Tag: Trump

Categories
Politics

Trump Backs New Group for Conservative Donors

Trump Backs New Group for Conservative Donors

Former President Donald J. Trump supports a group whose officials say it will aim to fight the sprawling democratic donor network, the Democracy Alliance. This is Trump’s most recent attempt to shape and campaign for Republican fundraisers since leaving the White House.

The group, known as the America Alliance, will urge donors to make annual dues and commit to giving $ 100,000 to candidates and organizations recommended by the umbrella group. This is evident from internal documents and people who are familiar with the plans. Mr Trump has asked Michael Glassner, the former chief operating officer of the 2020 Trump re-election campaign, to become the chief executive officer.

The new group will recommend making contributions to companies founded or partnered with Trump allies, as well as organizations affiliated with Mr. Trump, including a proposed Super PAC and his own multi-candidate PAC.

Internal documents for the group, reviewed by the New York Times, contain a notice that No. Employees “are paid on a commission basis.”

Mr Trump said in a statement to the Times that the group – as well as its own candidate committees and party committees – was a way to gain a foothold against Democrats.

“Republicans have been at a fundraising disadvantage for years, but now we’re going to beat the Democrats at their own game thanks to Save America, Make America Great Again PAC, the America Alliance, our fine party committees, and all of our other support groups,” said Mr. Trump.

The group was originally conceived by Caroline Wren, a professional fundraiser who worked for officials like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and worked on the former president’s re-election campaign. When it was first given to donors weeks ago, some aides to Mr Trump said he was dissatisfied with its existence because it competed with other groups he supported and that he hadn’t signed it. Since then, he has become aware of the idea of ​​a new group that, according to official information, will focus on grassroots activities and donations to other organizations.

Mr. Trump decided to install Mr. Glassner at the top of the structure, with Ms. Wren working for Mr. Glassner as a senior advisor along with a number of other senior executives and a board of directors of a dozen advisors.

Ms. Wren has told strategists that she has met more than 100 donors in the past five months and has repeatedly heard a wish that these types of businesses can channel money more effectively.

Mr Trump’s move comes as the Republican donor class enters an intermediate and new presidential cycle in which the Republican National Committee, Congressional committees, and individual candidate committees vie for donor support.

Mr. Trump’s Political Action Committee, Save America, has nearly $ 90 million in store, raised mostly in the weeks following the November 3 elections, which he falsely claimed were stolen from him. The former president has repeatedly drawn lots for fundraisers at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, for candidates seeking his support.

Categories
Business

One America Information Community Stays True to Trump

One America News Network Stays True to Trump

Months after President Biden’s inauguration, One America News Network, a right-wing cable news broadcaster that is available in approximately 35 million households, continued to air segments that cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 presidential election.

“There are still serious doubts about who is actually president,” OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in a March 28 report.

This segment was one of a series of similar reports from a channel that has become sort of Trump TV for the post-Trump era, a point of sale whose coverage coincides with the former president’s grievances at a time when he was from Excluding the main social media platforms.

Some of OAN’s reporting was not fully supported by staff. In interviews with 18 current and former OAN newsroom staff, 16 said the broadcaster had broadcast reports they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.

According to much of the OAN coverage, it is almost as if there was never a transfer of power. The broadcaster did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and inaugural address. Through April, Donald J. Trump was consistently referred to as “President Trump” and President Biden only as “Joe Biden” or “Biden” in news articles on the OAN website. This practice is not followed by other news organizations including OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.

OAN has also advocated the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were leftist agitators. Towards the end of a March 4 news segment describing the attack as the work of “anti-fascists” and “anti-Trump extremists” and describing the president as “Beijing Biden,” Mr. Sharp said, “History will tell that it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence. “Research has found no evidence that people who identify with Antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist activists, were implicated in the Capitol uprising.

Charles Herring, president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports that cast doubt on the election. “Based on our research, the November 2020 elections clearly revealed irregularities among voters,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”

Herring Networks was founded by Mr. Hering’s father, technology entrepreneur Robert Herring, who ran the OAN at the age of 79 with Charles and one other son, Robert Jr. Around 150 employees work for the station at its headquarters in San Diego.

Nielsen does not report viewership statistics for OAN that is not a Nielsen client. (Charles Herring quoted Nielsen’s “high fees”.) In a poll last month, Pew Research reported that 7 percent of Americans, including 14 percent of Republicans, had received political news from the OAN. In contrast, 43 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Republicans received political news from Fox News, according to the poll.

While OAN appeals to a relatively small audience, its coverage reflects the views of Republicans. In a Reuters / Ipsos poll last month, around half of Republicans said the January 6 attack, which killed five people, was largely a nonviolent protest or the work of leftist activists. Six in ten Republicans polled said they believed Mr Trump’s claim that the election was “stolen”.

OAN, which began in 2013, gained attention when it fully aired Mr Trump’s campaign speeches ahead of the 2016 election. In the past few months, it has been courting viewers who may have felt abandoned by Fox News. On election night, it was the first news agency to project Mr. Biden as the winner from Arizona, a major swing state. In an advertisement in mid-November, OAN accused Fox News of “joining the mainstream media in censoring factual reports.”

OAN’s stories “speak to people who want to believe the choice was illegitimate,” said Stephanie L. Edgerly, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. “These are two mutually reinforcing narratives from people who believe it and want to keep fueling the fire of OAN.”

Marty Golingan, who has been the station’s producer since 2016, said OAN has changed in recent years. When he first started, the company focused more on neutral reporting based on reports from The Associated Press or Reuters. He saw it as a scratchy upstart to produce naughty feature films, he said.

It moved to the right during the Trump presidency, Golingan said. And as he watched the coverage of the pro-Trump crowd breaking into the Capitol, he feared that his work might inspire the attack.

He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the broadcaster’s coverage. “The majority of people did not believe that the allegations of electoral fraud are in the air,” Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.

He remembered seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol holding a flag with the OAN logo on it. “I thought, OK, this is not good,” said Mr. Golingan. “That happens when people listen to us.”

Charles Herring defended OAN’s coverage. “A review process with multiple reviews is in place to ensure reporting is up to the company’s journalistic standards,” he said. “And yes, we’ve had a lot of mistakes, but we’re doing our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.”

Mr. Golingan added that Lindsay Oakley, the OAN’s news director, had reprimanded him since Inauguration Day for copying Mr. Biden as “President Biden”. Ms. Oakley did not respond to requests for comment.

“OAN White House staff use the term President Biden and then possibly Mr. Biden,” said Charles Herring. “The term biden or biden administration can also be used.” He declined to respond to a question about the broadcaster’s use of “President Trump” for Mr. Trump.

Allysia Britton, a news producer, said she was one of more than a dozen employees who left OAN after the Capitol uprising. She criticized some of the station’s reports, saying it did not meet journalistic standards.

“Many people have raised concerns,” Ms. Britton said in an interview. “And the thing is, if people talk about anything, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Charles Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN employees had left in the past few months, saying many of them were not high-level employees.

OAN employees refer to orders in which the older Mr. Herring has a particular interest as “H-stories”, said several current and former employees. The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr Herring instructed OAN staff in an email audited by the New York Times to “report all things Antifa did yesterday”.

Some “H-Stories” are reported by Kristian Rouz, an OAN correspondent who wrote for Sputnik, a website supported by the Russian government. In a report on the pandemic in May, Rouz said Covid-19 may have started as a “globalist conspiracy to establish comprehensive population control,” ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and “The Deep State.”

Ms. Britton, the former OAN producer, recalled checking out a website that Mr. Rouz had quoted in support of some of his reports. “It literally took me to this chat room where it’s only conservatives commenting on each other,” she said.

In an email to staff last month, Ms. Oakley, the news director, warned producers not to ignore or downplay Mr. Rouz’s work. “His stories should be viewed and treated as ‘H-stories’,” she wrote in the email The Times checked. “These stories are often broken up and copied by ME according to Mr. H’s instructions.”

OAN’s online audience is significant with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to the YouTube channel. In one of the most popular videos, with around 1.5 million views since its November 24th launch, Dominion Voting Systems, the voting technology company whose equipment has been used in more than two dozen states over the past year, including several made by Mr. . Trump were won. The video, hosted by OAN White House correspondent Chanel Rion, shows a man saying he infiltrated Dominion and company executives said they would “make sure” Mr. Trump lost.

Dominion has sued Fox News and two of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, on charges of making or promoting defamatory claims. A Dominion attorney who failed to respond to requests for comment said the company was considering further legal action.

Mr Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees were hoping Dominion would sue the channel. “A lot of people said, ‘This is crazy and if they sue us we might stop posting stories like that,'” he said.

Weeks after Dominion filed its first libel suits, OAN broadcast a two-hour video in which MyPillow executive director Mike Lindell presented his case that there had been widespread electoral fraud. YouTube removed the video the day it was posted, saying it violated the platform’s election integrity policy. Last month, Dominion’s “voting machines” were described as “infamous” in an OAN report.

Two of the current and former employees interviewed for this article – Dan Ball, a talk show host, and Neil W. McCabe, a former reporter – said OAN’s coverage was impartial. Mr McCabe, now a writer for The Tennessee Star, said the network gave “a voice to people who just aren’t covered”.

Susan Beachy contributed to the research.

Categories
Politics

One America Information Community Stays True to Trump

One America News Network Stays True to Trump

Months after President Biden’s inauguration, One America News Network, a right-wing cable news broadcaster that is available in approximately 35 million households, continued to air segments that cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 presidential election.

“There are still serious doubts about who is actually president,” OAN correspondent Pearson Sharp said in a March 28 report.

This segment was one of a series of similar reports from a channel that has become sort of Trump TV for the post-Trump era, a point of sale whose coverage coincides with the former president’s grievances at a time when he was from Excluding the main social media platforms.

Some of OAN’s reporting was not fully supported by staff. In interviews with 18 current and former OAN newsroom staff, 16 said the broadcaster had broadcast reports they considered misleading, inaccurate or untrue.

According to much of the OAN coverage, it is almost as if there was never a transfer of power. The broadcaster did not broadcast live coverage of Mr. Biden’s swearing-in ceremony and inaugural address. Through April, Donald J. Trump was consistently referred to as “President Trump” and President Biden only as “Joe Biden” or “Biden” in news articles on the OAN website. This practice is not followed by other news organizations including OAN competitor Newsmax, a conservative cable channel and news site.

OAN has also advocated the debunked theory that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were leftist agitators. Towards the end of a March 4 news segment describing the attack as the work of “anti-fascists” and “anti-Trump extremists” and describing the president as “Beijing Biden,” Mr. Sharp said, “History will tell that it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who called for this violence. “Research has found no evidence that people who identify with Antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist activists, were implicated in the Capitol uprising.

Charles Herring, president of Herring Networks, the company that owns OAN, defended the reports that cast doubt on the election. “Based on our research, the November 2020 elections clearly revealed irregularities among voters,” he said. “The real question is to what extent.”

Herring Networks was founded by Mr. Hering’s father, technology entrepreneur Robert Herring, who ran the OAN at the age of 79 with Charles and one other son, Robert Jr. Around 150 employees work for the station at its headquarters in San Diego.

Nielsen does not report viewership statistics for OAN that is not a Nielsen client. (Charles Herring quoted Nielsen’s “high fees”.) In a poll last month, Pew Research reported that 7 percent of Americans, including 14 percent of Republicans, had received political news from the OAN. In contrast, 43 percent of Americans and 62 percent of Republicans received political news from Fox News, according to the poll.

While OAN appeals to a relatively small audience, its coverage reflects the views of Republicans. In a Reuters / Ipsos poll last month, around half of Republicans said the January 6 attack, which killed five people, was largely a nonviolent protest or the work of leftist activists. Six in ten Republicans polled said they believed Mr Trump’s claim that the election was “stolen”.

OAN, which began in 2013, gained attention when it fully aired Mr Trump’s campaign speeches ahead of the 2016 election. In the past few months, it has been courting viewers who may have felt abandoned by Fox News. On election night, it was the first news agency to project Mr. Biden as the winner from Arizona, a major swing state. In an advertisement in mid-November, OAN accused Fox News of “joining the mainstream media in censoring factual reports.”

OAN’s stories “speak to people who want to believe the choice was illegitimate,” said Stephanie L. Edgerly, associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. “These are two mutually reinforcing narratives from people who believe it and want to keep fueling the fire of OAN.”

Marty Golingan, who has been the station’s producer since 2016, said OAN has changed in recent years. When he first started, the company focused more on neutral reporting based on reports from The Associated Press or Reuters. He saw it as a scratchy upstart to produce naughty feature films, he said.

It moved to the right during the Trump presidency, Golingan said. And as he watched the coverage of the pro-Trump crowd breaking into the Capitol, he feared that his work might inspire the attack.

He added that he and others at OAN disagreed with much of the broadcaster’s coverage. “The majority of people did not believe that the allegations of electoral fraud are in the air,” Golingan said in an interview, referring to his colleagues.

He remembered seeing a photo of someone in the Capitol holding a flag with the OAN logo on it. “I thought, OK, this is not good,” said Mr. Golingan. “That happens when people listen to us.”

Charles Herring defended OAN’s coverage. “A review process with multiple reviews is in place to ensure reporting is up to the company’s journalistic standards,” he said. “And yes, we’ve had a lot of mistakes, but we’re doing our best to keep them to a minimum and learn from our missteps.”

Mr. Golingan added that Lindsay Oakley, the OAN’s news director, had reprimanded him since Inauguration Day for copying Mr. Biden as “President Biden”. Ms. Oakley did not respond to requests for comment.

“OAN White House staff use the term President Biden and then possibly Mr. Biden,” said Charles Herring. “The term biden or biden administration can also be used.” He declined to respond to a question about the broadcaster’s use of “President Trump” for Mr. Trump.

Allysia Britton, a news producer, said she was one of more than a dozen employees who left OAN after the Capitol uprising. She criticized some of the station’s reports, saying it did not meet journalistic standards.

“Many people have raised concerns,” Ms. Britton said in an interview. “And the thing is, if people talk about anything, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Charles Herring confirmed that about a dozen OAN employees had left in the past few months, saying many of them were not high-level employees.

OAN employees refer to orders in which the older Mr. Herring has a particular interest as “H-stories”, said several current and former employees. The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr Herring instructed OAN staff in an email audited by the New York Times to “report all things Antifa did yesterday”.

Some “H-Stories” are reported by Kristian Rouz, an OAN correspondent who wrote for Sputnik, a website supported by the Russian government. In a report on the pandemic in May, Rouz said Covid-19 may have started as a “globalist conspiracy to establish comprehensive population control,” ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and “The Deep State.”

Ms. Britton, the former OAN producer, recalled checking out a website that Mr. Rouz had quoted in support of some of his reports. “It literally took me to this chat room where it’s only conservatives commenting on each other,” she said.

In an email to staff last month, Ms. Oakley, the news director, warned producers not to ignore or downplay Mr. Rouz’s work. “His stories should be viewed and treated as ‘H-stories’,” she wrote in the email The Times checked. “These stories are often broken up and copied by ME according to Mr. H’s instructions.”

OAN’s online audience is significant with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to the YouTube channel. In one of the most popular videos, with around 1.5 million views since its November 24th launch, Dominion Voting Systems, the voting technology company whose equipment has been used in more than two dozen states over the past year, including several made by Mr. . Trump were won. The video, hosted by OAN White House correspondent Chanel Rion, shows a man saying he infiltrated Dominion and company executives said they would “make sure” Mr. Trump lost.

Dominion has sued Fox News and two of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, on charges of making or promoting defamatory claims. A Dominion attorney who failed to respond to requests for comment said the company was considering further legal action.

Mr Golingan, the producer, said some OAN employees were hoping Dominion would sue the channel. “A lot of people said, ‘This is crazy and if they sue us we might stop posting stories like that,'” he said.

Weeks after Dominion filed its first libel suits, OAN broadcast a two-hour video in which MyPillow executive director Mike Lindell presented his case that there had been widespread electoral fraud. YouTube removed the video the day it was posted, saying it violated the platform’s election integrity policy. Last month, Dominion’s “voting machines” were described as “infamous” in an OAN report.

Two of the current and former employees interviewed for this article – Dan Ball, a talk show host, and Neil W. McCabe, a former reporter – said OAN’s coverage was impartial. Mr McCabe, now a writer for The Tennessee Star, said the network gave “a voice to people who just aren’t covered”.

Susan Beachy contributed to the research.

Categories
Politics

AG Merrick Garland erases Trump limits on consent decrees for police

AG Merrick Garland erases Trump limits on consent decrees for police

President Joe Biden listens as Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on April 8, 2021, on gun violence prevention executive measures.

Kevin Lemarque | Reuters

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday lifted the Trump-era restrictions on consent ordinances that the Justice Department has used to enforce reforms in police departments allegedly allegedly widespread wrongdoing.

Garland, who fulfilled an election promise made by President Joe Biden, said in a memorandum that the Justice Department “will revert to the traditional process” that took place before former President Donald Trump’s administration placed severe restrictions on the civil rights instrument.

“Together we will continue the Department’s legacy of promoting the rule of law, protecting the public, and working with state and local government agencies to achieve these goals,” Garland said in the memo sent to US attorneys and other DOJs Leader.

The policy reversal is taking place amid historically strained relationships between police agencies and black communities. A number of deaths involving police over the past year, notably the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

Derek Chauvin, the white ex-cop who kneeled on Floyd’s neck more than nine minutes before he died, is on trial for murder. The recent shooting near Minneapolis by Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, sparked further protests in Minnesota.

Consent ordinances are judicial agreements that can be used to remedy violations of the law or systemic misconduct that have been found in federal investigations against state or local law enforcement authorities.

For example, following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the DOJ initiated an investigation by the Ferguson Police Department into “alleged patterns or practices of illegal misconduct” and other issues. Less than a year later, the DOJ said it had identified “a number of patterns or practices of unconstitutional behavior”.

A federal judge approved the consent decree between Ferguson and the DOJ in April 2016, which required major changes in the police force.

Just before he was fired by Trump in November 2018, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions signed a memo restricting the Justice Department’s use of consent regulations.

Changes to the sessions included a requirement that consent orders must be approved by top management and that they contain an expiration date, rather than only going into effect once the court believes the case can be closed.

“I am picking up the November 2018 memorandum,” Garland said in his memo.

As a presidential candidate, Biden vowed that under his administration, the DOJ “will again use its authority to eradicate unconstitutional or unlawful policing”.

Categories
Politics

DOJ sues Trump ally Roger Stone, spouse over alleged unpaid taxes

DOJ sues Trump ally Roger Stone, wife over alleged unpaid taxes

Roger Stone, longtime political ally of US President Donald Trump, is leaving after a status hearing in the criminal proceedings initiated against him by special adviser Robert Mueller on March 14, 2019 at the US District Court in Washington.

Joshua Roberts | Reuters

The Justice Department on Friday sued Roger Stone, the loyal former advisor to ex-President Donald Trump, claiming he and his wife owe nearly $ 2 million in unpaid federal taxes and other fees.

The lawsuit accuses Stone and Nydia Stone of using an “alter ego” business to “protect their personal income from forced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle.”

The civil lawsuit also accuses the Stones of “trying to defraud the United States” by fraudulently transferring money used to buy their home.

Stone, 68, a longtime Republican politician, was pardoned by Trump in December after being convicted of lying by Congress.

The DOJ’s complaint filed in federal court in South Florida alleges Stone and his wife underpaid their income taxes for five consecutive years in 2007 and 2011. The Stones owe $ 1,590,361.89, including interest and penalties for late payments, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit also alleges Stone failed to pay his full tax bill in 2018 when he filed separately from his spouse. He owes income taxes, interest and penalties of $ 407,036.84 for that year, the complaint said.

“Despite the termination and demand for payment, Roger and Nydia Stone failed and refused to pay the full amount of the debt they owed,” claims the DOJ.

Stone did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment on the lawsuit.

The complaint alleges that by using a Delaware limited liability company called Drake Ventures, the Stones “escaped and thwarted the collection efforts of the IRS.” The company is so dominated and controlled “by the family” that it does not exist as an independent entity, “claims the DOJ.

Drake Ventures has no website or phone number, all members are part of Stone’s family, and its address is the same as the Stone’s home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the complaint states.

“The Stones used Drake Ventures’ bank accounts to pay a significant portion of their personal expenses, including groceries, dental bills, spas, salons, clothing and restaurant expenses,” the complaint said.

They paid more than $ 500,000 of their personal tax liabilities through Drake Ventures’ bank accounts in 2018 and 2019 and used the company to pay Stone employees and relatives without providing proper documentation, the DOJ claims.

“The Stones used Drake Ventures for an improper purpose and harmed the United States,” the complaint read. “They used Drake Ventures to receive payments to be made to Roger Stone personally, pay their personal expenses, shield their assets and avoid reporting taxable income to the IRS.”

Categories
Politics

GOP Rep. John Katko, who voted to question Trump, being recruited to run for NY governor

GOP Rep. John Katko, who voted to impeach Trump, being recruited to run for NY governor

Rep. John Katko, RN.Y., speaks during a press conference following a House Republican meeting in Washington on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

Caroline Brehman | CQ Appeal, Inc. | Getty Images

A Republican Congressman who voted for the charges against former President Donald Trump is being recruited to run for New York governor next year.

Lawmaker Rep. John Katko has not ruled out running, said these individuals, who refused to be named due to the private nature of the conversations.

The development comes when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, comes under fire over several scandals. Several women have accused him of sexual harassment, which he denies while his government is under investigation for handling Covid-19 death dates. Cuomo has turned down calls for resignation and was on track to run for a fourth term.

Katko, who has called for Cuomo’s resignation, is a prominent member of the House Republican Caucus. He is the senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and may be named chair if the GOP Republicans retake the house during the 2022 midterm elections.

But Katko could again run into stumbling blocks running for Congress: there is a potential for backlash within his own party for his impeachment decision, and he represents a swing district. Katko’s campaign raised nearly $ 340,000 in the first quarter and has more than $ 580,000 available through April, according to new records from the Bundestag Electoral Commission.

The race in his district, the 24th in New York, is slated to be a litter next year, according to analysts at Cook Political Report. The district, which includes Syracuse, is one of at least 17 House Republican races that are considered competitive. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, won Katko’s district against former President Donald Trump by almost nine points.

Republicans won last year’s House of Representatives elections and are just a handful of seats away from becoming a majority.

Media representatives for both the Katko Convention Bureau and the 2022 re-election campaign did not return repeated requests for comments.

The recruitment surge for Katko shows that members of the GOP are looking for a more moderate candidate for the highest office in a traditionally democratic state. New York GOP MP Lee Zeldin has already announced his candidacy for governor. Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has said he could run on the Republican ticket.

Zeldin, Giuliani and others are due to speak for nationwide contenders at the New York Republican meeting in Albany on Monday, according to a person briefed on the matter. MEP Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., who has not publicly ruled out running for governor in 2022, is also on the list of speakers. Katko is not expected to attend, this person added.

Katko is the chairman of the moderate republican government group. His vote shows that he’s not necessarily a hardliner either. While Katko pushed back certain parts of the Affordable Care Act, in 2015 he didn’t vote to repeal it entirely. Katko later voted against the Affordable Health Care Act, the Republican’s replacement for the ACA, which passed the House but not received it by the Senate.

Cuomo has since said that he wanted to run for a fourth term despite the exam.

The poll is mixed for Cuomo. A March poll by Morning Consult shows that 53% of New York voters approve of Cuomo. However, a Quinnipiac poll conducted last month found that over 60% of registered registered New York voters would prefer Cuomo to stop running in 2022.

Categories
Politics

Trump marketing campaign chief Paul Manafort worker Kilimnik gave Russia election knowledge

Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort employee Kilimnik gave Russia election data

Konstantin Kilimnik as he appears on an FBI poster.

Source: FBI

A long-time employee of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave Russian intelligence services “sensitive information about election and campaign strategy” during this year’s elections, the US Treasury said on Thursday.

Manafort staffer Konstantin Kilimnik “also tried to further the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election,” the Treasury Department said as the Biden government launched new sanctions against Russia, Kilimnik and others announced.

These sanctions relate in part to alleged efforts by Russia to influence the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort arrives in the U.S. District Court in Washington on June 15, 2018 to be indicted on a third superseded indictment against him by special adviser Robert Mueller for witness manipulation.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Categories
Politics

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks decide to droop residence confinement

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen asks judge to suspend home confinement

Michael Cohen leaves the Manhattan Attorney’s Office in New York City on March 19, 2021.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Michael Cohen, former personal attorney for ex-President Donald Trump, on Monday called on a federal judge to suspend his criminal sentence as the judge parses his request to declare satisfied his punishment by job and education loans received in jail.

The request came because Cohen is expected to meet separately for the ninth time later this week with investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, Cyrus Vance Jr., who are conducting an extensive criminal investigation into Trump and the Trump Organization, a source with the case said CNBC.

Cohen’s motion for a verdict has nothing to do with his collaboration with Vance’s investigation into the most serious criminal prosecution Trump currently faces.

Vance is known to be investigating how the Trump firm recorded hush money payments that Cohen made possible for two women in 2016 and is investigating Cohen’s allegations to Congress that the Trump organization artificially manipulated the valuation of real estate assets for financial gain .

In a letter to US District Judge John Koetl, Cohen wrote that his daily detention in Manhattan continues to be “a day Mr. Cohen is illegally detained”.

Cohen wrote that he wanted Koetl “to order his release pending a decision” as to whether his criminal conviction has already been fulfilled.

He also wrote: “The impetus for this request stems from the known fact that the Bureau of Prisons is walking through these petitions noticeably slowly in order to discuss resolve, particularly on matters such as the one before Your Honor, in which the petitioner is released from custody will be 7 months. “

If Koetl approves this motion, Cohen could freely leave his Upper East Side domicile, at least until the judge finally decides on his legal offer to declare his sentence complete.

Cohen, guilty of tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions and making a false declaration to Congress, was released last spring after serving just over a year of his three-year prison sentence on coronavirus concerns would have.

In his pending petition to Koetl in Manhattan federal court, Cohen argued that his sentence was completed because of classes and assignments he completed in prison, which bought him time under the First Step Act signed by Trump. Cohen argues that its last possible release date is May 29th.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Cohen told CNBC, “This letter to Judge Koetl and my underlying Habeas Corpus letter seeks judicial intervention to compel the Bureau of Prisons to give me what I am entitled to under the terms of the First Step Act . No more and no less. “”

And Cohen added, “This petition has nothing to do with my ongoing work with the prosecutor [New York state] Attorney General or any other investigation I am involved in. “

New York attorney general Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation into the Trump Organization that, like Vance’s criminal investigation, examines whether the company has misrepresented the value of the same real estate assets at different times, benefiting from lower tax expenses and insurance costs if Ratings were lower than stated for loan purposes.

The federal prosecutor argued that Cohen was not entitled to any time credits he had identified for any work or course he had identified, “largely because Cohen did not have a need to reduce his risk of relapse in any of the areas in which he took courses or work.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York who opposed Cohen’s offer declined to comment on Monday.

In his letter on Monday, Cohen also drew Koetl’s attention to a filing in another case involving a federal inmate in which prosecutors apparently dropped two “misguided and flawed defenses” that they had used in Cohen’s case.

That defense is that Cohen’s claim for a judgment from Koetl is not legally ripe because the First Step Act has not been fully enforced and because he has failed to exhaust the administrative complaints to the US Bureau of Prisons.

Cohen began working with Vance’s probe before going to jail and continued speaking with investigators while he was incarcerated and after his release to detention center.

Cohen last met with top officials in Vance’s office in mid-March.

Categories
Politics

Biden Picks Trump Critic Chris Magnus to Run Border Company

Biden Picks Trump Critic Chris Magnus to Run Border Agency

“I’ve been thinking about how I really wanted to treat people differently,” he said. “And it had an impact, that’s for sure.”

Chief Magnus began his law enforcement career as a dispatcher in the Lansing Police Department in 1979, rose through the ranks to become Chief of Police in Fargo, ND, in 1999, helping set up a refugee liaison program.

Later, as the chief of police in Richmond, he helped fight violent crime. In 2014, one of his last years in the department, the city recorded only 11 murders, the lowest number in more than four decades. That year Chief Magnus was photographed holding the Black Lives Matter sign and when criticized by the local police union said he would do it again.

However, in Richmond, Chief Magnus also faced a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by seven black sergeants, lieutenants and captains, despite a 2012 jury rejecting all claims. In 2015, a former Richmond police officer settled a dismissal suit with the department after saying he was fired for complaining that Chief Magnus sexually molested him and committed racial slurs. Chief Magnus called the allegations “completely wrong”.

“At that time, there were still people who said I was an easier target because I was a gay man,” he said. “This is not the first time in my career that I’ve seen it.”

In Tucson last year, Chief Magnus drew fire again when it took the department two months to release the body camera video of the death of a 27-year-old Latino man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, who repeatedly asked for water while he was withheld was by police officers.

Chief Magnus blamed the delay on a bureaucratic breakdown and said he didn’t see the video right away. But he said he wish he had done more to see it for himself. “We should have asked to see the video but it didn’t and when we finally saw it we were obviously very concerned about it,” he said. Chief Magnus offered to resign during a press conference when the video was released, but the mayor kept him updated and praised his work in a statement Monday.

Categories
Politics

Matt Gaetz hires Marc Mukasey, lawyer for Trump Group

Matt Gaetz hires Marc Mukasey, lawyer for Trump Organization

Marc Mukasey, an attorney for US President Donald Trump, is leaving Manhattan Federal Court after a judge ruled that Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One Financial Corp should submit financial records to investigators on May 22nd in New York City, United States May provide. 2019.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Rep. Matt Gaetz has hired two senior New York lawyers, one of whom is currently representing the Trump Organization in an ongoing criminal investigation, to represent him as the Florida Republican faces a federal investigation into sex trafficking.

The retention of Trump firm’s attorney Marc Mukasey is notable not only for Mukasey’s track record in handling serious criminal cases, but also because Gaetz is among the most ardent defenders of former President Donald Trump.

Mukasey, a former federal attorney who is the son of former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, was also a protégé of Trump’s personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Together with Mukasey, Isabelle Kirshner represents Gaetz in the criminal investigation.

Gaetz, who has not been charged, has also hired a public relations firm, the Washington-based Logan Circle Group, to deal with the devastating media outages after news of the federal investigation first appeared in the New York Times last week.

The steps came after an attorney for Gaetz’s friend Joel Greenberg pointed out Thursday that Greenberg was planning to plead guilty in a federal trial in which he was charged with sex trafficking in underage girls, wire fraud, stalking and bribery of a federal official.

This case against Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector, led to an ongoing investigation into 38-year-old Gaetz on suspicion of an illegal sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.

Investigators are also looking into whether Gaetz paid women to travel to the Bahamas for sex, according to NBC News, and whether he and Greenberg used the internet to look for women to be paid for sex.

The disclosure that Greenberg expects to reach an agreement on his own case sparked immediate speculation that he would work with federal agencies if they continued investigating Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing.

“I’m sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very well today,” said Greenberg’s lawyer Fritz Scheller on Thursday after appearing in court in the case. “You’ve seen the number of stories out there and the focus is on their relationship. Isn’t it obvious to assume he’d be concerned?”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) listens during a committee hearing on the impeachment proceedings of U.S. President Donald Trump in the Longworth House office building on Capitol Hill on December 11, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

Erin Elmore of the Logan Circle Group said in a statement Friday about Gaetz: “Matt has always been a fighter.”

“A fighter for its constituents, a fighter for the country and a fighter for the constitution,” said Elmore.

“He will fight the baseless allegations against him. His legal team, led by Marc Mukasey and Isabelle Kirshner, will fight those who try to smear his name with untruths.”

Elmore is a lawyer who appeared in season 3 as a candidate on Trump’s former television show “The Apprentice”.

The Logan Circle Group is led by Harlan Hill, another Trump attorney who was banned from appearing on the conservative Fox News network last fall after tweeting that Vice President “Kamala Harris comes out as such an unbearable lie.” , it’s just true. “

Mukasey declined to comment on his work for Gaetz on CNBC, referring to Elmore’s testimony.

A spokesman for Kirshner declined to comment on her, except to confirm that she and Mukasey had been kept by Gaetz.

Trump hasn’t said much in Gaetz’s defense over the past week, except to deny the story that Gaetz requested a blanket criminal pardon from Trump prior to the end of his term in January, and to indicate that Gaetz “was against the allegations completely denied him. “

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Mukasey is one of several attorneys representing Trump’s company in a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Cyrus Vance Jr., who is investigating not only the company, but also the former president himself and others affiliated with the firm.

Vance’s office is believed to be investigating possible tax and banking fraud by the Trump organization and whether the company has properly accounted for the hush money payments made in 2016 to two women who had sex with Trump.

The ex-president denies the women’s claims and has said Vance’s probe is a witch hunt.

On Thursday, investigators from Vance’s office collected financial records from Jennifer Weisselberg, the former daughter-in-law of the Trump organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

Jennifer Weisselberg said she’s working with Vance’s probe. The Washington Post reported that a subpoena, issued at Vance’s request, sought documents in their possession relating to the Trump Organization and an ice rink that the company operated in Central Park and managed Weisselberg’s ex-husband, Barry Weisselberg.

Michael Cohen, who served as Trump’s personal attorney for years, also worked with Vance’s investigation.

At the same time, New York Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation to determine whether the Trump Organization has mispriced various real estate assets in the form of lower tax liabilities, insurance rates, and loan terms for financial benefit.

Mukasey represents the Trump organization in James’ investigation.

Isabelle Kirshner attends the Artwalk NY 2015 at the Metropolitan Pavilion on November 17, 2015 in New York City.

Chance yeh | Getty Images