Liberal Forum

FBI conducted predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Manafort’s home.

FBI agents raided the home in Alexandria, Va., of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, arriving in the pre-dawn hours late last month and seizing documents and other materials related to the special counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The raid, which occurred without warning on July 26, signaled an aggressive new approach by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team in dealing with a key figure in the Russia inquiry.

Manafort has been under increasing pressure as the Mueller team looked into his personal finances and his professional career as a highly paid foreign political consultant.

Using a search warrant, agents appeared the day Manafort was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a day after he met voluntarily with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members.

The search warrant requested documents related to tax, banking and other matters.

People familiar with the search said agents departed the Manafort residence with a trove of material, including binders prepared ahead of Manafort’s congressional testimony.

Investigators in the Russia inquiry have previously sought documents with subpoenas, which are less intrusive and confrontational than a search warrant.

With a warrant, agents can inspect a physical location and seize any useful information.

“I think it adds a shock and awe enforcement component to what until now has followed a natural path for a white-collar investigation,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor.

“More so than anything else we’ve seen so far, it really does send a powerful law enforcement message when the search warrant is used. . . .

That message is that the special counsel team will use all criminal investigative tools available to advance the investigation as quickly and as comprehensively as possible.”

Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, confirmed that agents executed a warrant at one of the political consultant’s homes and that Manafort cooperated with the search.

Manafort has been voluntarily providing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s election interference.

The search warrant indicates that investigators may have argued to a federal judge that they had reason to think Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena.

The raid also could have been intended to send a message to Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team members, who already have begun combing through Manafort’s complicated financial past.

The documents seized in the raid include materials Manafort already had provided to Congress, said people familiar with the search, and the significance of what was obtained remained unclear Wednesday evening.

“If the FBI wanted the documents, they could just ask [Manafort] and he would have turned them over,” said one adviser close to the White House.

Josh Stueve, spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment, as did Reginald Brown, an attorney for Manafort.

“Mr. Manafort has consistently cooperated with law enforcement and other serious inquiries and did so on this occasion as well,” said Maloni, the Manafort spokesman.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. attorney, called the search “a significant and even stunning development,” noting that such raids are generally reserved for “the most serious criminal investigations dealing with uncooperative or untrusted potential targets.”

“A federal judge signing this warrant would demand persuasive evidence of probable cause that a serious crime has been committed and that less intrusive and dramatic investigative means would be ineffective,” he said in a statement.

Mueller has increased legal pressure on Manafort, consolidating under his authority unrelated investigations of various aspects of Manafort’s professional and personal life.

Manafort’s allies fear that Mueller hopes to build a case against Manafort unrelated to the 2016 campaign, in hopes that he would provide information against others in Trump’s inner circle in exchange for lessening his legal exposure.

Manafort has provided more than 300 pages of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Senate and House intelligence committees.

The information includes notes Manafort took while attending a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016.

Emails show that Trump Jr. accepted the meeting and invited Manafort after he was told that the Russian lawyer would provide damaging information about Democrat Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to assist his father’s campaign.

The special counsel’s office has subpoenaed records and testimony related to the Trump Tower meeting, people familiar with the investigation said.

Last week, the Trump campaign turned over more than 20,000 pages of documents to congressional investigators examining Russian efforts to influence the election.

Manafort and Trump Jr. separately turned over hundreds of documents requested by congressional committees.

Manafort had been subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 26, the day of the raid.

Ultimately, however, the subpoena was withdrawn, and he did not testify.

Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, said in a joint statement that they had dropped the demand after Manafort began producing documents.

Manafort, an experienced political operative who was once a business partner of Trump confidante Roger Stone, was hired to professionalize the Trump campaign at the recommendation of another Trump friend, Tom Barrack, an international real estate investor.

As a political consultant, Manafort traveled the world, at times offering advice to despots and dictators.

His decade of work in Ukraine on behalf of a Russia-friendly political party has drawn attention from the FBI.

In Kiev, he advised the Party of Regions, helping to elect former president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted from power amid public protests in 2014 and fled to Russia.

A few days after attending the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 at the urging of Trump Jr., Manafort was named chairman of Trump’s campaign, following the ouster of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Manafort remained in that role through the Republican National Convention and into August, when he resigned amid growing scrutiny of his work in Ukraine.

The New York Times reported at the time that his name was found in a ledger of off-the-books cash payments made by the Party of Regions.

Manafort has denied receiving any improper payments from the party.

Still, the work was lucrative.

In June, Manafort filed Foreign Agents Registration Act paperwork with the Justice Department providing new details about his work in Ukraine.

The documents showed that his firm was paid $17.1 million for its work in Ukraine over two years before expenses.

Manafort’s retroactive filing about his Ukraine work came as investigators scrutinized his foreign lobbying and began to aggressively probe his financial past.

During the spring, prosecutors issued subpoenas seeking information about his income sources and financial transactions.

One subpoena reviewed by The Washington Post sought information “concerning contracts for work . . . communication or other records of correspondence” related to about two dozen people and businesses that appeared to be connected to Manafort or his wife, including some who worked for Manafort while he was a political consultant in Ukraine.

The subpoena was issued by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Manafort’s consulting business has been located.

Also named in the subpoena were various corporations formed in Cyprus.

Manafort appeared to have routed money he earned in Ukraine and in business dealings with a Russian business magnate through Cyprus-based bank accounts.

After Mueller was appointed, his team took over the Manafort investigation that was underway in Virginia.

State authorities in New York also have issued subpoenas seeking information about Manafort’s real estate loans.

And Mueller’s office has taken over an investigation of financial dealings that involved Manafort and his son-in-law, a real estate investor, including real estate transactions in California.

Termin8tor » 09 Aug 2017 4:57 pm » wrote:There are perhaps legitimate questions about where Obama was born. Yes, he would be an American in any case.
I'd explain, but it would be a waste of time to someone like you.

Coal baron turned Republican governor wants a new federal subsidy to boost coal.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a coal baron and former Democrat who switched parties last week to side with President Donald Trump, is now calling for a $15-per-ton coal subsidy from the federal government, a local news site reported.

Justice says the subsidy is needed for national security reasons.

“If you’re all on gas or you’re all on gas and western coal and somebody puts a bomb at a gas junction point or somebody puts a bomb on a bridge coming from the west you could very well lose the entire eastern power grid,” Justice told the West Virginia Metro News.

Justice has met with White House officials, including Trump, to discuss the plan, which Justice openly admits is an effort to save the struggling coal industry.

Under the plan, “the federal government would pay our power plants for every ton of coal that they buy that’s a Central [Appalachian] ton or Northern [Appalachian] ton of coal in order to preserve our eastern coalfields,” Justice said.

He proposes a $15-per-ton subsidy.

Trump’s desperate Vietnam gamble.

[.......]
Trump had four student deferments as he completed undergraduate and graduate college work, and when they ran out, he got a doctor to certify him as damaged goods due to spurious bone spurs.
[.......]
I don’t judge harshly Donald Trump and his history with avoiding the draft, and I doubt that many in our generation do.

I came to describe that time as the “damned if you did, damned if you didn’t” years.

If you allowed yourself to get drafted and served, you were damned by those who opposed the war.

If you dodged the draft and avoided Vietnam — for any reason, moral or otherwise — there were those who damned you as not living up to your obligations as a citizen and moreover as a man.

This produced an incredibly confused split in our generation which more than 50 years has not lessened.

Our history is so strife torn and riven with contradictions and pain that none of us should be using it to harm one another.

It doesn’t accomplish anything, it’s not fair, and it’s just not right, so of course it’s exactly what Trump is doing.

Trump is reflexively using that split over Vietnam in the service of his career as president, most recently in his unhinged attack on Senator Richard Blumenthal for his mixed record on Vietnam.

“Interesting to watch Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut talking about hoax Russian collusion when he was a phony Vietnam con artist!” Trump tweeted on Monday morning after watching Blumenthal supporting the Russia investigation on CNN.

Trump’s thumbs continued to thwack: “Never in U. S. history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like Senator Richard Blumenthal.

He told stories about his Vietnam battles and . . . conquests, how brave he was, and it was all a lie.

He cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child.”

Apart from the fact that Trump was attacking Blumenthal for advocating upholding the law, and the fact that much of Trump’s attack is an outright lie — Blumenthal said that he had served in the war when in fact he had remained stateside while serving in the Marine Reserves — Blumenthal never “told stories about his battles and conquests” or “how brave he was,” much less “cried like a baby and begged for forgiveness like a child.”

On the contrary, when Blumenthal was caught out with his misstatement about his career — almost eight years ago — he apologized, and until Monday, he and everyone else in the world had moved on.

Not Trump. He used Vietnam as a bludgeon to clobber Blumenthal, as usual lying about him outrageously as he did it.

Why? That’s the question I have.

The war in Vietnam is the third rail for our generation, politically and in every other way.

Remember the attacks on Clinton for dodging the draft?

They went after him with a howitzer when it was revealed that Clinton had attended a demonstration against the war overseas when he was at Oxford.

Heavens! Not only was he a draft dodger, he wasn’t a patriot!

It hardly bears repeating to go over Trump’s various unpatriotic acts and statements while overseas, not to mention the role overseas Russians played in his election campaign. So let’s leave that to history.

What we shouldn’t ignore, however, is the reason Trump completely lost it on Monday morning with his insane tweets attacking Senator Blumenthal.

He is so frightened of the investigation of himself and his campaign by Special Counsel Mueller that he actually conflated Blumenthal’s military record with Russian “collusion.”

Huh? That’s not reaching; that’s pure unfettered desperation.

Our president is like a rabid raccoon, lashing out wildly, teeth bared, apparently prepared to fight to the death against the investigation which threatens his presidency more and more every day.

The thing about raccoons is, they can climb trees to avoid being caught.

Trump is marooned on the earth, where he finds himself in the crosshairs of Mueller’s investigation.

Poor guy.

He should have put on the uniform and gone through basic training and even taken that long dreadful flight to the combat zone whether he would carry a rifle when he got there or not.

Might have given him some of what the Army used to call “character,” because he — and we — sure as hell could use some right now.

Misty » 09 Aug 2017 6:21 pm » wrote: So just as I suspected you are willing to dismiss the fact that 45 promoted a racist conspiracy theory for over five years.

There are NO legitimate questions about where Obama was born.
He was born in Hawaii, period.

Did 45 ever question the birth place of a white president?

I love that you threw the word 'perhaps' in there.
That's your usual MO, using weasel words.

You don't need to explain **** to me.

I can figure out for myself that you are a boot licker who is willing to overlook anything that your Circus Peanut Messiah does or says.

And I can also figure out that you are not a person to be taken seriously.

Misty » 09 Aug 2017 6:21 pm » wrote:I can figure out for myself that you are a boot licker who is willing to overlook anything that your Circus Peanut Messiah does or says.

And I can also figure out that you are not a person to be taken seriously.

Misty » 09 Aug 2017 6:21 pm » wrote: So just as I suspected you are willing to dismiss the fact that 45 promoted a racist conspiracy theory for over five years.

There are NO legitimate questions about where Obama was born.
He was born in Hawaii, period.

Did 45 ever question the birth place of a white president?

I love that you threw the word 'perhaps' in there.
That's your usual MO, using weasel words.

You don't need to explain **** to me.

I can figure out for myself that you are a boot licker who is willing to overlook anything that your Circus Peanut Messiah does or says.

And I can also figure out that you are not a person to be taken seriously.

Misty » 09 Aug 2017 7:26 pm » wrote:
He's a vicious lying bully.

roadkill » 10 Aug 2017 8:04 am » wrote:Not a word from you about your Hillary Messiah.
Misty = Double Standard

Termin8tor » 10 Aug 2017 7:38 am » wrote:As I noted, it would be a waste of time to discuss the issue with a psychopath like you.

Misty » 10 Aug 2017 12:05 pm » wrote: Translation: I don't care about the fact that my Circus Peanut Messiah promoted a racist wingnut conspiracy theory for over five years.
I still worship and adore him.
He could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, and he wouldn't lose my support.

Misty » 10 Aug 2017 11:51 am » wrote:WTF?

In a new poll, half of Republicans say they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it.

Brainwashed dummies.
They would jump off a cliff if Donnie Tantrump told them to.

Misty » 09 Aug 2017 4:41 pm » wrote:For what?
Being a fraud and a con artist?

Democrat Party Faces Fundraising Crisis As “Doom and Gloom” Message Falls Flat in Trump-era
Joshua Caplan Aug 10th, 2017 9:21 am 63 Comments


The Democrat Party in the Trump-era is in shambles. The Party is moving full speed ahead towards the 2018 midterms without a message, a destructive fixation on Russia and a looming fundrasing crisis. Today’s “doom and gloom” message isn’t working with voters.

NTK Network reports:

The reality is it’s the Democrats who are struggling to stay relevant. Politico published a story Thursday morning that noted Democrats have raised barely half of what Republicans have brought in this year:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08 ... trump-era/

Termin8tor » 10 Aug 2017 12:33 pm » wrote:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08 ... trump-era/

Termin8tor » 10 Aug 2017 12:17 pm » wrote:10:1 this is Fake News from the corrupt WashPost.

Misty » 10 Aug 2017 2:46 pm » wrote:
Tell me again how you don't cite right wingnut websites or blogs?
Anyone who cites thegatewaypundit, can't say **** about FAKE News.

Misty » 10 Aug 2017 2:46 pm » wrote:Tell me again how you don't cite right wingnut websites or blogs?

Anyone who cites thegatewaypundit, can't say **** about FAKE News.

Misty » 10 Aug 2017 2:46 pm » wrote:Tell me again how you don't cite right wingnut websites or blogs?

Anyone who cites thegatewaypundit, can't say **** about FAKE News.

Termin8tor » 10 Aug 2017 2:59 pm » wrote: Want to debate Economics?

History?

The Reagan presidency?

The Cold War?

The pathetic Obama recovery?

No, all you do is lie and spout propaganda.