Tag: Kardinal Offishall

Erin Schaff/The New York Times WASHINGTON — House Democrats vowed on Friday to pursue the revelations in the special counsel’s report on President Trump but drew little Republican support in a nation still deeply polarized over the investigation that has dogged the White House for two years. “Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, challenged the credibility of Mr. McGahn’s account later on Friday. “It can’t be taken at face value,” he said in an interview. “It’s a mystery why Rudy Giuliani feels the need to relitigate incidents the attorney general and deputy attorney general have concluded were not obstruction,” said the lawyer, William A. Burck. “But they are accurately described in the report.” On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidates condemned the president’s conduct and called for action against him. Mr. Trump’s critics called it a devastating indictment of a candidate willing to profit from the help of a foreign power and a president who repeatedly sought to disrupt or end the investigation even if he was not charged with violating the law. The subpoena issued on Friday by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, escalated a fight with Mr. Barr over what material Congress is entitled to see from the investigation even as Democrats continued to pummel the attorney general for effectively serving as the president’s defense lawyer. “The department will continue to work with Congress to accommodate its legitimate requests consistent with the law and long-recognized executive branch interests.” Mr. Barr redacted about 10 percent of the report, blacking out information that would divulge secret grand jury evidence, expose classified intelligence, compromise continuing investigations, or invade the privacy or damage the reputation of “peripheral third parties.” Democratic leaders on Friday rejected Mr. Barr’s offer to show just select leaders a version with only the grand jury material redacted. “The attorney general stands ready to testify before our committee and to have the special counsel do the same.

Sputnik/Reuters WASHINGTON — At 9:34 on the November morning after Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and an informal envoy for President Vladimir V. Putin, sent a text message to a Lebanese-American friend with ties to the Trump campaign. But his report made clear how vigorously Mr. Putin sought to find points of contact and influence with Mr. Trump’s team — and how many people on the American side were willing to participate to one degree or another in discussions that touched on topics as varied as Mr. Trump’s desire to build a Moscow hotel to United States policy toward Ukraine. It is not clear that the Russians had much, if any, success in influencing American policy through the back channels they established, although Mr. Trump’s comments often strike foreign policy experts as remarkably sympathetic to Mr. Putin. According to the Mueller report, Mr. Putin wasted no time enlisting Russian oligarchs to carry the Kremlin’s message after Mr. Trump’s election. On the American side, a varied cast of characters was fielding overtures and proposals from Russians or pro-Russian Ukrainians during the campaign and transition, including: Mr. Gerson; George Nader, the Lebanese-American with Trump campaign connections; Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime fixer and lawyer; and Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder and brother of Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s pick for education secretary. An American investment banker with many contacts in Russia, Robert Foresman, said that Mr. Gorkov told him before the meeting that Mr. Putin had approved his trip and that he would report back to Mr. Putin afterward, the special counsel’s report states. Mr. Gorkov publicly suggested it was business, while Mr. Kushner said it was diplomatic issues. As the special counsel’s report noted in recounting the meeting between Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov, there “had been public reporting both about efforts to secure lending on the property and possible conflicts of interest for Kushner arising out of his company’s borrowing from foreign lenders.” The template of Russia trying to advance its policy goals through the business interests of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit was set in mid-2015, almost as soon as Mr. Trump announced his candidacy. Instead, Mr. Nader connected the Russian official to Mr. Gerson, Mr. Kushner’s hedge fund friend, and to Mr. On Jan. 11, 2017, Mr. Dmitriev and Mr.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., under pressure to respond to allegations that he touched and kissed a former Nevada assemblywoman, Lucy Flores, went on the defensive Sunday morning with a sweeping statement saying he did not believe he acted inappropriately but acknowledging that he had made “expressions of affection” during his years on the campaign trail. “But we have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention. Ms. Flores, responding on Sunday morning to Mr. Biden’s statement, said she was glad the former vice president was willing to listen and clarify his intentions. “And this is something that we should consider when we’re talking about the background of a person who is considering running for president.” “For me it’s disqualifying,” she added. Democratic presidential candidates weighed in on Sunday morning, indicating that they believed Ms. Flores’s allegations but remaining circumspect about the potential political fallout for Mr. Biden. “I have no reason not to believe Lucy,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said on says on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Asked if allegations should disqualify Mr. Biden from running for president, Mr. Sanders said: “I think that’s a decision for the vice president to make. His party calls it completely inappropriate.” Political pressure began to mount on Mr. Biden on Saturday as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is also a 2020 candidate, said in Iowa that she believed Ms. Flores and called on the former vice president to respond to the allegations. In her CNN interview on Sunday, Ms. Flores called Mr. Munoz’s statement “entirely irrelevant” because its premise was that she and Mr. Biden were never alone, a claim Ms. Flores said she never made. After her piece published Friday, she said she had been “prepared for the worst.” But she said she has been surprised by the amount of positive feedback and support she has received. On Tuesday, he expressed regret for his role in the hearing, saying, “To this day, I regret I couldn’t give her the kind of hearing she deserved.” As Ms. Flores noted in her essay, Mr. Biden has also faced scrutiny over the years for pictures and videos that have shown him standing close to women and sometimes touching them on the shoulders, whispering in their ears and even giving kisses.