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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
At the Direction of the President
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FBI And CIA Sources Say They Doubt
Major Dossier Allegation
by Chuck Ross
{dailycaller.com} ~ One of the most prominent allegations in the Steele dossier is that Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign... to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from Democrats — the claim fueled speculation ever since the dossier was published that the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russians to influence the election. But according to a top national security reporter for The Washington Post, FBI and CIA sources told reporters for the newspaper they doubt the allegations, which British spy Christopher Steele leveled. “We’ve talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere — they don’t believe that ever happened,” Greg Miller, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, said at an event in October that aired Saturday on C-SPAN. WaPo has not reported that bombshell information, and Miller himself did not reveal the detail in his recent book, “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy.” It is unclear why... https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/16/fbi-cia-doubted-dossier/?utm_medium=email.
Two ex-associates of Michael Flynn
charged with illegal lobbying for Turkey
by Brooke Singman
{foxnews.com} ~ Two ex-business associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn have been charged over alleged illegal lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government... in the United States and making false statements to the FBI, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. Bijan Rafiekian, also known as Bijan Kian, and Kamil Ekim Alptekin of Istanbul were charged after allegedly being involved in a conspiracy to “covertly influence U.S. politicians and public opinion” against a Turkish citizen living in the U.S. whose extradition had been requested by the Turkish government, according to the Justice Department. That Turkish citizen is Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of directing a failed coup. The alleged plot detailed Monday included using a company founded by Rafiekian, referred to in the indictment as “Company A,” based upon “Person A’s” national security expertise. Person A reportedly is Flynn. According to the indictment, the purpose of the conspiracy was to use Company A to “delegitimize the Turkish citizen in the eyes of the American public and United States politicians, with the goal of obtaining his extradition, which was meeting resistance at the U.S. Department of Justice.”... This has nothing to do with Flynn its all about Turkey getting Gulen extradited. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/two-ex-associates-of-michael-flynn-charged-with-lobbying-for-turkey.
Elite Universities Hide Information On Funding
From Ultraconservative Nation Of Qatar
by Luke Rosiak
{dailycaller.com} ~ The nation of Qatar, a Sharia-law monarchy that has been accused of trying to influence other countries’ governments... gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data. Some universities have refused to discuss where strings are attached to that money. The Qatar Foundation, for example, filed a lawsuit against the Texas attorney general Oct. 12 to hide information about the $225 million Qatar has awarded to Texas A&M University since 2011. The Qatar Foundation hired the politically connected powerhouse law firm Squire Patton Boggs for the suit, which was filed in response to a researcher’s public information request regarding the foreign funding. The biggest recipient of Qatar’s educational funding, Georgetown University, repeatedly ignored requests from The Daily Caller News Foundation for basic information about the funding and whether it implicates academic independence... https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/16/qatar-georgetown-texas-university/?utm_medium=email.
Gun Confiscation Begins in New Jersey
by Daniel John Sobieski.
Why Did Michael Cohen Plead Guilty to
Campaign Finance Crimes That Aren't
Campaign Finance Crimes?
by Jeremiah L. Morgan
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At the Direction of the President
{townhall.com} ~ Last week, federal prosecutors in Washington and New York filed sentencing memorandums with federal judges in advance of the sentencings of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. President Donald Trump's former campaign manager and his former personal lawyer had pleaded guilty to federal crimes, and the memorandums, which are required by the federal rules of criminal procedure, set forth the prosecutors' desired prison sentences for them.
Judges rely on these submissions, as well as on those of defense counsel, before making the mathematical calculations that the law requires. Sadly, sentencing today is largely an algorithmic function, dictated by federal sentencing guidelines, with some room for judicial deviation based on the facts of the crimes and the personal backgrounds of the defendants. In my career as a judge in New Jersey, I sentenced more than 1,000 people using state guidelines that were substantially similar to the present federal guidelines.
When the federal prosecutors made their submissions for the most part public, they revealed two disturbing facts. Special counsel dirty cop-Robert Mueller in Washington revealed that in the government's view, Manafort had reneged on his plea agreement by lying to FBI agents who were sent to debrief him about his contacts with the White House. And federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York revealed that some of Cohen's crimes had been committed with the knowledge of and at the direction of Trump or to shield him.
Then all hell broke loose. Here is the back story.
Manafort, who has been convicted of federal financial crimes in Virginia, opted to avoid a second trial in Washington, D.C., on another set of alleged federal crimes by pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel's office by truthfully telling its FBI agents what they sought to learn about ongoing investigations of President Trump.
The FBI agents wanted to know whether Manafort knew whether Trump committed any federal crimes -- such as conspiracy namely, agreeing to receive foreign assistance during his campaign, obstruction of justice interfering with the FBI in order to keep it from investigating him and bank and tax fraud before he was president.
When the special counsel announced that Manafort had declined to be truthful to its FBI agents and Manafort's lawyers claimed he had been truthful, that conflict set up a dispute that must be resolved by a federal judge -- after a public hearing -- before she can sentence Manafort. That hearing will most likely reveal what prosecutors wanted to learn about Trump and what they claim Manafort lied about. Even though the hearing -- which has not been held as of this writing -- could be explosive about Trump, the president claimed he was exonerated by this turn of events.
At the same time, career prosecutors in New York -- whose chief, a Trump appointee, has removed himself from the case -- asked a federal judge to sentence Cohen to substantial prison time for the crimes to which he pleaded guilty, notwithstanding the substantial assistance he had provided them in their investigations of the president. Of the president? Yes. The feds in New York City, as well as the special counsel in Washington, are investigating the president? Yes.
How do we know this? We know that Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations. According to the submission of the special counsel, Cohen lied to Congress -- about candidate Trump's efforts to build a hotel in Moscow by cutting a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the presidential campaign -- to protect the president, who had publicly denied any campaign-time communications with Russians.
But the most damning thing we learned from the submission of the New York federal prosecutors was that they have evidence that Cohen's deceptive and criminal payments of hush money to women alleging to have experienced sexual intimacy with Trump before he was an active candidate were made "in coordination with and at the direction of" the president.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York enjoy the highest reputation for excellence in the legal, judicial and law enforcement communities. They know that they cannot ethically make a charge in federal court without corroborated evidence to support it. In their Cohen sentencing memorandum, they chose to reveal the existence, but not the substance, of their evidence against the president.
Think about the significance of this. The Department of Justice has accused President Trump of coordinating with, ordering and paying Cohen to commit a federal crime for which Cohen has pleaded guilty. Stated differently, career federal prosecutors who are not in the office of special counsel dirty cop-Mueller have told a federal judge that they have corroborated evidence that the president committed felonies.
Let's be clear. If A pays B to shoot someone and B does the shooting, A is as criminally liable as he would be if he had pulled the trigger.
Nevertheless, when the president learned of all this, the revelation of which had been authorized by his chosen but unconfirmed acting attorney general, he claimed that this submission, too, exonerated him. I was sorry to learn that.
These submissions place the president directly in the legal crosshairs of federal prosecutors -- closer to knowing about a campaign-time agreement for something of value with Russians than we have heretofore been. And they show a more direct procurer of criminal behavior than we have heretofore had.
The president may want the public to think that none of this troubles him. Yet the evidence of the falsity of his publicly denied proximity to Putin during the campaign and the possession of evidence by the Department of Justice of his pre-presidential criminal behavior are gravely serious, and he cannot reasonably pretend that they are not.
He can try to avoid reality, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, but he cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Those consequences may be fatal to his presidency and to his liberty.
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