Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 26
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison on federal charges Wednesday, then was hit almost immediately with fresh state charges in New York that could put him outside the president's power to pardon. In Washington, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson brushed aside Manafort's pleas for leniency and rebuked him for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work and for encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf. "It is hard to o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors say confidential material from the Russia investigation was altered and released online as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, according to a court filing Wednesday. The material had been handed over to defense attorneys for Concord Management and Consulting LLC, a Russian company that Mueller has charged with financing efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But the files, which prosecutors say were not sensitive, surfaced online last y...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone may be accused of lying and tampering with witnesses, but it's equally notable what he's not charged with: colluding with the Kremlin in a grand conspiracy to help Trump win the presidency in 2016. The case is the latest in a series brought by special counsel Robert Mueller that focuses on cover-ups but lays out no underlying crime. It's a familiar pattern in Washington, where scandals from Watergate to Iran-Contra and Whitewater have mushroomed into presidency-imperiling affairs due to e...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's confidant Roger Stone was charged with lying about his pursuit of Russian-hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton's 2016 election bid, with prosecutors alleging that senior Trump campaign officials sought to leverage the stolen material into a White House win. The self-proclaimed dirty trickster, arrested by the FBI in a raid before dawn Friday at his Florida home, swiftly blasted the prosecution as politically motivated. In a circus-like atmosphere outside the courthouse, as supporters cheered h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Tuesday abruptly postponed the sentencing of President Donald Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, declaring himself disgusted and disdainful of Flynn's crime of lying to the FBI and raising the unexpected prospect of sending the retired Army lieutenant general to prison. Lawyers for Flynn, who admitted lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts, requested the delay during the stunning hearing in which U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told the former Trump aide in a blistering rebuke t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI's counterintelligence investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia initially focused on four Americans and whether they were connected to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, former FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers during hours of closed-door questioning. Comey did not identify the Americans but said President Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate, was not among them. He also told the House Judiciary Committee that, contrary to Trump's claims, he was "...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in touch as far back as 2015 with a Russian who offered "political synergy" with the Trump election campaign and proposed a meeting between the candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the federal special counsel said. Court filings from prosecutors in New York and special counsel Robert Mueller's office Friday laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence T...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation on Tuesday. A day after prosecutors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence, he adamantly denied a report in the Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange in March 2016. That's the same mon...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The date had been picked, the location too, and the plan was penciled in: President Donald Trump would be whisked from the White House to Camp David on a quiet winter Saturday to answer questions from special counsel Robert Mueller's team. But as the Jan. 27, 2018, date neared and Mueller provided the topics he wanted to discuss, Trump's lawyers balked. Attorney John Dowd then fired off a searing letter disputing Mueller's authority to question the president. The interview was off. Nearly a year later, Trump has still not s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is flexing his executive power to declassify secret documents in the Russia investigation, an extraordinary move he says will ensure that "really bad things" at the FBI are exposed. But the decision, made against the backdrop of Trump's spiraling outrage at the special counsel's Russia investigation, may expose sensitive sources and methods and brush up against privacy law protections, experts say. The order is likely to further divide the president from the intelligence agencies he oversees and r...
WASHINGTON (AP) — As Trump associates folded one by one over the last year under the pressure of federal investigators, there was always Paul Manafort. Until suddenly there wasn't. Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, who for months stood resolute in his innocence and determined to fight charge upon charge even as fellow onetime loyalists caved, reached an extraordinary plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller's office on Friday that requires him to assist the Russia investigation and converts him into a potentially vital g...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreed Friday to cooperate with the special counsel's Trump-Russia investigation as he pleaded guilty to federal crimes and avoided a second trial that could have exposed him to more time in prison. The deal gives special counsel Robert Mueller a key cooperator who steered the Trump election effort for a pivotal stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign. The result also ensures the investigation will extend far beyond the November congressional elections d...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump "over a barrel," according to multiple people familiar with the encounter. The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said. The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's political attacks on the FBI make America less safe because they undermine public confidence that the bureau is an "honest, competent and independent" institution, fired director James Comey told The Associated Press on Tuesday. In a telephone interview, Comey also said it was logical that special counsel Robert Mueller would seek to interview Trump since the president is a subject of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Comey ruled out seeking elected office and s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the FBI raided a client of Martin and Jane Raskin's law firm, the attorneys fended off the search warrant with an emergency motion that argued the records were protected by attorney-client privilege. A protective order was issued, the documents were placed in a locked room and a special master was appointed. That experience is newly relevant now that the Florida attorneys have joined Donald Trump's legal team during a critical phase of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and as the president finds h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agents have raided the office of President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, seizing records on topics including a $130,000 payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels. A furious Trump, who in the last month has escalated his attacks on Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, said Monday from the White House that it was a "disgrace" that the FBI "broke into" his lawyer's office. He called Mueller's investigation "an attack on our country," prompting new speculation that he might seek the removal of the J...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein explicitly authorized the Justice Department's special counsel to investigate allegations that President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman colluded with the Russian government, according to a court filing late Monday night. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team of prosecutors included that detail in a memo defending the scope of their investigation, which so far has resulted in criminal charges against 19 people and three Russian companies. Paul Manafort, who led the Trump c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was not amused. A lawyer for Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, was trying to justify the multimillion-dollar value of his client's home as part of a bail package. Rather than producing tax assessment or property records, the lawyer submitted to the judge a printout from Zillow, the online real estate website. "Zillow is actually considered to be pretty accurate, Your Honor," said Kevin Downing, Manafort's attorney. Jackson swatted that aside, i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Dramatically escalating the pressure and stakes, special counsel Robert Mueller filed additional criminal charges Thursday against President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman and his business associate. The filing adds allegations of tax evasion and bank fraud and significantly increases the legal jeopardy facing Paul Manafort, who managed Trump's campaign for several months in 2016, and longtime associate Rick Gates. Both had already faced the prospect of at least a decade in prison if convicted at trial. The two men w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey scorned the memo that was released by House Republicans after being declassified Friday by President Donald Trump, saying it doesn't add up to much. "That's it?" Comey said on Twitter. "Dishonest and misleading memo wrecked the House intel committee, destroyed trust with Intelligence Community, damaged relationship with FISA court, and inexcusably exposed classified investigation of an American citizen. For what?" Comey wrote, adding: "DOJ & FBI must keep doing their jobs." The tweet was the l...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump declared he's "looking forward" to being questioned — under oath — in the special counsel's probe of Russian election interference and Trump's possible obstruction in the firing of the FBI director. Trump said he would be willing to answer questions under oath in the interview, which special counsel Robert Mueller has been seeking but which White House officials had not previously confirmed the president would grant. "I'm looking forward to it, actually," Trump said late Wednesday when asked by reporters...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's effort to keep Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. The federal investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia already includes a close look at whether Trump's actions as president constitute an effort to impede that same probe. Those i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman sued special counsel Robert Mueller and the Justice Department on Wednesday, saying prosecutors had overstepped their bounds by charging him for conduct that he says is unrelated to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The lawsuit by Paul Manafort, filed in federal court in Washington, is the most direct challenge to date to Mueller's legal authority and the scope of his mandate as special counsel. It comes amid Republican allegations of partisan bias a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Flynn, the retired general who campaigned at Donald Trump's side and then served as his first national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on Trump's behalf and said members of the president's inner circle were intimately involved with — and at times directing — his contacts. Court papers didn't name the senior officials, but The Associated Press has confirmed that they were Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and former Deput...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman attacked an indictment accusing him of money laundering and other financial crimes, dismissing as "embellished" a criminal case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators. Attorneys for Paul Manafort defended him in a court filing Thursday as a "successful, international political consultant" who, by nature of his work on behalf of foreign political parties, was necessarily involved in international financial transactions. They argued that M...
