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Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director and one of President Donald Trump's closest aides, was questioned behind closed doors on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into potential obstruction of justice by the president. Shortly after Hicks arrived, the Democratic chairman, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, emerged to tell reporters that Hicks was "answering questions put to her" in the committee interview. But later, while Hicks was still facing questions, other Democrats coming in and out of the room didn't appear satisfied with her answers. While she was answering questions...

Paul Manafort is currently holed up in solitary confinement at a Manhattan prison — and he’s expected to remain at the lockup as his mortgage-fraud case plays out, his lawyer and the Department of Justice said Tuesday. The president’s former campaign manager was recently transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center to await arraignment on state crimes. “My expectation is he won’t remain there [in solitary]. For a couple days when you’re being processed, they keep you in solitary,” Manafort’s lawyer Todd Blanche told The Post on Tuesday. “I’m hopeful the MCC will have a location for him that’s not solitary.”...

Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new top deputy, indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York. And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hope Hicks, once a close aide and communications director for President Donald Trump, becomes on Wednesday the first member of his inner circle to testify to the congressional panel leading a probe into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.Democrats who control the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee believe Hicks can provide important insights into troubling chapters of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump’s efforts to interfere with the investigation. “She’s our first fact witness,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic lawmaker on the committee. “Having somebody talking about...

Full title: Hans von Spakovsky: Congress has no right to Trump tax returns – Justice Department makes right decision President Trump won a victory Friday when the Justice Department said Congress does not have the right to see his tax returns. More importantly, all American taxpayers won a victory, because the Justice Department memo regarding Trump’s returns has the effect of upholding the privacy and confidentially of all our tax returns as well. If Congress is allowed to examine the president’s tax returns, the next step will be demands by lawmakers to examine the tax returns of others – political...

The House Intelligence Committee has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates. "As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller's report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses," the committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), said in a statement on Thursday. Schiff noted that both Flynn and Gates cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but said...

After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas. One of the media and beltway orthodoxies we constantly hear is that just a few bad apples under James Comey at the FBI explain why so many FBI elites have been fired, resigned, reassigned, demoted, or retired — or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public...

Brushing back calls for impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday “it’s not even close” to having enough support in the House, while Democrats pushed forward on other fronts to investigate President Donald Trump. The House voted 229-191 to approve a resolution that will allow Democrats to accelerate their legal battles with the Trump administration over access to information from the Russia investigation. At the same time, they’re convening hearings this week on special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in an effort to boost public interest in the findings of the Trump-Russia probe while digging into a legal strategy aimed at forcing...

“You’re here as a prop. You’re functionally here as a prop because they can’t impeach Donald Trump”: Hand it to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for cutting to the heart of John Dean’s testimony Monday before the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jerry Nadler has to put on a show of pursuing President Trump because the party’s left wing demands it. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t let Nadler go to impeachment hearings because she knows the broader public will see it as a partisan outrage. Pelosi’s bid to appease the extremists runs to quotes about how she wants to see Trump “in...

Robert Mueller says he was able to pinpoint security company executive Erik Prince’s precise location for several hours in January 2017 by matching his mobile phone signal to a cell site near Trump Tower in New York City. The special counsel’s report discloses the use of this investigative technique, by which police determine a suspect’s location via a cellphone’s GPS signal. The Prince narrative is one instance in unredacted sections of the report in which Mr. Mueller’s team explicitly discloses cellphone tracking. It raises the question of whether the FBI applied the process to other investigative subjects — a phone’s...

# The Trump campaign ## June 16, 2015 ### Donald Trump announces his presidential run ## July 10 2015 ### FBI opens the Hilary email investigation ## July 11 2015 ### Maria Butina asks Trump about Russia at  a  public hearing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVRNRwqcds8&t=36s ## July 22 2015 ### Rob Goldstone emails DJT assistant Rhona Graff advising that Emin Agalarov would like to invite DJT to Aras Agalarov's 60th birthday party in Moscow on November 8 [see: Sep 7, 2017, Page 30 of Don Jr. transcript, page 5 of exhibits] ## July 24 2015 ### Rhona Graff politely suggests DJT will...

House Democrats on Thursday unveiled a proposed resolution that would grant congressional committee chairs sweeping new powers to unilaterally “initiate” judicial proceedings to enforce subpoenas in federal court, as long as they first obtain the sign-off of a small, Democrat-dominated group of House leaders. The resolution, obtained by Fox News and set for a vote before the full House on Tuesday, marks a dramatic escalation in Democrats’ ongoing efforts to continue to keep multiple investigations of President Trump and his administration alive — even as the White House has vowed not to comply with what it calls an attempted “do-over”...

With Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski away on a belated honeymoon, Willie Geist has been hosting Morning Joe this week. Today, Willie availed himself of his role to take a serious shot at the Democrats' plan to have John Dean, of Watergate fame, testify next week before the House Judiciary Committee. Discussing the matter with Kasie Hunt, Geist first suggested that the only point of having Dean testify was "for symbolism." A bit later, he unleashed this zinger: "Unless John Dean has new information, or can testify specifically about something that happened in the Mueller investigation, does this not add...

Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, best known for authoring the infamous anti-Trump dossier, has reached a deal with American officials to answer questions about his work for the FBI, according to The Times of London. The Times, citing a source close to Steele, reported that the former spy will meet American officials in London in the coming weeks. An anonymous senior government source told the Times that there was no request to interview Steele. Whether to testify or not would be Steele’s decision since he is no longer in government service, the source added. Steele paid second- and third-hand...

The White House has directed former officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson not to turn over any documents to the House Judiciary Committee relating to their time at the White House, according to two sources familiar with the matter. But Hicks, the former White House communications director, still could turn over documents the committee has requested related to the 2016 Trump campaign, a period that's not covered by executive privilege, according to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler. The White House sent letters to the committee stating that White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had directed Hicks and Donaldson, the...

Robert Mueller knew there was no collusion the first time he read the Steele dossier, which reads as if it was written by a high school sophomore who spent most of his time huffing inhalants behind the gym. “Hey Dude, let’s get some more gas at the Lukoil…” At the latest, the indictment of 12 Russians on 02/16/2018 should have been the end of his “collusion” investigation. Why did Mueller keep going? To entrap the president into obstructing justice, of course. Mueller had a plan. He would use his witchhunt to anger the president enough that he would try to...

Lou Dobbs @ LouDobbs #DTS– diGenova: Mueller’s conference was vindictive, abusive, unprofessional & unethical under all bar associations & DOJ rules. He should be disbarred for his outrageous accusation against Trump. @POTUS is presumed innocent until he’s proved of otherwise in a court. #DTS– @EricTrump: Mueller did a tremendous amount to divide this country. It wouldn’t take anybody 2 & a half years to say there is no collusion & obstruction. Our country is doing well on every front under @POTUS. All the Dimms can do is to put a clown show. #DTS- Partisan hack Mueller couldn’t overthrow @POTUS but...

The Greatest Presidential Harassment in history. After spending $40,000,000 over two dark years, with unlimited access, people, resources and cooperation, highly conflicted Robert Mueller would have brought charges, if he had ANYTHING, but there were no charges to bring! Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist. So now the Dems and their partner, the Fake News Media,..... ....say he fought back against this phony crime that didn’t exist,...

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee is sounding the alarm about the new powers that President Donald Trump has granted to Attorney General William Barr. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, in a letter obtained by The Associated Press, said he fears Trump is giving Barr “the right to selectively declassify certain information for purposes of political gain.” He asked that the leaders of the nation’s spy agencies contact lawmakers if Barr’s investigation threatens their work. Trump last week granted Barr the power to review and potentially release classified information as he analyzes the origins of the FBI’s Russia...

If conservatives think dealing with Google is hard from the outside, they should try coping with its “outrage mobs and witch hunts” from the inside, a Google employee writes in an expansive indictment of the tech giant’s corporate culture. Mike Wacker, a Google software engineer and self-identified Republican, took to Medium on Tuesday and posted an expansive and detailed picture of the troubles facing a conservative trying to survive life inside Google. The post does more than give a glimpse into a hostile corporate culture. Wacker drew a connection between the hostility to conservatives he has experienced to the extensive...