Welcome To aBlackWeb

Register

The Official World Politics Thread

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profil...t-could-be-nail-in-coffin-for-trump-fec-case/

Letter Revealed During 60 Minutes Stormy Daniels Segment Could Be Nail in Coffin for Trump FEC Case


The long-awaited 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti revealed several new pieces of information regarding Daniels’ alleged affair with Donald Trump and her 2016 agreement to remain silent about it. While some parts were juicier than others, perhaps the most significant moment (legally speaking) was the revelation of a plain old letter between lawyers.

A significant legal issue surrounding the $130,000 that Daniels received from Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen in October 2016 to keep quiet is whether it constituted an illegal and unreported in-kind contribution to Trump’s campaign.

The payment, which far exceeded the maximum allowed for campaign contributions, could be illegal if it was meant to benefit the Trump campaign. When former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards faced similar allegations, he claimed that any effort to keep his affair under wraps was to protect his marriage, not his candidacy. Cohen could make the same argument, but given that the agreement was signed less than two weeks before the election, circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that this was election-related.

Former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, who is the founder and current president of the Campaign Legal Center, argued that the timing makes the case against Trump stronger than the one against Edwards, who was acquitted.

“It’s right in the middle of the run-up to election day,” Potter said, “when Trump’s conduct with women was a prime campaign issue, in fact it was what everyone was focused on.”

On Trump’s end, his liability for accepting an illegal contribution and also failing to report it to the Federal Elections Commission rests mainly on whether he was aware of the payment at the time. Cohen has insisted that Trump did not know about it at the time and he claimed that he was never reimbursed for the payment. Still, a letter to Cohen from Keith Davidson, the attorney representing Daniels in the agreement, indicates that Cohen was not working independently.

The letter, which was shown on 60 Minutes on Sunday, was addressed to:

Michael Cohen
Executive Vice President and
Special Counsel to Donald J. Trump
The Trump Organization

The letter was addressed to Trump Tower in New York City, and was accompanying the NDA agreement signed by Daniels, and Michael Cohen. Cohen, and his attorney have previously insisted that Cohen was working on behalf of “Essential Consultants” when he signed the agreement.

“This idea that there’s a separation now, between Mr. Cohen individually and the Trump Organization, or Mr. Cohen individually and Donald Trump, it’s nonsense,” Avenatti said.

The letter does seem to indicate that Cohen was officially working on Trump’s behalf — or at the very least — working for Trump’s benefit.

“If he does this on behalf of his client,” Potter said, “the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.”
Click to expand...
 


https://www.mediaite.com/tv/stormy-...t-trump-affair-thats-a-beautiful-little-girl/

Stormy Daniels Says Man Threatened Her and Daughter to Keep Quiet About Trump Affair: ‘That’s a Beautiful Little Girl’

Stormy Daniels claimed in her 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper that a man threatened her and her young daughter in a parking lot to keep quiet about an affair she claims she had with Donald Trump.

The episode has yet to air, but CBS released a transcript of the interview on Sunday night.

The former porn star — whose real name in Stephanie Clifford — told Cooper that in 2011, five years after the alleged affair, she agreed to tell the story to a sister publication of In Touch magazine for $15,000. Two former employees of the magazine told CBS News that the piece never ran because Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, threatened to sue.

A few weeks after the story was spiked, Daniels said she was approached by a man in Las Vegas.

“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter,” she said. “And a guy walked up on me and said to me, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.” And then he was gone.”

“You took it as a direct threat?” Cooper asked.

“Absolutely,” Stormy replied. “I was rattled. I remember going into the workout class. And my hands are shaking so much, I was afraid I was gonna drop her.”

Cooper asked Daniels if she went to the police, and she said she did not, “Because I was scared.” Daniels added that if she saw the man today, she would instantly recognize him.

Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, first revealed on Morning Joe that his client had been physically threatened over her allegations against Trump.

Daniels is suing Trump to nullify a nondisclosure agreement she signed weeks before the 2016 election to keep quiet about the alleged affair. Though she was paid $130,000 as part of the agreement, she claims it is void because Trump never signed it. Daniels dished to Cooper about the gritty details of affair on 60 Minutes, which is likely to provide fodder to Trump and Cohen’s legal case against her.
Click to expand...
 


Stormy Daniels Reveals Details of Trump Affair: He Said I Reminded Him Of Ivanka After Spanking

During tonight’s 60 Minutes extravaganza, adult film actress Stormy Danielsclaimed Donald Trump said she reminded him of his daughter Ivanka Trump after spanking him with a magazine — a remark she says was made just before their alleged sexual experience.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told the story while discussing her alleged 2006 affair with the now-president. After anchor Anderson Cooper asked Daniels about their “conversation” that transpired in a hotel room, the porn star said he began by bragging about himself, but changed after she jokingly threatened to “spank” him with a magazine.
Click to expand...

She continued by saying that after Trump dropped his pants and received the playful magazine spanking, the conversation “completely” shifted — so much so, that he allegedly said Daniels reminded him “of my daughter.”

“He was like, ‘Wow, you — you are special. You remind me of my daughter,'” said Daniels. “You know — he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.'”

Daniels went on to say that Trump suggested she appear on The Apprentice — the NBC reality series he was hosting at the time. While Daniels claims she pushed back on the idea — saying the network would never allow a porn star on — Trump continued to push the suggestion by saying her appearance would “show a lotta’ people.”

The topic of his wife Melania Trump and his recently born son Barron Trump then came up, to which Daniels claims Trump shrugged off by downplaying their relationship and saying the two live in “separate rooms.”
Click to expand...

giphy.gif




trump-ivanka.jpg


081642EA-D829-46E6-A2A8-5FC81CBA8CAD.gif
 
https://www.mediaite.com/online/melania-trumps-spokesperson-weighs-in-on-stormy-daniels-interview/

Melania Trump’s Spokesperson Weighs in on Stormy Daniels Interview

Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s communications director, took to Twitter on Sunday night in the wake of Stormy Daniels’s bombshell 60 Minutesinterview dishes on the details of her alleged affair with Donald Trump.

Daniels, a former porn star, claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2006, when he was married to third wife Melania — and just months after she gave birth to son Barron.

“While I know the media is enjoying speculation & salacious gossip, Id like to remind people there’s a minor child who’s name should be kept out of news stories when at all possible,” Grisham wrote.

Daniels told Anderson Cooper in the interview that she first met Trump in 2006, and that they had one sexual encounter. She is now suing the president to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement she signed weeks before the 2016 election to keep quiet about the affair.

On 60 Minutes, Daniels said that when she asked Trump about his wife Melania during their dalliance, he dismissed her concerns, apparently explaining that he and his wife don’t sleep in the same room.
Click to expand...

 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/stormy-daniels-60-minutes-interview-breaks-ratings-record

CBS: Stormy Daniels Interview Gives ’60 Minutes’ Its Biggest Audience In Decade


WASHINGTON (AP) — CBS says its “60 Minutes” interview with Stormy Daniels drew the news magazine’s biggest audience in a decade.

The Nielsen company estimates that slightly more than 22 million viewers tuned in Sunday to hear the adult film star talk about an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Donald Trump and the aftermath.

If that figure holds, it would mean more people watched the Daniels interview than watched the 2016 “60 Minutes” interview with President-elect Trump and his family on Nov. 13, 2016.

CBS says that interview drew 20 million viewers.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, said that she had one encounter of consensual sex with the future president. Daniels also said she was threatened by an unidentified man to keep quiet about it.
Click to expand...
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ap-poll-americans-think-country-headed-wrong-direction

AP Poll: 62 Percent Of Americans Think The US Is Headed In The Wrong Direction


WASHINGTON (AP) — While Americans say they’re feeling slightly better about the current direction of the country than they did last month, their overall outlook for the future remains quite dim, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll released Monday finds that 37 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction. That’s up slightly from the 32 percent who said the same in February.

Still, 62 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction. And when asked about the year ahead, just 32 percent say they think things will get better — and 45 percent expect things to get worse.

Some other things to know from the new AP-NORC poll:

PARTY MATTERS

While 67 percent of Republicans say the country is headed in the right direction, 87 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of independents think it’s headed the wrong way. And 63 percent of Republicans expect continued improvement in the next year, while 73 percent of Democrats think things will keep getting worse.

SO DOES THE ECONOMY

Despite their overall lack of optimism about the state of the nation, Americans appear more likely to think the economy will improve in the next year than that it will deteriorate, 37 percent to 32 percent.

And they’re much more likely to think their personal finances will move in the right direction than the wrong one, 39 percent to 18 percent.

Most Republicans think both the national economy and their personal finances will get better in the next year. Most Democrats expect the national economy to get worse, but they largely expect their personal finances to stay about the same.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

When it comes to how the U.S. is viewed around the world, Americans have largely negative views about the year to come.

More than half — 53 percent — think respect for American will decline overseas, with just 26 percent expecting it to improve. And 48 percent think U.S. influence around the world will decline in the next 12 months, compared with just 27 percent who believe it will get better.

At the same time, Americans have mixed views about the direction of U.S. national security. About a third expects that to improve in the next year, a third expects it to get worse, and a third expect it to stay about the same.

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,122 adults was conducted March 14-19 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.
Click to expand...

GettyImages-915771154-804x450.jpg
 
https://www.mediaite.com/online/two...ached-to-join-trump-legal-team-have-declined/

Two Lawyers Who Were Approached to Join Trump Legal Team Have Declined

The Daily Beast is exclusively reporting tonight that attorneys Dan Webb and Tom Buchanan have turned down the chance to be part of the team:

“President Trump reached out to Dan Webb and Tom Buchanan to provide legal representation,” they said in a statement. “They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so. They wish the president the best and believe he has excellent representation in Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow.”

John Dowd recently left the Trump legal team, following Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing being brought in. But then yesterday Jay Sekulow said diGenova and Toensing aren’t joining after all.
Click to expand...
 
https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-reportedly-hopes-rob-porter-will-come-back-to-the-white-house/

Trump Reportedly Hopes Rob Porter Will Come Back to the White House

A new report indicates that Donald Trump has stayed in contact with Rob Porter over the last few months, and now the president wants his former aide back in the White House.

Porter left the Trump Administration last month amid allegations from multiple women that he was physical and emotionally abusive towards them. Porter was a close colleague of chief of staff John Kelly, and there have been a lot of questions about whether the White House was aware of the troubling claims against Porter while he was handling classified documents without fully-realized security clearance.

According to The New York Times, Trump has been telling advisers that he hopes Porter will return to the West Wing. Trump and Porter reportedly conversed about several issues that have drawn the president’s attention in the last few weeks, and Trump views aides getting criticism as “extensions of himself.”

Trump also reportedly misses the “staff structure” Porter built within the White House, which probably weighs on the president’s mind a lot these days after how many high-level administration members have left his team recently.

From the report:

The president’s calls with Mr. Porter have increased in the past few weeks, as the number of people he is close to in the White House has dwindled because of the large number of staff departures, the people familiar with the calls said.

When Porter left the White House after his abuse allegations came to light, Trump defended him by lamenting how a “mere allegation” can destroy lives. Days later, Trump said that “everybody knows” that he is opposed to domestic abuse.
Click to expand...

White privilege at work...
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/reports-ryan-spox-denies-resignation-despite-rumor-mill

Reports: Paul Ryan Spox Denies ‘Rumor Mill’ Resignation Plans


Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) office is denying reports that Ryan plans to resign in coming weeks, his spokesperson AshLee Strong told several news outlets Monday.

“The speaker is not resigning,” Strong told CNN, CBS and The Washington Examiner. Strong did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for comment.

Ryan’s office was responding Monday to comments from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV), who told a local news outlet on Monday that the “rumor mill” on Capitol Hill is suggesting that Ryan is “getting ready to resign in the next 30 to 60 days.” Amodei told the Nevada Newsmakers that Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) would be elected to replace him as speaker.

“Now that is interesting, because no one has talked to members on how they are going to vote,” Amodei said Monday. “Now, maybe they have talked to all of the members but me. I don’t know, so that is the rumor mill from last week.”

Scalise’s office has denied the claims as well, telling The Washington Examiner that Scalise “fully supports” Ryan as Speaker of the House.

Late last year, Ryan’s office also had to deflect rumors that he was planning to retire, which were perpetrated by reports from The Huffington Post and Politicothat said Ryan wanted to serve as speaker through the end of his term and then leave Congress altogether.
Click to expand...
 
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-rages-in-private-stormy-daniels

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...db33a5eef83_story.html?utm_term=.30f01adca5d9

Trump Silent In Public, But Reportedly Rages Over Stormy Daniels In Private

President Donald Trump has refrained from publicly addressing allegations from porn actress Stormy Daniels that she had an intimate affair with him. In private, however, Trump has complained and worried about the allegations, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Trump has called Daniels’ claims a “hoax,” asked if her allegations hurt him in the polls, and claimed that he does not find her attractive, the Washington Post reported.

Though he’s asked associates if the allegations from Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, are hurting him, he has made the general calculation that the episode will blow over and leave him largely undamaged, per the Post. This calculation has prompted him to remain silent.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top