pointed to the debate around the Medivac bill passed in February allowing asylum-seekers on Nauru and Manus Island into Australia for medical treatment -- and which some senior politicians warned could see murderers and rapists enter the country. This kind of "everyday racism" had "emboldened far-right groups in Australia, especially over the past three to four years," Priscilla Brice, managing director of All Together Now, a racial equality charity in Sydney, told CNN.Far-right Australian lawmaker finds himself -- literally -- with egg on his face As the full horror of Christchurch unfolded, some Australian journalists were doing their own soul-searching.When Sky News Australia, a CNN affiliate, airedsegments of the gunman's live stream, young Muslim journalist Rashna Farrukh decided she could no longer work at the conservative network,publishing a personal account of her years of moral anguish there."As a young Muslim woman, I had many crises of conscience working here," wrote 23-year-old Farrukh, who worked for three years in the junior role of liaison at the network's Canberra studio."I stood on the other side of the studio doors while they slammed every minority group in the country -- mine included -- increasing polarization and paranoia among their viewers," she wrote, urging other journalists to "act on our morals."In a statement, Sky News Australia said: "We respect Rashna's decision and wish her well with her future endeavors. As a news and national affairs broadcaster Sky News is committed to debate and discussion which is vital to a healthy democracy. We feature a broader range of views and counterviews that are challenged and held to account than anywhere else on Australian television." Turn on breakfast TV or current affairs shows in Australia today, and you'll often find figures who previously occupied the political fringes.One of the best known is One Nation's founder Pauline Hanson, who gained notoriety in the 1990s as a disgruntled fish and chip shop owner claiming the country was in danger of being "swamped by Asians."Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in Parliament, in a widely condemned stunt.Hanson, who in 2017 wore a burqa in parliament in an effort to see it banned, and last year unsuccessfully moved a motion acknowledging "it's OK to be white," has more recently enjoyed a weekly guest spot on Channel 7's Sunrise show. She quit the show in March following a spat with its host, David Koch, over her political views and was later replaced by fellow One Nation politician Mark Latham -- someone who has previously campaigned for a DNA test for Aboriginals to ensure fair-skinned people were not cheating the welfare system. CNN contacted Hanson's office, which said she was "currently recovering from an emergency appendectomy" and was "not available to provide a response." Sunrise executive director Michael Pell stood by the decision to have Hanson and Latham on, telling CNN that the show "has always featured figures from not one, but all sides of the political spectrum."JUST WATCHEDRacism speech shakes up Australia ReplayMore Videos ...MUST WATCHRacism speech shakes up Australia 02:43Pell included an extensive list of "regular political guests in recent years" that included former prime minister and Labor leader Kevin Rudd, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and former Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja."All have been given a regular platform and all have been held to account, no matter their politics," said Pell.But it seems some public figures are still deemed too extreme for TV. In August last year Sky News Australia faced a huge backlash for a 10-minute interview withneo-Nazi nationalist Blair Cottrell,in which he was asked about immigration and his political ambitions.The network said it was "wrong" to have Cottrell on air and pulled its Sunday flagship show -- "The Adam Giles Show" -- on which he appeared.According to Karen Farquharson, professor of sociology at Melbourne University, the Australian media's practice of giving equal weight to both sides of an issue had "contributed to an environment where racist voices have gotten unjustified air time.""At the heart" of racism in the Australian media, according to Morgan, are "structural problems around white supremacy in Australian society in general." "One only needs to look at the regularity with which white commentators -- on breakfast television and elsewhere -- take it upon themselves to comment on, and pass judgment upon, Indigenous issues despite a clear lack of expertise, experience, or knowledge," he said.Morgan pointed to veteran TV presenter Kerri-Anne Kennerley in January asking whether "Invasion Day" protesters had ever been to what she called the "outback," where "children, where babies and five-year-olds are being raped."Amid accusations of racism from a fellow Channel 10 panelist, Kennerley stood firm, later telling 2GB radio she "never made a racist comment," was "offended" by the suggestion that she had, and had "just stated a fact."As for Anning, anonline petitioncalling for his resignation has now gained more than 1.4 million signatures.Often described as an "accidental"senator after gaining the job when a previous party member stepped down, Anning has quickly made a name for himself in Australian politics over the past year.The challenge now facing the Australian media, is just how much of the nation's airtime extremist voices deserve.

In a bombshell announcement on Friday night, Facebook announced that it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, the data analysis firm that helped Donald Trump win the presidency. The social network said that it had recently learned that CA had not deleted all of the personal data it had improperly obtained from millions of users, via a personality prediction app that used a Facebook login. The firm was given the data by Aleksandr Kogan, a Cambridge professor given access to the data as part of a study he was conducting.CA, which has touted its ability to create personality profiles of voters for ad targeting purposes, was hired to run data operations for the Trump campaign. In December, it was asked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller to hand over documents as part of Mueller’s ongoing investigation into any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the election.In a statement posted tonight, Facebook’s VP and deputy general counsel Paul Grewal said that when Facebook learned about the data usage in 2015, it removed the app and Kogan and CA told the social network that it had deleted all the data. But, Grewal noted, “Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.”This story has been updated.

(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: Robert Mueller, as FBI director, testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington March 12, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File PhotoRod 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. (RUSSIA INVESTIGATION on reuters.com - here) 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. (GRAPHIC: Special counsel indictments and convictions - tmsnrt.rs/2RwJarW) 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. 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 from 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.

Former FBI director James Comey, after testifying before Congressional committees, ripped Donald Trump for undermining the rule of law and Republican lawmakers for trying to “slink away into retirement” without standing up to him.Comey answered questions behind closed doors for an inquiry into the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election, which he said focused on Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Steele dossier.“This while the President of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI, and attacking the rule of law in this country. How does that make any sense at all?” Comey told reporters after the session. “At some point, someone has to stand up and in the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweet, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement but stand up and speak the truth.”Comey was alarmed by Trump’s latest comments calling his former lawyer Michael Cohen a “rat” for cooperating with investigators.“It undermines the rule of law. This is the president of the United States, calling a witness who has cooperated with his own Justice Department a rat. Say that again to yourself at home, and remind yourself where we have ended up,” he said.Comey, who was fired by Trump, said he did not take any blame for the declining reputation of the FBI.“The FBI’s reputation has taken a big hit because the President of the United States, with his acolytes, has lied about it constantly,” he said. “And in the face of those lies, a whole lot of good people who watch your network believe that nonsense. That’s a tragedy. That will be undone eventually, but that damage has nothing to do with me.”Comey closed the press conference with a question on whether he has confidence in Trump’s acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker. “No comment,” he said.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Former FBI Director James Comey's book "A Higher Loyalty" comes out tomorrow. His tell-all memoir is not only about his interactions with President Trump. It's also about how he views the conduct of the highest officeholder in the country. Here's what he told Steve Inskeep of NPR's Morning Edition today.STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Why have you focused in some of your comments on what you view as the moral fitness of the president to be president?JAMES COMEY: Because I'm very worried that - and one of the ways I hope to be useful is having people realize that there's something above our normal fights. We fight like crazy in this country about guns and about social issues and taxes and immigration. And that's as it should be, and it's always been that way. But there's something we all have in common, which is a core set of values that is us as America - right? - freedom of expression, freedom of religion, rule of law, equal protection of the laws, the truth. We hold these truths to be self-evident. It's the fourth word of that sentence.So there's a thing, a set of values that's above our normal fights, and what I'm worried about with this president is he threatens those. And if we lose those, if those norms are degraded, those values are degraded, what are we exactly? President Trump tweeted - I don't follow him on Twitter, but I get to see his tweets - tweeted I don't know how many but some tweets this past couple days about me...INSKEEP: Quite a few.COMEY: ...That I should be in jail, right? The president of the United States just said that a private citizen should be jailed. And I think the reaction of most of us was, that's another one of those things. This is not normal. This is not OK. There's a danger that we will become numb to it and we will stop noticing the threats to our norms.SHAPIRO: You can hear the rest of Steve Inskeep's interview with James Comey tomorrow on NPR's Morning Edition.Copyright © 2018 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.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, told U.S. lawmakers in comments released on Monday that while he has never spoken about the substance of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation with Trump, he has discussed it in broad terms with Vice President Mike Pence. William Barr testifies at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be attorney general of the United States on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 15, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri GripasIn written answers to questions posed by Senate Judiciary Committee members, Barr also said he has discussed with Justice Department officials the issue of recusing himself from overseeing Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. The committee is due to vote on Tuesday on whether to endorse Barr’s nomination and send it to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. “The President has not asked me my views about any aspect of the investigation, and he has not asked me about what I would do about anything in the investigation,” Barr wrote in response to questions posed by Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. But Barr said that since the spring of 2017, he has discussed a variety of issues with Pence including a “general discussion” of Mueller’s probe and “I gave my views on such matters as Bob Mueller’s high integrity and various media reports.” “In these conversations, I did not provide legal advice, nor, to the best of my recollection, did he provide confidential information,” Barr wrote, referring to Pence. The Republican president has called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt, though Barr in his confirmation hearing this month said he would let the special counsel complete the probe and pledged to make as many details of Mueller’s findings public as he can, once the work is completed. Barr, nominated after Trump fired Jeff Sessions as attorney general in November, has been criticized by Democrats over a memo he sent to Justice Department and White House officials last year that called Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump committed obstruction of justice “fatally misconceived.” If confirmed by the Senate, Barr would oversee Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s presidential campaign conspired with Russia. Trump has denied collusion. Russian has denied election interference. Barr said during his hearing and in his written responses does not plan to overhaul Justice Department regulations so Mueller could be fired at will. Under current rules, Mueller can be fired only for misconduct or other wrongdoing. “I would not countenance changing the existing regulations for the purpose of removing Special Counsel Mueller without good cause,” Barr wrote to the senators. Some Democrats have questioned whether Barr should recuse himself from overseeing Mueller because of his memo. Barr said in his written responses he has discussed recusal issues related to the memo with department officials, but not the White House. “If confirmed, I will consult with the Department’s career ethics officials, review the facts, and make a decision regarding my recusal from any matter in good faith,” Barr wrote, adding that while he is unfamiliar with protocol for disclosing ethics advice to Congress he would be “as transparent as possible.” Democrats have raised concerns about whether Barr will adequately disclose to Congress all the details of Mueller’s inquiry, including any decisions not to charge certain people. Barr has signaled some details might remain under wraps. In responses to Democratic Senator Dick Durbin’s questions, Barr cited a Justice Department manual that he said “cautions prosecutors to be sensitive to the privacy and reputational interests of uncharged third parties.” “It is department policy and practice not to criticize individuals for conduct that does not warrant prosecution,” Barr added. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will DunhamOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

James Comey did not hide his concerns about Donald Trump’s fitness to be US president in his book A Higher Loyalty to be released April 17—nor did he in his interview with George Stephanopoulos which aired tonight (Apr. 15) on ABC television.Discussing Trump, the former head of the FBI said: I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.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. And that’s not a policy statement.Despite Trump’s attacks on Comey, whom the president fired, Comey doesn’t consider himself someone dedicated to bringing the president down. On the contrary: Comey doesn’t even think Trump should be impeached.This is because he believes the American people can’t be left “off the hook,” and instead need to take responsibility for removing Trump through an election. “People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values,” said Comey. Only voting, he suggested, can deliver a worthy defeat. Impeaching the president, Comey believes, would be a quick fix to a larger problem: “You cannot have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure,” Comey said. “That is the core of this country. That’s our foundation. And so impeachment, in a way, would short circuit that.”Comey continued:I think we owe it to each other to get off the couch and think about what unites us. I think about the people who supported Trump, and continue to support Trump.A lotta them come from families with a proud history of military service. And that’s a wonderful thing. What did their fathers and grandfathers fight and die for? Not for immigration policy. Not for a tax policy. Not for Supreme Court justice. They fought and died for a set of ideas. The rule of law. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The truth.That’s what they fought and died for. And at some point, we have to focus on that and make sure that whoever’s leading us embodies those and we judge that leader by their tether to those values. Then we’ll go back to fighting like cats and dogs about all the things we normally fight about.

President Donald Trump's calls for James Comey to be jailed are "not normal," the former FBI director said in a live appearance on "Good Morning America" today. "That is not normal," Comey said. "That is not OK. First of all, he's just making stuff up. But, most importantly, the president of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as he's done for a whole lot of people who criticize him. That is not acceptable in this country." This morning's appearance on "Good Morning America" was the former FBI director's first live interview at the launch of his book tour, having already given taped interviews including his first with ABC News, which aired on Sunday. Comey pointed to the tweets as examples of how he says Trump misunderstands or disrespects the rule of law. "I hope people read the book and see why the rule of law is such an important value in this country, and key to that is that the president doesn't get to decide who goes to jail," Comey said of his new book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” which was released today. Trump's tweets and accusations have numbed the U.S. public, Comey said, expressing hope that his book will serve as a wake-up call. “We’re numb to it,” he said. “We wake up in the morning and see the president of the United States is accusing people of crimes without evidence and pronouncing them guilty and saying they should be in jail. That should wake all of us up with a start, but there's been so much of it that we're a little bit numb and that's dangerous.” The tweets in question came April 15, hours before the airing of Comey's first interview with ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos. "The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?" Trump wrote. A day later, Trump accused Comey of "[commiting] many crimes." "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. Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!" he tweeted Monday. He discussed two recent incidents that Comey says demonstrates Trump's lack of understanding of the U.S. legal system was when he called the FBI's raids of his lawyer Michael Cohen's office, home and hotel room "an attack on our country." "Yeah, it shows me he either doesn't know or doesn’t care what the rule of law looks like,” Comey said. “Nobody broke into anybody's office. It doesn't happen. The FBI gets a search warrant from a federal judge and conducts itself professionally, completely and politely by the accounts of the people involved. So it's a total distortion of the way things work.” Trump’s recent pardoning of Scooter Libby, a chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, was “an attack on the rule of law,” Comey said. “There's a reason president George W. Bush, for whom Scooter Libby worked, refused to pardon him after looking at all the facts in the case. It was an overwhelming case. There's no reason that's consistent with justice to pardon him. And so it's an attack on the rule of law, in my view,” Comey said. Comey also responded to the belief by some that he took cheap shots at the president in his book -- which were repeated in the ABC News special Sunday -- in commenting on the color of the president's skin, the size of his hands and the length of his tie. "I'm not trying to make fun of President Trump. I'm not trying to make fun of anybody," he said, defending such descriptors as instances where he was trying to describe the scene for the reader. "I'm trying to be an author,” he said, “and bring the reader into the room.” Comey, 57, also raised concerns about former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was his boss during the Obama administration. Lynch's actions during the Clinton email saga "worried" him, he said in his book and in the ABC News special. In the hours before the interview aired, Lynch released a lengthy statement saying she "did what I always do: rise above politics and uphold the law." Comey never came to her with any concerns, she also noted. When asked this morning whether he should have, Comey said, "maybe, but I really don't think so even in hindsight." "There should have been a discussion about whether she should be involved in the matter but what she did was say, ‘I’m going to stay involved, but I'll accept his recommendation,’ which put me and the FBI in a terrible spot," he told Stephanopoulos today. Comey's book focuses on leadership and he pointed to two people -- one of whom he knows well and one he has never met -- who serve as examples for him. The first is his wife of more than three decades, Patrice Comey. He described their courtship as "a series of events of me chasing her, trying to convince her to love me." He discussed a moment of her leadership, which he says should serve as an example to others, that came in the wake of the death of their son Collin, who was "born healthy and died a little over a week later from a preventable infection." “She made it her mission to try to change medical practice across the country so that all mothers will be tested for this bacteria, which is harmless to the moms but can kill their babies. And so if you have a baby today in the United States you are tested for group B strep and if you have it, you're treated with antibiotics during delivery and your baby will be fine,” he said. “She took something awful and turned it into something good, which is the reason it's in the book, which is about leadership. It changed how I think about being a person and being a leader,” he added. The second source of inspiration is a person better known to the world: NBA player LeBron James. Comey called James "a man I've never met," whom he says he resembles "only in being the same height." "I used to talk about him all over the FBI. He illustrates what the endless pursuit of excellence looks like. ... It's because he measures himself not against the others but against himself," Comey said. He said that he read that James, whom he called “the best basketball player on the earth today,” looks for ways to improve his game during the off-season. During his tenure at the FBI, Comey would extend that example to the bureau, saying, "we have to find parts of our game to make better -- look at LeBron James!" ABC News' Kelly McCarthy contributed to this story.

Two of Europe's biggest airlines have been hit by strike action, grounding hundreds of flights and affecting tens of thousands of passengers.Lufthansa has been forced to cancel 800 of its 1,600 scheduled flights because of a walkout by public sector workers.The stoppage is in force at Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne and Bremen airports.At the same time, Air France has cancelled one in four of its flights as airline staff take action in support of a 6% pay claim.Lufthansa has said about 90,000 passengers have been hit by the German public sector strike, which does not involve the airline's own staff.Lufthansa told passengers whose flights had not been cancelled to allow more time to travel and get to airports earlier.The trade union Verdi said the strikes were intended to "increase pressure" on public sector employers ahead of wage talks.However, Lufthansa said it "cannot comprehend Verdi's threat to carry out such a massive strike"."It is completely unacceptable for the union to impose this conflict on uninvolved passengers," said Bettina Volkens, Lufthansa's head of human resources. "Lufthansa is not a part of this collective bargaining conflict, but unfortunately our customers and our company are being affected by the consequences of this dispute."She added: "Politicians and legislators must define clear rules for strikes and industrial actions."Lufthansa said normal services would resume on Wednesday.Meanwhile, Air France has said that it faces costs of €170m (£148m) from a wave of strike action by its employees, of which Tuesday's stoppage is merely the latest example. The strike is set to continue on Wednesday, with further walkouts planned on four more days this month.Rail travel in France is also under pressure from a rolling programme of strikes by SNCF staff, in response to labour reforms under President Emmanuel Macron.

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.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House lawyers are trying to dissuade U.S. President Donald Trump from seeking to get rid of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as Trump weighs options after the FBI raided his personal attorney’s office and home, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday. White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Donald McGahn have been telling Trump that firing Mueller would leave the president vulnerable to charges of obstruction of justice and have said that he must have “good cause” to order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oust Mueller, the officials said. The lawyers repeated those arguments after Monday’s raids targeting Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, but have made little or no progress persuading the president, the officials said. Aides said Trump was fuming on Tuesday over the raids but his future course of action remained unclear. The advice of the lawyers takes on greater significance following the departure of key aides, such as Hope Hicks, who recently resigned as White House communications director. Neither Cobb nor McGahn responded on Tuesday to requests for comment. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment about Cobb and McGahn trying to dissuade Trump. Related CoverageFactbox: Under investigation or indicted - the Trump aides facing scrutinyTimeline of Mueller probe of Trump campaign and RussiaTrump has called Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt.” Russia and Trump both deny any wrongdoing. The raids represent a dramatic escalation of a federal inquiry led by Mueller into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible collusion by Trump campaign aides. If Trump tries to scupper the probe, it could set in motion a series of events that eventually threaten his presidency. “The raid is seismic,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC, adding such searches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicate the possibility a crime was committed. A source familiar with the matter said FBI agents were looking in Monday’s raids for information on payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both said they slept with Trump while he was married. U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Daniels got $130,000 from Cohen in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement concerning her relationship with Trump. The New York Times, which first reported the news about the two women, said the search warrant for the FBI raids also sought information about McDougal, who was paid $150,000 by the parent company of The National Enquirer tabloid, which then withheld a story about her relationship with Trump. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, has sued Cohen to be released from a nondisclosure agreement over an alleged one-night stand with Trump in 2006. McDougal has said she had a longer affair with him. Trump officials have denied he had relations with either woman. Investigators were also looking into whether there was a broader pattern of tax fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes in Cohen’s private dealings, including his work for Trump and some real estate transactions that involved Russian buyers and prices that appeared to be well above market values, the source said. Senior members of the U.S. Congress have repeatedly urged Trump not to fire the special counsel. Critics have said any Trump effort to remove Mueller would amount to interference in the investigation. A White House aide said Justice Department guidance that only Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, could fire Mueller did not apply to Trump, who has the authority to fire anyone in the executive branch. Asked on Monday after the FBI raids if he would fire Mueller, Trump replied, “We’ll see what happens.” Slideshow (3 Images)When asked about the issue, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a Tuesday briefing: “He certainly believes he has the power to do so.” Trump’s friends rallied to his defense. “This is about getting Donald Trump at all costs even if it means stretching the boundaries of exceptions to attorney-client privilege,” said former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo. Reporting by Jeff Mason and John Walcott; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Nathan Layne, Amanda Becker, Makini Brice; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Frances Kerry and Howard GollerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.