– Conspiracy to collude with Russia –

Cohen said he did not know of any “direct evidence” that Trump or his presidential campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, the principal focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s meddling.

But if Mueller has developed a conspiracy case, Cohen testimony might offer some supporting elements.

He said Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks would release emails damaging to election rival Hillary Clinton after being informed of it by campaign consultant Roger Stone. Stone told Trump in a phone call that he got the information directly from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The emails turned out to have been stolen by Russian hackers.

In addition, Cohen said he believed Trump knew in advance about the June 9, 2016 meeting between campaign chiefs and a Russian lawyer touting dirt on Clinton. The meeting is a focus of the Mueller probe.

Cohen said he was present when the president’s son Donald Jr. quietly informed Trump at the beginning of June that “the meeting is set.” Cohen said he did not know for certain, but was convinced they were referring to the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

– Bank and insurance fraud –

Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, has labelled Trump a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ (AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN)

Cohen alleged that the Trump Organization regularly inflated the value of its assets to obtain loans from banks, which is bank fraud.

He presented three years of Trump’s personal financial statements that Trump gave to Deutsche Bank in 2014 in seeking a loan to help him buy the Buffalo Bills football team.

Asked if Trump similarly provided inflated asset values to an insurance company, Cohen answered “yes,” though without showing documentary evidence.
– Campaign finance violations –

Cohen pleaded guilty last year to violating campaign finance laws when he paid off adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet before the 2016 election about an affair Cohen said she had with Trump.

Cohen said Trump ordered the hush payment. He presented copies of checks drawn on Trump’s personal bank account — one of them signed by the president — that Cohen said were to repay him in 2017, evidence of Trump’s involvement in the scheme.

– Moscow Trump Tower lies –

Cohen pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress in 2017 testimony about the negotiations for a Trump-branded real estate project in Moscow, which continued in secret throughout the 2016 campaign.

Cohen said Trump did not order him to lie, but indicated that preference, and said the White House knew he would lie.

“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.”

Cohen also said Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow reviewed and edited his false testimony. Sekulow said that claim was “completely false.”

– Misuse of charity funds –

Cohen described a scheme in which, to inflate Trump’s own public image, they recruited a straw bidder to bid up the price of a large portrait of Trump at a 2013 y auction. The painting went for $60,000 — while a portrait of Mick Jagger went unsold at $10,000.

Cohen says the bidder was repaid with funds from the Trump Foundation, his family charity, and Trump kept the painting himself, having it installed in one of his eponymous golf clubs.

That could amount to illegal use of charity funds. The now-shuttered Trump Foundation is already under investigation in New York for misuse of funds.

© Agence France-Presse

Featured Photo: “US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has implicated him in several possible crimes in testimony to Congress (AFP Photo/Saul LOEB).”

Cesar Sayoc, who sent 15 pipe bombs to anti-Trump Democrats and media, tweeted threats to dozens of public figures, including sending a TV commentator a picture of a decapitated sheep.

One week after the Pittsburgh attack, Americans are asking why US law enforcement wasn’t aware of either extremist.

The number of violent acts by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, racists and anti-Semites has steadily climbed over the past decade, in recent years killing more Americans than Islamic extremists have.

But security experts say the government refuses to pursue them problem with equal intensity.

“The United States has a problem with far-right extremism and terrorism that we have to face up to,” said Peter Singer a security expert at the New America think tank.

“The number of attacks, combined with resistance to talking about the problem, dedicating resources to the problem — it is killing our fellow Americans at a rate greater than even ISIS.”

– Over 70% of extremist murders –

AFP / Brendan Smialowski. Police tape and memorial flowers outside the Tree of Life Synagogue after a shooting there by an alleged right-wing, anti-Semitic extremist left 11 people dead.

The threat from the right has been clear since extremists killed 168 in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1995.

After the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda terror attacks, US law enforcement concentrated their focus to Islamic extremism.

Yet today, more than 70 percent of nearly 300 murders by ideological extremists in the United States in the past decade were by far-right actors, according to data compiled by New America.

In 2017, 20 of 34 such killings were perpetrated by the far right.

In the same October week as the bombs and the synagogue shooting, a white supremacist shot dead two African Americans at a Kentucky supermarket, and a Wisconsin conservative activist was arrested trying to buy radioactive material to kill someone.

Daryl Johnson, formerly a domestic terrorism analyst in the Department of Homeland Security, says there is a conscious political blind spot toward the extremists on the right.

In 2009, he warned in a DHS report of a resurgence of right-wing extremism, after the economic crash and the election of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States.

The report drew an intense political backlash, he told AFP. Nobody wanted to hear about the problem, or give it a name. His unit was dissolved.

Since then, significant right-wing shootings, arson and bombings have slowly increased, with Democrats and Republicans both responsible, Johnson said.

The Obama administration feared antagonizing opponents. The Trump administration doesn’t want to take aim at supporters.

“Republicans don’t want to attack them,” said Johnson, now a security consultant at DT Analytics. “That’s part of their constituency.”

– Charlottesville show of strength –

AFP/File / Brendan Smialowski. Trump supporters, faced by an anti-Trump demonstrator (C), watch as other people march past during a rally on October 30, 2018 after a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

As a consequence, last year the far-right made an unprecedented show of strength when white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites and others joined hands in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The rally erupted into brawls with counter-protesters, one of whom was killed by a neo-Nazi.

Rather than criticize the extremists, Trump prevaricated, insisting that “both sides” were to blame and that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

“We have the first president in modern history celebrated by these groups, that these groups believe is on message with them. The political tides are with them,” said Singer.

After Charlottesville, Democrats in Congress demanded action, but Republicans refused to hold hearings on right-wing extremism.

Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler says that after Pittsburgh, Republicans are again avoiding calls to discuss the problem.

“14 pipe bombs mailed in unprecedented political assassination attempt. Deadliest massacre of Jews in US history. Murder of 2 African Americans in KY … All in 1 week,” Nadler wrote on Twitter after the Pittsburgh attack.

“All linked by one hateful ideology: white supremacy. We must act.”

– Civil liberties issue? –

AFP/File / Brendan SMIALOWSKI. The FBI pursues violent extremists of any stripe.

The FBI pursues violent extremists of any stripe. Punishments for hate crimes have gotten tougher, such as the 25-year jail sentence handed to a Texas man recently for burning a mosque.

But the government still will not treat extremism as a singular nationwide threat, critics say.

“There is as much a threat from white supremacists and anti-Semites as there is from Islamic extremists. So resources should be allocated appropriately,” said Heidi Beirich, who leads Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism.

“It’s not a question of one or the other; it’s both.”

The experts say the government has tied its own hands, by being wary of accusations that they are spying on US citizens online.

Monitoring potential jihadists is accepted because their acts fall under the official designation “terrorism.” That isn’t applied to other ideological extremists.

“There are legitimate civil liberty concerns” about the government monitoring of right-wing extremists, said Beirich. But, she noted, social media is a public place.

People “have no expectation of privacy when they post there,” she said.

“If you were to try to look for these people or find warning signs about them, you know where they are.”

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / CHIP SOMODEVILLA. White nationalists, neo-Nazis, KKK and members of the “alt-right” march in the Charlottesville, Virginia “Unite The Right” rally on August 12, 2017.

But officials denied the United States was pulling out of Syria, saying Washington will support long-term reconstruction, but only under the currently stalled 2012 Geneva roadmap, which requires a political transition in Damascus opposed by President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has “redirected” $230 million originally set aside to help begin the recovery of areas liberated from Islamic State (IS) group control after coalition partners committed $300 million of their own, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

The comes in response to President Donald Trump’s insistence that allies and partners “increase burden-sharing” in the war-wracked country, she said.

The decision was made based on the additional pledges, including $100 million from Saudi Arabia and $50 million from the United Arab Emirates, and “the already significant military and financial contributions made by the United States to date,” according to Nauert.

“This allows us to free up our tax dollars to use on other key foreign policy priorities,” she said in a briefing for reporters.

“This decision does not represent any lessening of US commitment to our strategic goals in Syria. The president has made clear that we are prepared to remain in Syria until the enduring defeat of (IS), and we remain focused on ensuring the withdrawal of Iranian forces and their proxies,” she said.

Brett McGurk, the special White House envoy to the coalition against IS, said the jihadist group has been cleared from some 99 percent of its former territory in Syria and that preparations for the final phase of the campaign are being made.

– US wants Damascus ‘political transition’ –

He said stabilization operations involving demining, restoration of water and power supplies and other basic needs are well underway in recaptured areas.

For example, he said, potable water supplies have been restored to all 26 districts of Raqa, which was devastated in the campaign to oust IS fighters.

“We are focused on stabilization, getting people back to their homes,” McGurk said.

However, he added, the country’s long-term reconstruction needs “are tied very much to the political process in Geneva.”

“We have made very clear that international reconstruction assistance for Syria will not be coming in until we have unalterable progress on the Geneva track and looking towards a political transition.”

Assad and Moscow have opposed the UN Security Council-supported Geneva approach because it has threatened to force the Syrian president from power.

On Tuesday, Staffan de Mistura, the UN peace envoy for Syria, said that he plans to host Iran, Russia and Turkey for talks in September on finalizing a committee to write a new Syrian constitution, which could be the first step in reviving the Geneva plan.

The State Department’s acting assistant secretary for the near eastern affairs David Satterfield questioned whether the Assad regime is “stonewalling” the UN peace effort.

“There is not going to be, by international agreement, reconstruction assistance to Syria, unless the UN — not Moscow, not Washington, not any other capital — certifies that a credible and irreversible political process is under way,” he said.

Featured Photo: AFP/File / Delil Souleiman. People buy fruits and vegetables at a market in Syria’s Raqa, which suffered extensive damage from the US-led coalition campaign to oust the Islamic State group.

In a deciding opinion on a case of an unidentified woman from El Salvador who was raped and beaten by her husband for years, Sessions said that asylum seekers must prove that they suffer persecution arising from their membership in a distinct group.

“An alien may suffer threats and violence in a foreign country for any number of reasons relating to her social, economic, family, or other personal circumstances. Yet the asylum statute does not provide redress for all misfortune,” Sessions said.

Such a group cannot be overly broad or diffuse, Sessions said, overruling a previous asylum decision which accepted married women who are victims of violent relationships as a persecuted group.

“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes –such as domestic violence or gang violence — or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”

The ruling came as part of a pushback to the arrival of thousands of migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador over the past year fleeing widespread violence in their country.

Most of them cross the US-Mexico border and immediately turn themselves in to request asylum.

In early May Sessions announced that any illegal border-crossers, including asylum seekers, would first be charged with a crime, and parents and children would be separated.

The policy, meant to be a deterrent, has sparked strong criticism and an accusation from the UN Human Rights Office that children’s rights are being violated by the policy.

– ‘A high burden’ –

In a speech earlier Monday, Sessions made clear the Trump administration’s ongoing frustration with the border situation.

“The asylum system is being abused to the detriment of the rule of law, sound public policy, and public safety — and to the detriment of people with just claims,” he said.

“The vast majority of the current asylum claims are not valid,” he added, saying only 20 percent have met asylum standards.

“Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems — even all serious problems — that people face every day all over the world.”

Sessions’ statement set the standard for immigration judges facing a massive surge in cases of undocumented immigrants.

More than 7,800 asylum applications were filed in March alone.

And immigration courts overall face a backlog of about 700,000 cases of all types.

Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, said a key point in Sessions’ ruling was that applicants needed to demonstrate that “the government condoned the private actions or demonstrated an inability to protect the victim.”

“That’s quite a high burden,” he said on Twitter.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal attacked the decision as “shameful,” closing the door on women fleeing violence, LGBT refugees, and others.

“Today’s decision will send untold numbers of refugees to their deaths,” he said.

Featured Photo: AFP/File / NICHOLAS KAMM. US Attorney General Jeff Sessions says asylum “was never meant to alleviate all problems.”

In the latest salvo from Trump’s administration and his Republican Party, the president assailed former CIA chief John Brennan, a strident critic, as having initiated the investigation.

A day earlier, Trump demanded the Justice Department investigate the FBI for allegedly planting an informant in his campaign, and his lawyer pressed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to speed up the probe to avoid it affecting November’s mid-term elections.

Both moves highlighted the heightened political stakes surrounding the year-old probe, as Mueller seeks to interview Trump himself amid growing chances of an impeachment effort against the president if evidence of collusion and obstruction of justice is found.

“This was a Political hit job, this was not an Intelligence Investigation,” Trump said in a series of tweets, quoting Fox News commentator Dan Bongino.

Brennan, the CIA’s head from 2013 to 2017, “started this entire debacle about President Trump,” the president said. “He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community.”

– FBI infiltrated Trump campaign? –

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / CHIP SOMODEVILLA. US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein promises to investigate whether there was any politically motivated surveillance of the Trump campaign.

In recent weeks, Trump has stepped up his attacks on the Russia investigation, aiming to erode trust in Mueller’s integrity in the event the probe takes aim at the president himself.

After hitting the one-year mark last week, Mueller’s probe has taken on increasing political weight as the country heads towards midterm elections.

Investigators have already issued 22 indictments, including of top Trump aides like chairman Paul Manafort and former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

More indictments are expected, but Mueller and his team have remained absolutely silent about the direction of the investigation and what evidence they have, especially with regard to Trump.

Aiming to exploit that silence, Trump took to Twitter on Sunday to order the Justice Department to investigate the FBI’s implanting of “at least one” informant in his 2016 campaign, suggesting it was an act of political espionage by president Barack Obama’s administration.

Late last week, some US media identified a British-based American academic and former government official, with longstanding ties to the CIA, as the informant who sought meetings with several Trump aides during the campaign at the FBI’s request.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Chris Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats met Trump to discuss the issue Monday.

Based on the meeting, the Justice Department will include in its ongoing investigation into the 2016 election “any irregularities with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s or the Department of Justice’s tactics concerning the Trump Campaign,” according to the White House.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani added pressure on the probe, telling media Mueller hopes to wrap up by September 1 — a target date that no one on Mueller’s team has made public.

Vice President Mike Pence reiterated that stance, telling Fox News: “I think it’s time that the special counsel wrap it up.”

The White House is gambling that by both pressuring and denigrating the investigation, Republicans can gain voter support ahead of the November elections.

If Mueller finds evidence of criminal behavior by Trump, it is crucial the Republicans prevent Democrats from gaining control of the House of Representatives, which would rule on any impeachment motion.

Analysts say Trump’s strategy to attack the CIA and FBI could be working.

“The FBI and DOJ are reluctant to publicly respond in any way that makes them appear political,” said Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

“By tweeting the accusation, the president has already cast the doubt in the public mind.”

Feature photo. AFP / SAUL LOEB. US President Donald Trump accused former CIA director John Brennan of launching the Russia meddling probe of his campaign as a “political hit job”.