Papadopoulos被判刑（获特朗普总统特赦）, Cohen入狱三年, Manafort获刑7.5年、Gates, Flynn, Patten认罪， Roger Stone获刑40个月；Flynn、Manafort、Stone获特朗普总统特赦; Steve Bannon、纳瓦罗被判四个月监禁
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https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-interpret-robert-muellers-new-charges/
10.29.17
05:16 pm
How to Interpret Robert Mueller’s New Charges
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller Andrew Harnik/AP
With the first public criminal charges expected to come out Monday, this year’s biggest political story—the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—will enter an important new phase, guided not just by whispers and Twitter wars but by written indictments and the rules of federal evidence.
While we don’t yet know precisely what the charges will be or who the target is, there have been plenty of hints about the unfolding case—and there’s plenty of context we have to understand what Mueller’s actions might ultimately mean for our country and President Trump’s administration.
Here are five rules of federal investigations to keep in mind as you read about the new charges and think about their implications:
1) The FBI takes down whole organizations. The charges due Monday in Mueller’s investigation are almost assuredly only a first step in what could be an very long and extensive grand jury investigation.
Only rarely does the FBI end up charging a single individual; it’s simply not worth the time and resources of the federal government to go after individuals in cases outside of rare instances, like say, terrorism. Institutionally, the FBI’s modus operandi and DNA is to target and dismantle entire whole criminal organizations—that’s why federal cases usually take so long: The agency starts at the bottom or periphery of an organization and works inward, layer by layer, until it’s in a position to build a rock-solid case against the person at the top.
This investigative method has been the heart of the FBI’s approach since the 1980s, when it and the Justice Department—led by an era of aggressive and brilliant prosecutors like Louis Freeh, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Chertoff—began to attack La Cosa Nostra in New York. The FBI relied then on a then-new tool, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, to attack and dismantle entire mafia families, charging dozens or scores of suspects in a single case.
The approach, then and now, has been almost always been similar: Work on peripheral figures first, encourage them to cooperate with the government against their bosses in exchange for a lighter sentence, and then repeat the process until the circle has closed tightly around the godfather or criminal mastermind. There’s no reason to think that this investigation will be any different.
In fact, members of Mueller’s investigative team cut their teeth on a who’s who of the biggest Justice Department targets of the last quarter century, taking that “organization” approach to cases like Enron (prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the task force), al-Qaeda (aide Aaron Zebley helped investigate the 1998 embassy bombings before 9/11), and organized crime (prosecutor Greg Andres helped investigate the Bonnano family in New York, as well as the $8 billion Ponzi scheme led by Texan financier Robert Allen Stanford, who’s now serving a 110-year prison sentence).
Weissmann—who was spotted Friday outside the grand jury room—is considered an expert on “flipping witnesses,” encouraging people to testify against their colleagues. In the 1990s, he led the case against mobster Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, from the Genovese crime family, with the help of turncoat witnesses.
2) Don’t hold your breath for “collusion.” For all the talk of Russian collusion, there isn’t really a federal crime that matches what the press, critics, and Capitol Hill lawmakers have been calling collusion, a word that refers legally to a narrow segment of antitrust law. And there’s almost zero chance anyone will be charged with treason, a charge that’s only available to use against enemies in a declared war.
Instead, nearly all charges that stem from this case—based, at least on publicly available tea leaves—are likely to focus on targeting individual crimes reflecting aspects of the complex web of Russian influence in 2016, rather than a neatly-tied-up-with-a-bow conspiracy. Early rounds of charges may even likely focus on business dealings far removed from the questions of the 2016 election.
Expect to see garden-variety white-collar crimes—charges like money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and “structuring,” (arranging financial transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements)—as well as the possibility of some more exotic charges like violating the nation’s election laws or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or there’s a general catch-all known as 18 USC Sec. 371, “conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.”
There’s also the crime of being an unregistered foreign agent—a charge known inside the Justice Department as a “FARA violation,” after the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A FARA violation is typically the FBI’s go-to way to charge espionage and foreign intelligence officers—the cases are rare and only a few agents in their careers ever have a chance to work a FARA case—but we’ve already seen Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn retroactively register as “foreign agents” this year, showing that they have some legal exposure in this realm.
As the case unfolds, there will almost assuredly also be charges that, in many ways, form the foundation of many federal cases: obstruction of justice, perjury, or lying to federal agents (a.k.a. “making false statements”). These charges are particularly common in special counsel-type investigations—and can end up targeting people unrelated to the original criminal act. During Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, for example, it was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ended up in the hot seat for obstruction and perjury. Similarly, Marine General James Cartwright was charged with lying to federal investigators as part of the investigation into the Stuxnet leak. These charges—perjury, obstruction, false statements—are often used as leverage to seek a witness’s cooperation (see No. 4).
This approach and the reality of federal criminal law means that the full picture of what happened in 2016—and even before—is likely still years away from being understood.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-known-unknowns-swirling-around-the-trump-russia-scandal/
3) There are many threads, including some likely unrelated to others. Based on what we know so far, it appears that Russia’s information operation against the 2016 presidential election might have been less of a top-down conspiracy and more of an opportunistic case of many different arms of the Russian octopus—the strange mix of politicians, intelligence officers, oligarchs, criminals, and professionals who surround the Kremlin—working to exploit every potential opportunity.
Just in the last week, we’ve seen how expansive the Mueller investigation might be inside the nondescript Washington, D.C., office where his team has been assembling evidence for months. He’s evidently covering not just the Trump Tower meeting (coordinated with the Kremlin?), but digging into Paul Manafort’s finances (his realtor testified before the grand jury last week), looking at Michael Flynn’s work with Turkey, and the social media advertising and targeting that went on as well. Add in the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email, which had already been the subject of an FBI investigation before the election even unfolded—and which might represent an entirely separate Russia nexus through Wikileaks—or what we’ve now learned about the attempted penetration of state-level voting machines, and it’s clear that this case will evolve for many months to come. And all of those individual cases or investigative avenues might prove ultimately unrelated to the Big Question: Did President Trump attempt to obstruct justice with his firing of FBI Director James Comey?
4) The first charges are only a starting point—but don’t necessarily wait for the dramatic Perry Mason-style trial. The indictments handed down by a grand jury that lead to a target’s arrest are rarely the charges the target ultimately faces in a courtroom. Federal prosecutions—particularly complex, still unfolding ones like Mueller’s—often go through many legal iterations, with so-called “superseding indictments” either adding additional charges down the road as more information becomes known or, as trial nears, dropping ancillary charges in order to zero in on the most potent and provable ones.
However, as much as Law and Order may have taught us otherwise, very very few cases go to trial—generally more than 90 percent of federal cases are settled via a plea bargain. That’s in part because the government is heavily incentivized to take the bird-in-hand of a lesser charge for a guaranteed success, but also because the government has tremendous leverage in a criminal negotiation, from the length and location of a prison sentence (much better to be in the low- security FCI Danbury prison in Connecticut than it is to be in the high- security FCI Terre Haute in Indiana) to what assets the government might try to seize (think: “Nice house your family lives in—shame if something happened it”) to what the impact of a unfolding case might be on family members. (You have an aunt who overstayed her visa? Maybe the government promises to overlook that. Your son or wife was also in on the scheme? Maybe you plead guilty right now to a heftier charge to stop the investigation of your family.) Weissmann used this tool to effect in the Enron trial, leveraging the charges against former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his wife to encourage Fastow to testify against Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.
Pay particular attention if you start seeing Mueller’s team filing not criminal indictments but “criminal informations,” which are effectively criminal charges done with the cooperation of the target: That means the suspect is cooperating with prosecutors and has likely worked out a deal to provide testimony or evidence against others, or has negotiated the charges in advance and intends to plead guilty quickly.
It’s clear, too, that Mueller is coming at this investigation with an even broader lens: One of the Justice Department veterans he recruited to the team, Michael Dreeben, is known for being the government’s smartest mind on appellate cases—that is, how a case will play out down the road on appeal—and he’s argued 100 cases before the Supreme Court, putting him in a rare class of lawyer who can meld not just the evidence necessary for a trial but also the legal theory and jurisprudence necessary to sustain that case through years and rounds of appeals. There are signs, too, that Mueller is even thinking through how presidential pardons might shape his case.
5) Bob Mueller is after federal crimes, not political problems. It’s important to understand that the task before Mueller’s team of FBI agents and prosecutors isn’t to investigate and make public the full truth of the 2016 election. They have a much more narrow task: To determine whether there are definable criminal violations that amount to federal felonies or misdemeanors and that can be proven in a courtroom beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the federal government’s standard rules of evidence and criminal procedure.
Sally Q. Yates—the acting attorney general fired by President Trump for refusing to implement the so-called Muslim ban—has argued since leaving office that Mueller’s standard should not be the nation’s only test of what happened in 2016. There are any number of behaviors and actions that might fall short of a definable, provable felony that we, as a democratic society and a sovereign nation that eschews foreign involvement in our politics, might find troubling behavior in our commander-in-chief and the leader of one branch of government. But it’s not entirely clear right now how the country might see such behavior or act upon it.
How, if Mueller uncovers such behavior, it remains an open question how he might convey this information to the public and political process. He might write a formal report, akin to what Ken Starr did during his probe into the Monica Lewinsky affair during the Clinton years or what the 9/11 Commission did following its investigation, and turn that over to the Justice Department to present to Congress. Or he might not. When Mueller, working in private practice after his stint as FBI director, was tasked with investigating the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, he defined his mission as narrowly as possible—examining only the NFL’s handling of a video showing the original assault, rather than getting into the larger questions of, say, whether the League coddles abusers.
This latter category of “political problems” ultimately ends up being the purview of Congress—and it will be almost inseparable from the conversation of whatever criminal charges and information stems from Mueller’s investigation. At each stage, we will see debates in the media and political circles: Are there political high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant action via presidential impeachment? Unfortunately, the Capitol Hill investigations have had a difficult road this year, and there seems little appetite for bipartisan action and a forthright debate about the 2016 election. The House investigation by the Intelligence Committee was quickly undermined by bizarre behavior by chair Devin Nunes and now even the Senate investigation, which at least kept up the appearance of a bipartisan effort, appears to be faltering.
Which is a long roundabout way of saying: Monday’s charges are only the beginning of what’s sure to be a complex and deeply partisan process. And, if this weekend’s release of half-century-old files related to JFK’s assassination is any guide, we, as a country, may never feel like we fully understand what transpired in 2016.
10.29.17
05:16 pm
How to Interpret Robert Mueller’s New Charges
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller Andrew Harnik/AP
With the first public criminal charges expected to come out Monday, this year’s biggest political story—the former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election—will enter an important new phase, guided not just by whispers and Twitter wars but by written indictments and the rules of federal evidence.
While we don’t yet know precisely what the charges will be or who the target is, there have been plenty of hints about the unfolding case—and there’s plenty of context we have to understand what Mueller’s actions might ultimately mean for our country and President Trump’s administration.
Here are five rules of federal investigations to keep in mind as you read about the new charges and think about their implications:
1) The FBI takes down whole organizations. The charges due Monday in Mueller’s investigation are almost assuredly only a first step in what could be an very long and extensive grand jury investigation.
Only rarely does the FBI end up charging a single individual; it’s simply not worth the time and resources of the federal government to go after individuals in cases outside of rare instances, like say, terrorism. Institutionally, the FBI’s modus operandi and DNA is to target and dismantle entire whole criminal organizations—that’s why federal cases usually take so long: The agency starts at the bottom or periphery of an organization and works inward, layer by layer, until it’s in a position to build a rock-solid case against the person at the top.
This investigative method has been the heart of the FBI’s approach since the 1980s, when it and the Justice Department—led by an era of aggressive and brilliant prosecutors like Louis Freeh, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Chertoff—began to attack La Cosa Nostra in New York. The FBI relied then on a then-new tool, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, to attack and dismantle entire mafia families, charging dozens or scores of suspects in a single case.
The approach, then and now, has been almost always been similar: Work on peripheral figures first, encourage them to cooperate with the government against their bosses in exchange for a lighter sentence, and then repeat the process until the circle has closed tightly around the godfather or criminal mastermind. There’s no reason to think that this investigation will be any different.
In fact, members of Mueller’s investigative team cut their teeth on a who’s who of the biggest Justice Department targets of the last quarter century, taking that “organization” approach to cases like Enron (prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the task force), al-Qaeda (aide Aaron Zebley helped investigate the 1998 embassy bombings before 9/11), and organized crime (prosecutor Greg Andres helped investigate the Bonnano family in New York, as well as the $8 billion Ponzi scheme led by Texan financier Robert Allen Stanford, who’s now serving a 110-year prison sentence).
Weissmann—who was spotted Friday outside the grand jury room—is considered an expert on “flipping witnesses,” encouraging people to testify against their colleagues. In the 1990s, he led the case against mobster Vincent “the Chin” Gigante, from the Genovese crime family, with the help of turncoat witnesses.
2) Don’t hold your breath for “collusion.” For all the talk of Russian collusion, there isn’t really a federal crime that matches what the press, critics, and Capitol Hill lawmakers have been calling collusion, a word that refers legally to a narrow segment of antitrust law. And there’s almost zero chance anyone will be charged with treason, a charge that’s only available to use against enemies in a declared war.
Instead, nearly all charges that stem from this case—based, at least on publicly available tea leaves—are likely to focus on targeting individual crimes reflecting aspects of the complex web of Russian influence in 2016, rather than a neatly-tied-up-with-a-bow conspiracy. Early rounds of charges may even likely focus on business dealings far removed from the questions of the 2016 election.
Expect to see garden-variety white-collar crimes—charges like money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, and “structuring,” (arranging financial transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements)—as well as the possibility of some more exotic charges like violating the nation’s election laws or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or there’s a general catch-all known as 18 USC Sec. 371, “conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.”
There’s also the crime of being an unregistered foreign agent—a charge known inside the Justice Department as a “FARA violation,” after the Foreign Agents Registration Act. A FARA violation is typically the FBI’s go-to way to charge espionage and foreign intelligence officers—the cases are rare and only a few agents in their careers ever have a chance to work a FARA case—but we’ve already seen Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn retroactively register as “foreign agents” this year, showing that they have some legal exposure in this realm.
As the case unfolds, there will almost assuredly also be charges that, in many ways, form the foundation of many federal cases: obstruction of justice, perjury, or lying to federal agents (a.k.a. “making false statements”). These charges are particularly common in special counsel-type investigations—and can end up targeting people unrelated to the original criminal act. During Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, for example, it was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who ended up in the hot seat for obstruction and perjury. Similarly, Marine General James Cartwright was charged with lying to federal investigators as part of the investigation into the Stuxnet leak. These charges—perjury, obstruction, false statements—are often used as leverage to seek a witness’s cooperation (see No. 4).
This approach and the reality of federal criminal law means that the full picture of what happened in 2016—and even before—is likely still years away from being understood.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-known-unknowns-swirling-around-the-trump-russia-scandal/
3) There are many threads, including some likely unrelated to others. Based on what we know so far, it appears that Russia’s information operation against the 2016 presidential election might have been less of a top-down conspiracy and more of an opportunistic case of many different arms of the Russian octopus—the strange mix of politicians, intelligence officers, oligarchs, criminals, and professionals who surround the Kremlin—working to exploit every potential opportunity.
Just in the last week, we’ve seen how expansive the Mueller investigation might be inside the nondescript Washington, D.C., office where his team has been assembling evidence for months. He’s evidently covering not just the Trump Tower meeting (coordinated with the Kremlin?), but digging into Paul Manafort’s finances (his realtor testified before the grand jury last week), looking at Michael Flynn’s work with Turkey, and the social media advertising and targeting that went on as well. Add in the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email, which had already been the subject of an FBI investigation before the election even unfolded—and which might represent an entirely separate Russia nexus through Wikileaks—or what we’ve now learned about the attempted penetration of state-level voting machines, and it’s clear that this case will evolve for many months to come. And all of those individual cases or investigative avenues might prove ultimately unrelated to the Big Question: Did President Trump attempt to obstruct justice with his firing of FBI Director James Comey?
4) The first charges are only a starting point—but don’t necessarily wait for the dramatic Perry Mason-style trial. The indictments handed down by a grand jury that lead to a target’s arrest are rarely the charges the target ultimately faces in a courtroom. Federal prosecutions—particularly complex, still unfolding ones like Mueller’s—often go through many legal iterations, with so-called “superseding indictments” either adding additional charges down the road as more information becomes known or, as trial nears, dropping ancillary charges in order to zero in on the most potent and provable ones.
However, as much as Law and Order may have taught us otherwise, very very few cases go to trial—generally more than 90 percent of federal cases are settled via a plea bargain. That’s in part because the government is heavily incentivized to take the bird-in-hand of a lesser charge for a guaranteed success, but also because the government has tremendous leverage in a criminal negotiation, from the length and location of a prison sentence (much better to be in the low- security FCI Danbury prison in Connecticut than it is to be in the high- security FCI Terre Haute in Indiana) to what assets the government might try to seize (think: “Nice house your family lives in—shame if something happened it”) to what the impact of a unfolding case might be on family members. (You have an aunt who overstayed her visa? Maybe the government promises to overlook that. Your son or wife was also in on the scheme? Maybe you plead guilty right now to a heftier charge to stop the investigation of your family.) Weissmann used this tool to effect in the Enron trial, leveraging the charges against former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow and his wife to encourage Fastow to testify against Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling.
Pay particular attention if you start seeing Mueller’s team filing not criminal indictments but “criminal informations,” which are effectively criminal charges done with the cooperation of the target: That means the suspect is cooperating with prosecutors and has likely worked out a deal to provide testimony or evidence against others, or has negotiated the charges in advance and intends to plead guilty quickly.
It’s clear, too, that Mueller is coming at this investigation with an even broader lens: One of the Justice Department veterans he recruited to the team, Michael Dreeben, is known for being the government’s smartest mind on appellate cases—that is, how a case will play out down the road on appeal—and he’s argued 100 cases before the Supreme Court, putting him in a rare class of lawyer who can meld not just the evidence necessary for a trial but also the legal theory and jurisprudence necessary to sustain that case through years and rounds of appeals. There are signs, too, that Mueller is even thinking through how presidential pardons might shape his case.
5) Bob Mueller is after federal crimes, not political problems. It’s important to understand that the task before Mueller’s team of FBI agents and prosecutors isn’t to investigate and make public the full truth of the 2016 election. They have a much more narrow task: To determine whether there are definable criminal violations that amount to federal felonies or misdemeanors and that can be proven in a courtroom beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the federal government’s standard rules of evidence and criminal procedure.
Sally Q. Yates—the acting attorney general fired by President Trump for refusing to implement the so-called Muslim ban—has argued since leaving office that Mueller’s standard should not be the nation’s only test of what happened in 2016. There are any number of behaviors and actions that might fall short of a definable, provable felony that we, as a democratic society and a sovereign nation that eschews foreign involvement in our politics, might find troubling behavior in our commander-in-chief and the leader of one branch of government. But it’s not entirely clear right now how the country might see such behavior or act upon it.
How, if Mueller uncovers such behavior, it remains an open question how he might convey this information to the public and political process. He might write a formal report, akin to what Ken Starr did during his probe into the Monica Lewinsky affair during the Clinton years or what the 9/11 Commission did following its investigation, and turn that over to the Justice Department to present to Congress. Or he might not. When Mueller, working in private practice after his stint as FBI director, was tasked with investigating the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence case, he defined his mission as narrowly as possible—examining only the NFL’s handling of a video showing the original assault, rather than getting into the larger questions of, say, whether the League coddles abusers.
This latter category of “political problems” ultimately ends up being the purview of Congress—and it will be almost inseparable from the conversation of whatever criminal charges and information stems from Mueller’s investigation. At each stage, we will see debates in the media and political circles: Are there political high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant action via presidential impeachment? Unfortunately, the Capitol Hill investigations have had a difficult road this year, and there seems little appetite for bipartisan action and a forthright debate about the 2016 election. The House investigation by the Intelligence Committee was quickly undermined by bizarre behavior by chair Devin Nunes and now even the Senate investigation, which at least kept up the appearance of a bipartisan effort, appears to be faltering.
Which is a long roundabout way of saying: Monday’s charges are only the beginning of what’s sure to be a complex and deeply partisan process. And, if this weekend’s release of half-century-old files related to JFK’s assassination is any guide, we, as a country, may never feel like we fully understand what transpired in 2016.
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Russia-Trump: Who's who in the drama to end all dramas?
33 minutes ago
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40709270
It's more gripping than any box set we can get our hands on right now.
The investigations into Russian interference in the US election, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, continue to deliver daily developments and drama worthy of anything seen in House of Cards.
There are several ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia, and reports of imminent arrests.
Here is your viewer's guide to the main characters in the first three seasons of the only political drama that matters.
Season One - The Election
This is the season in which Donald Trump, the reality TV star, takes centre stage in his own political drama by launching a presidential campaign. He's supported by his family and gets the attention of the Russians. The season ends with a cliffhanger - could Trump the outsider actually win?!
It's been a while since all of this happened, so let's remind you of the key players in this season.
Who is he? Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate (who by Season Three is the 45th president of the United States). If you really need a refresher, here's his life story.
Key plot line As Donald Trump was busy traversing the country canvassing for votes, US intelligence officials said Russia hacked into the emails of his Democratic rivals.
The question is why? Was the Kremlin trying to alter the outcome of the election, and what did Trump and his campaign know?
What, if anything, did Donald Trump do to try to cover things up in the ongoing Russia investigation?
Who is he? He was Trump's campaign chairman before being forced to quit over his ties to Russian oligarchs and Ukraine.
Key plot line Paul Manafort spent more than a decade as a political consultant in Ukraine. He resigned from the campaign in August 2016, after he was accused of having links to pro-Russian groups there. He also sat in on a crucial meeting with a Russian lawyer who may have been trying to feed the Trump team classified information (more on that later).
We'll meet him again in Season Three, when the FBI raids his house as part of its investigations.
Who is he? The president's eldest child. The Trump who we know did meet the Russians - the big question is why.
Key plot line The role of Donald Trump Jr in this unfolding saga all comes down to a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer, which was set up by a music publicist (the full details of which come out in Season Three). If it sounds random, then in many ways it is.
In June 2016, the publicist, Rob Goldstone▼, offered him a meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya▼ promising Trump Jr dirt on Hillary Clinton. "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump," Goldstone wrote. "I love it" Trump Jr replied, and so he invited the pair to Trump Tower, where they met Trump staff Jared Kushner▼ and Paul Manafort▼
This meeting is the key to much of our plot line because it raises several key questions. Did this amount to the campaign colluding with a foreign government? Why did he agree to the meeting? Don Jr says the meeting was about Russian adoption policy, and Veselnitskaya says she's not an agent of the Russian government. But it's the scene investigators will be playing over and over again as they try to work out if there was any impropriety.
Read more: Trump Jr's habit for making headlines
Season Two - The Transition
Donald Trump confounds his critics by winning the presidency. But the transition is as gripping as the season before it as Trump picks his cabinet, introducing key characters to the mix. The season ends with Trump taking the oath of office on a cold January morning - but there are more twists to come.
Who is he? The granite-faced former general who later became the shortest-serving member of Donald Trump's cabinet. He was forced to resign after not being honest about his contact with a Russian official - what did he know and who did he tell?
Key plot line Michael Flynn was appointed national security adviser just days after the election, against the advice of then-President Obama, who warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn's starring role came in December 2016, when he spoke to the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak▼.
The Washington Post and New York Times said the men discussed Russian sanctions, and that Flynn later lied to the Vice President Mike Pence about the conversation (Kislyak said the men discussed only "simple things").
The FBI is now investigating Flynn. And here's where the president comes in - the agency is also looking at whether Trump tried to get it to back off this inquiry.
Read more: Out after 23 days - who is Michael Flynn?
Who is he? Many roads in this drama lead back to Sergei Kislyak, the jolly and charismatic figure, who up until July 2017 was the Russian ambassador to Washington.
Key plot line Kislyak's role in this drama is unclear - but he makes several appearances as the man many of our cast have had meetings with. The key questions for investigators are - why were they drawn to him, and what was said? The Russian ambassador spoke to both Flynn▼ and Sessions▼ - meetings which both Trump officials didn't initially acknowledge took place.
Anything else we should know? Well, Russia fiercely fought back against claims on CNN that Kislyak was a "top spy and recruiter of spies".
Who is he? Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hovered in the background during Season One, when he was an Alabama senator and a trusted Trump adviser, but we really got to know him during Season Two, when he became Trump's nominee for attorney general.
Key plot line Sessions is one of a number of Trump's team to meet the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak▼ and there are question marks over the nature of those meetings.
Since the FBI investigation focused on the Trump campaign, Sessions stood down from the inquiry. That decision led to plenty of tension, with Trump taking potshot after potshot at Sessions on Twitter.
Sessions has said any suggestion he colluded with Russia is "an appalling and detestable lie".
Read more: An attorney general dogged by scandal
Season Three - The Presidency
This is where the drama really picked up and all the plot lines came together. A lot of the background characters we saw in Season One came back with a vengeance and the infighting got nasty - and, don't look now, but the police are circling.
Who is she? A Russian lawyer who has fought against US restrictions on Russia, with a fearsome reputation and a propensity for drama. But is she a Kremlin stooge? She says no.
Key plot line Hers is a small but crucial role - she's the one who Trump Jr▼, Kushner▼ and Manafort▼ met in June 2016, the details of which were disclosed a year later once Trump became president. She says the meeting was to discuss adoptions - but those who helped set it up said she was offering dirt on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign. That meeting would never have happened without...
Who are they? Emin Agalarov is Azerbaijan's biggest pop star, of course. Have you not heard Love is a Deadly Game? Emin helped bring ▼Donald Trump's Miss Universe competition to Russia and the two are close enough to send each other birthday messages. His dad, Aras, is a billionaire who mixes in the highest circles of influence in Moscow.
Key plot line Emin is the man who set the wheels in motion on that Trump Jr▼ meeting. An email sent to Trump Jr suggests Emin was offering information on the Democrats (Emin says he didn't). The email also says Aras Agalarov had apparently met the "crown prosecutor" of Russia - a role that weirdly doesn't exist - and got information on Hillary Clinton. Are you keeping up?
Read more: The tough-talking networker
Who is she? One of those supporting characters who came from nowhere to play a massive role in the rest of the season. She was the acting attorney general, until Sessions▼ was confirmed in his role. And then she was fired...
Key plot line She's the one who informed the White House that Flynn▼ had not been truthful about his meetings with the Russians. She argued that the fact the Russians knew about these meetings, and that the White House didn't, made Flynn vulnerable to blackmail. Her reward? Donald Trump▼ fired her over an unrelated matter weeks later. She's been a persistent critic of the president ever since.
Who is he? He became deputy attorney general under Jeff Sessions▼ In the TV drama of the Russia scandal, this is the sort of role that would go to a solid Broadway actor you recognise but can't put a name to.
Key plot line Given Sessions stood down from leading the main investigation into the Trump-Russia ties, it fell to Rosenstein to do that job. In a major plot development, he appointed a special investigator▼ - not a popular move with the White House. He's also the guy who recommended in a letter that FBI chief Comey▼ be fired. That move proved to be a bit more popular with the president.
Read more:The man at the centre of Comey sacking
Who is he? Married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka, Kushner is the character who is seen but very rarely heard.
Key plot line Amid cries of nepotism, he was given a plum White House job as senior adviser to the president with a wide-ranging portfolio. It's his contacts with the Russians during the election campaign and beyond that have led to investigators circling him. In June 2016, Kushner attended THAT meeting with Donald Trump Jr▼ and the Russian lawyer▼. He says he was so bored he messaged his assistant to call him so he could leave.
Kushner is also another cast member who had contact with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak▼ - including, reportedly, phone calls (he denies this), and a December 2016 meeting, where it's claimed he discussed setting up a secret back channel with Moscow. He denies this too - but investigators want to know why he failed to disclose these meetings initially.
Read more: The son-in-law with Trump's ear
Who is he? When the White House says "we refer all your questions to Mr Trump's lawyer", this is the guy they mean.
Key plot line Washington DC is a city full of lawyers, but none is as important as Jay Sekulow, the president's personal counsel. Like many political types, he also has a talk show on the side, but is often seen on the airwaves defending the White House from the latest revelations in this ongoing investigation.
Who is he? A British former tabloid journalist, with a penchant for selfies in silly hats, is perhaps an unlikely addition to the cast, but in most good dramas there's always room for the slightly out-of-place eccentric.
Key plot line Rob Goldstone finds his way into Donald Trump's circle of trust thanks to his connections with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov▼.
Goldstone manages the pop star, and it was he who contacted Donald Trump Jr▼ on behalf of his client to set up that now-infamous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Goldstone sent an email to Trump Jr promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, in an email exchange that is a key piece of evidence in this inquiry.
Another highlight on Goldstone's CV is his work bringing the Miss Universe contest to Russia, and it is through these connections he once met Donald Trump himself.
Read more:The Music Man with a love for hats
Who is he? At 6ft 8in (just over two metres), James Comey is a towering figure, the character who gives little away about himself personally, but has a huge personal role in this story.
Key plot line He first entered this drama in Season One, when as head of the FBI he reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails - just weeks before the election. Democrats blamed him for her loss, Republicans hailed him a hero. That, we thought, was the last we'd seen of him.
Cue Season Three, when months into the Trump presidency, Comey was fired by the new president. In true television drama style, he learned of his sacking as he was watching TV news during a trip to LA. By this point, Comey was heading up an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Was this why he was given the heave-ho?
His testimony to the Senate was one of the most gripping scenes in this drama so far, as - under oath - he told politicians he was asked to pledge loyalty to the president - but refused. He also said he was told by Trump to "let go" of the investigation into Michael Flynn▼. A character whose stock is still high - it's unclear when he'll next make an appearance.
Read more: The FBI director who took centre stage
Who is he? The man who could decide the fate of the Trump presidency.
Key plot line Some characters wield a lot of power, but don't have a starring role, such as Robert Mueller, the tall chiselled figure who was appointed as "special counsel" to take over the Russia investigation in the wake of the dismissal of James Comey▼. Mueller comes from the same stock as Comey - both are former heads of the FBI. It's led some to accuse Mueller of not being impartial.
There have been reports that the president has considered firing Mueller - but he's still in the job. With a team of more than 15 lawyers, and a staff of more than three dozen, he's working quietly behind the scenes amassing evidence. There are now reports criminal charges have been filed and arrests will take place soon.
Mueller's inquiry runs alongside similar ones being conducted by politicians in Congress - but he's the only one who can press charges against anyone.
He could play a big part in Season Four onward.
Text by Rajini Vaidyanathan and Roland Hughes; illustrations by Gerry Fletcher
33 minutes ago
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40709270
It's more gripping than any box set we can get our hands on right now.
The investigations into Russian interference in the US election, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, continue to deliver daily developments and drama worthy of anything seen in House of Cards.
There are several ongoing investigations into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia, and reports of imminent arrests.
Here is your viewer's guide to the main characters in the first three seasons of the only political drama that matters.
Season One - The Election
This is the season in which Donald Trump, the reality TV star, takes centre stage in his own political drama by launching a presidential campaign. He's supported by his family and gets the attention of the Russians. The season ends with a cliffhanger - could Trump the outsider actually win?!
It's been a while since all of this happened, so let's remind you of the key players in this season.
Who is he? Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate (who by Season Three is the 45th president of the United States). If you really need a refresher, here's his life story.
Key plot line As Donald Trump was busy traversing the country canvassing for votes, US intelligence officials said Russia hacked into the emails of his Democratic rivals.
The question is why? Was the Kremlin trying to alter the outcome of the election, and what did Trump and his campaign know?
What, if anything, did Donald Trump do to try to cover things up in the ongoing Russia investigation?
Who is he? He was Trump's campaign chairman before being forced to quit over his ties to Russian oligarchs and Ukraine.
Key plot line Paul Manafort spent more than a decade as a political consultant in Ukraine. He resigned from the campaign in August 2016, after he was accused of having links to pro-Russian groups there. He also sat in on a crucial meeting with a Russian lawyer who may have been trying to feed the Trump team classified information (more on that later).
We'll meet him again in Season Three, when the FBI raids his house as part of its investigations.
Who is he? The president's eldest child. The Trump who we know did meet the Russians - the big question is why.
Key plot line The role of Donald Trump Jr in this unfolding saga all comes down to a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer, which was set up by a music publicist (the full details of which come out in Season Three). If it sounds random, then in many ways it is.
In June 2016, the publicist, Rob Goldstone▼, offered him a meeting with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya▼ promising Trump Jr dirt on Hillary Clinton. "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump," Goldstone wrote. "I love it" Trump Jr replied, and so he invited the pair to Trump Tower, where they met Trump staff Jared Kushner▼ and Paul Manafort▼
This meeting is the key to much of our plot line because it raises several key questions. Did this amount to the campaign colluding with a foreign government? Why did he agree to the meeting? Don Jr says the meeting was about Russian adoption policy, and Veselnitskaya says she's not an agent of the Russian government. But it's the scene investigators will be playing over and over again as they try to work out if there was any impropriety.
Read more: Trump Jr's habit for making headlines
Season Two - The Transition
Donald Trump confounds his critics by winning the presidency. But the transition is as gripping as the season before it as Trump picks his cabinet, introducing key characters to the mix. The season ends with Trump taking the oath of office on a cold January morning - but there are more twists to come.
Who is he? The granite-faced former general who later became the shortest-serving member of Donald Trump's cabinet. He was forced to resign after not being honest about his contact with a Russian official - what did he know and who did he tell?
Key plot line Michael Flynn was appointed national security adviser just days after the election, against the advice of then-President Obama, who warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn's starring role came in December 2016, when he spoke to the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak▼.
The Washington Post and New York Times said the men discussed Russian sanctions, and that Flynn later lied to the Vice President Mike Pence about the conversation (Kislyak said the men discussed only "simple things").
The FBI is now investigating Flynn. And here's where the president comes in - the agency is also looking at whether Trump tried to get it to back off this inquiry.
Read more: Out after 23 days - who is Michael Flynn?
Who is he? Many roads in this drama lead back to Sergei Kislyak, the jolly and charismatic figure, who up until July 2017 was the Russian ambassador to Washington.
Key plot line Kislyak's role in this drama is unclear - but he makes several appearances as the man many of our cast have had meetings with. The key questions for investigators are - why were they drawn to him, and what was said? The Russian ambassador spoke to both Flynn▼ and Sessions▼ - meetings which both Trump officials didn't initially acknowledge took place.
Anything else we should know? Well, Russia fiercely fought back against claims on CNN that Kislyak was a "top spy and recruiter of spies".
Who is he? Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III hovered in the background during Season One, when he was an Alabama senator and a trusted Trump adviser, but we really got to know him during Season Two, when he became Trump's nominee for attorney general.
Key plot line Sessions is one of a number of Trump's team to meet the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak▼ and there are question marks over the nature of those meetings.
Since the FBI investigation focused on the Trump campaign, Sessions stood down from the inquiry. That decision led to plenty of tension, with Trump taking potshot after potshot at Sessions on Twitter.
Sessions has said any suggestion he colluded with Russia is "an appalling and detestable lie".
Read more: An attorney general dogged by scandal
Season Three - The Presidency
This is where the drama really picked up and all the plot lines came together. A lot of the background characters we saw in Season One came back with a vengeance and the infighting got nasty - and, don't look now, but the police are circling.
Who is she? A Russian lawyer who has fought against US restrictions on Russia, with a fearsome reputation and a propensity for drama. But is she a Kremlin stooge? She says no.
Key plot line Hers is a small but crucial role - she's the one who Trump Jr▼, Kushner▼ and Manafort▼ met in June 2016, the details of which were disclosed a year later once Trump became president. She says the meeting was to discuss adoptions - but those who helped set it up said she was offering dirt on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign. That meeting would never have happened without...
Who are they? Emin Agalarov is Azerbaijan's biggest pop star, of course. Have you not heard Love is a Deadly Game? Emin helped bring ▼Donald Trump's Miss Universe competition to Russia and the two are close enough to send each other birthday messages. His dad, Aras, is a billionaire who mixes in the highest circles of influence in Moscow.
Key plot line Emin is the man who set the wheels in motion on that Trump Jr▼ meeting. An email sent to Trump Jr suggests Emin was offering information on the Democrats (Emin says he didn't). The email also says Aras Agalarov had apparently met the "crown prosecutor" of Russia - a role that weirdly doesn't exist - and got information on Hillary Clinton. Are you keeping up?
Read more: The tough-talking networker
Who is she? One of those supporting characters who came from nowhere to play a massive role in the rest of the season. She was the acting attorney general, until Sessions▼ was confirmed in his role. And then she was fired...
Key plot line She's the one who informed the White House that Flynn▼ had not been truthful about his meetings with the Russians. She argued that the fact the Russians knew about these meetings, and that the White House didn't, made Flynn vulnerable to blackmail. Her reward? Donald Trump▼ fired her over an unrelated matter weeks later. She's been a persistent critic of the president ever since.
Who is he? He became deputy attorney general under Jeff Sessions▼ In the TV drama of the Russia scandal, this is the sort of role that would go to a solid Broadway actor you recognise but can't put a name to.
Key plot line Given Sessions stood down from leading the main investigation into the Trump-Russia ties, it fell to Rosenstein to do that job. In a major plot development, he appointed a special investigator▼ - not a popular move with the White House. He's also the guy who recommended in a letter that FBI chief Comey▼ be fired. That move proved to be a bit more popular with the president.
Read more:The man at the centre of Comey sacking
Who is he? Married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka, Kushner is the character who is seen but very rarely heard.
Key plot line Amid cries of nepotism, he was given a plum White House job as senior adviser to the president with a wide-ranging portfolio. It's his contacts with the Russians during the election campaign and beyond that have led to investigators circling him. In June 2016, Kushner attended THAT meeting with Donald Trump Jr▼ and the Russian lawyer▼. He says he was so bored he messaged his assistant to call him so he could leave.
Kushner is also another cast member who had contact with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak▼ - including, reportedly, phone calls (he denies this), and a December 2016 meeting, where it's claimed he discussed setting up a secret back channel with Moscow. He denies this too - but investigators want to know why he failed to disclose these meetings initially.
Read more: The son-in-law with Trump's ear
Who is he? When the White House says "we refer all your questions to Mr Trump's lawyer", this is the guy they mean.
Key plot line Washington DC is a city full of lawyers, but none is as important as Jay Sekulow, the president's personal counsel. Like many political types, he also has a talk show on the side, but is often seen on the airwaves defending the White House from the latest revelations in this ongoing investigation.
Who is he? A British former tabloid journalist, with a penchant for selfies in silly hats, is perhaps an unlikely addition to the cast, but in most good dramas there's always room for the slightly out-of-place eccentric.
Key plot line Rob Goldstone finds his way into Donald Trump's circle of trust thanks to his connections with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov▼.
Goldstone manages the pop star, and it was he who contacted Donald Trump Jr▼ on behalf of his client to set up that now-infamous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Goldstone sent an email to Trump Jr promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, in an email exchange that is a key piece of evidence in this inquiry.
Another highlight on Goldstone's CV is his work bringing the Miss Universe contest to Russia, and it is through these connections he once met Donald Trump himself.
Read more:The Music Man with a love for hats
Who is he? At 6ft 8in (just over two metres), James Comey is a towering figure, the character who gives little away about himself personally, but has a huge personal role in this story.
Key plot line He first entered this drama in Season One, when as head of the FBI he reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails - just weeks before the election. Democrats blamed him for her loss, Republicans hailed him a hero. That, we thought, was the last we'd seen of him.
Cue Season Three, when months into the Trump presidency, Comey was fired by the new president. In true television drama style, he learned of his sacking as he was watching TV news during a trip to LA. By this point, Comey was heading up an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Was this why he was given the heave-ho?
His testimony to the Senate was one of the most gripping scenes in this drama so far, as - under oath - he told politicians he was asked to pledge loyalty to the president - but refused. He also said he was told by Trump to "let go" of the investigation into Michael Flynn▼. A character whose stock is still high - it's unclear when he'll next make an appearance.
Read more: The FBI director who took centre stage
Who is he? The man who could decide the fate of the Trump presidency.
Key plot line Some characters wield a lot of power, but don't have a starring role, such as Robert Mueller, the tall chiselled figure who was appointed as "special counsel" to take over the Russia investigation in the wake of the dismissal of James Comey▼. Mueller comes from the same stock as Comey - both are former heads of the FBI. It's led some to accuse Mueller of not being impartial.
There have been reports that the president has considered firing Mueller - but he's still in the job. With a team of more than 15 lawyers, and a staff of more than three dozen, he's working quietly behind the scenes amassing evidence. There are now reports criminal charges have been filed and arrests will take place soon.
Mueller's inquiry runs alongside similar ones being conducted by politicians in Congress - but he's the only one who can press charges against anyone.
He could play a big part in Season Four onward.
Text by Rajini Vaidyanathan and Roland Hughes; illustrations by Gerry Fletcher
