Ethics Office has ‘essentially’ reported Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution
MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber reports that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) sent a letter to the Department of Justice on President Donald Trump’s hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
NEW: Ethics office sending letter to Rod Rosenstein stating that Michael Cohen's payment on behalf of Trump was a debt and may be relevant to "any inquiry" Rosenstein may be pursuing. pic.twitter.com/e22Jfuozic
— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) May 16, 2018
Former Department of Justice spokesperson Matt Miller described the letter as “essentially a criminal referral to DOJ for Trump making a false statement in a previous financial disclosure.”
“Fascinated by OGE’s decision to make this referral public,” he continued. “Leaves DOJ no choice but to open at least a preliminary investigation into Trump for false statements (if he wasn’t already a subject in the Cohen inquiry, which he might be).”
Walter Shaub, the former Director of the Office of Government Ethics, went even further than Miller.
“This is tantamount to a criminal referral,” Shaub suggested. “OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime.”
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Republican lawmakers ask judge to destroy smoking gun documents proving GOP’s white supremacy
Republicans on Monday sought a court order to block damning documents from being used against them in a lawsuit.
"North Carolina Republican lawmakers on Monday asked a court to make sure the files of the now-deceased GOP strategist Tom Hofeller are destroyed, or at least kept secret, instead of being used in a high-profile gerrymandering lawsuit," the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
"The filing comes after the groups behind the lawsuit, including Common Cause, accused Republican lawmakers of making false statements in court in a previous gerrymandering case, when the state’s 2011 maps were ruled unconstitutional," the newspaper noted. "That blockbuster accusation made national headlines and was, it said, based on Hofeller’s files which had been secret until recently."
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Trump angrily demands newspaper reveal unnamed sources behind bombshell report on his Russia policy
President Donald Trump on Monday evening again lashed out at The New York Times for reporting on his Russia policy.
"The story in The New York Times about the U.S. escalating attacks on Russia’s power grid is fake news, and the failing New York Times knows it," Trump argued in a tweet sent after 10 p.m.
"They should immediately release their sources which, if they exist at all, which I doubt, are phony," he continued.
"Times must be held fully accountable," he demanded.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140804748423118848
Trouble appears to be brewing between President Donald Trump and the cable news station he loves: Fox News.
In a tweet Monday night, the president lashed out at the network over its polling and called it “fake news’ — an epithet he usually reserves for mainstream outlets:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1140768516288782336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Media Matters for America Senior Fellow Matthew Gertz, who has previously noted that Trump appears to record news segments and watch them a few hours later, suggested that the president appeared to be reacting to an earlier segment from Special Report with Bret Baier. The segment showed that, even according to Fox News’ polling, Trump trails every single leading candidate in the Democratic field in head-to-head matchups.
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