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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates testified on Monday that he stole money from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is on trial for tax and bank fraud. Gates, a former business partner of Manafort’s, also testified that Manafort had asked him to omit information in a court deposition regarding a private equity fund.

Austin’s Equity Office has recommended renaming the Texas city because of Stephen F. Austin's alleged views on slavery. But why stop at just renaming Austin when Amerigo Vespucci took and sold slaves. Austin, Texas is named after Stephen F. Austin, but America is named after Amerigo Vespucci. New York City has been on its own anti-history binge, demoting the statue of the ‘Father of Gynecology’ and tearing out plaques memorializing Robert E. Lee attached to a tree that he had once planted, but it’s got bigger problems. The city is named after King James II whose Royal African Company branded...

Former Trump campaign adviser Richard Gates is scheduled to testify Monday against his longtime business partner, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. NBC News reported that Gates, considered the prosecution's star witness, is slated to testify late Monday afternoon in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Prosecutors last week said they had "every intention" of bringing Gates to the stand after Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye initially cast doubt on whether he would testify. Gates pleaded guilty in February as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. He was charged with one count of conspiracy against the U.S. and one...

Coal has become the enemy of city-dwelling, affluent believers in global warming. Yet it continues to be cheap and available for many countries, especially China and India, that want to expand their power grids to raise their standards of living to a level approaching that of the warmists who insist that doom awaits if atmospheric CO2 levels rise. So how can the poorer countries in the world, whose governments insist on improving their citizens' lives with electricity now and worries about hypothetical assertions based solely on computer models later, be forced to comply with the elites' desires? The warmists have...

The NRA mocked gun control activist David Hogg for apparently showing up to a protest at the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va., this weekend with "armed security."....in February, didn't deny that he had an armed security detail

WASHINGTON, DC — Work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline has come to a halt after a Friday order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The agency issued the stop work order a week after the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pulled a permit needed for construction in the National Forest. The 300 miles pipeline is under construction to carry natural gas from Wetzel County, West Virginia to Pittsylvania County, Virginia. FERC ordered a halt to all work with the exception of what it considered measures necessary to land management and stabilization of the right of way and work areas....

Paul Manafort. Tony Podesta. Tad Devine. Greg Craig. Manafort worked for Trump. Tony Podesta is the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. Tad Devine was Bernie Sanders’ chief strategist. Greg Craig was Obama’s White House Counsel. All four men also, directly or indirectly, allegedly did work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. And the ECFMU was allegedly a front for Yanukovich's Ukrainian pro-Russian faction. Manafort and the Podesta Group had failed to register as foreign agents. Tad Devine had worked for Manafort on the Ukraine project. Craig had written a report on Ukraine for one of Manafort’s lobbying...

"We have groups clearly at odds with each other," Chairman Jack Evans said. "We'd like to keep the groups separate. We don't want incidents on Metro." "Unite the Right" demonstrators plan to use Metro from the Vienna, Virginia, station to Foggy Bottom in D.C. Police and Metro are making plans to avoid a deadly confrontation like the one at the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally last year. "Maybe put all of one group on a train or a certain car on a train," Evans said. "We're trying to see how can we keep the groups separate so we don't have any incidents...

The Portland Protest is spinning up. Right now it's the opening act. Please post links to additional feeds as they come online. Live YouTube Feed Here.

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Richmond's famed Monument Avenue has been vandalized. Red paint was splattered on the statue's base. The letters BLM, an apparent reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, was also sprayed on the base. Virginia Capitol Police, which is responsible for policing the monuments, told news outlets the vandalism occurred late Friday or early Saturday between patrols. The vandalism occurs a week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that was organized in part as a protest to plans to remove a Lee Statue there. ETC...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors were lectured by a federal judge on Wednesday for the language they’ve used in the courtroom, as the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort entered its second day. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III specifically told prosecutors to stop using the word “oligarch” to describe wealthy Ukrainians, whose dealings with Manafort are at the heart of the fraud charges he faces in northern Virginia federal court. The judge said the term has a “pejorative” meaning and is not relevant in this case. Further, he cautioned that using it could suggest Manafort is associated...

Paul Manafort‘s third day on trial over charges of bank fraud and tax evasion was cut a bit short on Thursday after government attorneys made the same mistake twice in a row. The last witness called to the stand was J. Philip Ayliff, a certified public accountant (CPA) at Paul Manafort’s long-serving tax-preparation agency, Kositzka, Wicks and Co. (KWC), of Richmond, Virginia. As time inched along during the last witness’s testimony, nothing of particular interest seemed to be occurring at all. Ayliff was mostly providing foundational testimony regarding the basic functions of a tax-preparation company. Prosecutors then moved on to...

Paul Manafort. Tony Podesta. Tad Devine. Greg Craig. Manafort worked for Trump. Tony Podesta is the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager. Tad Devine was Bernie Sanders’ chief strategist. Greg Craig was Obama’s White House Counsel. All four men also, directly or indirectly, allegedly did work for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. And the ECFMU was allegedly a front for Yanukovich's Ukrainian pro-Russian faction. Manafort and the Podesta Group had failed to register as foreign agents. Tad Devine had worked for Manafort on the Ukraine project. Craig had written a report on Ukraine for one of Manafort’s lobbying...

A dire warning from the National Weather Service has forced an evacuation around the College Lake Dam in Lynchburg, Virginia. A flash flood warning issued Thursday night by the NWS reports "if a complete failure of the dam occurs, the water depth at Lynchburg could exceed 17 feet in 7 minutes." The area impacted would be the city of Lynchburg, which is one mile downstream from the dam. An updated report issued just after midnight by the NWS said the dam has not failed, and is being closely monitored by emergency personnel for any signs of structural failure." Lynchburg Water...

Bombshell: Eight years ago Paul Manafort was investigated for the very same charges he has since been indicted for by special counsel Robert Mueller. Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano made this point on Wednesday during an appearance on the network’s morning show, “Fox & Friends.” What’s more, a legal team led by current Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was responsible for exonerating Manafort, as Napolitano reminded the audience.

Marylanders spend more time commuting to work than the residents of every other state, apart from New York. The time spent stuck in I-270 or Beltway traffic is maddeningly frustrating. Congestion results in less time spent with families and discourages workers from taking jobs involving longer commutes. Economists estimate that congestion costs run into the billions. The statewide cost of congestion based on auto delay, truck delay and wasted fuel and emissions was estimated at $2 billion in 2015. This is an increase of 22% from the $1.7 billion estimated cost for congestion in 2013. As serious a problem as...

The tax and bank fraud trial in a Virginia federal court represents the first test of Mueller's ability to win a conviction of a former Trump aide. Three other aides, including Manafort's longtime business partner Rick Gates, have already pleaded guilty and are cooperating with Mueller's probe. Trump has vacillated between showing sympathy for Manafort and trying to distance himself. Manafort worked on Trump's presidential campaign for five months and attended a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians that is a focal point of Mueller's probe into possible collusion between the campaign and the Kremlin. A Manafort conviction would...

The first trial to emerge from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe is set to start Tuesday when former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort appears before a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Manafort is facing 18 criminal counts, including bank and tax fraud, which could net him 30 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The charges stem from Mr. Manafort’s lobbying in the Ukraine on behalf of politicians with ties to Russia. Prosecutors have alleged he was paid more than $60 million for his work, which includes support of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yankovich....

An appeals court on Monday rejected Paul Manafort’s request to end his pre-trial detention ahead of the former Trump campaign chairman's second trial in Washington, D.C. A federal judge had ordered Manafort to jail last month after special counsel Robert Mueller alleged that Manafort had engaged in witness tampering, in violation of his house arrest. An appellate court Washington, D.C. upheld the judge's order, which said that Manafort "was unlikely to abide by any conditions the District Court might impose, including the 'most fundamental condition of release . . . that he not commit [additional] crime[s] during the period of...

Hunter Thompson once decried the fleeting fortunes of gamblers as “tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.” Paul Manafort is about to discover if he is one of those “blinking toads.” The trial of the former Trump presidential campaign chairman in Virginia, on more than a dozen criminal counts of tax fraud, bank fraud and reporting violations, is about to begin. Rather than take a plea, Manafort has taken the gamble of a trial and the lingering chance of a pardon. Manafort is in the worst possible legal position of having to “run the tables” by not only beating...