Lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Monday asked a federal judge in Washington to impose a prison term “significantly below the statutory maximum” when he is sentenced on March 13, according to a court filing.

Manafort pleaded guilty in a federal court in Washington last September to conspiracy against the United States — a charge that includes a range of conduct from money laundering to unregistered lobbying — and conspiracy to obstruct justice for attempts to tamper with witnesses.

He can be sentenced up to five years for each count, for a statutory maximum of 10 years.

“We respectfully request that the Court impose a sentence significantly below the statutory maximum sentence in this case,” Manafort’s lawyers said in the filing.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team said in a filing on Saturday that Manafort, 69, “repeatedly and brazenly” broke the law, and argued he did not deserve leniency at sentencing.

While Mueller did not recommend a specific sentence, he portrayed Manafort as a “hardened” criminal who was at risk of repeating criminal behavior if released from prison.

Mueller is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and any collusion between Russia and the campaign of President Donald Trump.

Russia denies trying to interfere in the election, and Trump says his team did not collude with Moscow.

Manafort is due to be sentenced on March 8 in a separate case in Alexandria, Virginia. He faces up to 25 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines in that case, in which he was convicted last year of financial crimes.

In Monday’s filing, Manafort’s lawyers asked the Washington judge to impose a concurrent sentence if he receives prison sentences in both cases.
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President Donald Trump is going after director Spike Lee, who used his Oscar acceptance speech to urge mobilization for the 2020 election.

Trump tweeted Monday that Lee did a “racist hit on your President.” Trump claimed that he had “done more for African Americans” than “almost” any other president.  

Lee won for best adapted screenplay for his white supremacist drama “BlacKkKlansman,”  sharing the award with three co-writers. The film includes footage of Trump after the violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Lee did not directly name Trump. He spoke about black history and his family history, saying his grandmother’s mother was a slave, before stressing the presidential election next year.

Said Lee: “Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate.”
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A group of 58 former U.S. national security officials, both Republicans and Democrats, contended Monday that President Donald Trump had “no factual basis” to declare a national emergency to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to thwart illegal immigration.

“Under no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today that entitles the president to tap into funds appropriated for other purposes to build a wall at the southern border,” the group said.

The officials who signed the statement included former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and John Kerry, along with former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former United Nations Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former Defense chief and Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta and former State Department counselor Eliot Cohen.

Trump declared the emergency 10 days ago to circumvent congressional refusal to give him the $5.7 billion he wanted to build the border wall he says is necessary to block illegal migrants and criminals from entering the United States and to interdict drug shipments. Congress approved $1.375 billion for border barriers, but none for a wall.

WATCH: Under the National Emergencies Act of 1976, a U.S. president has broad power to declare a national emergency. But what does that mean?

Trump did not respond directly to the statement by the former security officials, but defended his plans for a wall at a White House meeting with the country’s state governors.

“You take a look at Tijuana, Mexico,” Trump said. “Thousands and thousands of people are sitting there trying to get into our country. And if we didn’t have that wall there that we’ve totally renovated and fixed, if we didn’t have that wall, it would be impossible even for the military to stop them.”

He added, “It’s incredible, what that wall has done. And that’s not even the upper, you know, the best of our walls. We have a great system now. We have a prototype. We expect to have 250 to 300 miles of wall built in the very near future. It’s actually a beautiful wall, it’s a beautiful looking—actually, you know, I’ve always said part of the wall was that previous administrations when they did little walls, they built them so badly. So badly, so unattractive. So—I wouldn’t want them in my backyard.”

“And the new one is incredible looking,” he concluded. “It’s a piece of art, in a sense. And by the way, it’s more effective. It’s more effective.” 

But the former security officials said that contrary to Trump’s claim, there is no emergency at the border, noting that illegal border crossings are at nearly 40-year lows. They also said there is no drug trafficking emergency at the border since “the overwhelming majority of opioids” enter the country through legal ports of entry, a contention supported by government statistics but one that Trump disputes.

Trump plans to tap about $8 billion in government funds already earmarked for other projects to build the wall, including some designated for the Defense Department. But the former security officials claimed that redirecting the money “will undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.”

The officials’ statement comes a day before the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is likely to reject Trump’s national emergency declaration. A majority of House members has signed on to the resolution opposing Trump’s action.

The measure would then head to the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, although several Republican lawmakers have voiced opposition to the emergency declaration. Whether they eventually will join Democrats in voting to oppose Trump’s action is uncertain.

Trump has started lobbying fellow Republicans to stand with him in support of the emergency declaration.

“I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security,” he said on Twitter. “Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country – and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats ‘trap’ of Open Borders and Crime!”

Sixteen states and other groups have sued to block the emergency declaration, but court hearings on the dispute have yet to held.
…

A top House Democrat says his committee will sue the Trump administration if the Justice Department withholds the Mueller report from the public.

“We will obviously subpoena the report, we will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress, we will take it to court, if necessary,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told ABC’s This Week program Sunday.

“We are going to get to the bottom of this. We are going to share this information with the public and if the president is serious about all of his claims of exoneration, then he should welcome the publication of this report.”

Reports say Robert Mueller is wrapping up his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to turn the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor, and if the president obstructed justice in the probe.

Mueller will hand over his report to the Justice Department which, based on Mueller’s recommendations, will decide if anyone should be charged with a crime.

Attorney General William Barr failed to make it clear during his confirmation hearings whether he would release the report to the public.

But Barr said in his written testimony that he wants as much “transparency” as he can.

“If he were to try to withhold or try to bury any part of this report, that will be his legacy and it will be a tarnished legacy,” Schiff said. “So I think there will be immense pressure not only on the department, but on the attorney general to be forthcoming.”

While many Republicans also say they believe the public needs to know the whole story, Republican Senator Roy Blunt said he does not think Congress can subpoena the report.

But Blunt said “We need to get the facts out there, get this behind us in a way that people thought that anybody that should have been talked to was talked to, any question that schooled have been asked was asked.”

Blunt appeared on CBS television’s Face the Nation.
…

All the bill needed to become law was President Donald Trump’s signature. It would create a national archive of documents from civil rights cold cases. Students had been working on the project for years, families waiting on it for decades. But time was running out.

Legislation dies in the transition from one session of Congress to the next, and unless Trump acted, it would be lost.

So the students at New Jersey’s Hightstown High School did what teenagers do: They started tweeting at the president.

And not just Trump. They tweeted at his advisers, his staff and even Trump-friendly celebrities whose thousands of followers could carry their message to the White House.

As the deadline neared, Oslene Johnson, 19, was managing the project’s Twitter account from under the blankets in her bedroom and trying not to be discouraged.

“When you really look at it, it’s about providing closure for communities, families, and also as a country,” said Johnson, who has since graduated but still works with the students.

Imagine, the class considered, all the people, African-Americans mostly, who have lived with questions about what happened to their loved ones 50 years or more ago. The killings and injuries have long passed. The perpetrators are gone. But the families, she said, “they’re still with us.”

The students’ interest began in 2015, when teacher Stuart Wexler’s Advanced Placement government and policy class at Hightstown High was studying the civil rights movement. They couldn’t believe that in America, so many criminal cases involving racial violence and death could remain unsolved.

Srihari Suvramanian, 17, a senior, said in an Associated Press telephone interview with the class: “It’s just atrocious that these individuals have gotten away with crimes committed decades ago, for so long, even though the majority of Americans know it’s wrong.”

He added: “We think it’s very important to provide a sense of closure. Even if we can’t get a full sense of closure, maybe provide some answers to the people that were denied justice.”

The students crowdsourced a list of cases, filed Freedom of Information Act requests and then waited. Research on old cases often runs into dead ends, and they could imagine the difficulties that families go through trying to get answers.

They turned their attention to Congress.

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which collects records at the National Archives from the assassination, provided a model for the legislation they wanted. They took bus trips to Washington to find supporters. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., was among the first to sign on, inspired, his office said, by the work and the possibility it held.

Then Democrat Doug Jones won a Senate seat from Alabama in December 2017. They had already reached out to Jones, the U.S. attorney who won convictions after reopening the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing case from 1963 in Birmingham.

Six months after he was sworn in as the first Democratic senator from Alabama in a generation, Jones stood on the Senate floor and introduced the bill that would become the Civil Rights Cold Case Collection Act. The students watched from the gallery above.

“Justice can take many forms,” Jones said. Reconciliation can be a potent force, he said. “After all this time, we might not solve every one of these cold cases, but my hope is, our efforts today will, at the very least, help us find some long overdue healing and understanding of the truth.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was presiding in the chamber that day, has said he was so moved that he told Jones he would sign on as a co-sponsor. Cruz helped bring Republicans on board. By December, in the final days of the congressional session, the bill unanimously passed the Senate and was approved in the House, 376-6. From there, it was off to the president’s desk.

But the students worried the bill would expire when the new Congress convened in January.

“We went on a mad, desperate scramble to get the president to sign the bill,” said James Ward, a 17 year-old senior who helped mobilize the student body, class by class, “to take out their phones and tweet.”

In Wexler’s classroom, students posted photos of Trump’s “midnight advisers” — aides, media celebrities — and started putting “X’s” through the ones they had reached out to. “We were tweeting at as many people as we could,” Suvramanian recalled.

He was finishing class one afternoon when he dashed off an email to Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and a Trump ally. “He got back to me within 30 minutes,” the teenager said. After a short exchange, another note came back, “He said, ‘I dropped a message to the president around 10 minutes ago and I really hope your bill gets signed into law.’”

Even with the new Congress starting the next day, the actual deadline for signing the bill was still a week away — the night of Trump’s border security address to the nation amid what became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Johnson, a student leader when the project started, tried not to lose hope as she tweeted. She had graduated and moved on, as had many other students. There have been dozens in all, over the past several years, who had been involved in the project.

Then word came. Jones’ office told Wexler, who told the students: Trump had signed the bill, which focuses on unsolved criminal cases from 1940 until 1980.

Johnson cried.

“The families could now, with access to information, at least know something about what happened,” she said.

Along with Trump’s signature came a lengthy signing statement of potential concerns about the process for review and public release of the documents, but also support for Congress to fund the effort. Ruddy confirmed he had reached out to the White House, impressed by the students. He thinks the president would have been, too.

Margaret Burnham, a law professor at Northeastern University and director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, said what Wexler and his class did was “nothing short of amazing.”

“The creativity was not so much in framing potentially effective legislation, but in strategizing how to get it through the Congress,” said Burnham, who has worked for years on these issues and similar efforts in Washington. “That’s where Stuart and his students, over several classes, were just dogged — and creative, incredibly creative — in their ability to persuade Congress, people on both sides of the aisle, of the meaning and continuing urgency and significance of this issue.”

Tahj Linton, 17, said he hopes other Americans understand the power they have to shape political outcomes. “If we can start to solve some of the racial problems that were never really closed in the past decades or 50 years or so, maybe we can start to work on the ones that are happening today and make a difference about it,” he said.
…

The U.S. Senate is expected to consider the most ambitious and sweeping measure to combat climate change ever put before Congress. The “Green New Deal” calls for a rapid transformation of America’s economy and infrastructure to eliminate carbon emissions and fight economic and racial inequality. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports.
…

In coming days, the U.S. Senate is expected to consider the Green New Deal, the most ambitious and sweeping measure to combat climate change ever put before Congress, as Republicans push to vote on a proposal they oppose but believe will split Democrats and make them vulnerable ahead of the 2020 elections.

A non-binding resolution introduced earlier this month, the New Green Deal aims to rapidly forge a carbon emissions-free economy while fighting economic and racial inequality. It calls for a 10-year “national mobilization” to remake power production, transportation, manufacturing and farming.  It also sets forth wide-ranging guarantees for worker retraining, higher education, health care, and retirement benefits, with special emphasis on disadvantaged sectors and those currently facing risks from a warming planet.

“We choose to assert ourselves as a global leader in transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy,” New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at a recent news conference outside the Capitol. “We should do it because we should lead. We should do it because we are an example to the world.”

“We will save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation,” Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts said. “When we talk about a Green New Deal, we are talking about jobs and justice.”

Republicans have a different take on the resolution.

“This Green New Deal is nothing more than a socialist agenda disguised as feel-good environmental policy,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said. “This is, in reality, a new entitlement program on steroids.”

Noting an estimated price tag in the trillions of dollars and the many promises the measure makes to multiple constituencies, Cornyn added, “They [proponents] might have thrown in free beer and pizza, too.”

Another Republican, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, labelled the Green New Deal “a raw deal for the American public.”

Barrasso said, “This is just so extreme, way out of the mainstream of the American public, to the point that it is scary.”

But it is Republicans, not Democrats, who are pressing for a vote. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California pointedly declined to endorse the Green New Deal at a recent news conference, saying, “There are all kinds of ideas coming forward” but stressing that a “well-defined approach” is needed “to make a difference.”

By contrast, the Senate’s Republican majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, could barely suppress a smile when announcing a vote on a measure his entire caucus opposes.

“I’ve noted with great interest the Green New Deal. And we’re going to be voting on that in the Senate and give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal,” McConnell recently told reporters.

Climate change activists said they are energized.

“I’m excited,” Ben Beachy, director of the Sierra Club’s living economy program, told VOA. “It [Green New Deal] is a bold program to transition from an economy of low wages and climate pollution to one driven by dignified work and 100 percent clean energy for all.”

Some Democrats, meanwhile, are feeling the pressure. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein drew criticism on social media for her response to a youth group that urged her to vote in favor of the Green New Deal.

“It [carbon emissions] is not going to get turned around in 10 years [as the resolution mandates],” Feinstein said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know what I’m doing.”

But if Republicans believe they have set a trap for Democrats, Senate Democrats are determined to fight back when floor debate on climate change begins.

“Go for it. Bring it on,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in response to McConnell’s vote announcement. “I challenge Leader McConnell to say that our climate change crisis is real, that it is caused by humans, and that Congress needs to act.”

The forthcoming floor debate likely will expose divisions among Democrats on how to respond to climate change. But Democrats predicted Republicans will be even more exposed.

“We [Democrats] have never been more fired up,” Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said. “We’re going to take this opportunity to have a real debate about climate, because Republicans do not have a plan to address climate change.”

Proponents don’t deny the Green New Deal is strong medicine, insisting the time for half-measures is over.

“Climate change isn’t far-off and hypothetical. It’s here and now,” Beachy said. “Just last year, direct impacts from climate change in the United States killed hundreds of people and cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars. So it’s already here and it’s only going to get worse unless we act at the scale and speed that justice and science and demand.”

Critics see the resolution as a costly economic disaster in the making.

“It would be a central planning, one-size-fits-all solution from Washington,” Cato Institute economist Chris Edwards told VOA. “While it has nice warm and fuzzy language about helping people, I think some of the top-down proposals would actually end up hurting people.”

Edwards noted that the free market is producing more energy efficient automobiles and appliances than existed a generation ago, arguing that a downward trend in energy consumption is already underway without massive governmental intervention.

Where Edwards sees unnecessary and harmful federal meddling, Beachy sees opportunity.

“We have a really big opportunity to renew our neglected infrastructure in this country. And doing so would simultaneously create new jobs, help ensure clean air and water, and tackle climate change,” Beachy said.

Polls show Americans increasingly concerned about a warming planet and destructive weather patterns. But that concern has yet to spur substantive congressional action.

“Yes, most Americans think climate change is real, it’s a problem,” Progressive Policy Institute founder Will Marshall said. “But they also don’t really rank it up there with health care, with the economy, with immigration, with issues they think are more pressing priorities for the country. That means that there isn’t a movement now to support the most ambitious definitions of what this Green New Deal means.”

With Republicans opposed and Democrats divided, the Green New Deal is expected to be soundly defeated in any final Senate vote. Proponents hope, at very least, it serves to advance America’s discourse on climate change and what might be done about it.
…

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said Saturday after visiting the U.S.-Mexico border that the government needs a broader, more effective approach to border control. He suggested the Pentagon might contribute with its expertise in surveillance and monitoring.

“How do we get out of treating the symptoms and get at the root of the issue,” Shanahan said in an interview while flying back to Washington.

Considering how the military could reinforce efforts to block drug smuggling and other illegal activity comes as the Pentagon weighs diverting billions of dollars for President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Shanahan said he was not volunteering the Pentagon to take over any part of border control, which is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. But he said his visit led him to question whether there should be a “wholesale redesign” of the way border control is done by the federal government.

Shanahan said the Pentagon is willing to continue supporting the DHS but wants to see a longer-term solution.

“I don’t want to just add resources and not fix the problem,” he said.

​Surveillance, reconnaissance expertise

The Pentagon, for example, has agreed to temporarily provide active-duty troops to operate Border Patrol vehicles whose cameras can surveil wide areas along the border. Shanahan said this will free up the Border Patrol to do other important aspects of their mission. He said this is a function that could be developed more fully with the benefit of decades of U.S. military experience with ground and aerial reconnaissance and surveillance around the world.

In addition to speaking with Border Patrol agents and other leaders during his visit, Shanahan flew in a V-22 Osprey aircraft along dozens of miles of border west of El Paso, including two areas where DHS is proposing to replace vehicle barriers with 18-foot and 30-foot border walls.

Shanahan and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford, visited a border site called Monument Site 3 where a stretch of 18-foot border wall stands atop a huge landfill. They also got a close look at Border Patrol vehicles used for surveillance. Vehicle-mounted surveillance cameras can see as far as eight miles away.

High-priority projects

During the visit Shanahan tried his hand at firing a couple of Border Patrol weapons, including one that fires plastic bullets.

The two border control sites farther west are on a list of high-priority projects DHS submitted to Shanahan Friday to support its request for money to pay for construction of roads, replacement of vehicle barriers and dilapidated pedestrian fencing, and installation of lighting. The pedestrian fencing would include detection systems that could alert border patrol agents when someone is attempting to damage or break through the fencing. The money would come from the Pentagon’s drug interdiction programs.

One such project proposed by DHS, dubbed “El Paso Project 1,” includes segments of border west of El Paso, in Luna and Dona Ana counties, in New Mexico. This is among areas DHS cites as known drug smuggling corridors used by Mexican cartels.

These projects are separate from, but related to, those Shanahan is expected to pay for by diverting money that Congress appropriated for military construction projects. This could total as much as $3.6 billion, although Shanahan has not yet determined that the diversion is justified. His visit Saturday was meant to help him decide whether to approve such spending.

DHS has yet to provide the details that Shanahan says he needs before making his decision on the repurposing of military construction funds. He has said he is likely to provide the full $3.6 billion the White House is expecting, plus $2.5 billion from the drug interdiction program. Trump authorized the use of these military funds when he declared a national emergency to build a wall.

Corps of Engineers

Wall construction would be done under contracts managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, whose commander, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, accompanied Shanahan on Saturday. The Corps has built 126 miles (203 kilometers) of border wall in the last two years — mostly replacement barriers, Semonite told reporters.

There are about 2,900 active-duty troops and about 2,100 National Guard troops on the border in support of Customs and Border Protection. That combined total of 5,000 is expected to grow to 6,000 by March 1 as the Pentagon provides additional support.

The border mission for active-duty forces began on Oct. 30, 2018, as Trump asserted that caravans of Central American migrants posed an urgent national security threat. Critics dismissed his use of the military on the border as a political gimmick on the eve of midterm congressional elections. The active-duty mission has since been extended to Sept. 30.
…

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort committed crimes that cut to “the heart of the criminal justice system” and over the years deceived everyone from bookkeepers and banks to federal prosecutors and his own lawyers, according to a sentencing memo filed Saturday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

In the memo, submitted in one of two criminal cases Manafort faces, prosecutors do not yet take a position on how much prison time he should serve or whether to stack the punishment on top of a separate sentence he will soon receive in a Virginia prosecution. But they do depict Manafort as a longtime and unrepentant criminal who committed “bold” crimes, including under the spotlight of his role as campaign chairman and later while on bail, and who does not deserve any leniency.

“For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law,” prosecutors wrote. “His crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in October 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment.”

Citing Manafort’s lies to the FBI, several government agencies and his own lawyer, prosecutors said that “upon release from jail, Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism.”

The memo is likely the last major filing by prosecutors as Manafort heads into his sentencing hearings next month and as Mueller’s investigation approaches a conclusion. Manafort, who has been jailed for months and turns 70 in April, will have a chance to file his own sentencing recommendation next week. He and his longtime business partner, Rick Gates, were the first two people indicted in the special counsel’s investigation. Overall, Mueller has produced charges against 34 individuals, including six former Trump aides, and three companies.

The memo was filed in federal court in Washington, where Manafort last September pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy arising from his Ukrainian political consulting work. As part of that plea, he acknowledged he had tampered with witnesses even after he had been indicted by encouraging them to lie on his behalf. Even after his plea, prosecutors said, Manafort repeatedly lied to investigators, including about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate who the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence. That deception voided the plea deal.

The sentencing memo comes as Manafort, who led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for several critical months, is already facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison in a separate tax and bank fraud case in Virginia. Mueller’s team endorsed a sentence of between 19.5 and 24.5 years in prison in that case.

Prosecutors note that the federal guidelines recommend a sentence of more than 17 years, but Manafort pleaded guilty last year to two felony counts that carry maximum sentences of five years each.

Prosecutors originally filed a sealed sentencing memo on Friday, but the document was made public on Saturday with certain information still redacted, or blacked out.

In recent weeks, court papers have revealed that Manafort shared polling data related to the Trump campaign with Kilimnik. A Mueller prosecutor also said earlier this month that an August 2016 meeting between Manafort and Kilimnik goes to the “heart” of the Russia probe. The meeting involved a discussion of a Ukrainian peace plan, but prosecutors haven’t said exactly what has captured their attention and whether it factors into the Kremlin’s attempts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Like other Americans close to the president charged in the Mueller probe, Manafort hasn’t been accused of involvement in Russian election interference. His criminal case in Washington stems from illegal lobbying he carried out on behalf of Ukrainian interests. As part of a plea deal in the case, Manafort admitted to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
…

Official Washington is on edge with the news that special counsel Robert Mueller could finish his report on the Russia investigation in the coming days. After nearly two years of investigation and numerous indictments and guilty pleas from former associates and campaign aides to President Donald Trump, the long-awaited report on Russian interference in the 2016 election could have huge ramifications for Trump and the country. VOA national correspondent Jim Malone has a preview from Washington.
…

With a new election ordered in North Carolina’s disputed congressional race, a key question remains unanswered: Who could face criminal charges after a state elections board hearing exposed evidence of ballot fraud? 

Among those in potential legal trouble are the central figure in the scandal, political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless, and some of those working for him. According to testimony heard by the board, they illegally gathered voters’ absentee ballots and, in some cases, filled in votes and forged signatures. 

The Republican candidate for whom Dowless was working, Mark Harris, has denied knowledge of any illegal practices by those involved with his campaign. But he, too, could come under legal scrutiny. 

Suspicion of ballot tampering

Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes out of about 280,000 cast last fall in the district along the southern edge of the state. But the state refused to certify the outcome because of suspicions Dowless tampered with mail-in absentee ballots in rural Bladen County. Under state law, only voters and their close relatives can handle completed ballots. 

On Thursday, the five-member elections board unanimously ordered a new election after Harris abruptly reversed course and called for one. No date has been set.  

McCready said Friday that he was ready for another election. Harris has not said whether he intends to run. 

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman in Raleigh said her office has been investigating potential Bladen County voting irregularities for over a year. The investigation has been expanded to include last year’s election, she said.   

In an email Friday, she said she expects the state elections board to submit its investigative files to her office, and “we will determine what, if any, supplemental investigation is required.” 

She said she hopes to present findings from her investigation to a grand jury in the next month. 

Federal charges

Federal prosecutors also could pursue charges under a law against interfering with an election for federal office, North Carolina elections board attorney Josh Lawson said. The U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh has refused to say if an investigation is underway. 

Dowless has denied wrongdoing through his attorney. He refused to testify at the elections board hearing without a promise of immunity from prosecution. 

Dowless’ stepdaughter, Lisa Britt, could face criminal charges after admitting under oath that she collected dozens of ballots and forged signatures and dates while working for him.  

As for the GOP candidate himself, Harris admitted writing personal checks to Dowless in 2017, a potential legal violation if they weren’t reported by his campaign. Also, he could be in legal jeopardy over his testimony during the board hearing. 

On Thursday, Harris was on the stand when a lawyer for the state elections board pressed him repeatedly over whether his attorneys had turned over crucial emails. McCready’s lawyer, Marc Elias, reminded Harris that he was under oath. 

‘Culture of corruption’

Harris’ lawyer asked for a break, and Harris returned to the stand more than an hour later to read a statement admitting he misspoke, saying ill health, including two recent strokes, had caused confusion and memory problems. He then agreed that his apparent election victory was tainted and a new election was needed. 

“What we saw this week in the hearing was a culture of corruption. We saw emails that were hidden from the board under subpoena. We saw lying on the stand,” McCready said Friday.  

Asked if he was satisfied at where the investigation stands, the Democratic candidate responded: “I imagine that the district attorney’s office and the U.S. attorney will probably be picking things up.” 

And if Harris runs again, McCready said, “he is going to need to ask for forgiveness from the voters.”   
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen met last month with federal prosecutors in Manhattan and provided information about potential irregularities in the Trump family business, The New York Times reported Friday.

The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said prosecutors in the Southern District of New York also asked Cohen questions about Imaad Zuberi, a venture capitalist and donor to the president’s inaugural committee.

Cohen, a former employee at the Trump Organization, provided the prosecutors with information about insurance claims filed by the company over the years, the Times reported. There was no indication that Cohen implicated Trump in the possible irregularities, the newspaper said.

James Margolin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, declined comment. Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Cohen did not reply to a request for comment.

The meeting with Cohen indicates prosecutors are interested in matters at the Trump Organization that go beyond its role in the illegal hush payments before the 2016 presidential election made to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, the Times said.

Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging the payments in violation of campaign finance laws and other crimes last year in the same district. He is scheduled to start a three-year prison term in May.

The New York Times said Cohen was also asked by the prosecutors about Zuberi, who contributed $900,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee and separately wrote Cohen a $100,000 check that was never cashed.

A spokesman for Zuberi, Steve Rabinowitz, said his client wrote the check to Cohen as a retainer. Cohen had proposed representing Zuberi in possible real estate investments in New York but Zuberi never signed the contract, he said.

“Zuberi never pursued Cohen, it was the other way around,” Rabinowitz said.

Rabinowitz said Zuberi has not been questioned by federal prosecutors about the inaugural or his dealings with Cohen.
…

Get ready for some fireworks over the long-awaited “Mueller Report.”

Word that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may wrap up his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and issue his final report as early as next week has Washington on edge.  

Speculation is rife over what Mueller will conclude in his report: Will he implicate President Donald Trump in criminal conduct or will he exonerate him, in a probe the president has repeatedly called a “witch hunt.”

Another hotly-debated question: Will the report be made public or will Americans and the rest of the world be kept in the dark about details of an investigation that has cast a shadow over the Trump presidency?

Mueller could submit his report to Attorney General William Barr in the coming days, according to several unconfirmed reports, bringing to an end an investigation that began two years ago amid allegations Russian government agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign to tip the election against Democrat Hillary Clinton and in favor of the billionaire real estate mogul.

The probe has netted criminal charges against more than two dozen Russian operatives and six former Trump business and campaign associates but thus far has not revealed evidence of collusion or wrongdoing on the part of Trump surrounding the operations of his campaign.   Whether reported efforts by Trump to influence or derail the investigation rise to the level of obstruction of justice is another unanswered question.   

Here are five questions that legal experts and veterans of a former independent counsel investigation have been asking about the report:

Will the report be made public?

Under current Justice Department regulations, Mueller is required to submit a “confidential report” of his findings to the attorney general and for the attorney general to notify Congress about it. There are no requirements for Mueller to make his findings public.

Trump said this week that it is up to Barr to decide whether to share the full report with Congress.  Barr, who served once before as attorney general during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, has been non-committal on the issue.  During his recent confirmation hearing, Barr pledged to provide “as much transparency as I can” on the Mueller report but declined to commit to releasing the report in its entirety.  

That has not gone over well with congressional Democrats who have threatened to subpoena the report or Mueller to testify before Congress.   Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN this week that if the report is not fully disclosed, “the public will feel rightly that there is a cover-up.”

With lawmakers, the news media and voters clamoring for a resolution to the prolonged investigation, some version of the report is certain to be made public. Over time, more and more details of Mueller’s findings likely will leak out. Kim Wehle, a former associate independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation now a professor of law at University of Baltimore, stressed that releasing the full report is key to insuring government accountability.

What will the report say?

The special counsel’s mandate was fairly broad: to determine whether Russians worked with the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections and pursue other tangential matters that might turn up during course of the investigation.   

However, what Mueller is required to say in his report is much narrower. Justice Department guidelines simply call for an explanation of his decision to charge or not to charge various targets of the probe.  Beyond that, there are no hard and fast rules about what form the report must take and how long it should be.

“It could be a brief report summarizing his conclusions or it could be a book,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor now a law professor at George Washington University. 

The two biggest unanswered questions

There are two major questions that legal experts are looking to the report to address: Was there coordination between members of the Trump campaign and Russian operatives seeking to influence the election and was President Trump personally involved in any such conspiracy or other crimes?

Thus far, Mueller has offered no evidence of collusion.   While the special counsel has charged more than two dozen Russian operatives with seeking to influence the election and several former Trump associates with lying about their contacts with the Russians and other offenses, he has not connected them in a criminal conspiracy.

“That’s really the big [unresolved] question,” Eliason said.  “I think he has to answer that question somehow because that’s his primary charge.”

Another critical question is whether Mueller will present any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Trump that he may have uncovered during the course of his investigation.   “That’s the outstanding question everyone wants to know for purposes of a political solution to potential wrongdoing, which of course is impeachment,” Wehle said.

The U.S. Constitution says a president can be removed from office for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” leaving the question of “impeachable offenses” open to interpretation by Congress.

Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr included a list of impeachable offenses in his final report to Congress on the conduct of then-president Bill Clinton.  But current Justice Department regulations do not require Mueller to do so, said Eric Jaso, a former associate independent counsel who is now a partner at the Spiro Harrison law firm.

David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University, noted that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has already implicated Trump in unlawful conduct, testifying last year that he made hush money payments to two women during the 2016 campaign at the direction of Trump.  

“I’d be surprised if Mr. Mueller felt he could not say anything about the president in the course of describing what other people did with him,” Super said.

On the other hand, the report may exonerate the president.  

Are more indictments expected?

Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president can’t be indicted and Mueller is expected to adhere to those guidelines.  But if he is pursuing other indictments, Mueller hasn’t tipped his hand.  

Super of Georgetown said that any additional indictments could be announced in conjunction with the report or be handed over to other sections of the Justice department.   

Short of announcing new charges, the Mueller report could also shine a light on other players and institutions that have hummed in the background of the investigation but have not faced charges, Super said.

One example: Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which over the years was a major source of loans for the Trump Organization.  “I think the real headlines are going to be about people that haven’t figured in the indictments so far,” Super said.  

What happens after Mueller submits his report

The submission of the Mueller report does not mean the end of legal troubles for Trump, even if the president is not specifically accused of wrongdoing.  In recent months, Mueller has farmed out parts of his investigation to the Southern District of New York where prosecutors have opened separate investigation into Trump’s finances.

“I don’t think we should assume that just because he issues a final report, that that will be the end of prosecutions but rather that those prosecutions will be occurring through the ordinary process which is the U.S. attorney’s office,” Super said.

 
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The Manhattan district attorney’s office is preparing state criminal charges against Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, in case Trump pardons him for his federal crimes, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing several people with knowledge of the matter.

Manafort, 69, could spend the rest of his life in prison for charges stemming from his work as an international political consultant and lobbyist. He is due to be sentenced in a federal court in Virginia on March 8, where he faces a prison sentence of up to 24 years and a fine of up to $24 million, and in another federal court, in Washington, D.C., on March 13.

He is one of the first people in Trump’s orbit to face criminal charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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Sen. Amy Klobuchar will meet with former President Jimmy Carter and Democrat Stacey Abrams on Friday as she brings her presidential campaign to Georgia.

Klobuchar spokeswoman Carlie Waibel says the Minnesota Democrat will meet privately with Abrams, who lost a bid for governor last year and delivered the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this month.

Klobuchar and Carter will speak about her campaign during their meeting, which is also private. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, also represented Minnesota in the Senate and has been one of Klobuchar’s political mentors.

Klobuchar also will attend a roundtable discussion on voting rights with local leaders and activists before a fundraiser Friday night in Atlanta.

Klobuchar also will campaign this weekend in South Carolina and New Hampshire
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