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Silent on Cohen, Trump says Manafort conviction ‘a disgrace’ but ‘does not involve me’

Donald Trump told reporters in West Virginia that Manafort’s conviction “has nothing to do with Russian collusion.”. (Reuters/Leah Millis)
Updated 22 August 2018
AP
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Silent on Cohen, Trump says Manafort conviction ‘a disgrace’ but ‘does not involve me’

  • Trump hasn’t publicly reacted to former personal attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas to felonies
  • Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said there’s no allegation of any wrongdoing
Updated 22 August 2018
AP

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump says the conviction of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on financial crimes is “a disgrace.”
But he hasn’t publicly reacted to former personal attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas to felonies, including campaign finance violations he stated he carried out in coordination with Trump.
Manafort was convicted Tuesday in Virginia on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential obstruction of justice. Cohen pleaded guilty in New York, saying he and Trump arranged the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model to influence the election.
Trump told reporters in West Virginia that Manafort’s conviction “has nothing to do with Russian collusion.” Of Manafort’s crimes, he says: “It doesn’t involve meRudy Giuliani  Trump’s personal lawyer says criminal charges against Michael Cohen don’t include the assertion he made in court that Trump directed him to make hush-money payments to influence the election.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that there’s “no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government’s charges.”
Giuliani’s comments came after Cohen pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud.
The charging documents say Cohen made the payments “at the request and suggestion of one or more members of the campaign.”
Cohen told a judge that he and Trump arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal as the 2016 election loomed.

Both women claimed they had affairs with Trump, which he denies.

Giuliani echoed Deputy US Attorney Robert Khuzami’s assessment that the charges against Cohen “reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.”

Michael Cohen’s lawyer is suggesting President Donald Trump should face criminal charges for directing his longtime “fixer” to make hush-money payments to two women to influence the election.
Lawyer Lanny Davis tweeted on Tuesday: “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?“
Davis’ comments came after Cohen pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud.
Both women claimed they had affairs with Trump, which he denies.
Davis tweeted that by pleading guilty Cohen was “fulfilling his promise” to “put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump.”
Stormy Daniels’ lawyer says Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to charges involving hush-money payments should open the door to questioning President Donald Trump about “what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it.”
Cohen said in court on Tuesday that he coordinated with Trump to pay Daniels $130,000 and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to influence the election. Both women claimed they had affairs with Trump, which he denies.
Daniels said she and lawyer Michael Avenatti felt vindicated and look forward to apologies “from the people who claimed we were wrong.”
Avenatti is flirting with running for president in 2020 as a Democrat. He said the likelihood of that happening will dwindle if Trump resigns or decides not to run for re-election.

Topics: Donald Trump Paul Manafort Michael Cohen US Elections 2016

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US judge rejects Trump administration’s halt of wind energy permits

Updated 5 sec ago
Reuters
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US judge rejects Trump administration’s halt of wind energy permits

  • 17 Democratic-led states challenged the suspension
  • Offshore wind group supports ruling for economic and energy priorities
Updated 5 sec ago
Reuters
BOSTON: A federal judge on Monday struck down an order by US President Donald Trump’s administration to halt all federal approvals for new wind energy projects, saying that agencies’ efforts to implement his directive were unlawful and arbitrary.
Agencies including the US Departments of the Interior and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency have been implementing a directive to halt all new approvals needed for both onshore and offshore wind projects pending a review of leasing and permitting practices.
Siding with a group of 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, US District Judge Patti Saris in Boston said those agencies had failed to provide reasoned explanations for the actions they took to carry out the directive Trump issued on his first day back in office on January 20.
They could not lawfully under the Administrative Procedure Act indefinitely decline to review applications for permits, added Saris, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose state led the legal challenge, called the ruling “a big victory in our fight to keep tackling the climate crisis” in a social media post.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement that Trump through his order had “unleashed America’s energy dominance to protect our economic and national security.”
Trump has sought to boost government support for fossil fuels and maximize output in the United States, the world’s top oil and gas producer, after campaigning for the presidency on the refrain of “drill, baby, drill.”
The states, led by New York, sued in May, after the Interior Department ordered Norway’s Equinor to halt construction on its Empire Wind offshore wind project off the coast of New York.
While the administration allowed work on Empire Wind to resume, the states say the broader pause on permitting and leasing continues to have harmful economic effects.
The states said the agencies implementing Trump’s order never said why they were abruptly changing longstanding policy supporting wind energy development.
Saris agreed, saying the policy “constitutes a change of course from decades of agencies issuing (or denying) permits related to wind energy projects.”
The defendants “candidly concede that the sole factor they considered in deciding to stop issuing permits was the President’s direction to do so,” Saris wrote.
An offshore wind energy trade group welcomed the ruling.
“Overturning the unlawful blanket halt to offshore wind permitting activities is needed to achieve our nation’s energy and economic priorities of bringing more power online quickly, improving grid reliability, and driving billions of new American steel manufacturing and shipbuilding investments,” Oceantic Network CEO Liz Burdock said in a statement.

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