Articles

Trump’s ex-lawyer’s guilty plea implicates president

President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and implicated Trump in a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of women who said they had sexual relationships with him. Michael Cohen’s admission threw Trump’s presidency into crisis and raises questions about Trump’s own legal jeopardy.

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Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen pleads guilty in hush-money scheme

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer,” pleaded guilty Tuesday to campaign-finance violations and other charges, saying he and Trump arranged the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model to influence the election.

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Ex-Trump campaign chairman Manafort guilty of 8 charges

Paul Manafort, the longtime political operative who for months led Donald Trump’s winning presidential campaign, was found guilty of eight financial crimes Tuesday in the first trial victory of the special counsel investigation into the president’s associates. A judge declared a mistrial on 10 other counts the jury could not agree on.

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AP sources: Cohen in talks to strike plea deal in fraud case

Lawyers for Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, were pursuing negotiations with prosecutors that could result in a plea deal and a court hearing was set for Tuesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the financial fraud investigation. If a deal is struck, Cohen would plead guilty in federal court in Manhattan and agree to cooperate with the government.

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Giuliani clarifies his ‘truth isn’t truth’ puzzler

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney says he wasn’t trying to make an existential point about the meaning of veracity when he declared “truth isn’t truth.” Instead, he said he was trying to make the case that having Trump sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the conflicting nature of witnesses’ recollections.

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Trump fears Mueller interview could bring perjury charge

President Donald Trump is expressing concern that anything he tells special counsel Robert Mueller under oath could be used to charge him with perjury as part of Mueller’s ongoing investigation into coordination between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

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Manafort judge says he fears for jurors’ safety

The judge in Paul Manafort’s financial fraud trial says he has received threats and he fears for the “peace and safety” of the jurors deciding the fate of the former Trump campaign chairman. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III revealed his concerns Friday when explaining why he doesn’t intend to make jurors’ names public at the end of the trial.

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Giuliani on hazards of Trump interview: ‘Truth isn’t truth’

“Truth isn’t truth,” says President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, explaining why he’s wary about pushing the president into an interview he says could be a perjury trap. He was trying to make the case that having Trump sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the he-said-she-said nature of witnesses’ recollections.

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Questions mark first day of deliberations at Manafort trial

The jury in the fraud trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ended its first day of deliberations with a series of questions to the judge, including a request to “redefine” reasonable doubt. The questions came after roughly seven hours of deliberation, delivered in a handwritten note to U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III. Ellis read the questions aloud to lawyers for both sides as well as Manafort before he called the jury in to give his answers.

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7th Circuit scrubs en banc hearing on welcoming ordinance

Although the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has cancelled an en banc hearing to reconsider a nationwide injunction that protected welcoming ordinances across the country, it left the door open for the U.S. Attorney General to file a new challenge to what the Trump administration terms sanctuary cities.

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Memo shows Kavanaugh resisted indicting a sitting president

Newly released documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s time on the Kenneth Starr team investigating Bill Clinton reveal his resistance to issuing an indictment of a sitting president. The memo, tucked toward the end of nearly 10,000 pages released Friday, provides greater insight into Kavanaugh’s views on executive power that are expected to feature prominently in his Senate confirmation hearings next month.

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Prosecutors shift focus to fraud charges in Manafort trial

After three days of dramatic and even salacious testimony in the trial of Paul Manafort, prosecutors on Thursday returned to the nuts and bolts of their case against the former Trump campaign chairman as they sought to show he obtained millions of dollars in bank loans under false pretenses.

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Manafort’s ‘right-hand man’ Gates to testify in fraud trial

The most critical moment in the financial fraud trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort will likely arrive this week with the testimony of his “right-hand man” — the person defense attorneys blame for any crimes. Rick Gates has been a key cooperator for special counsel Robert Mueller’s team after he cut a plea deal earlier this year.

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Judge in Manafort trial brings short fuse and sharp wit

Lawyers who have appeared before Thomas Selby Ellis III, the judge hearing the Paul Manafort trial, said he likes to be seen as the smartest person in the courtroom, not a huge leap for a judge. With his Princeton-Harvard-Oxford education and experience spanning consequential cases in an era of war and terrorism Ellis is known to cut lawyers down to size, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much.

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