McCabe: Rosenstein wrote Comey memo under duress

The White House directed the firing of former FBI Director James Comey in a manner that left Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "shaken" over his role in Comey's ouster, according to a new book.

In "The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump," former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe writes that Rosenstein was deeply uncomfortable over Comey's firing and told him at the time that the move "wasn't his idea," according to excerpts obtained by The Guardian.

“He said it wasn’t his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,” McCabe writes.

“There’s no one here that I can trust,” he quotes Rosenstein as saying, according to The Guardian.

More: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/429149-mccabe-rosenstein-wrote-comey-memo-under-duress

National Enquirer’s AMI Scrutinized Over Bezos Story, Sources Say

Federal prosecutors are reviewing the National Enquirer’s handling of its story about Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair to determine if the company violated an earlier cooperation deal with prosecutors, according to two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reports.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office were provided with information about key exchanges concerning Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., who went public in a jaw-dropping public blog post Thursday night. In it, Bezos detailed exchanges with American Media Inc. and accused the company of extortion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/national-enquirer-s-ami-scrutinized-over-bezos-story-sources-say?utm_medium=social&utm_content=politics&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-politics

Mueller Probes an Event With Nunes, Flynn, and Foreign Officials at Trump’s D.C. Hotel

Devin Nunes has been a pitbull for the president, growling at the prosecutors investigating Trumpworld. Now an event that Nunes himself attended is under Mueller’s microscope.

The Special Counsel’s Office and federal prosecutors in Manhattan are scrutinizing a meeting involving former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, one-time National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and dozens of foreign officials, according to three sources familiar with the investigations.

The breakfast event, which was first reported by The Daily Sabah, a pro-government Turkish paper, took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. at 8.30 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2017—two days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration. About 60 people were invited, including diplomats from governments around the world, according to those same sources.

The breakfast has come under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan as part of their probe into whether the Trump inaugural committee misspent funds and if donors tried to buy influence in the White House. The existence of that probe was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Special Counsel’s Office is also looking at the breakfast as part of its investigation into whether foreigners contributed money to the Trump inaugural fund and PAC by possibly using American intermediaries, as first reported by The New York Times. Robert Mueller’s team has asked Flynn about the event, according to two sources familiar with the Special Counsel’s Office questioning.

Nunes, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has been perhaps Trump’s most important congressional ally over the last two years. After serving on Trump’s transition team, Nunes became a vigorous defender of the president against federal and congressional inquiries. The California Republican pushed a misleading memo alleging misconduct in the FBI investigation of Trump’s associates that the bureau said contained “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Now Nunes—a key figure behind the right-wing counter narrative that Trump is at the mercy of a “Deep State” conspiracy—finds at least one meeting that he himself attended under the special counsel’s scrutiny.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-probes-an-event-with-nunes-flynn-and-foreign-officials-at-trumps-dc-hotel

New York prosecutors seek records from Trump inauguration committee: Sources

Another probe that could hamstring the president and his lawyers is widening.

Prosecutors in New York’s Southern District have reached out to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee and plan to subpoena the organization for documents, sources with direct knowledge tell ABC News, indicating that even as the special counsel probe appears to be nearing an end, another investigation that could hamstring the president and his lawyers is widening.

The contact from the Southern District, which came from its public corruption section, is the latest activity focusing on Trump’s political fundraising both before and immediately after his 2016 election. Lawyers for the inauguration committee were contacted midday Monday and asked if they could accept a subpoena for documents from federal prosecutors, according to sources familiar.

The details of the request remain unclear.

Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen has been extensively interviewed by prosecutors in the Southern District office. Longtime family accountant and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg has agreed to cooperate, though the extent of his help is unknown.

More: https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Politics/york-prosecutors-seek-records-trump-inauguration-committee-sources/story?id=60841246

A Lobbyist At The Trump Tower Meeting Received Half A Million Dollars In Suspicious Payments

A bank flagged transactions, including large cash deposits, made before and after Rinat Akhmetshin attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Source: BuzzFeed News

A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The lobbyist also received a large payment that bank investigators deemed suspicious from Denis Katsyv, whose company Prevezon Holdings was accused by the US Justice Department of laundering the proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax fraud.

The Trump Tower meeting and those who attended it have become a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. As part of that inquiry, banks were asked to pull financial information on the meeting attendees, and investigators at Wells Fargo handed over documents on Akhmetshin to the US Treasury in 2017. Those records were passed to Mueller's team, but Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to say whether the transactions are under investigation. Congressional investigators also requested the financial information from the Treasury Department.

Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/trump-tower-meeting-russian-lobbyist-akhmetshin-suspicious-p

🔥🔥🔥 Adam Schiff's House Intel voting in two days to send transcripts of as many as 73 witnesses to Mueller

Potential transcripts heading to Mueller: DonJr, Kushner, Parscale, Bannon, Lewandowski, Hicks, Bannon, Cohen, Sessions, Sater, Nix, Prince, Schiller...and many more. 🔥🔥🔥⚖️

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1092517240585490432

If you told Congress something different than the FBI and/or Mueller's Grand Jury, you've got a problem called 18 U.S. Code § 1001.

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1092517409360150530
here we go... Members of House Intel will gather on Wednesday at 10 a.m. to vote on the “transmission of Certain Committee Transcripts to the Department of Justice.”

Huh. Trump had been involved in...(checks notes)...3500 lawsuits by the time he took office. Oops, I mean, 3500 that we know of.

https://twitter.com/saradannerdukic/status/1091843100887138304

Civil lawsuits between shell LLCs are the ultimate money laundering vehicle. $500 to establish each LLC $250 civil suit filing fee And about $2,000 in fees to a random, but willing, attorney to facilitate. Total cost: ~$3,250 Then the two parties “reach a settlement”.

That settlement can be for millions of dollars, can include binding confidentiality clauses, is not public record, and, most importantly, is the perfect cover story for tens of millions to be transferred as one lump sum.

https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1091722906017554432

NRA Heavyweight Wanted Access to Putin: Leaked Email

“Impressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin,” an organizer of the NRA’s infamous 2015 trip to Moscow wrote.

A former NRA president hoped to win access to Vladimir Putin on a trip to Moscow, according to an email from one of the trip’s organizers. That organizer, Republican operative Paul Erickson, also said the trip could have “enormous diplomatic consequences.” The email, sent in November 2015 and reviewed by The Daily Beast, came just months before the Kremlin’s election meddling went into full gear.

In the email, Erickson wrote that an official with the Russian Central Bank had made a tantalizing, though tentative, offer to former NRA president David Keene: an interview for his newspaper with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the time, Keene was the opinion editor for The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper. He had previously helmed the NRA, and he maintained close ties with its top officials. And he was one of the small group of people on the trip.

“Impressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is also the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin on behalf of David Keene and the Washington Times – a plum that was dangled in front of Keene by Torshin himself visit to Washington, DC,” Erickson wrote. “High stakes all around.”

The NRA’s Russian hosts were a powerful group. Alexander Torshin, who Erickson said had tentatively offered Keene a Putin interview, was a deputy governor at Russia’s powerful central bank at the time. Justice Department prosecutors later alluded to him when they charged Erickson’s girlfriend, Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina, with conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent in the U.S. Butina pleaded guilty to the charge last month. Her organization, called The Right to Bear Arms, had helped organize the trip Keene went on.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/nra-heavyweight-wanted-access-to-putin-leaked-email

BREAKING: Justice Department's inspector general wants authority to investigate a decade-old plea deal in which Acosta allegedly helped an accused sex offender skirt harsh punishment for crimes against teens
https://twitter.com/blaw/status/1090366147806011393

Labor Secretary’s Role in Epstein Plea Deal Under DOJ Scrutiny

The Justice Department’s inspector general wants lawmakers to give him the authority to investigate a decade-old plea deal in which Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta allegedly helped an accused sex offender skirt the harshest punishment for crimes against teens.

“Your letter raises important questions about the resolution of this case by department attorneys,” DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a Jan. 29 letter to lawmakers. “However, the OIG does not currently have jurisdiction over matters involving allegations of misconduct relating...

Link: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/doj-watchdog-wants-to-probe-labor-secretarys-role-in-abuse-deal?utm_campaign=2019-01-29T21%3A48%3A42&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=lawdesk