Charges expected Thursday for Donald Trump’s company, top executive
Donald Trump’s company and his longtime finance chief are expected to be charged Thursday with tax-related crimes stemming from a New York investigation into the former president’s business dealings, people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The charges against the Trump Organization and the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, appear to involve non-monetary benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including the use of apartments, cars, and school tuition. The people were not authorized to speak about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal was first to report that charges were expected Thursday. The charges against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization would be the first criminal cases to arise from the two-year probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., a Democrat who leaves office at the end of the year. Prosecutors have been scrutinizing Trump’s tax records, subpoenaing documents, and interviewing witnesses, including Trump insiders and company executives. A grand jury was recently empaneled to weigh evidence and New York Attorney General Letitia James said she was assigning two of her lawyers to work with Vance on the criminal probe while she continues a civil investigation of Trump. Messages seeking comment were left with a spokesperson and lawyers for the Trump Organization. Weisselberg’s lawyer, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment. Trump’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Jason Miller, a longtime former senior adviser to the Republican, spun the looming charges as “politically terrible for the Democrats.” “They told their crazies and their supplicants in the mainstream media this was about President Trump. Instead, their Witch Hunt is persecuting an innocent 80-year-old man for maybe taking free parking!” Miller tweeted, apparently referring to Weisselberg, who is 73. Trump, who’s been critical of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, was in Texas visiting the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday. He did not respond to shouted questions about the charges as he participated in a briefing with state officials. Trump had blasted the investigation in a statement Monday, deriding Vance’s office as “rude, nasty, and totally biased” in their treatment of Trump company lawyers, representatives, and long-term employees. Trump, in the statement, said the company’s actions were “things that are standard practice throughout the U.S. business community, and in no way a crime” and that Vance’s probe was an investigation was “in search of a crime.” Trump Organization lawyers met virtually with Manhattan prosecutors last week in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade them from charging the company. Prosecutors gave the lawyers a Monday deadline to make the case that criminal charges shouldn’t be filed. Ron Fischetti, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the AP this week that there was no indication Trump himself was included in the first batch of charges. “There is no indictment coming down this week against the former president,” Fischetti said. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet completely.” Weisselberg, a loyal lieutenant to Trump and his real estate-developer father, Fred, came under scrutiny, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at little or no cost. Barry Weisselberg managed a Trump-operated ice rink in Central Park. Barry’s ex-wife, Jen Weisselberg, has been cooperating with the investigation and turned over reams of tax records and other documents to investigators. “We have been working with prosecutors for many months now as part of this tax and financial investigation and have provided a large volume of evidence that allowed them to bring these charges,” Jen Weisselberg’s lawyer, Duncan Levin, said Wednesday. “We are gratified to hear that the DA’s office is moving forward with a criminal case.” Allen Weisselberg has worked for the Trump Organization since 1973. The case against him could give prosecutors the means to pressure the executive into cooperating and telling them what he knows about Trump’s business dealings. Prosecutors subpoenaed another long-time Trump finance executive, senior vice president and controller Jeffrey McConney, to testify in front of the grand jury in the spring. Under New York law, grand jury witnesses are granted immunity and can not be charged for conduct they testify about. Prosecutors probing untaxed benefits to Trump executives have also been looking at Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security. However, a lawyer for the Calamaris said Wednesday that he didn’t expect them to be charged. “Although the DA’s investigation obviously is ongoing, I do not expect charges to be filed against either of my clients at this time,” said the lawyer, Nicholas Gravante. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Conservative gathering to feature Donald Trump’s false fraud claims
A gathering of conservatives this weekend in Florida will serve as an unabashed endorsement of former President Donald Trump’s desire to remain the leader of the Republican Party — and as a forum to fan his false claim that he lost the November election only because of widespread voter fraud. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Conference and a Trump ally, said discussion panels on election integrity would highlight “huge” evidence of illegal voting in Georgia, Nevada, and elsewhere that ultimately swung the election for Democrat Joe Biden. Such baseless claims fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and have been repeatedly dismissed by the courts, the Trump administration’s leading security officials, and senior Republicans in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The conference marks the first significant gathering of Republicans since the election and its aftermath as the party reckons with the faction that continues to support Trump as its leader and those who think the GOP needs to move quickly beyond the turbulent era of his presidency. Conference organizers, representing the first camp, did not invite any of the 17 Republican members of Congress who voted to support Trump’s second impeachment or any major Trump critics. McConnell, a regular at the annual conference, will not be on the program after publicly chastising Trump for inciting last month’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol. McConnell and his allies are worried that Trump will undermine the party’s political future should the former president and his conspiracy theories continue to dominate Republican politics. But at the conference, which will feature Trump along with most of the GOP’s leading 2024 presidential prospects, organizers say election fraud will be a major theme. “Because we pretty much wiped away scrutiny in a lot of these important swing states, you had a lot more illegal voting. That is not an opinion, that is fact,” Schlapp told The Associated Press before the conference’s kickoff Thursday evening. But in five dozen court cases around the country after the election, no such evidence was presented, and Trump’s then-attorney general, William Barr, said the Justice Department also had found none. At the conference, though, those fact-based assessments are likely to be few, if any. Trump himself is headlining the three-day session in a Sunday speech that will be his first public appearance since leaving the White House on Jan. 20. The event is being held in central Florida, having been blocked from meeting at its usual Maryland hotel by coronavirus restrictions in that state. Trump has been keeping a relatively low profile since he moved from the White House to Palm Beach a month ago. He is expected to use his speech to assert his standing as the head of the party, as well as to harshly criticize Biden’s first month in office, including the new president’s efforts to undo Trump’s immigration policies. “I think the broader point will be: Here’s where the Republican Party and conservative movement and the America First movement goes from here,” said senior Trump adviser Jason Miller. “In many ways, this will be a throwback to 2016, where the president ran against Washington. Here we’ll see the president address the fact that the only divide in the Republican Party is between the elites and the conservative grassroots in the party.” Trump has begun to wade back into the public, calling into friendly news outlets after the death of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and after golfer Tiger Woods’ serious car accident. His aides have been meeting this week to set benchmarks for fundraising and organization for candidates seeking his endorsement as he tries to plot a future that will include backing those who will challenge lawmakers who voted for his impeachment and whom he deems insufficiently loyal. “They need to show that they’re going to be serious candidates before asking the president to get out there for them,” Miller said. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, among several scheduled speakers who are contemplating a 2024 presidential run, declined to describe Trump as the outright leader of the GOP. “In opposition, when you don’t have the White House, there are many more voices that lead the party,” Cotton said in an interview. The event will feature a seven-part series on “Protecting Elections,” including one titled “Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence,” featuring Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala. The conservative congressman addressed the rally near the White House just before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, telling the crowd, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Others who attended “Stop the Steal” rallies and participated in efforts to overturn the results will also be featured alongside panelists bemoaning China’s power, “Cancel Culture,” and “California Socialism.” Trump has a long history with CPAC, which played a key role in his emergence as a force in conservative politics. He attended the conference every year he served as president. While he is mulling running again four years from now, the event will feature speakers thought to be considering their own runs in 2024, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kristi Noem of South Dakota. In the interview, Cotton refused to say there was widespread election fraud in the 2020 election. In an implicit nod to those who do, he encouraged efforts by Republican officials in various states to strengthen election security. Voting rights groups fear that such efforts will make it more difficult for many people, especially nonwhite voters, to cast ballots. “I don’t want election procedures that were adopted in the middle of a pandemic to become the normal practice,” Cotton told the AP. “Especially when those procedures are — just as a factual matter — more susceptible to potential fraud.” Among those who will not be in attendance this weekend: Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has maintained a low profile since leaving the White House and
Donald Trump names 2 lawyers to impeachment defense team, one from Alabama
Former president Donald Trump announced a new impeachment legal defense team Sunday, one day after it was revealed that he had parted ways with an earlier set of attorneys with just over a week to go before his Senate trial. The two lawyers representing him will be David Schoen, a criminal defense lawyer with offices in Alabama and New York, and Bruce Castor, a former county prosecutor in Pennsylvania. Both issued statements through a Trump adviser saying that they were honored to take the job. “The strength of our Constitution is about to be tested like never before in our history. It is strong and resilient. A document written for the ages, and it will triumph over partisanship yet again, and always,” said Castor, who served as district attorney for Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, from 2000 to 2008. The announcement Sunday was intended to promote a sense of stability surrounding the Trump defense team as his impeachment trial nears. The former president has struggled to hire and retain attorneys willing to represent him against charges that he incited the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, which happened when a mob of loyalists stormed Congress as lawmakers met Jan. 6 to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That’s a contrast from his first impeachment trial, when Trump’s high-profile team of attorneys included Alan Dershowitz, one of the best-known criminal defense lawyers in the country, as well as White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Jay Sekulow, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Trump’s team had initially announced that Butch Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer, would lead his legal team after an introduction from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. But that team unraveled over the weekend due to differences over legal strategy. One person familiar with their thinking said Bowers and another South Carolina lawyer, Deborah Barbier, left the team because Trump wanted them to use a defense that relied on allegations of election fraud, and the lawyers were not willing to do so. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation and requested anonymity. Republicans and aides to Trump, the first president to be impeached twice in American history, have made clear that they intend to make a simple argument in the trial: Trump’s trial, scheduled for the week of Feb. 8, is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. “The Democrats’ efforts to impeach a president who has already left office is totally unconstitutional and so bad for our country,” Trump adviser Jason Miller has said. Many legal scholars, however, say there is no bar to an impeachment trial despite Trump having left the White House. One argument is that state constitutions that predate the U.S. Constitution allowed impeachment after officials left office. The Constitution’s drafters also did not specifically bar the practice. Castor, a Republican who was the elected district attorney of Pennsylvania’s third-most populated county, decided against charging Cosby in a 2004 sexual encounter. He ran for the job again in 2015, and his judgment in the Cosby case was a key issue used against him by the Democrat who defeated him. Castor has said that he personally thought Cosby should have been arrested, but that the evidence wasn’t strong enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In 2004, Castor ran for state attorney general unsuccessfully. In 2016, he became the top lieutenant to the state’s embattled attorney general — Kathleen Kane, a Democrat — as she faced charges of leaking protected investigative information to smear a rival and lying to a grand jury about it. She was convicted, leaving Castor as the state’s acting attorney general for a few days. Schoen met with financier Jeffrey Epstein about joining his defense team on sex trafficking charges just days before Epstein killed himself in a New York jail. In an interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times last year, Schoen said he had also been approached by Trump associate Roger Stone before Stone’s trial about being part of the team and that he was was later retained to handle his appeal. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence and then pardoned him. Schoen maintained in the interview that the case against Stone was “very unfair and politicized.” Neither Schoen nor Castor returned phone messages seeking comment Sunday evening. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
GOP squirms as John Bolton prepares to dish on Donald Trump White House
After this week’s early leaks about the book, White House aides and allies are privately expressing concern about what more Bolton might reveal.
Amid Iran and impeachment, Donald Trump’s focus is reelection
Donald Trump is being attacked on two sides.
‘Were you lying?’ Sanders faces new credibility questions
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing a barrage of questions about whether she purposely misled the American people amid fallout over Rudy Giuliani’s stunning revelation about hush money paid by President Donald Trump’s lawyer to a porn star who alleges a tryst with Trump. “Again, I gave you the best information that I had,” Sanders said over and over again Thursday in response to questions about why the White House failed to disclose that Trump had reimbursed his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the $130,000 payment to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. “Were you lying to us at the time? Or were you in the dark?” one reporter asked. It was an awkward position for Sanders, who is tasked with speaking on behalf of the American president. It also highlighted the difficulty the White House communications office has had in navigating an unpredictable and free-wheeling president. “As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump tweeted last year. Sanders on Thursday had to acknowledge that Giuliani hadn’t given her a heads-up that he would reveal that Trump had reimbursed Cohen. She said she didn’t know about the reimbursement at all until Giuliani’s interview Wednesday night. “I’m not part of the legal team and wouldn’t be part of those discussions,” she said when asked whether she’d been caught off guard. It was an omission by design. “They were (caught off guard). There was no way they wouldn’t be,” Giuliani told CNN on Thursday in reference to White House staffers. “The President is my client. I don’t talk to them.” Jason Miller, who has worked for both Trump and Giuliani and remains in close touch with both teams, said White House staffers shouldn’t have to deal with issues like Cohen and the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Finally, for the first time there’s now an external operation that’s handling such matters,” he said, describing the model as similar to the one developed during the Clinton administration as he faced impeachment hearings over his cover-up of an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. During that time, the Clinton administration developed a crisis communications team to respond to reporters’ inquiries about the scandal so that regular press staffers could focus on business as usual. But, according to former Clinton staffers, their model was very different from the one on display this week with Trump. Joe Lockhart, White House press secretary from 1998 to 2000, said the separation proved effective, but only because both sides were in constant communication. “It was actually very hugely coordinated,” he said, recalling that he spent almost as much time meeting with members of the legal team as he did political aides. “It really was the only way you could effectively communicate, when you knew what everyone was doing,” he said. “There wasn’t a communication strategy and a lawyers’ strategy. There was one strategy: a political strategy.” Michael McCurry, who was press secretary from 1994 to 1998, said that while there were significant disagreements between lawyers and communication and political staffers who came to the table with different priorities and concerns, the group was committed to working as a team. “I think it was very critical to helping President Clinton get through a difficult period,” he said. “It was a very, very delicate balance” that requires “a lot of goodwill and camaraderie.” Sanders, meanwhile, was forced to defend her credibility, a week after comedian Michelle Wolf created an uproar at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner with jokes about the press secretary, including one quip that she “burns facts” and “uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.” “Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies,” Wolf cracked. “It’s probably lies.” Many who saw the routine felt Wolf went too far. On Thursday, Sanders took issue with a reporter’s characterization that she had felt blindsided by Giuliani’s interview. “With all due respect, you actually don’t know much about me in terms of what I feel and what I don’t,” she said. Lockhart, meanwhile, said that often the hardest part of the job is “standing up there and looking like you don’t know what you’re doing, but understanding that just getting through the day and getting through the week is the best thing you can do.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump drama rolls on: Disputes, falsehoods hit transition
The drama, disputes and falsehoods that permeated Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign are now roiling his transition to the White House, forcing aides to defend his baseless assertions of illegal voting and sending internal fights spilling into public. On Monday, a recount effort, led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein and joined by Hillary Clinton‘s campaign also marched on in three states, based partly on the Stein campaign’s unsubstantiated assertion that cyberhacking could have interfered with electronic voting machines. Wisconsin officials approved plans to begin a recount as early as Thursday. Stein also asked for a recount in Pennsylvania and was expected to do the same in Michigan, where officials certified Trump’s victory Monday. Trump has angrily denounced the recounts and now claims without evidence that he, not Clinton, would have won the popular vote if it hadn’t been for “millions of people who voted illegally.” On Twitter, he singled out Virginia, California and New Hampshire. There has been no indication of widespread election tampering or voter fraud in those states or any others, and Trump aides struggled Monday to back up their boss’ claim. Spokesman Jason Miller said illegal voting was “an issue of concern.” But the only evidence he raised was a 2014 news report and a study on voting irregularities conducted before the 2016 election. Trump met Monday with candidates for top Cabinet posts, including retired Gen. David Petraeus, a new contender for secretary of state. Trump is to meet Tuesday with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who is also being considered more seriously for the diplomatic post, and Mitt Romney, who has become a symbol of the internal divisions agitating the transition team. Petraeus said he spent about an hour with Trump, and he praised the president-elect for showing a “great grasp of a variety of the challenges that are out there.” “Very good conversation and we’ll see where it goes from here,” he said. A former CIA chief, Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information relating to documents he had provided to his biographer, with whom he was having an affair. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is heading the transition effort, teased “a number of very important announcements tomorrow” as he exited Trump Tower Monday night. Pence is said to be among those backing Romney for State. Romney was fiercely critical of Trump throughout the campaign but is interested in the Cabinet position, and they discussed it during a lengthy meeting earlier this month. Other top Trump allies, notably campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, have launched a highly unusual public campaign to warn the president-elect that nominating Romney would be seen as a betrayal by his supporters. Conway’s comments stirred speculation that she is seeking to either force Trump’s hand or give him cover for ultimately passing over Romney. Three people close to the transition team said Trump had been aware that Conway planned to voice her opinion, both on Twitter and in television interviews. They disputed reports that Trump was furious at her and suggested his decision to consider additional candidates instead highlighted her influence. Conway served as Trump’s third campaign manager and largely succeeded in navigating the minefield of rivalries that ensnared other officials. Trump is said to have offered her a choice of White House jobs — either press secretary or communications director. But people with knowledge of Conway’s plans say she is more interested in serving as an outside political adviser, akin to the role President Barack Obama‘s campaign manager David Plouffe played following the 2008 election. The wrangling over the State Department post appears to have slowed the announcements of other top jobs. Retired Gen. James Mattis, who impressed Trump during a pre-Thanksgiving meeting, was at the top of the list for Defense secretary, but a final decision had not been made. Trump was also considering former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for Homeland Security secretary, according to those close to the transition process. Giuliani was initially the front-runner for State and is still in the mix. But questions about his overseas business dealings, as well as the mayor’s public campaigning for the job, have given Trump pause. Those close to the transition insisted on anonymity in commenting because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private process. Even as Trump weighs major decisions that will shape his presidency, he’s been unable to avoid being distracted by the recount effort. He spent Sunday on a 12-hour Twitter offensive that included quoting Clinton’s concession speech, in which she said the public owed Trump “an open mind and the chance to lead.” His final tweets challenging the integrity of an election he won were reminiscent of his repeated, unsubstantiated assertions during the campaign that the contest might be rigged. Those previous comments sparked an outcry from both Clinton and some Republicans. Clinton lawyer Marc Elias said the campaign has seen “no actionable evidence” of voting anomalies. But the campaign still plans to be involved in Stein’s recount to ensure its interests are legally represented. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. All three would need to flip to Clinton to upend the Republican’s victory, and Clinton’s team says Trump has a larger edge in all three states than has ever been overcome in a presidential recount. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
