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Michael Cohen Receives His Official Sentence

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On Wednesday, President Trump’s case against an indictment on the basis of campaign finance violations became much more difficult. Michael Cohen, the president’s personal attorney for years including the 2016 campaign, was sentenced to three years in prison – and his sentencing included an open acknowledgment by Cohen that he had directed hush payments to former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels with an eye toward affecting the 2016 election.

Judge William H. Pauley III said Cohen had committed a bevy of crimes with an eye toward deception. Cohen, for his part, threw himself on the mercy of the court, stating, “I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness and blind loyalty to [President Trump] that led me to choose a path of darkness over light.” He added, “time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.”

More damaging than Cohen’s open-court mea culpa, though, was the prosecution’s announcement that they had reached a non-prosecution agreement with American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer – the entity Cohen attempted to used to silence Karen McDougal. AMI would purchase the stories of Trump’s lovers and then bury them at Trump’s behest; Cohen would then attempt to reimburse AMI, so the allegations go.

(Read more from “Michael Cohen Receives His Official Sentence” HERE)

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California Rep Claims Trump Could ‘Face Jail Time’

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By The Washington Examiner. California Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday he believes President Trump could spend time in jail once he leaves the White House, after his former attorney Michael Cohen implicated him in campaign finance violations.

“My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” the California Democrat said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Schiff, who likely will lead the House Intelligence Committee next year, has been a persistent critic of Trump’s during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump referred to him on Twitter last month as ” little Adam Schitt.” (Read more from “California Rep Claims Trump Could ‘Face Jail Time'” HERE)

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Top House Dems Raise Prospect of Impeachment, Jail for Trump

By AP. Top House Democrats on Sunday raised the prospect of impeachment or almost-certain prison time for President Donald Trump if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the president over the Russia investigation and other scandals. . .

Rep. Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, described the details in prosecutors’ filings Friday in the case of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as evidence that Trump was “at the center of a massive fraud.” . . .

In the filings, prosecutors in New York for the first time link Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office also laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business interests. (Read more from “Top House Dems Raise Prospect of Impeachment, Jail for Trump” HERE)

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Trump’s Possible New Chief of Staff

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President Trump is looking for a new chief of staff to replace John Kelly, and there’s a good chance he might pick hard-line conservative Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

Meadows would like the job; he said in a statement, according to Politico, “Serving as Chief of Staff would be an incredible honor. The President has a long list of qualified candidates and I know he’ll make the best selection for his administration and for the country.” Politico notes that Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), his closest friend in Congress, have championed Trump’s cause by initiating counter-investigations of the FBI and how the bureau has conducted the Russia investigation. Jordan said of Meadows, “I think he’d be great. Mark understands how Capitol Hill works. He’s a smart guy. This decision is between the president and Mark, but I think he’d do an outstanding job.”

One White House official told Politico, “He’d have a keen sense of what to do, what groups to engage with, what events to hold, going into a hyperpolitical time. He also knows oversight better than most. Going into a Democratic House takeover, he would know tools Republicans have at their disposal to push back on Democrats better than anyone.”

Meadows has his supporters in Congress, among them, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who stated, “Meadows understands the oversight process, the media and how to pick fights we can win,” adding he’s doing “all I can to encourage the president to pick him … I lobbied the president the best way I know how. I made the Meadows case on Fox News.” Gaetz said on Fox News, “It’s one of the reasons I think President Trump needs to pick Mark Meadows to be his chief of staff, because Mark fully understands the facts and the timeline and will make sure the White House is prepared to go toe-to-toe with a far more politically engaged James Comey,” (Read more from “Trump’s Possible New Chief of Staff” HERE)

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Dem Floats Impeachment, Says New Mueller Revelations Could Justify Removing Trump

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By The Daily Caller. New evidence suggesting that President Donald Trump directed his onetime fixer Michael Cohen to break campaign finance laws could constitute an impeachable offense, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York told CNN’s Jack Tapper Sunday.

Nadler is the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which drafts articles of impeachment.

“They would be impeachable offenses,” Nadler said. “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But, certainly, they would be impeachable offenses, because, even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.”

Nadler went on to say that the outgoing Republican majority in Congress effectively shielded the president from legal exposure, but that the new Democratic majority would not do so. From his new perch as Judiciary chair, Nadler is expected to investigate the administration on a range of topics.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller released a charging memo recommending a “substantial” prison sentence for Cohen on Friday. The document alleges that Cohen executed a $130,000 hush payment to Stephanie Clifford, who appears in adult films under the name “Stormy Daniels,” at Trump’s direction. (Read more from “Dem Floats Impeachment, Says New Mueller Revelations Could Justify Removing Trump” HERE)

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Comey: Trump Is Lucky a Sitting President Can’t Be Indicted for Being Linked to Cohen Case

By Fox News. Former FBI Director James Comey said Sunday in an interview that President Trump, if it’s proved that he directed illegal hush-money payments to women, would be in violation of campaign finance laws, but he is lucky that the rule of the Justice Department remains that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“I don’t know,” Comey replied to an MSNBC host at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, when asked if Trump is now an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the case of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. “Not in the formal sense that he’s been named in an indictment. … But if he’s not there, he’s certainly close given the language in the filing that the crimes were committed at his direction.”

In filings Friday, prosecutors in New York linked Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office also laid out contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries, and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to his political and personal business interests. (Read more from “Comey: Trump Is Lucky a Sitting President Can’t Be Indicted for Being Linked to Cohen Case” HERE)

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Bombshell: Giuliani Says Mueller Investigation Thinks Trump Knew About Trump Tower Meeting

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On Friday, President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani dropped some bombshell news: he says that the Robert Mueller special counsel team doesn’t believe Trump when Trump claims that he was unaware of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian-connected lawyer.

Giuliani stated, “In the questioning of [former Trump campaign Paul] Manafort, they did tell them at the time that they believed he was lying about certain things related to us that he’s not lying about.” That meeting, details of which were revealed by Donald Trump Jr., surrounded an open attempt by a Russian go-between, Rob Goldstone, to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton – an attempt celebrated via email by Trump Jr. Trump has denied knowledge of the meeting. Other attendees of the meeting reportedly included Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Michael Cohen, who currently has a plea deal with Mueller, has also said that Trump had knowledge of the meeting.

On June 7, the day the meeting was confirmed between Trump Jr. and Goldstone, Trump gave a speech in which he stated, “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very imformative and very, very interesting.” The speech never took place, but Hope Hicks, a trusted campaign aide, said it had nothing to do with the Trump Tower meeting anyway. In the end, the meeting came to nothing, as the Russian lawyer wanted to speak only about lifting American sanctions pressure.

According to Giuliani, the Mueller team tried to cudgel Manafort into attributing knowledge of the meeting to Trump in exchange for continuing with his plea deal. Giuliani said, “They repeated that conduct over and over again which gives us a clear indication of what they want him to say in order to get him out of solitary confinement. I find that abominable.” (Read more from “Bombshell: Giuliani Says Mueller Investigation Thinks Trump Knew About Trump Tower Meeting” HERE)

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Charles Blow’s Latest Column Accidentally Reinforces That Russia Collusion Is a Hoax

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The New York Times published an opinion article Sunday by Charles M. Blow titled, “What Would Happen If,” which attempts to argue that the day of reckoning with accusations of Trump-Russia collusion has arrived for President Trump supporters. RealClearPolitics.com assigned it the misleading click-bait title, “It’s Becoming Clear Trump Colluded with Russia.”

I’ve been searching for a coherent and updated Russia collusion piece for some time, because it’s been so clear for so long that the Trump-Russia collusion story is a hoax. What am I missing? Maybe this New York Times article can explain to me how liberals continue to believe the story in spite of the mounting evidence to the contrary. I thirst for evidence contradicting my beliefs, because I find it so hard to believe that honest liberal journalists would knowingly continue to advance a story that appears to have been so thoroughly debunked as a hoax. So I took the bait and clicked.

Blow begins with one of those famous “We know” statements that pundits tend to use when they actually don’t know, but don’t want to argue threshold assumptions. “A crime has been committed by Russia and Trump cheered the crime and used the loot thereof to advance his candidacy,” Blow writes. “That is clear.” I looked for a hyperlink to support this bold statement, to no avail. I’m left to guess what he means. What crime? What loot? . . .

For a more detailed write-up, click here. Alternatively, the crime to which Blow so un-clearly refers might be the case against the named Russian GRU operatives, which again, are mere allegations and not proven. That case will likely never see the inside of a courtroom and probably ended with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s self-congratulatory press conference. To quote Rosenstein during the press conference: “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”

I assume “any American citizen” includes candidate Donald Trump. Indeed, the culpability for the Democratic National Committee server hack and the John Podesta email hack have not been established beyond the mere indictment. As far as the DNC server is concerned, intelligence experts have offered plausible alternate theories. Why is this still not clear two years after the hack? Because the DNC’s subcontractor Crowdstrike likely destroyed the original evidence before obtaining a third-party review of its attribution accusing the Russians. (Read more from “Charles Blow’s Latest Column Accidentally Reinforces That Russia Collusion Is a Hoax” HERE)

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Democrats Are Pushing Another Bogus Lawsuit Against Trump

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Wednesday evening on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin discussed one of the Left’s latest erroneous pseudo-constitutional plans of attack against President Trump. The attack comes from the activist attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Trump’s business dealings are the subject of a new lawsuit that has to do with the Constitution’s emolument’s clause. When foreign officials stay at the hotel, the argument of the attorneys general goes, Trump receives unconstitutional payments from foreign governments.

The emoluments clause, Levin explained, was originally included in the Constitution to keep people from seeking office as a stepping stone to more lucrative ventures. Levin argued that since Trump owned the hotel before taking office, the clause does not apply to him.

“So now we have another tool that will apparently be used by the Left – and if they can find these Clinton and Obama judges – to try and destroy the Trump presidency,” the host concluded.

(For more from the author of “Democrats Are Pushing Another Bogus Lawsuit Against Trump” please click HERE)

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Whoa: Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Forklift He Intended to Use to Assassinate Trump

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By Townhall. Who is Gregory Lee Leingang? Well, he’s the North Dakota man who just pled guilty to stealing forklift he intended to use to kill President Trump last year. Leingang had intended to use the forklift to ram the president’s motorcade. It got stuck in the gate on the day of Trump’s visit to Andeaver Mandan Refinery. Leingang fled, but was later apprehended by local police (via Grand Forks Herald):

Leingang reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors, entering a guilty plea on Friday for attempting to enter or remain in a restricted building and on grounds while using a dangerous weapon, that is, a forklift.

U.S. Assistant State’s Attorney Brandi Sasse Russell said Leingang was aware that the president was coming to town on Sept. 6, 2017, to give his speech at the Andeavor Mandan Refinery, an area which had been cordoned off for the motorcade route.

Prior to the president’s arrival at around 2 p.m., Leingang had stolen a forklift in Mandan and entered the motorcade route, according to Sasse Russell.

“The intent was to basically try to get to the limo, flip the limo and get to the president and he wanted to kill the president,” Sasse said.

(Read more from “Whoa: Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Forklift He Intended to Use to Assassinate Trump” HERE)

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Inside One Man’s Failed Plan to Use a Stolen Forklift to Assassinate Trump

By The Washington Post. . .The arrest capped off a string of crimes Leingang committed in the region that day, according to Mandan Deputy Police Chief Lori Flaten.

Earlier that morning, Leingang had set two fires in Bismarck, on the other side of the Missouri River, and had stolen a truck from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, Flaten said.

Leingang later abandoned the truck, then crossed the river over to Mandan and made his way to a sports complex under construction near the Mandan oil refinery — “which is where he got the forklift,” Flaten said. (Read more from “Inside One Man’s Failed Plan to Use a Stolen Forklift to Assassinate Trump” HERE)

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NeverTrump Clings to Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory Despite Lack of Evidence

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The NeverTrump movement has gone from pushing allegations that Donald Trump treasonously colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from its rightful owner Hillary Clinton, to pretending that his attempts at business deals in Russia, which were legal and the subject of widespread reporting during the election, are evidence of unspecified crimes.

The main barrier to the Russia-Trump collusion theory — an information operation that was secretly bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, spread by a compliant media, and weaponized by the highest levels of federal agencies — is the lack of evidence for it. But that lack of evidence hasn’t been much of an obstacle for either the so-called mainstream media or the leaders of the NeverTrump movement.

The news that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to a process crime was enough to convince them of Trump’s guilt, despite the lack of evidence. The guilty plea was reportedly related to Cohen lying to Congress about when he talked to others about attempts at a deal in Moscow. Yet the attempts at a deal in Moscow have been known for years.

In fact, a major reason anyone knows in-depth details about the Trump Tower Moscow plan that went nowhere is that Donald Trump, Jr. testified about the plans beginning more than a year ago, in front of multiple committees in 2017. Transcripts of that testimony were made publicly available last May. It’s unclear why some journalists and media activists are attempting to spin this information as shocking and new since it’s been public for months, even before this testimony. Here’s The New York Times talking about the Moscow Trump Tower in August 2017, for instance.

For the most recent hysteria, various pundits took information that had been public for years, threw some fresh wrapping paper onto it, and claimed that this public information, which clearly wasn’t evidence of treasonous collusion with the Russian government to steal an election from Hillary Clinton when it was initially reported, became new bombshell evidence because they finally managed to hear about it, despite touting themselves as experts on the matter since 2016. (Read more from “Nevertrump Clings to Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory Despite Lack of Evidence” HERE)

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Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess

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On Tuesday, President Trump said the withdrawal agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union designed to codify Brexit “sounds like a great deal for the EU.” This reflected the majority of political thought across Great Britain over the last fortnight, which has panned the agreement Prime Minister Theresa May obtained:

At some point, negotiations with the EU always seemed destined to hit a reality check. The gap between what many British leaders want and what May could deliver has placed the United Kingdom in the midst of high-stakes political drama with a far-from-certain outcome. . .

From the outset of the treaty process, the EU held most of the negotiating cards, for two big reasons. First, British business fears the prospect of a “no-deal” Brexit. Under this scenario, the U.K. would exit the European Union next March 29—the date currently scheduled for Britain’s withdrawal—with no agreement in place governing future relations between the two entities. Overnight, border and customs checks would go into place, and tariffs would be re-imposed on British goods entering the EU and vice versa.

A no-deal Brexit has terrified the business community, ranging from the banking sector, where London’s reputation as a financial capital relies in large part on its EU ties, to concerns about supply chain interruptions. To give but one example of the uncertainty plaguing industry, the head of Britain’s Food and Drink Federation testified before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that “warehouses around the U.K. for frozen and chilled food are ‘for all practical purposes booked out at the moment’”—businesses are stockpiling supplies to try and avoid disruptions next spring.

A no-deal Brexit also would create political uncertainties in Northern Ireland. Without an agreement governing customs between Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom exiting the EU) and the Republic of Ireland (a sovereign state that will remain in the EU), a no-deal Brexit could lead to the re-imposition of a “hard border” between the two nations. (Read more from “Why the Brexit Deal Has Become Such a Tangled Mess” HERE)

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