Tag: Special Councel

GIULIANI: Meuller findings a ‘clear victory’ for Trump

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

WASHINGTON– President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday called the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “a clear victory” for his client.

Rudy Giuliani, who serves as the president’s personal lawyer, spoke on behalf of the president, who was the subject of the Mueller probe for nearly two years.

“We’re very happy,” Giuliani told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” just after the report was released. “A clear victory. Any lawyer would say when you get a declaration you just won.”

Giuliani went on to state that, based upon his findings, Mueller now agrees with Attorney General William Barr on his claims of obstruction and blames “out of control members of his staff who had this very extended definition of obstruction.”

Further, Giuliani accused investigators of “trapping” former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who infamously pled guilty to lying to the FBI, resulting in his being declared a convicted felon.

“They created the crime,” Giuliani said. “Somebody has to do something about that, and rein them in.”

“One of these guys is a terror, never mind,” he added. “One of these guys is a terror and shouldn’t be allowed to prosecute.”

Asked about the response from Democrats who claim Mueller’s report was merely a technical dismissal of charges, Giuliani scoffed.

“The big victory is, no collusion with the Russians. I don’t think you could be any clearer, you can read that collusion 200 pages as much as you want,” he said. “Believe me, I was up two nights going through it and you are not going to find a darn thing that shows that President Trump or anybody on his campaign had any kind of connection with whatever the Russians were doing.”

FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump walks with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani through the new Trump International Hotel in Washington

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‘A GOOD DAY’: Trump declares victory in wake of Mueller report

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday declared victory after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on the Russia scandal absolved him of any wrongdoing.

The report, released Thursday morning, found no evidence that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and found no causes to justify obstruction of justice.

“It’s a good day,” the president said during a White House event as he welcomed a group of wounded warriors. “This should never be allowed to happen to another president again.”

Trump, who has often times referred to the nearly two-year-long investigation as a “witch hunt,” took to Twitter to declare victory.

“No Collusion. No Obstruction,” the president wrote in a tweet. “For the haters and the radical left Democrats — Game Over.”

One interesting piece of information that came from the Mueller report shows that several times throughout the ordeal Trump pushed Michael Flynn and other members of his administration to track down Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s private emails, which were also at one time the subject of an FBI investigation.

According to an excerpt from Mueller’s report, “Trump asked individuals affiliated with his Campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails. Michael Flynn, who would later serve as National Security Advisor in the Trump Administration – recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly, and Flynn subsequently contacted multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails.”

Clinton’s emails have been at the center of controversy for years. Clinton’s attorneys claim their client deleted approximately 33,000 emails because they were personal and not government related. Republicans, however, have long fought for the release of the emails, claiming they were improperly deleted and hid damaging information.

Mueller’s report, which most political pundits expected to be much more highly redacted, also shows that Trump, outraged at the investigation, tried often to intervene in the investigation.

The report states that in June of 2017, Trump directed White House counsel Don McGahn to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation, to say that Mueller must be ousted because Mueller had conflicts of interest. According to the report’s findings, McGahn refused on the grounds that doing so may indicate impropriety.

In his final summary, Mueller wrote: “While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.”

“Now the tables have turned, and it’s time to investigate the liars who instigated this sham investigation into President Trump, motivated by political retribution and based on no evidence whatsoever,” Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., who had also been the subject of investigation throughout the Mueller probe, also weighed in on Thursday’s findings.

“Better luck next hoax!” the younger Trump wrote on Twitter.

Calls for statement to a Hillary Clinton spokesperson were met with “no comment.”

Republican National Convention: Day Four

TICK TOCK: Justice Department to release Mueller report to public Thursday morning

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is planning to make public a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia probe as early as Thursday morning, spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Monday.

Mueller officially concluded his nearly two-year-long investigation in late March and submitted the confidential report to Attorney General William Barr. Two days later, Barr sent Congress a four-page letter outlining Mueller’s “principal conclusions.” In it, In his letter, Barr said the special counsel found no evidence that President Donald Trump took part in a criminal conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. Further, the attorney general went public with comments suggesting that it was Trump’s election rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, “spied” on Trump and his campaign in an effort to swing the election in her favor.

“For the same reason we’re worried about foreign influence in elections…I think spying on a political campaign – it’s a big deal, it’s a big deal,” Barr said of Clinton and her ally at the time, former president Barack Obama.

The president has taken to Twitter in recent days both to claim vindication and to voice his frustrations over the 22-month ordeal.

“Mueller, and the A.G. based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No Collusion, No Obstruction,” Trump tweeted. “These were crimes committed by Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!”

While Democrats, angry over the findings, called for an immediate release of the Mueller report, Republicans celebrated, calling the investigation no more than a “witch hunt” conducted for the sole purpose of bringing the president down.

“The Mueller Report, which was written by 18 Angry Democrats who also happen to be Trump Haters (and Clinton Supporters), should have focused on the people who SPIED on my 2016 Campaign, and others who fabricated the whole Russia Hoax. That is, never forget, the crime,” the president wrote in a separate tweet.

When asked by reporters last week if he had seen a confidential copy of the Mueller report the president said he had not.

“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care about the Mueller report,” Trump said. “I’ve been totally exonerated.”

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WITCH HUNT: Records show Mueller targeted Cohen early on

by Breck Worsham, posted in law, news, politics

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of pages of court records made public Tuesday revealed that special counsel Robert Mueller quickly zeroed in on Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, in the early stages of his Russia probe.

The heavily blacked-out records, released by a judge at the request of news organizations, show that Mueller was investigating Cohen by July 2017 — much earlier than previously known.

That was two months after Mueller was appointed to investigate Moscow’s election interference and practically a year before an FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office.

The full scope of Mueller’s interest in Cohen is not clear from the documents, which include search warrant applications and other records. More extensive files from the special counsel investigation remain under seal in Washington.

But the documents made public Tuesday show that Mueller’s investigators early on began looking into possible misrepresentations Cohen made to banks to shore up his financially troubled taxi business.

They were also initially interested in money that was flowing into Cohen’s bank accounts from consulting contracts he signed after Trump got elected. Prosecutors were looking into whether Cohen failed to register as a foreign agent.

Some of the payments he received were from companies with strong foreign ties, including a Korean aerospace company, a bank in Kazakhstan and an investment firm affiliated with a Russian billionaire.

By February 2018, though, the records show Mueller had handed off portions of his investigation to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. And by the spring of 2018, those prosecutors had expanded their investigation to include payments Cohen made to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels and a Playboy centerfold, both of whom claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

The newly released documents indicate authorities continue to probe campaign violations connected to those hush money payments. Nearly 20 pages related to the matter were blacked out at the direction of a judge who said he wanted to protect an ongoing investigation by New York prosecutors.

Where that investigation is headed is unclear. But prosecutors have said Trump himself directed Cohen to arrange the hush money. The president has denied any wrongdoing.

Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over those payments. He also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, making false statements to banks and lying to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a skyscraper in Moscow. He was not charged with failing to register as a foreign agent.

He is scheduled to begin serving a three-year prison sentence in May.

Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said Tuesday that the release of the search warrants “furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump Organization to law enforcement and Congress.”

The FBI raided Cohen’s Manhattan home and office last April — the first public sign of a criminal investigation that has proved an embarrassment for Trump.

The newly released records show that several months earlier, in July 2017, Mueller’s office got a judge to grant him authority to read 18 months’ worth of Cohen’s emails.

In their investigation, Mueller’s prosecutors also obtained Cohen’s telephone records and went so far as to use a high-tech tool known as a Stingray or Triggerfish to pinpoint the location of his cellphones.

FBI agents also scoured Cohen’s hotel room and safe deposit box and seized more than 4 million electronic and paper files, more than a dozen mobile devices and iPads, 20 external hard drives, flash drives and laptops.

Both Cohen and Trump cried foul at the time over the raids, with Cohen’s attorney calling them “completely inappropriate and unnecessary” and the president taking to Twitter to declare that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!”

A court-ordered review ultimately found only a fraction of the seized material to be privileged.

Tuesday’s release of documents came nearly six weeks after U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III partially granted a request by several media organizations, including The Associated Press, that the search warrant be made public because of the high public interest in the case.

But he ordered certain material withheld, acknowledging prosecutors’ concerns that a wholesale release of the documents “would jeopardize an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties.”

“The unsealed records provide significant insight into the investigations of Michael Cohen and serve as an important safeguard for public accountability,” AP’s director of media relations, Lauren Easton, said Tuesday.

David E. McCraw, vice president and deputy general counsel for The New York Times, which initiated the request for the documents, said he is hopeful Pauley will approve the release of additional materials in May after the government updates the judge on its investigation.

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Jim Mustian and Larry Neumeister of the Associated Press contributed to the contents of this report.

 

Former Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Attends His Sentencing Hearing
NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 12: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, exits federal court after his sentencing hearing, December 12, 2018 in New York City. Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in prison after pleading guilty in August to several charges, including multiple counts of tax evasion, a campaign finance violation and lying to Congress. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

‘PUT UP OR SHUT UP’: Giuliani says Trump will answer no more questions from Mueller

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

WASHINGTON — Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said on Thursday that his client’s cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller is essentially over.

In an interview with Reuters, Giuliani said President Trump submitted a series of written answers to questions from Mueller in late November regarding the FBI’s probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Giuliani said when approached by Mueller’s team about answering a new set of follow up questions, he and Trump refused and there has been no contact with Mueller’s team since.

“As far as we’re concerned, everything is over,” Giuliani told Reuters. “We weren’t convinced they had any questions they don’t know the answer to.”

Giuliani then went on to say that what Mueller decides to do with the president’s answers is now up to him. “They could try to subpoena him if they want,” he said. “But they know we could fight that like hell.”

Despite allegations by Democrats, Trump has steadfastly denied any collusion with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

But Democrats cite former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s sentencing last month to three years in prison for crimes including orchestrating “hush money” payments to two of the president’s former lovers in violation of campaign finance laws as proof of misdeeds within the Trump campaign team. As he plead guilty at his sentencing, Cohen claimed he was directed by Trump.

Giuliani says the president did no wrong and that the Cohen and Russia matters are two completely separate issues.

“We have a memo from a number of campaign finance experts that paying what they call hush money, since it has a personal purpose, is not considered a campaign contribution,” Giuliani said. “Therefore it’s not a violation of the campaign finance law.”

In the Reuters interview, Giuliani called for the end of the “witch hunt” against the president and urged Mueller to “put up or shut up”.

“Put up or shut up,” Giuliani said. “We challenge you to do it.”

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HE’S BAAAAACK: Mueller reemerges with questions about Trump, Russia

by Breck Worsham, posted in law, news, politics, Uncategorized

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Mueller is back.

After a quiet few months in the run-up to the midterm elections, the special counsel’s Russia investigation is heating up again with a string of tantalizing new details emerging this week.

None of it answers the central question: Did Donald Trump and his campaign coordinate with Russia to help him win America’s 2016 presidential election. But the new evidence does make clear that some in Trump’s orbit recognized his Russia connections were a problem — so they lied about them.

Mueller has indicated there are more criminal charges to come.

Here’s a look at the key lines of inquiry, what we know and what we don’t.

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WHAT’S THE LATEST?

It’s been a busy week.

On Thursday, Michael Cohen, the longtime Trump lawyer and legal fixer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts during the 2016 campaign to line up a Trump Tower Moscow project. The plea was significant because it prominently featured Trump and conversations he and his family had with Cohen about the project.

Prosecutors did not accuse Trump or his grown children of any wrongdoing. But Cohen said he lied to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging.”

The surprise plea came just days after prosecutors revealed that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s separate plea deal fell apart over allegations that he lied to investigators, a development that could lead to new charges .

Draft court documents made public this week also revealed that Mueller made a plea offer to Jerome Corsi, a conservative writer and conspiracy theorist. The documents accused Corsi of lying about his discussions with Trump confidant Roger Stone about WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

American intelligence agencies and Mueller have said Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the campaign that damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential effort. Mueller’s office is trying to determine whether Corsi and Stone had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.

Corsi has denied lying and rejected the plea offer. Stone has also denied having any contact with WikiLeaks or knowledge of its plans.

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WHAT DO WE KNOW FOR SURE?

There were a lot of contacts between Russia and people close to Trump. And the Kremlin mounted a large-scale operation that sought to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump, according to Mueller and U.S intelligence agencies .

In public court filings, Mueller has woven a narrative of events that he believes are significant. They include contacts between a little-known campaign foreign policy adviser and Russian intermediaries, conversations the president and his family had with Cohen about a proposed Trump Tower Moscow and contacts between senior advisers in Trump’s incoming administration and Russian officials during the transition period.

Much of that has become public because key participants — Cohen, ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and ex-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos— lied to federal agents about it.

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WHAT REMAINS UNKNOWN?

Mueller has yet to answer definitively the central questions in the Russia probe.

Did any Trump associates coordinate with Russia in an attempt to sway the 2016 presidential election? And did the president cross the line and obstruct justice in his efforts to stymie the Russia investigation?

Mueller’s team is also intently focused on WikiLeaks and whether anyone close to Trump or his campaign knew in advance about the group’s plans to release the material hacked by Russia.

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WHO HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF CRIMES?

Thirty-three people and three companies.

Since Mueller’s appointment in May 2017, he’s obtained guilty pleas from seven people including five involved in the Trump campaign. Flynn and Papadopoulos both admitted to lying about their contacts with Russians or Russian intermediaries.

Mueller also brought a series of charges against Manafort over undisclosed foreign lobbying on behalf of Ukraine and millions of dollars that were never reported to the IRS. Manafort was convicted by a jury of eight felony counts. His right-hand man, Rick Gates, took a plea deal , and Mueller brought obstruction charges against Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort associate who prosecutors say has ties to Russian intelligence.

In addition, Mueller has brought sweeping indictments against Russians. That includes charging 13 Russians and three companies with orchestrating a covert effort to flood American social media with disinformation to sow discord during the U.S. election campaign. One company is fighting the charges. Twelve Russian intelligence officers were also accused of hacking Democratic organizations during the 2016 campaign.

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WHAT ABOUT TRUMP?

The president is angry to the point of boiling about the Mueller probe — and he’s hinted he may do something about it.

Trump has heightened his attacks in recent weeks, blasting the special counsel as corrupt and unethical. He’s even accused Mueller of pressuring people to lie.

In a tweet, Trump floated the idea of giving those caught up in the investigation some ”relief .” And this week, he said he hasn’t ruled out a pardon for Manafort.

All of this came as his attorneys turned over Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions about his knowledge of any ties between his campaign and Russia.

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WHEN WILL WE FIND OUT MORE?

It’s not clear.

Mueller’s indictments and guilty pleas are not announced ahead of time. The special counsel also hasn’t said when he will complete any report of his findings.

But there are several deadlines coming up where Mueller will have to disclose at least some new details about his investigation.

Next week, prosecutors will have to disclose what lies they say Manafort told them after he agreed to cooperate. Prosecutors will also have lay out the nature of the cooperation by Cohen and Flynn in the next few weeks.

All of those filings will be closely watched to see what they say about where Mueller is going.

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Chad Day of the Associated Press contributed to the contents of this report.

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’12 ANGRY DEMOCRATS’: Mueller protection bill blocked in Senate

by Breck Worsham, posted in law, news, politics

WASHINGTON (The Hill) — Legislation protecting special counsel Robert Mueller was blocked on Wednesday for a second time in the past month.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), joined by Sens. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), tried to get consent to schedule the long-stalled legislation for a vote.

Flake questioned why his colleagues weren’t “up in arms” after a string of tweets from President Trump bashing Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“With the president tweeting on a regular basis, a daily basis, that the special counsel is conflicted, that he is leading so-called 12 angry Democrats and demeaning and ridiculing him in every way, to be so sanguine about the chances of him being fired is folly for us,” Flake said.

Trump in a tweet hours before Flake’s request blasted Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference and possible collusion between the president’s campaign and Moscow as the “angry Mueller gang of Dems” and exclaimed that it is “our Joseph McCarthy era.”

But GOP Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) objected to voting on the legislation, arguing the bill had constitutional issues.

“As Justice Scalia explains, we cannot convert an office like this one … without creating a de facto fourth branch of government fundamentally undermining the principles of the separation of powers that is so core to our liberty,” Lee said.

Flake pledged that they would come back to the Senate floor to try to set up the bill for a vote again.

Under the upper chamber’s rules, senators can go to the floor to request a vote or passage of any bill or nomination. But any one senator can block their requests.

The floor drama comes after Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Republican leadership was measuring support for the bill to try resolve a standoff with Flake, who is voting against judicial nominees until the Mueller protection bill gets a vote.

“We’re whipping that to see where people are. I think the leader needs that information to decide how to manage all the competing demands on our time,” Cornyn said when asked about discussions within the Republican caucus about the legislation.

But there is still fierce opposition to the bill within the GOP caucus, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a “solution in search of a problem” on Tuesday.

The president has stepped up his Twitter attacks on Mueller’s probe in recent days amid several new revelations, including the special counsel’s charge that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had violated his plea agreement.

New reports emerged on Tuesday that Manafort’s attorney had been sharing information with attorneys for Trump on his former campaign aide’s cooperation with the Mueller probe.

Trump after the midterm elections forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign and named Matthew Whitaker, Sessions’s chief of staff, as acting attorney general. Whitaker, who has criticized the Mueller probe, is now overseeing it in place of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed legislation that would protect Mueller, or any other special counsel, in the event he is fired, but the bill has stalled amid opposition from GOP leadership.

The bill would codify Justice Department regulations that say only a senior department official could fire Mueller or another special counsel.

It would give a special counsel an “expedited review” of their firing. If a court determines that it wasn’t for “good cause,” the special counsel would be reinstated.

MUELLERVSTRUMP

REPORT: Trump says Manafort pardon ‘not off the table’

by Breck Worsham, posted in law, news, politics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a news report about contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have thrown a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation.

Manafort on Tuesday adamantly denied a Guardian report that he secretly met with Assange around March 2016.

The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates

All the while, Manafort’s lawyers have been briefing Trump’s attorneys on what their client has told investigators, a highly unusual arrangement that could give Trump ammunition in his feud against special counsel Robert Mueller.

Meanwhile, Trump said on Wednesday that he’s never discussed pardoning his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, but says it’s “not off the table.”

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump asked rhetorically: “Why would I take it off the table?”

Prosecutors have accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them and violating his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence.

There also are new questions about what Manafort knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates in the campaign.

According to reports, Manafort’s lawyers have been briefing Trump’s attorneys on what their client has told investigators. The arrangement could give Trump ammunition in his fight against special counsel Mueller.

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‘ENOUGH’: Former Clinton adviser says Mueller probe against Trump ‘must be stopped’

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, news, politics

Washington, D.C. — Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn called out Robert Mueller on Monday, saying the special counsel’s investigation of President Donald Trump “must now be stopped”.

In an op-ed piece published by The Hill, Penn, who served as a pollster and adviser to former President Bill Clinton and as a chief political strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, called Mueller “impartial” and a “threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again”.

“The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming,” wrote Penn.

“At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton “matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done,” Penn continued.

“It is hard to see how a yearlong investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac. With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations,” Penn cautioned.

“But it is backfiring,” he added. “They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.”

“With Attorney General Jeff Sessions shoved out of the way,”  Penn challenged, “Rosenstein and Mueller then ignored their own conflicts and took charge anyway. Rosenstein is a fact witness, and Mueller is a friend of Comey, disqualifying them both,” Penn wrote, adding that Sessions “needs to take back his Justice Department.”

The scathing article comes in the wake of President Trump’s call for the DOJ to look into whether they “infiltrated” his campaign to advance 2016 presidential election rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has since been tasked with looking into any possible “impropriety or political motivation” in the FBI’s Russia probe.

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REPORT: Newest Mueller prosecutor donated to Hillary

by Breck Worsham, posted in crime, law, news, politics

Washington, D.C. (Daily Caller) — The latest addition to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, according to federal campaign records.

Uzo Asonye, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is joining Mueller’s stable of prosecutors to work as local counsel on the case against Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who has been indicted on money laundering and bank fraud charges.

Asonye worked at the firm O’Melveny & Myers before joining the U.S. attorney’s office in 2010. Asonye donated $900 to Clinton’s presidential campaign from January to April 2008, according to Federal Election Commission records. He has not donated to any other national political campaigns since then.

Asonye is just the latest Democrat to join Mueller’s team.

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