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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(CNN) Senate investigators have obtained new information showing Donald Trump Jr.'s mysterious phone calls ahead of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting were not with his father, three sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Records provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee show the calls were between Trump Jr. and two of his business associates, the sources said, and appear to contradict Democrats' long-held suspicions that the blocked number was from then-candidate Donald Trump.

The information came to light recently and could answer one of the key questions over the meeting Trump's eldest son set up to get Russian dirt on the Clinton campaign. Trump Jr.'s phone calls involving blocked numbers -- meaning the numbers are private and do not appear in the phone records -- have been a lingering issue as investigators have probed the meeting and whether Trump himself had advance knowledge through any means that his son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr.'s phone records included calls with two blocked phone numbers the same day he exchanged calls with Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, the son of a Russian oligarch who spearheaded the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The calls came three days before the Trump Tower meeting, and an additional call with a private number occurred several hours after the meeting.

CNN has not confirmed the identity of the business associates who spoke with Trump Jr. nor what they discussed on the calls. The purpose of the calls and their relevance to the Trump Tower meeting and the Russia investigation is still unclear. Trump Jr. attorney Alan Futerfas declined to comment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's two-year investigation into 2016 Russian election interference is still ongoing and it's unknown whether the committee is still investigating the Trump Tower matter. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, both declined to comment.

It's not evident whether special counsel Robert Mueller has also obtained the phone records disclosing the identity of the private numbers, but the Trump Organization has provided both Mueller and Congress with a range of Russia-related documents.

The documents showing the calls were not with then-candidate Trump could resolve a key line of inquiry that House Democrats have said they want to get to the bottom of this year now that they are the majority party and have control of investigations.

The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was hatched when Agalarov asked British promoter Rob Goldstone to arrange a meeting between Veselnitskaya and campaign officials. In an email to Trump Jr., Goldstone said that Veselnitskaya would provide "dirt" on Clinton at the meeting. "If it's what you say I love it," Trump Jr. responded, though when the meeting occurred on June 9, 2016, Veselnitskaya focused her presentation on Russian sanctions, and not Clinton dirt.

All of the participants in the meeting have spoken with one or all of the three congressional committees that have probed the meeting.

Democratic lawmakers have zeroed in on Trump Jr.'s four-minute call that occurred between the two calls he exchanged with Agalarov on June 6, 2016, three days before the Trump Tower meeting. Trump Jr. then had an 11-minute call with a private number that same evening, and also another a three-minute call with a blocked number two hours after the meeting.

Trump Jr. told congressional investigators in 2017 that he did not know who the blocked calls were with. When asked if he told his father about the meeting or the underlying offer of dirt on Clinton, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: "No, I did not."

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, has slammed his House Republican counterparts for not following through to obtain phone records to determine to whom Trump Jr. had spoken, writing last year that "the committee has not pursued leads to determine who called Trump Jr. at this crucial time from a blocked number." He's pledged to make it one of his first priorities as chairman.

In a 2018 memo outlining the areas of the Russia investigation that went unexplored, Schiff wrote that "(b)ased on the timing of these calls, the committee must determine whether some of these calls may be between Trump Jr. and Donald J. Trump, including calls concerning the Trump Tower meeting."

"We wanted to get the phone records to determine, was Donald Trump talking to his son about this meeting," Schiff told CNN in November. "It's an obvious investigative step, but one the Republicans were unwilling to take because they were afraid of where the evidence might lead."

Schiff declined to comment through a spokesperson for this story.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also highlighted the blocked numbers in a Democratic report last year on that panel's probe of the Trump Tower meeting. "We also do not know who they told about this meeting, including whether they ever discussed it with Mr. Trump," Feinstein wrote.

In her report, Feinstein wrote that Trump Jr. had placed the three calls to the blocked numbers. But Schiff's report in fact states that the first June 6 call was incoming to Trump Jr. A source familiar with the records provided to Congress said they did not indicate if the blocked calls were incoming or outgoing.

Democrats had reason to suspect the private number was Trump, as Trump's first campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told the committee that Trump's "primary residence has a blocked (phone) line," according to a report from Democrats on the House Intelligence panel.

In addition to the phone calls, Schiff has called for a subpoena to Trump Jr. to compel him to discuss the conversations he had with his father in 2017 about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting before Trump Jr. released a misleading public statement about the purpose of the meeting. Trump Jr. has claimed the conversations with his father were protected by attorney-client privilege when he testified in December 2017.

The President said in written responses to Mueller's questions that he did not know about the meeting in advance.
In July, Agalarov told Vice News he had remembered speaking with Donald Trump Jr.

"I said, 'Listen, there's some people that want to meet you.' They obviously want something that could potentially help them resolve things that you could be interested in or maybe not. If you can spare a few minutes of your time, I'd be grateful. If not, no problem. Obviously Don Jr. obviously being Don Jr. said, 'Of course. I'll do it if you're asking,'" Agalarov told Vice.

Scott Balber, the Agalarovs' attorney, previously told CNN that his clients have no reason to believe then-candidate Trump knew about the meeting with the Russian lawyer before it happened.

CNN's Kara Scannell contributed to this report.

 

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[向问天]

浏览附件812885

浏览附件812886

浏览附件812887

同情川普。

 

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It's been more than 21 months since former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to head a special investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election "and related matters".

Now, according to multiple media reports, the end is drawing near.

But what does that mean? Time Magazine senior editor Ryan Teague Beckwith has described trying to keep up with the twists in the Mueller investigation as akin to understanding the plot of a Russian novel by listening to a book club conversation.

Now, at last, perhaps we will see the full manuscript. Or at least the CliffsNotes (that's York Notes to you Brits).

Or maybe we won't.

If it all seems confusing, that's because no-one knows exactly what happens next - just that something may be about to happen soon.

How soon is 'soon'?
According to CNN, Mr Mueller's investigation could be completed "as early as next week". The Washington Post says it will be "in the coming days". CBS's Major Garrett has reported that the end could come "as early as tomorrow".

Is that soon enough for you?

Just because the Mueller investigation is drawing to a close, however, doesn't mean we'll know all the details immediately - or ever. The notoriously tight-lipped former FBI director could simply announce that his work is done, pack his bags and go back to a private life of golf clubs, corporate boards, academic speaking engagements and trips to the Apple store Genius Bar.

Wait, won't there be a final 'Mueller Report' with all the juicy details?
Not necessarily. In fact, probably not.

It doesn't seem likely there will be a detailed investigative narrative presented to the public similar to the multi-tome report produced by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr back in 1998.

Image copyright Alamy Boxes and boxes of the Starr report
Mr Starr's wide-ranging investigation that started with a real-estate inquiry and ended up scouring Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was governed by a federal statute with different rules. And Mr Starr himself - a former judge and Republican administration lawyer - was a different kind of man to the by-the-books ex-Marine Mueller.

Mr Mueller's probe is conducted under the auspices of the Justice Department and is governed by its regulations.

The special counsel's obligations at the conclusion of his work are to provide a "confidential report" to Attorney General Bill Barr explaining his prosecutorial decisions.

Mr Barr must then provide the top members of the Senate and House Judiciary committees with a brief explanation of any actions taken - or instances where he overruled the special counsel's proposed action.

It is up to the attorney general to decide whether it would be in the "public interest" to make any of these reports or communications accessible to the rest of us.

Traditionally the Justice Department has been reluctant to provide information about investigations that do not lead to criminal prosecution. That was a guideline notably violated by former FBI Director James Comey during his July 2016 press statement outlining the results of a federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Barack Obama's secretary of state.

It would be ironic, to say the least, if the resulting political fallout from Mr Comey's decision - which grievously wounded Ms Clinton's presidential campaign - is cited by Justice Department officials to defend a decision to keep confidential damaging details of the Mueller investigation involving Donald Trump.

What will Bill Barr do?
This is the million-dollar question.

In his testimony during his January Senate confirmation hearings, Mr Barr was repeatedly pressed by Democrats to promise he would make public any findings or reports produced by the Mueller investigation.

He demurred.

"My objective and goal is to get as much as I can of the information to Congress and the public," he told Senator Dianne Feinstein. "I am going to try to get the information out there consistent with these regulations and to the extent I have discretion, I will exercise that discretion to do that."

His answers left considerable wiggle room. He could view the Justice Department's special counsel regulations as a ceiling or a floor - a minimum requirement of disclosure that can be exceeded or a limit to what he can reveal, given confidentiality requirements and prosecutorial guidelines.

So we may not know anything?
It's certainly a possibility. Or if we do learn something, it could take a while to render it into a form for public consumption (or, given the way things work in Washington, to leak).

Imagine the scene in Washington, as the political world learns Mr Mueller has provided his findings to Mr Barr and then waits - for hours, days, maybe even weeks - to learn what, if anything, will come of it.

There is another possibility, however.

Up until now, Mr Mueller has spoken through his court filings, which are rich in detail and new revelations. While Mr Mueller's report to the attorney general will be confidential, it may not be his final word at the conclusion of his investigations.

There may be more indictments to come.

Over the course of the last 21 months, Mr Mueller - in his prosecutorial documents - has explained how Russian agents and operatives allegedly gathered information about the US political process, initiated a social media campaign to influence and enflame American political views, funded on-the-ground political activities, and hacked the emails and files of top Democratic operatives in an effort to damage Mrs Clinton's presidential campaign.

He has prosecuted multiple members of the president's inner campaign circle for a variety of misdeeds, including obstruction of justice and lying about Russian contacts.

He helped strike a deal with Mr Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, which unearthed evidence of Trump business negotiations with Russian officials conducted in the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign.

He indicted a Trump confidant, Roger Stone, for lying about his contacts with Wikileaks, the organisation he says was the conduit through which Russia injected its purloined material into the American political bloodstream.

I
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The special counsel could be building a prosecutorial path that leads to the White House, with the final stones about to be set. Court-watchers note multiple sealed indictments have been filed in the federal courts used by Mr Mueller's team over the past few months. Those could be political and legal bombs, with their fuses lit.

Or they could be duds.

That's it, then?
Hardly. Even if the Mueller investigation closes up shop and there is no "report", there are no new indictments and the attorney general's public pronouncements provide few details, it's not the end of the story.

There are a number of cases initiated by the special counsel - involving Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy campaign aide Rick Gates - that still await final sentencing.

Long-time Trump adviser Mr Stone has yet to go to trial on his charges of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Mr Mueller has handed this prosecution over to government lawyers. There's also a special counsel case against Concord Management and Consulting, which Mr Mueller has charged with assisting Russia's 2016 social media election-meddling campaign.

Meanwhile there's a plethora of other ongoing investigations that are being run independently of the special counsel's office. Federal investigators in New York are looking into possible election-law violations by the Trump campaign and his businesses and misconduct by the Trump inaugural committee.

The US attorneys in Washington and Virginia also have their hands full, with the espionage case involving Russian Maria Butina and an unregistered foreign lobbying prosecution of Mr Flynn's business associates.

There are also state-level investigations of Mr Trump's charitable foundation and Trump Organization tax filings, as well as an ongoing lawsuit by Maryland and the District of Columbia alleging that the president, through his business dealings, is violating a constitutional rule prohibiting the acceptance of money from foreign governments while in office.

Mr Mueller may exit the stage, but the drama will continue.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47312898

 

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Washington (CNN) Robert Mueller's report could land within days, yet rather than offering definitive answers, his hotly anticipated filing might only ignite a new controversy -- over how much of the special counsel's conclusions most Americans get to see.

Sources told CNN on Wednesday that the Justice Department is preparing for Mueller to report to Attorney General Bill Barr as soon as next week after an investigation that started as an attempt to find out whether Trump campaign members conspired with a Russian election meddling effort.

But the big question is how much of what the special counsel concludes -- after an investigation repeatedly blasted as a "hoax" and a "witch hunt" by the President -- will be made public or even sent to Congress.

Whenever it is filed, Mueller's report will mark a critical point in the Trump presidency, given the gravity of the accusations against his team, and offer the theoretical possibility of conclusive answers about the last White House race.

The reclusive former FBI director's findings could also put the United States on the road to a new and divisive impeachment saga, if he finds collusion with Russia and an attempt by the President to obstruct justice to cover it up.

If there is no case for Trump to answer, Mueller could at least partially lift a cloud that has haunted the White House every day of his presidency, though a flurry of spin-off cases mean the President's legal exposure is far from over.

It will be a fraught political time, since so many Americans have invested so much emotion in the outcome, whether they are liberals who dream of Trump being ousted from power or supporters who buy his claims of a huge "hoax."

Yet key players in Washington and many Americans beyond, transfixed by the barely believable drama leading up to the final report, at least at first, may be let down.

Mueller's endgame is obscured because no one really knows exactly what he will report and the information that Barr will choose -- or feel compelled -- to share with Congress and the public on a scandal that has polarized the nation.

The uncertainty is almost certain to spark a new struggle between Congress, the White House and the Justice Department that could lead to litigation and has every chance of reaching all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Mueller's filing could also herald the reclusive prosecutor's own exit from the stage -- likely after not speaking to the American people from the beginning to the end of his investigation.
That old fashioned reticence, as well as a stellar career in law enforcement, is one reason why Mueller's conclusions will carry such weight -- whether his report is ultimately critical of the President or leaves him in the clear.

What does Mueller know -- and what will he say?

The special counsel has run one of the most impenetrable Washington investigations in memory. He has, however, sprinkled clues throughout a growing library of indictments and court memos.

While he has yet to openly accuse anyone in Trump's orbit of colluding with the Russians, Mueller has laid out 10 criminal cases, seen four people sentenced to prison, secured one conviction at trial, extracted seven guilty pleas and charged 37 people and entities with crimes.

He's put Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort behind bars for witness tampering. The President's personal lawyer Michael Cohen -- who cooperated with the Mueller investigation -- will also soon go to prison.

Ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn -- another Trump associate who flipped -- is awaiting sentencing.

In richly detailed indictments, Mueller has weaved a tale of Kremlin troll farms, social media campaigns, spear phishing operations and computer hacking.

He's uncovered a pattern of compulsive lying by people close to Trump, often about contacts with Russians, which have raised the key question: What are all of these presidential associates trying to hide?

In one of the most tantalizing unclosed loops, Mueller in recent filings revealed that a senior campaign official was directed by an unnamed person to ask Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone about future releases by Wikileaks that could damage Hillary Clinton.

Last week, prosecutors said for the first time they had evidence that Stone -- who is charged with obstruction and witness tampering -- communicated with Wikileaks, which many US analysts believe has links to Russian intelligence.

What kind of report will Mueller file?

According to Justice Department regulations, Mueller is required to file a confidential report with Barr. It is not clear what form it could take.

One model would be for the special counsel to adopt a traditional, sparse prosecutorial approach to explain the cases he initiated and decisions he made not to charge other people linked to the case.

Barr and Mueller will likely seek to avoid the political furor whipped up by former FBI Director James Comey when he announced he would not charge Clinton after an investigation into her email server but hardily criticized her conduct all the same.

According to the regulations governing his appointment, Mueller is only required to deliver a confidential report to the attorney general outlining why he decided to prosecute some people and declined to pursue others.

Still, a pared down approach would risk coming across as deeply insufficient given the huge political ramifications of the Mueller investigation, which after all, at least indirectly centers of the behavior of a sitting President.

Given his by-the-book history, it's likely that Mueller would follow the prevailing Justice Department opinion that a sitting President cannot be charged in a criminal case, even if he has evidence that Trump transgressed in some way.

So he could choose to include information about Trump's conduct in his report that he believes should be sent to Congress -- the sole constitutional authority for judging presidential wrongdoing.

But since so much of Mueller's work is a mystery, no one outside his tight operation can say for sure exactly what he might do.

Barr's dilemma

Once Mueller files, the focus shifts to Barr, who will come under immediate pressure from Democrats in Congress to allow maximum public access to the special counsel's conclusions.

"The attorney general, as I understand the rules, would report to Congress about the conclusion of the investigation," Barr said in his Senate confirmation hearing last month.

"I believe there may be discretion there about what the attorney general can put in that report," he said.

His comments prompted concern among Democrats and raised the possibility that, at least initially, the evidence and reasoning that led to Mueller's final conclusions may be kept under wraps.

"I think the American people deserve to know the truth. As Thomas Jefferson used to say, 'if the people know the truth, they won't make a mistake,'" Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, told CNN on Wednesday.

Barr could be constrained in his report by the need to respect grand jury secrecy rules, a desire to protect classified material and sources and methods and the reputations of people interviewed by prosecutors and not charged.

Trump's lawyers have already indicated they may seek to have parts of the report withheld through assertions of executive privilege. Such comments have provoked fears that there could be an effort by the administration to use legitimate legal considerations to withhold information that could be damaging to the President.

Democrats, especially Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, are preparing to act if there is any such blocking maneuver.

Barr also knows there will be strong desire among the public to release details about an investigation that has overshadowed Washington politics and the result of the 2016 election for two years and cost millions of dollars.

On the flip side, Barr will be under fearsome pressure from Trump, who has turned on senior law enforcement officials who he feels have offered him insufficient protection.

House Democrats have subpoena power that they may use either to try to force the release of Mueller's full report, or get evidence and testimony uncovered by the special counsel and not released to Congress.

All of this could set the stage for a massive legal battle and yet another clash between the executive and legislative branches of the US government.

"Barr isn't going to have the final say here," said Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency attorney who is now a CNN legal analyst.

"If he tries to withhold even one word of the Mueller report from Congress, they are going to litigate this question to the absolute end of the earth," Hennessey told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room."

"They are really, really going to push the executive privilege issues. It is almost certainly going to wind up in the United States Supreme Court," she said.

Only the beginning

Just because Mueller may be finishing up, it does not mean the end of Trump's legal exposure -- nowhere close.

To begin with, elements of Mueller's report and evidence and source information he uncovered could provide fuel for an accelerating Democratic investigation into Trump's links with Russia.

At some point, Democratic leaders may face a choice, if Mueller and Barr indicate that there was wrongdoing by Trump, whether to initiate impeachment proceedings with all the nightmare political consequences that such a step would entail.

Mueller's team has farmed out various cases, not seen under his direct jurisdiction, to prosecutors elsewhere, including in New York.

The President's campaign, transition and administration are currently the subject of a string of civil and criminal legal probes.

Many analysts believe that investigations being pursued by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that are now delving deep into Trump's business empire could ultimately prove the most damaging legal threat to the President.

That means the final shots of the Mueller investigation may only be the end of the beginning of the legal and political nightmare the President will endure.

 

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(CNN) The impeachment of President Donald Trump suddenly looks like much more than just a theoretical possibility.
Democrats on Monday will launch an "abuse of power" investigation that could be easily transformed into an even more serious process, with an expansive demand for documents from Trump's government, his family and even his real estate empire.

The President reacted to his worsening plight with a vehement defense on Sunday, after a week in which testimony from his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen deepened his political vulnerability and ahead of the expected filing soon of special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

"Presidential Harassment by 'crazed' Democrats at the highest level in the history of our Country. Likewise, the most vicious and corrupt Mainstream Media that any president has ever had to endure," Trump tweeted Sunday night.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who would eventually lead any impeachment proceedings, on Sunday signaled a significant escalation into congressional inquiries into the President.

The New York Democrat plans on Monday to request documents from 60 people and entities close to Trump, including from the Department of Justice, the White House and the Trump Organization.

The document trawl will be used "to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power," Nadler said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.

Nadler stuck to the House Democratic position that impeachment "is a long way down the road," apparently in order to avoid Republican arguments that the decision has already been made to try to oust Trump. The document requests are not taking place under the auspices of an official impeachment investigation.

But Nadler said nevertheless that he believes the President had obstructed justice, a potentially impeachable offense.

And given his responsibilities and powers, the warning from Nadler took the President's political and legal nightmare to a new plane, and opened a new, more serious stage of the showdown between House Democrats and Trump.

It was the latest sign that investigations sparked by accusations that Trump's campaign team cooperated with Russian election meddling has mushroomed into a relentless examination of Trump's political, personal and business life.

The latest blow to the President further intensified pressure on the White House as Washington waits for another shoe to drop — with Mueller expected to file his long awaited report from Monday onward.

The Nadler investigation, along with parallel probes into Trump's presidency by the House Oversight and Intelligence committees means that the structure of a political investigation into the President based in Congress is now in place, alongside the legal inquiries led by Mueller and prosecutors in New York and other jurisdictions.

Trump showing signs of stress
In the last week, partly through Cohen's testimony, it has become clear that even if the special counsel does not find direct wrongdoing by the President, Trump's legal troubles will linger deep into his presidency and probably beyond.

Trump is showing increasing signs of stress at being surrounded.

He spent much of the weekend laying out a likely defense should any of the multiple probes find him guilty of wrongdoing and bolstering his stranglehold on the Republican Party that could eventually be key to saving his presidency in a Senate trial if House Democrats opt for impeachment.

"I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start - And only because I won the Election!" Trump tweeted Sunday.

In a mostly unscripted two-hour speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday — one of the most demagogic and inflammatory appearances of his presidency, Trump lacerated Mueller and his investigation.

"So now we're waiting for a report, and we'll find out ... who we're dealing with ... We're waiting for a report by people that weren't elected," Trump said at CPAC.

"You put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people for a long time that shouldn't be there, and all of a sudden, they're trying to take you out with bullshit, OK," Trump said.

Trump also sketched a defense for two potential areas of vulnerability: his call for Russia to find Hillary Clinton's missing emails during the 2016 campaign and his firing of former FBI Director James Comey in 2017.

He said he was being "sarcastic" when he asked Russia to find Clinton's emails and was having fun with his audience.
Mueller's team has already filed an indictment against 12 Russian intelligence operatives, accusing them of hacking into Clinton's personal emails for the first time on the same day — July 27, 2016 — as Trump's appeal.

Trump's comment is often cited by his critics as an instance in which his campaign colluded in plain sight with the Russian election meddling effort.

The President also used his speech at CPAC to knock back accusations that his firing of Comey was an attempt to shut down the Russia investigation and therefore fits the definition of obstruction of justice.

"I said, 'Melania, I'm doing something today, I'm doing it because it really has to be done ... he's a bad, bad guy,'" Trump said, arguing that he thought Democrats would welcome the move given their anger at Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.

"I said to the first lady, I said, 'but you know the good news, the good news is that this is going to be so bipartisan, everyone's going to love it' — so we fired Comey."

In May 2017, Trump told NBC News that he was thinking of the "Russia thing" when he dismissed Comey.

His lawyers have argued that since he is the titular head of the US government and legal system, the President has the right to dismiss anyone in the executive branch and therefore cannot be guilty of obstruction.

It may soon be Mueller time
Mueller has not so far produced any evidence that Trump is guilty of cooperating with the Russian election interference effort, or of obstructing justice.

He has however sprinkled tantalizing clues in indictments of a handful of Trump associates that have sparked intrigue about what his eventual findings — that will be presented to Attorney General William Barr — will show.

In a moment that will have dramatic overtones given the timing, Barr is due to deliver brief remarks on Monday at an event at the White House hosted by the President for state attorneys general, a Justice Department spokesman said.

Trump's fierce political campaign against what he calls Mueller's "Witch Hunt" and "hoax" investigation is apparently aimed at discrediting any conclusions that Barr choses to share with Congress and the public.

But his increasingly emotional denunciation of the various legal and political investigations — that are now focusing on his business, his campaign, his transition, his inauguration and his presidency is not giving the impression that he is a President who is confident there will be no charges to answer.

Nadler is expected to give further details of his document request on Monday.

But he said on ABC that it would stretch from the White House, to the Department of Justice to Trump's son, Donald Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.

Given that he believes that Trump obstructed justice, Nadler was asked on "This Week" whether the decision not to pursue a formal impeachment investigation at this point was merely a political distinction.

"We do not now have the evidence sorted out and everything to do an impeachment. Before you impeach somebody you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen. You have to persuade enough of the opposition party voters, the Trump voters," Nadler said.

Republicans accused Nadler and fellow Democrats of lining up a fall back investigation to pursue the President in case Mueller does not find offenses that rise to the level of impeachment.

"I think Congressman Nadler decided to impeach the President the day the President won the election," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on "This Week."

"He talks about impeachment before he even became chairman and then he says, you've got to persuade people to get there."
McCarthy also argued that the hush money payments made by Trump to two women who accused him of affairs before the election did not amount to the standard of impeachable offenses.

Cohen last week produced a check for $35,000 which he said was proof that Trump was reimbursing him for what may amount to an infringement of campaign finance laws even while he was in office.

But McCarthy argued that campaign finance violations merit a fine, not the ultimate sanction Congress can take against a President.

"Those aren't impeachable in the process," he said.

 

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[zhangulei]

35 页，快三年了吧，对川普没完没了的调查。这楼越高，就越不利于民主党群众了。

 

[ottawa_tj]

Paul Manafort被“轻”判47个月（弗吉尼亚法庭），尽管Muller建议判20年！令人不解。。。

但是，下周还有一场判决（Washington DC法庭）等着。。。

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/manafort-sentence-tax-bank-fraud-1.5046393

 

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Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his appeal for no additional time and rebuked him for his crimes and years of lies.

Within minutes of the sentencing, prosecutors in New York announced Manafort has been indicted on 16 new charges, including residential mortgage fraud.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced that the new charges were filed in state Supreme Court last Thursday, alleging Manafort and others falsified business records to illegally obtain millions of dollars.

At Wednesday's hearing, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to nearly 3½ years in prison on charges that he misled the U.S. government about his foreign lobbying work and encouraged witnesses to lie on his behalf. That's on top of the roughly four-year sentence he received last week in a separate case in Virginia.

Manafort, 69, faced up to 10 additional years in prison after pleading guilty in Washington to two counts of conspiracy against the United States that included a range of conduct, from money laundering to unregistered lobbying, and a second count related to witness tampering.

He was convicted of bank and tax fraud in Virginia, where a judge last week sentenced him to 47 months in prison for tax evasion and other financial crimes. That sentence was far below sentencing guidelines that allowed for more than two decades in prison, prompting national debate about disparities in how rich and poor defendants are treated by the criminal justice system.

Jackson said at the outset of the hearing that she would not be swayed by last Thursday's sentence by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis.

Manafort, who has gout, a form of arthritis, entered Jackson's courtroom in a wheelchair.

Jackson ruled Manafort should get a tougher sentence because he acted in a leadership role, directing others to participate in a crime, rejecting a defence argument that the sentencing enhancement should only apply to those who lead criminal organizations.

But she said Manafort should get credit for acceptance of responsibility, because he pleaded guilty to the conduct at issue.

Remorse rings hollow
A prosecutor with special counsel Robert Mueller's office said Manafort didn't deserve any credit because he repeatedly lied to investigators and the grand jury after his guilty plea.

But defence lawyer Thomas Zehnle said Manafort has "come forward" to take responsibility, and the topics he's accused of lying about are about different ones from the crimes he admitted to."

Manafort, centre, in a wheelchair, was also sentenced last week in Alexandria, Va., to four years in prison for bank and tax fraud. (Dana Verkouteren via Associated Press)

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann did not recommend a particular punishment for Manafort, but delivered a scathing assessment of Manafort's crimes, saying he concealed his foreign lobbying work, laundered millions of dollars and even coached other witnesses to lie.

Weissmann said Manafort's crimes undermined the rule of law and committed crimes that "go to heart of the American criminal justice system."

He said Manafort's upbringing and education could have led him to an exemplary life, but that at each turn, "Mr. Manafort chose to take a different path."

Unlike at his sentencing hearing last week, Manafort said he was sorry for his actions, but Jackson then told him his expression of remorse rang hollow.

"I am sorry for what I have done and for all the activities that have gotten us here today," Manafort said.

"This case has taken everything from me already — my properties, my cash, my life insurance, trust accounts for my children and grandchildren, and even more."

Jackson told Manafort that he had lied repeatedly and committed fraud repeatedly, and there was no good explanation for the leniency he sought.

"Saying 'I'm sorry I got caught' is not an inspiring plea for leniency," Jackson said.

"The defendant's insistence that none of this should be happening to him ... is just one more thing that is inconsistent with the notion of any genuine acceptance of responsibility," the judge said.

She sentenced Manafort to 60 months on the first count, half of which would run concurrently with the Virginia case, and 13 months on the second count, to be served consecutively — adding 43 months on top of the 47 months he received in the Virginia case.

That's a total of seven and half years in prison, minus credit he is expected to get for nine months already served.

Jackson ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort had breached his agreement in the Washington case to co-operate with Mueller's office by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent to the Russia probe including his interactions with a business partner they said has ties to Russian intelligence.

Jailed since June
Jackson's sentence may mark the end of a two-year-old legal battle between Manafort, a veteran Republican political operative who worked for Trump's campaign for five months in 2016, and Mueller, who made exposing Manafort's covert lobbying for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine a centrepiece of his Russia probe.

Manafort's lawyers noted that none of the Mueller's charges against him related to the special counsel's core mandate:
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

"But for a short stint as a campaign manager in a presidential election, I don't think we'd be here today," Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing told Jackson, and asked her to take media coverage of the case into account in determining the sentence.

On Tuesday night, Mueller's prosecutors updated a judge on the status of co-operation provided by one defendant, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and are expected to do the same later in the week for Rick Gates, Trump's former deputy campaign manager.

The Mueller team has prosecuted Manafort in both Washington and Virginia related to his foreign consulting work on behalf of a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party.

The decision last week by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III to sentence Manafort to 47 months stunned many who'd been following the case, given both the guideline calculation of 19.5 to 24 years in prison and the fact that the defendant was convicted of hiding millions of dollars from the IRS in undisclosed foreign bank accounts.

But Ellis made clear during the sentencing hearing that he found the government's sentencing guidelines unduly harsh and declared his own sentence "sufficiently punitive."

"If anybody in this courtroom doesn't think so, go and spend a day in the jail or penitentiary of the federal government," Ellis said. "Spend a week there."

Manafort has been jailed since last June, when Berman Jackson revoked his house arrest over allegations that he and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political consultant, sought to influence witnesses by trying to get them to testify in a certain way.

Trump has not ruled out a presidential pardon for Manafort, and after last week's sentencing said "I feel very badly" for his former aide.

Trump, as president, can issue pardons for federal crimes, but not for state offences.

 

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Washington (CNN)　Donald Trump has been president for 792 days. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been on the job -- investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility of collusion between the Russians and members of Trump's campaign -- for 675 days.

That all came to a head at 5 p.m. Eastern, when the Justice Department announced that Mueller had delivered his investigation to Attorney General William Barr. While we don't know what's in the report, we do know that this marks a major milestone: Mueller's investigation, which has occupied 85% of Trump's presidency, is now finished. We are likely to look back on Trump's presidency -- no matter what the report actually says -- as "before Mueller report" and "after the Mueller report."

Barr told congressional leaders in a letter Friday that he may be able to advise them on the "principal conclusions" of the Mueller report "as soon as this weekend."

This all began on May 17, 2017, when Mueller was appointed as special counsel by deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In the intervening 22 months (statistics courtesy of CNN Mueller probe expert Marshall Cohen):

• Mueller brought criminal charges against 37 people and entities.
• 6 of them were associates of President Trump: Campaign chairman Paul Manafort, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, national security adviser Michael Flynn, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Trump ex-attorney Michael Cohen and political svengali Roger Stone
• 5 people have been sentenced to prison
• Trump has referred to the investigation as a "witch hunt" more than 170 times.

Given the length of the Mueller probe, the number of charges it has produced and Trump's unrelenting negative attacks on Mueller and his team, it's normal to see the conclusion of the Mueller report as the beginning of the end of all of this.

Except that even with Mueller's probe now shuttered, we still don't immediately know a) what he submitted of his findings to Barr b) what Barr will redact c) whether the White House will be able to see the report before Congress and/or exert executive privilege on parts of it d) when Congress will get the report and how extensive or not the report will be and e) when -- and if -- the report is made public.

That leaves off the many House Democratic investigations into the Trump administration, the possibility of bringing Mueller in front of Congress to testify over the report, and the likely legal fights that will follow any redactions and executive privilege claims.

See what I mean? End of the beginning. Not the beginning of the end. (Thanks, Sir Winston!)

Still, it is an end -- if not the end.

The Point: With the news that Mueller is done, Trump's presidency as we have known it since, well, almost its first days, will begin to change. How will it change -- and will that change be the beginning of the end for Trump or a new and more positive beginning?

Below, the week that was in 18 headlines.

Monday:

• Trump again attempts to pressure GM on Ohio plant closure
• Conway's husband is trying to tell the public Trump is mentally ill

Tuesday:

• 'Trump of the Tropics' fawns over US president
• Rod Rosenstein staying at Justice Department 'a little longer'
• Mueller's office began investigating Michael Cohen as early as July 2017

Wednesday:

• Trump claims his Syria strategy hasn't changed
• Trump weighs in on Conways' marriage in feud with aide's husband
• Trump's acting DOD secretary under ethics probe over Boeing ties
• Trump complains he didn't get a 'thank you' for McCain's funeral
• Trump spotlights Ohio manufacturing -- and demands credit

Thursday:

• White House rejects Dem requests for info on Putin communications
• Trump signs executive order on campus free speech
• Trump vows to 'fix' student loan debt
• Trump: US needs to recognize 'Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights'

Friday:

• US announces new round of sanctions on Iran
• Trump to nominate Stephen Moore to Federal Reserve
• Trump sparks confusion with tweet on North Korea related sanctions
• Special counsel Robert Mueller ends investigation

 

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What we've already learned about Mueller's investigation
By Katelyn Polantz and Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 11:39 AM ET, Sat March 23, 2019

Washington (CNN) Special counsel Robert Mueller's 22-month investigation was an often-shocking story about what Russians, Trump campaign associates and others did in the 2016 election so their preferred candidate could win.

Now that investigation is complete. And the public, the media and Congress are anxiously waiting to learn what more, if anything, Mueller uncovered, and how much Attorney General William Barr will make public.

Mueller's office has been notoriously silent, choosing instead to speak almost exclusively through court filings -- and with Mueller slipping out of his office unseen on Friday afternoon with no public statement to make and no more indictments to bring.

The only public message, through a spokesman, was that Mueller would finish his service as special counsel "in the coming days" and that the office would be closing.

However, what Mueller has revealed in court has already told the story of Russia's ambitious and brazen attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, the operatives who aided -- wittingly or otherwise -- in that effort, and the extent to which people around Donald Trump lied when faced with tough questions.

Along the way, the special counsel charged 37 criminal defendants, interviewed dozens of witnesses and subpoenaed terabytes of documents, revealing that Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton were far more extensive than previously known — and that multiple Trump associates were never as innocent as they claimed.

What Mueller uncovered regarding the President's involvement remains a mystery. He has not brought charges against Trump or any of his family members, as some thought he would. He has not alleged a conspiracy to collude with the Russians. Mueller also hasn't yet revealed what he learned about one of the key questions that has hung over the investigation: whether the President obstructed justice, first by pressuring then-FBI Director James Comey to go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in 2017, and then by firing Comey, which Trump later admitted was tied to the Russia investigation.

There are still lingering, unanswered questions about what new information Mueller's team uncovered that didn't add up to a criminal indictment and thus remains shielded from public view.

Mueller's team of prosecutors also uncovered alleged criminal activity that opened up a cascade of connected investigations and prosecutions from other sections of the Justice Department against Russians working in America, foreign lobbyists and even Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen. Some of these, like a probe into the Trump inauguration's donations and spending and another into Cohen's campaign finance violation of paying off women, continue to this day and will not end with the conclusion of the special counsel's investigation.

The next phase of the Mueller investigation could be a desperate political fight to provide details from the investigation to Congress and the public, one that could spark a prolonged court battle.

But the special counsel has already exposed a range of revelations to the American public:

— The dirty deeds of Paul Manafort are central to the investigation: Prosecutors made clear in court filings that the former Trump campaign chairman's ties to powerful pro-Russian Ukrainians ran to the "heart" of the collusion investigation and were not just about Manafort's lobbying business, including his continued contact with a Russian man accused of witness tampering and having ties to Russian intelligence.

— The surprising start to the Russia probe: A relatively unknown campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was thrust to the center of the collusion allegations after he was charged with lying to the FBI about speaking to a Russian-linked professor who told him about "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign. His encounter with an Australian diplomat, in which he bragged about what he had been told, sparked the FBI's counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 that eventually became Mueller's probe into collusion.

— The many lies from Trump world: Despite Trump's initial claims that his campaign had no contacts with Russia, we now know of at least 16 officials who in fact had contact with Russians during the campaign and transition. Not only that, but the special counsel charged six people close to the President with lying about their contacts — raising the question, still unanswered, of why did they lie?

— Russia's sophisticated operation: Mueller's filings provided painstaking detail about how Russia's election interference went well beyond hacking Democrats and included a sophisticated social media propaganda effort that, allegedly, was ultimately backed by the Russian government. The Justice Department, in additional court filings, has now alleged that subversion effort continues on social media sites to this day.

This is a retelling of how Mueller's work played out and what the special counsel found.

Papa-Who?

It was almost six months before Mueller made his first public moves. When he did, the cases put the investigation further into the Trump campaign than many had expected, thanks to a surprise indictment of a little-known figure.

Mueller's first charges alleged a broad criminal lobbying business scheme for Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, an accusation that was widely expected.

Manafort had long been on the shortlist of targets with various witnesses walking in and out of the federal courthouse in Washington to testify against him to a grand jury in the months before Mueller made a move. The indictment, once public, only alleged Manafort and Gates committed crimes before the Trump campaign began. The White House seized on the timeframe. The President tweeted that day "there is NO COLLUSION!"

But while Trump was crowing about no collusion, Mueller later that day announced another criminal case against a little-known campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos.

As revealed in the plea documents, Papadopoulos, a 20-something from Chicago, heard that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton early in 2016, then lobbied campaign officials to arrange a meeting with the Russian government — maybe even one between Trump himself and Vladimir Putin, according to court documents.

Papadopoulos then lied to investigators about his interactions with a woman claiming to be related to Putin and to a mysterious Russia-linked foreign professor.

The announcement of Papadopoulos' case was such a left turn the special counsel's spokesman misspelled his last name when the office first announced his plea. (It was corrected days after the unsealing.) Trump and associates downgraded Papadopoulos' role on the Trump campaign's foreign policy team, calling him a "coffee boy," and his significance in the investigation wasn't made clear.

But the transcript of that plea hearing shows that the Mueller team dropped the first clue of what was to come. "There's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part," prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky said in court.

Manafort and Gates

With Papadopoulos' charge revealed and his sentencing put on hold, the public focus quickly shifted back to Manafort and Gates. The pair vowed to fight their charges of money laundering, tax crimes and foreign lobbying violations. Both were placed on house arrests, and the government seized their passports.

A day after their arrests, on Halloween, Mueller outlined how much more he knew about the two top-level political men. The two had connections to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, traveled extensively abroad, moved money through offshore accounts and hid millions of dollars acquired through off-the-books Ukrainian political work.

But how did the past transgressions of the former Trump campaign chair and the deputy chair fit in to Mueller's attempt to find the truth of the 2016 presidential election?

For months, Mueller wouldn't say.

Instead, he turned his attention to others who had also always been suspected to be in the middle of the probe.

Flynn and the Russians

Next up was Michael Flynn. On Dec. 1, 2017, the former lieutenant general and Trump national security adviser on the campaign and, briefly, in the White House strode into a packed federal courtroom with an entourage of family members and lawyers. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about several things, namely his conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump presidential transition. The pair had discussed over a series of phone calls the US position toward economic sanctions on Russia and the Russian response.

Sanctions have long been a thorn in the US-Russia relationship, and with Flynn's case in place, Mueller had found a motivation that later became a theme among some Trump associates' contacts with Russia.

Mueller had learned Flynn was in touch with officials on the Trump transition team about his calls with Kislyak. While Flynn and Kislyak were exchanging phone calls, Trump associates at the President-elect's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida over Christmas and New Year's 2016, Mueller said, and kept in touch with Flynn.

At this point, Mueller's cases against Flynn and Papadopoulos pointed to moments on the campaign and transition. Other top advisers around Trump knew about the interactions on Russia. Still, Mueller had no "collusion" to detail.

The 13 Russians

By February 2018, Mueller had his next big case to drop. The special counsel's Office introduced to the public a Russia-based company with an amorphous name, the Internet Research Agency. Mueller detailed in his court filings how the IRA, two other companies operating under the name "Concord" and 13 Russians allegedly executed an elaborate social media propaganda conspiracy in 2016.

Some traveled to the US, got in touch with grassroots political operatives and campaign officials, then created fake online accounts to spread misinformation across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. One of those Russians directing the operation, Mueller alleged, was a catering executive and businessman named Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch so close to Putin he's often described as "Putin's chef."

The allegations unmasked the extent to which misinformation had infiltrated the American political psyche, driving conservatives and liberals further away from one another. The Russians allegedly encouraged black voters to skip voting in the 2016 election, Muslim voters to demonstrate for Clinton, and Trump supporters in Florida, New York and Pennsylvania to rally.

At one point, one of the Russian co-conspirators had an American hold a sign in front of the White House that wished Prigozhin a happy 55th birthday.

Concord Management and Consulting, the parent company of Prigozhin's catering business, was indicted in the case and has tapped a US law firm to fight the case on its behalf. The Russian company says it's not guilty. That challenge is ongoing. The defense team continues to try to pry open evidence in the case for its clients to see. At the same time, the prosecutors are daring Prigozhin to come to the US and face the court.

In June 2018, Mueller landed another indictment against Russian government-backed operatives. The new case accused 12 military intelligence officers of hacking Democratic officials in 2016. This case had long been expected when Mueller opened it, since it essentially bolstered a January 2017 report by US intelligence agencies that detailed how the Russian government orchestrated the attack on the Democrats and Clinton's campaign.

Mueller's filings allege that the Russians, after looting the political computers and accounts, released batches of emails themselves online, and sent some to WikiLeaks for maximum political effect. The email releases came as a bombshell days before the Democratic National Convention in 2016, and again on the same day in October 2016 that an "Access Hollywood" tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women sexually went public.

The leak before the convention ultimately forced the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who came under fire for favoring Clinton over her primary challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. This was the "dirt" Papadopoulos had heard about, that Mueller had tracked down in full by July 2018.

Six months later, at the end of 2018, Mueller tied the hackers to a willingness among more Trump campaign advisers to get that same dirt. But before he got to that, Mueller had more to reveal.

Turning the Screws
Mueller's prosecutors plodded along with their court filings in Manafort and Gates' proceeding. Week by week, from October 2017 and then going forward, they used the court record to trickle out damning details that would squeeze Gates and Manafort closer to cooperation. As the two tried to get out from their house arrest restrictions, prosecutors dug into their banking history, making it harder for the men to find millions of dollars they could use as collateral for bail. The prosecutors changed and added to their indictments, making it clear how much they knew. The defendants' legal bills skyrocketed.

Manafort's defense team at one point, in April 2018, unsuccessfully challenged Mueller's approach, saying the special counsel had no authority to pursue Manafort's long-ago crimes in Ukraine when he should be focused on Russia and the election.

But prosecutor Michael Dreeben let on that Manafort's work in Ukraine may connect back to Russia. "Here you have somebody who was a campaign official in the Trump campaign, that he had longstanding ties to Russia-backed politicians in the Ukraine," Dreeben said on behalf of Mueller at a court hearing. "What were the nature of those connections? Did they provide means for surreptitious communications? Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things."

To bolster this argument, Dreeben relied on what may be the single most important document made public so far in the Mueller investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had written a memo for Mueller two-and-a-half months after his appointment in 2017. This became known as the "August 2 memo" and spelled out exactly who and what Mueller should investigate, including Manafort's years of financial ties in Ukraine and communications with Russians in 2016. The three-page memo that prosecutors revealed in the court filing is still largely redacted. No charge related to the allegation against Manafort's efforts in 2016 has been brought.

Gates flips
The special counsel's office found other ways to bear down on Manafort: line up cooperators against him and get him sent to jail. Ultimately, Mueller landed the man who could be the most damaging witness against Manafort, his former partner Gates, who proved to be the star witness.

Gates' house arrest in Richmond had been a burden for him, his wife and four children. He'd struggled with financing his legal fees as he fought his charges alongside Manafort, his long-time boss.

While keeping the public front that he was preparing for trial, Gates secretly hired a top Washington defense attorney to negotiate a deal with Mueller beginning in January 2018. The next month, Gates' new defense lawyer publicly announced his role the night before Gates walked into court to plead guilty to a much-reduced pair of crimes. He agreed to cooperate and began spilling what he knew of Manafort over more than 20 interview sessions with Mueller, his lawyer has said in court filings.
And he prepared to help the prosecution in the trial of his former boss.

Manafort march to trial
About a month before Manafort was set to go to trial, prosecutors revealed they had followed conversations between him and his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik as they attempted to get in touch with their lobbying contacts and shape what they might tell investigators. As a result, both Kilimnik, now living in Moscow, and Manafort were indicted for witness tampering. A federal judge revoked Manafort's house arrest, putting him in near-solitary detention in Virginia. He has stayed under those conditions since then.

Kilimnik also surfaced when another witness was charged with lying: Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who worked with Manafort and Gates on a public relations strategy in Ukraine. In a filing detailing how van der Zwaan covered up what he knew about communications in 2016 between Kilimnik and his Ukrainian lobbying partners, Mueller slipped in a key detail the FBI had learned: In 2016, Kilimnik had ties to Russian intelligence.

Manafort's trial began in Alexandria, Virginia in late July 2018. Prosecutors detailed the trappings of Manafort's luxurious life -- fine clothes, expensive rugs, landscapers and contractors -- to outline how he got rich in Ukraine, then hid the money in foreign bank accounts and used the cash to support his lavish spending. They showed dozens of emails, including one where Manafort wrote to Gates "WTF? ... You told me you were on top of this," regarding keeping his tax payments artificially low.

Gates took the stand against his former boss over three days of the trial. The questioning badly damaged Gates' credibility, after he admitted to stealing from Manafort — possibly from the Trump political operation, too — and said he had an affair. But the damage was worse for Manafort. Gates detailed how Manafort had orchestrated years of financial fraud.

After deliberating for about four days, on August 21, the jury convicted Manafort on eight financial fraud charges. The jurors couldn't agree unanimously on 10 other financial charges — but among them, only one juror had doubt of Manafort's guilt.

In an extraordinary bit of timing, the same hour a jury in Virginia read its guilty verdict for Manafort, Trump's long-time lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to several financial crimes including tax fraud and campaign finance violations. Crucially, in his plea, Cohen implicated the President, whom Cohen told the court had directed him to pay hush money in the final days of the campaign to women who were alleging affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

In the span of an hour, Mueller had secured a conviction of Trump's former campaign manager and the long-time personal lawyer to Trump had turned against the President. Cohen began meeting with Mueller's team and eventually pleaded guilty to an additional lying charge. Mueller's subsequent case against Cohen revealed that the Trump Organization and Trump's family had worked on a plan to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout the first half of 2016 while Trump campaigned for the presidency — much further into 2016 than Cohen had testified to Congress in 2017 and that Trump publicly claimed.

Things speed up
With Manafort damaged and Cohen on board, Mueller moved many of his cases toward their final positions. Manafort was headed for a second trial in DC about his Ukrainian lobbying and dozens among Washington's elite were lined as possible witnesses. Manafort — after holding prosecutors off for 11 months — finally admitted to his crimes in September 2018 and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.

Papadopoulos' and Flynn's criminal cases also fast-tracked to a close in the fall of 2018. Prosecutors said Papadopoulos had never really been helpful to them and had even thwarted their ability to question the mysterious foreign professor who knew about the Russians' "dirt" on Clinton before it was released. Papadopoulos got two weeks in prison.

Flynn, on the other hand, had proven more useful. Mueller's team told a federal judge their well-known cooperator deserved no jail time because he had contributed substantially to ongoing investigations.

Flynn's cooperation "likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming" with investigators, Mueller's team wrote.

With that assertion about other witnesses, Mueller put a point on what had become most perilous for so many defendants during the probe: Significant lies would be charged as crimes.

Flynn readied for his sentencing in December. The hearing started like any other, with prosecutors and defense counsel on friendly terms. But the judge, Emmet Sullivan of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, came ready with tough questions. Sullivan was appalled by Flynn's actions, especially while the military leader sat in the West Wing speaking with the FBI. Sullivan asked whether Flynn could have been charged with treason. Did Flynn realize how he had disgraced the American flag?

The special counsel's office said no, treason was never a line Flynn crossed-- and Sullivan said he had misunderstood the timeline of Flynn's private lobbying. But Sullivan's lecture left its mark. Flynn's attorneys realized the peril for their client in that charged moment and asked the judge not to sentence him that day. Flynn has finished cooperating with the investigation, prosecutors have said, but may still be of use as a witness in another case brought by the Justice Department against his former lobbying partner. Flynn's sentencing has not yet been rescheduled.

Cohen, too, received a sentence. He'll go to prison in May for almost three years for his financial fraud crimes. For lying to Congress, he got two months in prison, though that time won't make the time he serves lengthier.

At Cohen's sentencing, also in December, Mueller prosecutor Jeannie Rhee spoke about "core Russia-related issues under investigation" for which Cohen gave "credible and reliable" information. This statement still hasn't been explained.

But what Cohen knows and did for Trump has clearly been a live current throughout Mueller's tenure. The special counsel's office got access to his campaign-time and earlier emails beginning in July 2017- two months after Mueller's appointment. Other parts of Justice Department investigations involving Cohen are still under seal.

There are additional unresolved questions. Cohen has alleged in public testimony to Congress that he overheard Trump and Roger Stone speaking during the campaign about Wikileaks emails that could hurt the Democrats. Trump and Stone have denied the conversation happened.

Stone zone

With seven defendants sentenced or heading that direction and two dozen Russians charged, Mueller had one more case to unlock.

Stone, Manafort's former lobbying partner-turned-Republican spin doctor, awoke to a swarm of FBI agents on his lawn in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 25, 2019. CNN had tracked the grand jury foot traffic for months and positioned a camera crew on Stone's lawn early that morning, with the possibility an indictment was coming. "FBI, warrant," the heavily armed agents yelled as they knocked on Stone's door just after 6 a.m. that day.

The arrest caught on tape became one of the most viral moments of Mueller's work. Stone had been charged under seal the day before by the grand jury in the DC courthouse for obstruction, lying during a congressional proceeding and threatening witnesses who might have contradicted his congressional statements. Mueller alleged that Stone attempted to reach WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign about the stolen Democratic emails and that Stone wanted to understand the "dirt" the hackers found before new batches dropped. The most tantalizing allegation Mueller leveled against Stone was that he was "contacted by" senior Trump campaign staffers also keen on learning about what WikiLeaks might drop to hurt Clinton.

The Stone criminal case is ongoing. Stone has pleaded not guilty and is under strict orders not to speak publicly about the case, the court or Mueller.

'Heart' of the Investigation
Just after Thanksgiving 2018, prosecutors revealed another bombshell development: They believed Manafort was lying to them and the grand jury. This left Manafort with little leverage. He was already in jail and no longer useful to prosecutors. It was time for him to be sentenced.

Manafort, now grayed after eight months in jail and using a wheelchair, said he never intended to lie. Prosecutors submitted more than 800 pages of evidence suggesting he did, and the judge agreed.

In a filing leading up to the decision, Manafort's attorneys redacted their document badly, allowing the public to copy and read text beneath the blacked-out sections in digital copies. That text said Manafort had discussed with Kilimnik about a Ukraine peace plan and had shared 2016 polling data with him. The polling data revelation, especially, sent the Trump camp dialing back their blanket "no collusion" claims.

"I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign," Trump's personal defense attorney Rudy Giuliani said on CNN in response to the Manafort filing. "I said the President of the United States."

In one of the hearings about the lies, Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann gave one more nod to where Mueller's been headed all along, which has still not been revealed in full. Manafort and Kilimnik had met on August 2, 2016, at a cigar bar in Manhattan while Manafort led the Trump campaign. They talked about their old contacts in Ukraine and about a policy idea for peace that touched on US sanctions against Russia -- the same idea Flynn had discussed with Kislyak after the election.

Judge Jackson pressed the special counsel's office on its apparent obsession with Kilimnik's efforts. "Why is that important?" she asked.

Weissmann responded with an answer that's still largely redacted in the court file. He began by saying, "Okay. So, I mean, this goes to the larger view of what we think is going on, and what we think the motive here is." Kilimnik had a Russian intelligence connection, Weissmann reminded her. Then he turned to Manafort, saying, "There is an in-person meeting at an unusual time for somebody who is the campaign chairman to be spending time, and to be doing it in person. That meeting and what happened at that meeting is of significance to the special counsel."

It was the "heart" of the investigation, he added.

Prosecutors have yet to close the loop on whether this meeting of great significance led them to something larger.

But they did earn hefty penalties time for Manafort. The former Trump campaign chairman was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in prison, and is giving up $35 million of his assets in forfeiture to the US government and restitution to victims.

In his final report, Mueller is poised to answer this: Do Manafort and Kilimnik, Stone and WikiLeaks, Flynn and Papadopoulos, the hackers and the troll farm, and the Trump campaign and the Russian government have more than lies and coincidences in common?

The answers, for now, are still under seal.

 

[A Special Day]

大鱼没抓到，烂虾抓到一些。同时让人们看到，大鱼周围的烂虾是什么货色。没白花钱。

 

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