Tag: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Accused sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell by apparent suicide. Epstein faced up to 45 years in prison if convicted; Bryan Llenas reports. FOX News operates the FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN),…

Although Mr. Cohen was not a central part of the Trump family business, he was often at Mr. Trump’s side in the decade before he became president, including helping him sort out difficulties leading up to the 2016 election. Most famously, he helped arrange hush money payments to two women — including the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels — who claimed to have had affairs with Mr. Trump. After months of indecision, he turned on Mr. Trump last summer and has since spoken to the Southern District prosecutors about the Trump family business and more, as well as providing information to the office of the special counsel, Mr. Mueller. Mr. Cohen implicated the president in a crime Federal prosecutors in Manhattan effectively characterized Mr. Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in the hush money payments, which violated campaign finance laws because they were made to influence the outcome of the election. But when a president is no longer in office, prosecutors are free to bring charges — a possibility cited in the Mueller report released on Thursday. He assisted criminal investigations into Mr. Trump’s business Mr. Cohen did not enter into a formal cooperation agreement with the Southern District prosecutors, but voluntarily met with them about his knowledge of Mr. Trump’s family, business and inner circle. Mr. Cohen used the spotlight to attack the president’s character Since turning on his former boss, Mr. Cohen has become one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics, offering fodder for the president’s detractors. He gave Congress a view into the president’s finances Mr. Cohen’s testimony has also provided something of a road map for congressional investigators looking into Mr. Trump’s finances. And as Mr. Cohen’s May 6 surrender date nears, his lawyers appear to be making a last-ditch effort to keep him out of prison. raid and about a Trump Tower project in Russia, as well as discussions with the president’s lawyer about a possible pardon.

In Kentucky, I believe these divisions originate from the historical impropriety of the Commonwealth’s political leadership. However, Kentucky politics has an optics problem today that’s independent of its history: the perception exists that the Commonwealth is currently a corrupt state. Notably, despite much-needed ethical reforms under Gov. In 1986, the FBI arrested a former State Police Commissioner, a state judge, a former gubernatorial candidate, a county executive, a sheriff and seven others on charges including conspiracy, extortion, public corruption, insurance fraud, and federal narcotics violations. These examinations were based on historic evidence and current public perception, which were metrics strong enough to resonate with the FBI’s Louisville Division. Research suggests corruption negatively influences local economic growth. Today, media rights and the First Amendment are argued about and sometimes infringed upon, but we should actively strengthen our community knowledge bases. Local media possesses the obligation to inform communities about public servants – and their misdeeds. Relationships between politicians and the media have declined from cynicism to animosity, and communities have suffered from the lack of information. So, if local media informs constituents of corruption, and Frankfort doesn’t make concerted efforts to correct that information, then the public will naturally believe whatever chronicle dominates more.

But first tonight, attorney general William Barr has finally confirmed what has been obvious for months: The Obama administration spied on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Yes, I think spying did occur. There’s no disputing Barr’s first point: Spying on a presidential campaign is a big deal, especially when it was authorized by a rival administration. Imagine if, a year from now, the Trump administration allowed the FBI to surveil officials in the Kamala Harris for president campaign. She called Barr “Trump’s toad.” CNN, meanwhile, assured it’s viewers that there is “little evidence” that spying occurred. This is all spying. When Trump complained about it, Democrats and their employees in the media called him a liar: ADAM SCHIFF: there is no evidence to support any allegation that the FBI or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the trump campaign DON LEMON: His baseless claims of spies. Jim Clapper was: JOY BEHAR: Was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign? The Obama administration wasn’t spying. There’s got to be a limit to how much lying a country can take from its leaders.

You might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think it was okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that, when it was discovered a year later that they had lied about that meeting and said it was about adoptions, you might think it’s okay that the president is reported to have helped dictate that lie. You might think it’s okay that the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think it’s okay if the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. I don’t think it’s okay that during a presidential campaign Mr. Trump sought the Kremin’s help to consummate a real estate deal in Moscow that would make him a fortune. I don’t think it’s okay that he concealed it from the public. There is a different word for that than collusion and it's called compromised.

“The witch-hunt is over,” Papadopoulos said. Declassification of surveillance material is paramount.” Alexander Downer's secret meeting with FBI led to Trump-Russia inquiry – report Read more Papadopoulos was one of Mueller’s first prosecutions. The 31-year-old from Chicago pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 14 days’ prison for lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian nationals and Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud. Downer, in an interview with The Australian newspaper last year, claimed Papadopoulos had told him Russia might use “damaging” material they had on Trump presidential rival Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election. Downer said he passed the information back to Canberra “the following day or a day or two”. Papadopoulos’s book, Deep State Target, will be released on Tuesday and details his account of dealings with Downer, Thompson, Trump and others. In September last year Trump wrote on Twitter “key allies” had asked him not to release classified FBI documents related to the probe into Russian influence. “While the (Mueller) report is likely mired in classified material, and most will likely never be revealed to the public, I do hope what is public is what Alexander Downer’s and Erika Thompson’s roles were and why Downer has become so protected,” Papadopoulos said. Downer, Thompson and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was contacted for comment on Papadopoulos’s claims. Downer has previously shrugged off Papadopoulos’s spying accusation, telling BBC radio last year: “I’m not going to get into these sort of allegations.”

During recent closed-door testimony, Fox News has learned that a senior FBI lawyer said the chances of securing the Page warrant were only '50/50' without relying on the controversial anti-Trump dossier; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports. Newly unsealed court filings show how the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and an associate shared with the FBI and a host of media outlets the unverified dossier that alleged the Russians had compromising information on now-President Trump. McCain had denied being the source for BuzzFeed after it published the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, but had acknowledged giving it to the FBI. In a newly unsealed declaration from September, former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain. In another filing, David Kramer -- a former State Department official and McCain associate -- said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was given to him by author and former British spy Christopher Steele, which he then provided to more than a dozen journalists at outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. The details were first reported by The Daily Caller. Kramer told investigators that it was the sense from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson that “having Senator McCain provide it to the FBI would give it a little more oomph than it had had up until that point.” “I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack,” he said. Kramer also described how BuzzFeed News reporter Ken Bensinger came to get hold of the dossier, before the outlet became the first to publish it in its entirety. But Kramer said he left Bensinger alone to read the memos and, in that time, Bensinger took photos of the dossier.

The Justice Department "negotiated" an agreement with Hillary Clinton's legal team that ensured the FBI did not have access to emails on her private servers relating to the Clinton Foundation, former FBI special agent Peter Strzok testified during a closed-door appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last summer, according to a newly released transcript. Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters. "Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?" "My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton." Strzok did not elaborate on whether prosecutors made any effort to secure a search warrant, which could have delineated precisely what agents could and could not search. But Strzok later said that agents had access to the "entire universe" of information on the servers when using search terms to probe their contents. The DOJ's goal, Chaffetz said, was to "make sure they hear no evil, see no evil -- they had no interest in pursuing the truth." The Clinton Foundation did not respond to Fox News' request for comment. Strzok, who was fired from the bureau after months of scrutiny regarding anti-Trump text messages between him and Page, confirmed he was involved in an extramarital affair when asked about it during his interview before the committee on June 27, 2018. But Strzok was also asked by Art Baker, the GOP investigative counsel for the committee, whether that affair could have made him "vulnerable to potential recruitment" by "hostile intelligence service[s]."

Aiming to crack down on money laundering and bribes to overseas governments, the FBI is stepping up its efforts to root out foreign corruption with a new squad of agents based in Miami. The squad will focus its efforts not only on Miami but also in South America, a continent that has been home to some of the Justice Department's most significant international corruption prosecutions of the last several years. "We're protecting the rule of law," Leslie Backschies, the chief of the FBI's international corruption unit, said in an interview Monday. "One thing when I talk to companies, I'm like, 'When you pay a bribe, do you know where your bribe goes? We've had a lot of work there," Backshies said. "When you're looking at foreign officials in other governments — I mean, look, in Malaysia, the president wasn't re-elected. The agents are working to ensure there's "a place where business can compete fairly," and in most cases other governments are glad to accept the FBI's help in rooting out corruption, Backschies said. "You can't just have one agent or two agents in a field office addressing it. The unit had been splitting cases involving South American countries between the three other offices before Backschies decided they should refocus their resources and add agents in Miami. "Beverly Hills, New York, Miami — these are cities where we find people hiding their money" in real estate and boating, Backshies said.

Former top FBI lawyer James Baker, in closed-door testimony to Congress, detailed alleged discussions among senior officials at the Justice Department about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office, claiming he was told Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said two Trump Cabinet officials were “ready to support” such an effort. “I was being told by some combination of Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, that, in a conversation with the Deputy Attorney General, he had stated that he -- this was what was related to me -- that he had at least two members of the president’s Cabinet who were ready to support, I guess you would call it, an action under the 25th Amendment,” Baker told the committees. One way that could happen is if a majority of the president’s Cabinet says the president is incapable of discharging his duties. Fox News requested further comment from the parties involved. “As the deputy attorney general previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.” During his testimony, Baker acknowledged he was not directly involved in the May 2017 discussions but testified over a two-day period in October that McCabe and Page came to him contemporaneously after meeting with Rosenstein for input in the days after Comey was fired by the president. “I had the impression that the deputy attorney general had already discussed this with two members in the president’s Cabinet and that they were…onboard with this concept already,” Baker said. During the closed-door hearing, the former FBI lawyer told lawmakers he could not say whether Rosenstein was taking the initiative to seek out Cabinet members: Question: “Do you know what direction that went? On Thursday, the top Republicans on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees called for McCabe and Rosenstein to testify before their respective panels, following McCabe's comments about these discussions. Also during the testimony, Moyer said the chances of securing a 2016 surveillance warrant for a Trump campaign aide were only “50/50” without the controversial anti-Trump “dossier,” according to transcripts confirmed by Fox News. Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security.