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Trump grand jury examining his other hush money payments that show a pattern of behavior: report
March 30, 2023
After the New York Times revealed that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office was looking at felony charges for former President Donald Trump, it sparked a legal conversation among scholars and experts about how they would get there.
If Trump is charged with a crime over the hush money payments to adult film Stormy Daniels, it doesn't rise above a misdemeanor charge. To try and hide the payment to Daniels, Trump spliced them out into several payments to Cohen over time and claimed them as a legal retainer.
"That's going to be really strong evidence because there was no legal work being done by Michael Cohen," said former Justice Department lawyer Andrew Weissmann, who now teaches at NYU School of Law. "There was no reason to have these retainers month after month. And so, that will be a very strong part of the case. The problem is, that's a misdemeanor under New York law. And so, the thing that we don't know is the way in which that misdemeanor can be elevated to a felony, and under New York law, the way it can be elevated is if you commit that misdemeanor to further or to cover up another crime. Whether that other crime is a felony or a misdemeanor. Then the false business record charge is no longer a misdemeanor. It is a felony. Meaning, if you do the misdemeanor to help promote another crime, it's more serious. What we don't know is exactly how [DA] Alvin Bragg is thinking about what he would charge probably some form of either a federal and/or state election crime."
Conservative Bill Kristol compared Trump to former presidential candidate John Edwards, when speaking to MSNBC last week. Edwards engaged a third party to make the hush money payments. The jury ultimately acquitted Edwards — but Trump's case is more complicated.
IN OTHER NEWS: Marjorie Taylor Greene credits Kevin McCarthy for QAnon Shaman’s prison release
In Trump's case, he not only paid off Daniels through his lawyer, but he also paid off Karen McDougal through a third party, The National Enquirer. The tabloid's chief, David Pecker, was given immunity in the Michael Cohen case. Pecker has been called back to speak to the grand jury more than once.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed Thursday that the DA's office has brought up the hush money deal for McDougal.
"Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been presenting a grand jury with evidence of Mr. Trump’s involvement in a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels since January," said the report. "In those proceedings, the people said, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors also have questioned grand-jury witnesses extensively about an earlier deal involving Karen McDougal, Playboy Magazine’s Playmate of the Year in 1998, who has said she began a 10-month relationship with Mr. Trump beginning in 2006."
At the same time, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen recorded his client talking about the "deal" being made with Pecker, and the plan to reimburse the Enquirer's parent company, American Media.
The Enquirer used what's known as a "catch and kill," to protect Trump from the allegations. It's where the company claims they'll buy the rights to the story, and then not publish anything about it.
"A consultant for Mr. Pecker used a separate shell company to issue a false invoice to Mr. Cohen for advisory services, insulating both American Media and Mr. Trump from the transaction, according to the nonprosecution agreement," the Journal explained. Cohen tried to have Pecker buy the Daniels story too, but he refused, which is how Cohen ended up running the hush money through him.
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) heaped praise on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Thursday, claiming he played a key role in securing the release of a man convicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Jacob Chansley, 35 of Phoenix, was sentenced to 41 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one felony count of obstructing an official proceeding.
Chansley, who also goes by “Jacob Angeli,” became known as the “QAnon Shaman” after he was seen wearing a helmet with a fur hat and his face painted during the insurrection in photos and video shared widely.
Chansley was moved from a Safford, Arizona federal prison to a Phoenix “residential reentry management” facility CBS News reports. His scheduled release date is May 25.
IN OTHER NEWS: Lauren Boebert doesn't want to 'nitpick what the Bible says' after son gets girlfriend pregnant
McCarthy’s release of a trove of video from the insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson was a key factor in Chansley’s release, according to Greene.
“All the credit goes to @SpeakerMcCarthy for releasing the video tapes and @TuckerCarlson for his great work exposing the lies of the politically corrupt Democrats and the January 6th Committee,” Greene tweeted.
But according to Chansley's attorney, "Jake is out on schedule."
"I told him 16 months ago in our first conversation it would be Feb. or Mar. 2023," Chansley's attorney Bill Shipley tweeted on Thursday morning. "BOP [Federal Bureau of Prisons] math. I didn’t do anything extraordinary–this was always the schedule, I just understood it and could explain it to him."
Chansley is among at least 1,000 people who had been charged in connection with the insurrection as of March 25, NPR reports.
Many of those charged in connection with the attack have been revered by Greene and former President Donald Trump, among others.
Greene on Friday led a congressional delegation visiting jailed Jan. 6 defendants held at a Washington D.C. jail, and the far-right congresswoman from Georgia told reporters afterward that she considered the defendants “political prisoners.”
“Jacob Chansley is free,” Greene tweeted Thursday.
“A J6 political prisoner persecuted for walking in the Capital escorted by police. He prayed for them and encouraged everyone to be peaceful. I hope he sues everyone that assassinated his character and lied about him.”
\u201cJacob Chansley is free.\n\nA J6 political prisoner persecuted for walking in the Capital escorted by police. He prayed for them and encouraged everyone to be peaceful.\n\nI hope he sues everyone that assassinated his character and lied about him.\u201d— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1680190851
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By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a Republican energy reform bill intended to bolster U.S. oil and gas production while scaling back climate initiatives, the first major legislation of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's majority.
The House passed the Lower Energy Costs Act by a mostly partisan 225-204 vote.
The bill would deliver on a top 2022 Republican campaign pledge to lower Americans' energy costs but faces little chance of making it through the Democratic-led Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has declared it "dead on arrival."
"The Senate is not going to waste our time on a bill that sets America back decades on our transition to clean energy," Schumer said in a Senate speech shortly before the House vote. Democratic leaders in both chambers have been calling the bill one that "puts polluters over people."
The White House has also said President Joe Biden would veto the measure if it were to make it to his desk.
But the vote was a symbolic victory for McCarthy that demonstrated his ability to hold his narrow 222-213 Republican majority together, as Congress prepares for bigger fights in coming months over the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling and funding for the federal government.
Republican leaders secured passage after overcoming reservations from at least five party members, which would have been enough to block legislation.
Party disagreement over the House bill partly reflected gaping divisions over how to streamline permitting for energy projects, a goal otherwise shared by both Republicans and Democrats.
Democrats want a permitting bill that will pave the way for a swifter adoption of clean energy technologies like solar and wind power that have received lucrative new subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act, while Republicans are pushing for a renewed focus on fossil fuels.
Republicans billed the legislation as a solution to high U.S. gasoline prices that would bolster oil and gas production by reducing regulations, promoting energy development on federal lands and eliminating climate initiatives imposed by Democrats.
Democrats decried the legislation as a giveaway for the oil industry. They warned that it would also repeal a greenhouse gas reduction fund aimed at reducing pollution and creating green energy jobs, while also eliminating a methane reduction program that charges polluters for releasing the greenhouse gas.
With the bill's future in doubt, Republicans said they hoped to include provisions from the legislation in any agreement with Biden and his fellow Democrats to lift the federal government's borrowing limit.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Moira Warburton in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul and Jonathan Oatis)
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