Politics

Investigators follow flow of money to Trump from wealthy donors with Russian ties Three Americans with significant Russian business connections contributed almost $2 million to political funds controlled by Donald Trump, ABC News has learned. The timing of contributions coming from US citizens with ties to Russia, is now being questioned by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a Republican campaign aide interviewed by Mueller’s team. Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence in the 2016 campaign, said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern,” Schiff told ABC News. A review of Trump campaign records conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics for ABC News ...

This month's revelations about the investigation into Russia's election interference and President Donald Trump's campaign ties to Moscow have come at a dizzying pace. We learned that special counsel Robert Mueller obtained a search warrant to examine Facebook accounts linked to Russia after the company announced that the "inauthentic" users had purchased more than $100,000 in political ads during the election. We also learned more details about the FBI's longtime interest in Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort - and his overtures to a Russian oligarch last July. The president's legal team, meanwhile, is clashing over how cooperative to be with Mueller, who is homing in on key White House players as he examines whether Trump sought to obstruct justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey. Here is a look back at some of the month's most important developments: Facebook's Russia bombshell: Facebook announced on Septemb...

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The California Democrat added that there was no strict definition for what constitutes an impeachable offense. Outspoken Donald Trump critic Maxine Waters on Thursday guaranteed that there was collusion between the president and Russia and called on the black community to demand his impeachment. Waters, the long-time Democratic Congresswoman from California, has frequently called for Trump to be removed from office, citing a variety of alleged offenses. Related: Trump Supporters Don't Really Care If He Is Impeached But her latest tirade against the United States' 45th president may be her most severe yet. Speaking at a town hall on civil rights for the Congressional Black Caucus, Waters called on the black community to step up and make their voices heard in opposition to Trump. Adding that there was no strict definition for what constituted an impeachable offense. "How many in your organization have said 'impeach 45?'" she said. "Impeachment is abo...

On June 8, 2016, former FBI Director James Comey delivered what will be remembered as one the most consequential testimonies in modern history. Major networks interrupted their normal day-time TV to broadcast it live, which has only happened for a handful of congressional hearings (the Watergate hearings being among them). Americans tuned in with one question at the forefront of their minds: Is President Trump guilty of obstruction of justice? There have been numerous reports since Trump fired Comey that depict a president who was eager to end the investigation into his campaign’s potential collusion with Russia, and from what we got from Comey’s testimony, that appears to be the case. Comey’s prepared opening statement confirmed President Trump’s demand for loyalty in a private dinner, Trump’s request to end the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and that Comey did indeed write detailed memos of all his interactions with Trump. These details c...

WASHINGTON — Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, President Donald Trump's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Russia, told Congress on Tuesday that Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential election led directly to the lack of trust between the two former Cold War foes. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Huntsman struck a tough tone amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow. The relationship has been marred in recent months by a series of expulsions of diplomats and closures of diplomatic missions. "There is no question that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. election last year and Moscow continues to meddle in the democratic processes of our friends and allies," said Huntsman, who also noted that Russia continues to disregard its commitments to arms control treaties. "Right now we're at a low point," he said. "It reminds me of 1986." He said he would not hesitate to remind Russian officials that the...

President Donald Trump’s administration refused to release visitor logs from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that would provide the identities of those who have visited the president while he has stayed there. In July the Department of Justice was ordered by a federal court to finish reviewing Mar-a-Lago visitor records and make them available to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a liberal nonprofit group that fights for government transparency,  according  to the New York Times. On Friday the Justice Department had only “released a State Department list of just 22 names — all of them members of the delegation of the Japanese prime minister — who visited the club in February for a meeting with President Trump,” the Times reported. The defiant decision is the latest example of the Trump administration’s lack of transparency, and only stirs more questions regarding Trump’s private business that he can still  take out money from . It ...

Jurisprudence Could Facebook be held criminally liable for selling political ads to a Russian firm? September 15 2017 11:42 AM Folks at Facebook need to lean in and lawyer up. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal dream team is likely exploring whether the tech company has liability for political ads sold to a Russian firm. It’s time for Facebook to share what it knows. We learned last week that a Russian company paid Facebook $100,000 to place political ads. The Washington Post reported that this firm also disseminated pro-Kremlin propaganda, while the Daily Beast wrote that the ads may have reached as many as 70 million Americans. Some were circulated before the election and mentioned candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by name. The purchase of these political ads by the Russian company could be a federal crime, and members of the Trump campaign and Facebook could be implicated. The candidate ads look like independent expenditures by a foreign national in a U.S. elect...

Earlier this year, when reporters were sniffing around Donald Trump Jr.’s now-infamous June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney, some people inside the Trump camp wanted to come clean: to issue a statement saying that Trump Jr.’s meeting was about getting Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. The president, however, disagreed. During a flight on Air Force One in July, he personally dictated a statement to White House spokesperson Hope Hicks saying that the meeting “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” That statement, released on July 8 and attributed to Donald Trump Jr., was quickly shown to be verifiably false. And several reports released in the past week indicate that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating just how it was drafted. The Daily Beast, for example, reported on September 8 that Hicks herself will almost certainly be questioned regarding the statement’s composition. The Washington Post reported on the same day that five other Tru...

Is Vladimir Putin trying to strengthen the Trump presidency—or weaken it? laims that United States President Donald Trump secretly cooperated with Russia to steal the 2016 United States presidential election have been making headlines for over a year. New allegations seem to come out every week, but none of them are backed up by proof against the president. WikiLeaks published 19,252 e-mails hacked from the accounts of seven key Democratic National Committee staff members on July 22, 2016. These staff members are chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chief executive officer Amy Dacey, chief financial officer Brad Marshall, communications director Luis Miranda, press secretary Mark Paustenbach, broadcast media director Pablo Manriquez and finance director Jordan Kaplan.
The e-mails revealed that under Schultz’s leadership, key officials within the Democratic Party worked to sabotage the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders so Hillary Clinton would win the party nomination. Ma...

Trump Can't Admit He Lied About Wiretapping So Walks Out Of Interview © Reuters In a weird sort of bait-and-switch, Trump brings up his disproven Obama wiretapping claims, and then proceeds to act insulted when the journalist does his job. Multiple intelligence agencies and at least one congressional investigation found that President Donald Trump's claims that then-President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower were utterly false. Yet he still brings it up. In an interview with CBS journalist John Dickerson on Monday, Trump made the odd choice to revisit his lie, and then abruptly ended the interview when pressed on it. It's a little like watching a bratty, hormonal teenager pick an unnecessary fight, but it's the president of the United States. When Dickerson asked Trump if Obama had given him any advice, the president immediately proceeded to set his stage. "He was very nice to me, but after that, we’ve had some difficulties. So it doesn’t matter. Yo...

BuzzFeed News Reporter WASHINGTON – In the third month of Donald Trump’s presidency, Vladimir Putin dispatched one of his diplomats to the State Department to deliver a bold proposition: The full normalization of relations between the United States and Russia across all major branches of government. The proposal, spelled out in a detailed document obtained by BuzzFeed News, called for the wholesale restoration of diplomatic, military and intelligence channels severed between the two countries after Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine and Syria. The broad scope of the Kremlin’s reset plan came with an ambitious launch date: immediately. By April, a top Russian cyber official, Andrey Krutskikh, would meet with his American counterpart for consultations on “information security,” the document proposed. By May, the two countries would hold “special consultations” on the war in Afghanistan, the Iran nuclear deal, the “situation in Ukraine,” and efforts to denuclearize the “Korean...

Hillary Clinton may have officially ruled out another run for office on Sunday, but she is continuing to voice her opinions on the Trump Administration. In an interview with millennial-focused news site Refinery29 leading up to the Tuesday release of her memoir What Happened—an account of her loss to Trump in the presidential election last November—Clinton was asked if she believes First Daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump should be held responsible for her father’s actions. “Everyone associated with him … they’re either on board with that, or they’re not,” Clinton responded. “And if they’re not, they need to be speaking out or leaving. But if they remain silent and just give lip service to contrary points of views, then they are part of his agenda and should be judged and held accountable for that.” Clinton also offered some advice for millennial women looking to make a difference in the world. “I have a little mantra where I like to say resist, insist, persist, and enl...

The dangerous politics of revanchism are on full display in the Trump administration. September 06, 2017 In the 1880s, France saw the unlikely rise of Georges Boulanger, a military man who built a political movement based entirely on grievance. Boulangisme, as that movement came to be called, began with a desire to exact revenge on Germany, which had recently defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War. Rife with romantic nationalist overtones, boulangisme "centered on the power and charisma of a single leader who was seen as a kind of political savior for a nation led astray by 'foreign' forces and ideology,'" as the political scientist Ingrid L. Anderson wrote. Although the boulangistes gained some power in Parliament, the Third Republic survived the movement's demagoguery. Boulanger killed himself in 1891 in the appropriately dramatic fashion of the French, at the grave of his mistress. His lasting contribution to Western society is the word revanchism, whic...

For the past few months, I have had this questions in my head, like I am sure most Americans have – How did Donald Trump ever become the President of the United States? Sure, I am aware of the help he may have received from Russian hackers. I am also acutely aware that other factors may have influenced the last presidential election but I have a hard time believing that we as Americans could have been so easily fooled into voting for this man, a man with the intelligence of a 6-year old. Something is seriously wrong with Donald Trump. It scares me to say that about a man with his hands on the nuclear code and the economic levers of the world’s most powerful nation. See also: Hurricane Harvey Last 24 Hours: Updates You May have Missed. Trump has never seen a lie too preposterous to tell. At the last count, he has recorded over 1100 lies. There are now so many of them that the default position has become to doubt every word coming out of his mouth. Just this week, the U.S. Justice ...