Federal prosecutors are investigating whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee misspent some of the funds it raised, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people it said were familiar with the matter.

The investigation opened by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is examining whether some of the committee’s donors gave money in exchange for policy concessions, influencing administration positions or access to the incoming administration, the Journal said.

The probe could present another legal threat for Trump and his White House, which already faces a web of lawsuits and probes into subjects such as the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, hush-money payments to women made by the president’s former lawyer, and spending by Trump’s foundation.

The investigation into the inaugural committee partly stemmed from materials seized in a probe into the dealings of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the Journal reported. Cohen was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for crimes including orchestrating the hush payments in violation of campaign laws.

A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. Spokespeople for the White House and Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says a looming government shutdown would be “stupid” but might be unavoidable if Democrats refuse to support President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.

The California Republican said Thursday that even if House Republicans cobble together enough votes to approve the wall, the plan is likely to fail in the Senate. Democrats in that chamber have vowed to block it from receiving the necessary 60 votes.

McCarthy said he thinks “going into a shutdown is stupid,” but he offered no immediate plan ahead of a December 21 deadline. The House adjourned for six days after his remarks.

McCarthy’s comments put him at odds with Trump, who said this week he’d be “proud to shut down the government” in the name of border security.
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Rep. Nancy Pelosi shrugged off suggestions Thursday that she weakened herself by agreeing to limit her tenure as next House speaker to a four-year maximum, a deal that clears the way for her to be elected to the post for the new Congress.

“That’s a long time,” she said at a news conference a day after she and seven insurgents who’d been pushing for younger leadership announced their pact.

For weeks, the 78-year-old California Democrat had resisted opponents’ demands that she step aside or restrict how long she’d serve, saying limits would make her a lame duck and sap her bargaining clout. But on Wednesday she relented and struck a deal that all but guarantees she’ll be elected when the House votes on its new speaker on January 3.

“What, four years? No, I don’t think that’s a lame duck,” she told a group of reporters afterward.

Democrats widely agreed that the pledge meant Pelosi had clinched a comeback to the post she held from 2007 until January 2011, the last time her party ran the House and the first time the speaker was a woman.

Wednesday’s accord gives Pelosi a clear path to becoming the most powerful Democrat in government and a leading role in confronting President Donald Trump during the upcoming 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns.

It moves a 78-year-old white woman to the cusp of steering next year’s diverse crop of House Democrats, with its large number of female, minority and younger members.

The agreement also ends what’s been a distracting, harsh leadership fight among Democrats that has been waged since Election Day, when they gained at least 39 seats and grabbed House control for the next Congress. It was their biggest gain of House seats since the 1974 post-Watergate election.

Democrats have been hoping to train public attention on their 2019 agenda focusing on health care, jobs and wages, and building infrastructure projects. They also envision investigations of Trump, his 2016 presidential campaign and his administration.

To line up support, Pelosi initially resorted to full-court lobbying by congressional allies, outside Democratic luminaries, and liberal and labor organizations. She cut deals with individual lawmakers for committee assignments and roles leading legislative efforts.

But in the end, she had to make concessions about her tenure to make sure she’ll win a majority — likely 218 votes — when the new House votes. Democrats are likely to have 235 seats, meaning she could spare only 17 defections and still prevail if, as expected, Republicans all oppose her.

Pelosi had described herself as a transitional leader over the last several weeks. But she’d resisted defining how long she would serve as speaker, saying it would lessen her negotiating leverage to declare herself a lame duck.

On Wednesday, she gave in to her opponents’ demands that she limit her service. Under the deal, House Democrats will vote by February 15 to change party rules to limit their top three leaders to no more than four two-year terms, including time they’ve already spent in those jobs.

“I am comfortable with the proposal and it is my intention to abide by it whether it passes or not,” Pelosi said in her statement.

Pelosi’s opponents have argued it was time for younger leaders to command the party. They also said her demonization as an out-of-touch radical in tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Republican television ads was costing Democrats seats.

While some Democrats are still certain to vote against Pelosi — especially incoming freshmen who promised to do so during their campaigns — most Democrats have remained solidly behind her. She’s been a strong fundraiser and unrelenting liberal who doesn’t shy from political combat, and her backers complained that her opponents were mostly white men who were largely more moderate than most House Democrats.

Pressure to back Pelosi seemed to grow after she calmly went toe-to-toe with Trump at a nationally televised verbal brawl in the Oval Office on Tuesday over his demands for congressional approval of $5 billion for his proposed border wall with Mexico.

“We are proud that our agreement will make lasting institutional change that will strengthen our caucus and will help develop the next generation of Democratic leaders,” the rebellious lawmakers said in a written statement.

To be nominated to a fourth term under the agreement, Pelosi would need to garner a two-thirds majority of House Democrats. Several aides said they believed restlessness by younger members to move up in leadership would make that difficult for her to achieve.

The limits would also apply to Pelosi’s top lieutenants, No. 2 leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and No. 3 leader James Clyburn of South Carolina. Both are also in their late 70s.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., was among 16 Democrats who had signed a letter demanding new leadership but who ultimately helped negotiate the deal with Pelosi.

Joining Perlmutter in saying they would now back her were Democratic Reps. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts; Tim Ryan of Ohio; Bill Foster of Illinois; Linda Sanchez and Rep.-elect Gil Cisernos, both of California; and Filemon Vela of Texas.
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President Donald Trump is welcoming governors-elect from both parties to the White House.

Among those attending Thursday are Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, Georgia Republican Brian Kemp, Illinois Democrat J.B. Pritzker, Wisconsin Democrat Tony Evers and newly-inaugurated Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican.

White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Doug Hoelscher says they’ll be discussing “shared priorities,” including workforce investment, prison reform and combatting the opioid epidemic.

The visitors will also be meeting with Cabinet members as part of a broader White House outreach effort to local officials.

The White House says that, after the midterm elections, it has reached out to a long list of newly-elected state and local officials of both parties “to open lines of communication and begin a dialogue.”
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Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill says she won’t run for another office after her term expires next month, but that she will remain active in Democratic politics.

The veteran senator sought re-election to a third term last month but lost to Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley. On Thursday, she will give her final Senate floor speech before she leaves office in January.

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from her Senate office, McCaskill squashed any speculation that she’d run for Missouri governor by saying she’s done running for office. Instead, she said she’s planning a yet-to-be-announced initiative and that she sees potential in the non-elected public role that former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, a Republican, has taken since he left office 24 years ago.

“I am not going to disappear,” McCaskill said. “I am going to help and I think I can help in terms of the party recruiting good candidates, being prepared. I envision trying to help teach candidates some of the basics.”

One thing she won’t miss?

“I will never make another phone call asking for money,” said McCaskill, who raised nearly $40 million for her re-election bid, almost four times more than Hawley. “It’s terrible, terrible. It is a horrible part of the job and I have done it for a long time.”

McCaskill, 65, told the newspaper that she considered not running this year but did so partly out of duty. She also said she had made up her mind before she announced she was running that it would be her last campaign.

After Donald Trump’s strong showing in Missouri in 2016 en route to winning the presidency, McCaskill said she felt obliged “to stand and fight and not just walk off the field. And so we gave it our best. But I am really at peace about being done.”

Danforth, who has served as United Nations ambassador and in a variety of governmental roles since retiring from the Senate, was among those who called her the day after the election, McCaskill said.

“She has got a lot of life ahead of her,” Danforth said of McCaskill. “There are a lot of opportunities for people who want to continue to be engaged.”

McCaskill leaves a Congress torn over Trump’s agenda. Lawmakers also face a potential constitutional showdown over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election and the Trump campaign.

McCaskill said she has no idea what Mueller will ultimately conclude, but warned: “If it continues down the path it appears to be going, my colleagues here — if more of them don’t speak up — I think they will have a crisis.”

She said Trump’s Republican allies in Congress “are all conflicted right now. They don’t know what to do. All you have to do is look at the state of Missouri, where Trump’s blessing was all a Republican needed. So you want to risk that if he is not going down? It will be interesting to see.”

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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Intelligence experts say Russian outreach to the Trump campaign fits the pattern of an intelligence operation.

Former officials have reviewed the attempts by Russians to establish contact as laid out in recent court filings by special counsel Robert Mueller. They conclude they were apparently targeted and more frequent than would be expected during a typical presidential campaign.

Mueller has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election for more than a year and has not revealed clear evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Much of the investigation is still under wraps.

Court filings from Mueller show Russian contacts with the Trump campaign began within months of Trump announcing his candidacy in June 2015.
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Michael Cohen, the longtime personal attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison, after telling a New York judge that his “blind loyalty” to the U.S. leader led him to “cover up his dirty deeds.”

U.S. Judge William Pauley imposed the sentence on Cohen for an array of crimes, including his role in arranging $280,000 in hush money payments to two women who alleged they had affairs with Trump, and for lying to Congress about Trump’s efforts to build a skyscraper in Moscow.

The judge told the 52-year-old Cohen that somewhere along the way, he had “lost his moral compass.”

Cohen, who worked for Trump for 12 years, once bragged that he would “take a bullet” to support Trump. More recently, however, Cohen had turned against Trump and said at his sentencing that working for Trump was a “personal and mental incarceration.”

“My weakness could be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump,” Cohen said.

Now, Cohen also holds the distinction of being the closest figure to Trump sentenced to prison in the wide-ranging criminal investigations of Trump’s 2016 campaign, its links to Russia and whether, as president, Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probes being conducted by federal prosecutors in New York and special counsel Robert Mueller in Washington.

Several other prominent figures in Trump’s orbit, including his former campaign chairman and his first national security advisor, have yet to be sentenced for various offenses.

Cohen attorney Lanny Davis said that after Mueller completes his investigation, Cohen would cooperate with congressional committees as they consider possible wrongdoing by Trump and his aides. Some Democrats in the House of Representatives have called for Trump’s impeachment when they assume control of the chamber next month.

“Mr. Trump’s repeated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts,” Davis said.

Cohen’s lawyers asked that he serve no prison time, but Cohen took “full responsibility” for his crimes, “including those implicating the president of the United States. He said that his allegiance to Trump led him “to take a path of darkness instead of light.”

Pauley rejected leniency for Cohen, saying, “This court firmly believes that a significant term of imprisonment is fully justified in this highly publicized case to send a message.”

The judge ordered him to surrender March 6 for his prison term and also pay nearly $1.9 million in financial penalties.

Prosecutors said that Cohen, at Trump’s direction, facilitated the payments — in violation of campaign finance laws — to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 election to buy their silence about alleged liaisons with the real estate mogul a decade before he ran for the presidency.

After Cohen was sentenced, the New York prosecutors announced they had reached a “non-prosecution agreement” with American Media Inc., which publishes the grocery store tabloid National Enquirer, to acknowledge that it paid McDougal $150,000 shortly before the 2016 election for her story about her claims that she had a months-long affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007 with the “principal purpose” of killing the information so it would not damage Trump’s chances of winning the election.

Cohen’s lawyers said he was in “close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel” when he prepared for congressional testimony last year falsely claiming that Trump had ended his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow by early 2016, before Republican presidential nominating contests started.

Cohen more recently said that actually Trump had pursued the Moscow project through June 2016, the entirety of the Republican primary election calendar two years ago. Cohen said he briefed the then-candidate about his efforts to win approval for the Moscow project, although eventually it was abandoned.

Federal prosecutors in New York had called for a “substantial term of imprisonment,” perhaps 3 1/2 years or more, because they say Cohen never fully cooperated with investigators about his crimes, which also include tax fraud and making false statements to a bank.

Trump and his lawyers have sought to downplay the payments to Daniels and McDougal, saying that at most, it was a civil, not criminal, violation of U.S. election laws.

On Twitter, Trump contended that Cohen was “just trying to get his sentence reduced” by making claims against him.

The U.S. leader, angered by Cohen’s allegations, has said that the lawyer deserves a “full and complete” sentence.

There was no immediate White House comment about Cohen’s sentence.

But Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said, “This is the real criminal sentence. I have no idea if it’s the right one or not, but I do know he’s proven to be a consummate liar who has lied at all stages of his situation.”

 
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Lawyers for Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, asked a judge Tuesday to spare him prison time, saying he had devoted his career to his country and taken responsibility for an “uncharacteristic error in judgment.” 

The arguments to the judge echoed those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, which last week said that Flynn’s cooperation — including 19 meetings with investigators — was so extensive that he was entitled to avoid prison when he is sentenced next week. 

Flynn, who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI about conversations during the presidential transition period with the then-Russian ambassador to the United States, will become the first White House official punished in the special counsel’s probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. 

In court papers Tuesday, he requested probation and community service for his false statements.  

The filing came as lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said they were still deciding whether to dispute allegations that he lied to investigators and breached his plea agreement. A judge gave Manafort until Jan. 7 to respond to prosecutors’ claims that he misled them about his interactions with an associate who they say has ties to Russian intelligence and with Trump administration officials. 

The defendants, their fortunes sliding in opposite directions, represent starkly different paths in Mueller’s investigation — a model cooperator on one end and, prosecutors say, a dishonest and resistant witness on the other. Even as prosecutors recommend no prison time for Flynn, they’ve left open the possibility they may seek additional charges against Manafort, who is already facing years in prison. 

Threats to Trump

Given both men’s extensive conversations with prosecutors, and their involvement in key episodes under scrutiny, the pair could pose a threat to Trump, who in addition to Mueller’s investigation is entangled in a separate probe by prosecutors in New York into hush-money payments paid during the campaign to two women who say they had affairs with the president. 

Since his guilty plea a year ago, Flynn has stayed largely out of the public eye and refrained from discussing the Russia investigation despite encouragement from his supporters to take an aggressive stance. 

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, spent three decades in the military, including five years in combat. In a public statement after his plea, Flynn has said he cooperated with prosecutors because it was in “the best interests of my family and our country.” 

In Manafort’s case, prosecutors have accused him of repeatedly lying to them even after he agreed to cooperate. They say Manafort lied about his interactions with a longtime associate they say has ties to Russian intelligence, his contacts with Trump administration officials and other matters under investigation by the Justice Department. 

Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in Washington in September and faces sentencing in a separate case in Virginia, where he was convicted of eight felony counts related to his efforts to hide from the Internal Revenue Service millions of dollars he received for Ukrainian political consulting.
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President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was not concerned that he could be impeached and that hush payments made ahead of the 2016 election by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to two women did not violate campaign finance laws.

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview.

“I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened,” he said.

Federal prosecutors in New York said last week that Trump directed Cohen to make six-figure payments to two women so they would not discuss their alleged affairs with the candidate ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

They said the payments violated laws that stipulate that campaign contributions, defined as things of value given to a campaign to influence an election, must be disclosed, and limited to $2,700 per person.

Democrats said such a campaign law violation would be an impeachable offense, although senior party leaders in Congress have questioned whether it is a serious enough crime to warrant politically charged impeachment proceedings.

Impeachment requires a simple majority to pass the House of Representatives, where Democrats will take control in January. But removal of the president from office further requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, where Trump’s fellow Republicans hold sway.

Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday in New York for his role in the payments to the two women — adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Trump has denied having affairs with them.

Earlier this year, Trump acknowledged repaying Cohen for $130,000 paid to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

He  previously disputed knowing anything about the payments.

Trump has slammed Cohen for cooperating with prosecutors, alleging that the lawyer is telling lies about him in a bid to get a lighter prison term. He has called for Cohen to get a long sentence and said on Tuesday his ex-lawyer should have known the campaign finance laws.

“Michael Cohen is a lawyer. I assume he would know what he’s doing,” Trump said when asked if he had discussed campaign finance laws with Cohen.

“Number one, it wasn’t a campaign contribution. If it were, it’s only civil, and even if it’s only civil, there was no violation based on what we did. OK?”

Asked about prosecutors’ assertions that a number of people who had worked for him met or had business dealings with Russians before and during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said: “The stuff you’re talking about is peanut stuff.”

He then sought to turn the subject to his 2016 Democratic opponent.

“I haven’t heard this, but I can only tell you this: Hillary Clinton — her husband got money, she got money, she paid money, why doesn’t somebody talk about that?” Trump said.
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The moment of reckoning has nearly arrived for Michael Cohen, who finds out Wednesday whether his decision to walk away from President Donald Trump after years of unwavering loyalty will spare him from a harsh prison sentence. 

A federal judge in New York is set to decide whether Cohen gets leniency or years in prison for crimes including tax evasion, making illegal hush-money payments to protect Trump during the campaign and lying to Congress about the president’s past business dealings in Russia. 

Few observers expect the hearing to go well for the 52-year-old attorney. 

For weeks, his legal strategy appeared to revolve around convincing the court that he is a reformed man who abandoned longtime friendships and gave up his livelihood when he decided to break with the president and speak with federal investigators.

That narrative collapsed last week. New York prosecutors urged a judge to sentence Cohen to a substantial prison term, saying he’d failed to fully cooperate and overstated his helpfulness. They’ve asked for only a slight reduction in the 4- to 5-year term he would face under federal sentencing guidelines. 

Revisiting of sentence

A sentence of hard time would leave Cohen with little to show for his decision to plead guilty, though experts said Wednesday’s hearing might not be the last word on his punishment. 

Cohen could have his sentence revisited if he strikes a deal with prosecutors in which he provides additional cooperation within a year of his sentence, said Michael J. Stern, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit and Los Angeles. 

“Few things spark a defendant’s renewed interest in cooperating faster than trading in a pair of custom Italian trousers for an off-the-rack orange jumpsuit,” he said.    

Annemarie McAvoy, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said prosecutors appear to be angry at Cohen for limiting his cooperation. 

“It could be a tactic to try to break him like they’ve tried to do with [Paul] Manafort,” McAvoy said, referring to Trump’s former campaign chairman. “It kind of shows they’re putting the screws to him. If they’re not mad at him, he didn’t give them what they wanted.” 

Cohen’s transition from Trump’s fixer-in-chief to felon has been head-spinning.  

During the campaign, he coordinated payments to buy the silence of two women — former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels — who were thinking of speaking with reporters about alleged sexual encounters with Trump. Cohen once told an interviewer he would “take a bullet” for Trump. 

But months after investigators began gathering evidence that he’d dodged $1.4 million in taxes, Cohen pleaded guilty in August, pledged to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat.  

Prosecutors said Cohen orchestrated payments to McDougal and Daniels at Trump’s direction.  

Trump, who insists the affairs never happened, said Monday in a tweet mocked for its spelling errors that the campaign finance allegations are being made up by Democrats disappointed not to have found a “smocking gun” proving collusion between his campaign and Russia. 

“So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution … which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!” Trump wrote. 

‘Bring his toothbrush’

U.S. District Judge William Pauley III, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton, may allow Cohen to begin serving any prison term he receives at a later date. But legal experts said Cohen could also be taken into custody immediately.  

“If I were advising him, I’d encourage him to bring his toothbrush to court,” said Stern. 

Cohen’s lawyers have asked for no prison time, saying he has suffered enough already. 

“The greatest punishment Michael has endured in the criminal process has been the shame and anxiety he feels daily from having subjected his family to the fallout from his case,” his attorneys wrote in a court filing last month. “The media glare and intrusions on all of them, including his children, the regular hate correspondence and written and oral threats, the fact that he will lose his law license, the termination of business relationships by banks and insurers and the loss of friendships, are but some of this fallout.” 

Federal prosecutors said the request of a probation-only sentence is unbefitting of “a man who knowingly sought to undermine core institutions of our democracy.” 

Mueller’s office took a far kinder view of Cohen’s cooperation in a separate court filing, crediting him for useful insights about attempts by Russian intermediaries to influence Trump, among other matters.  

Cohen’s latest plea agreement, reached last month, requires he “provide truthful information regarding any and all matters” Mueller deems relevant. The same document bars Cohen from appealing his sentence unless his prison term exceeds federal guidelines, or he claims to have received ineffective assistance of counsel in his proceedings.  

David S. Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, said Cohen’s lawyers miscalculated by seeking an “unreasonably lenient” sentence.   

“They got a little greedy,” Weinstein said. “Judges take a dim view of lawyers who have played the system. Cohen knew where the line was, and he chose to step over the line.” 
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