US President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared increasingly under threat from the Russia collusion probe after a court filing revealed that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, cooperated extensively in multiple high-level investigations during the past year.
A sentencing recommendation late on Tuesday from Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Flynn spend no time in jail explained that the retired three-star general had given “substantial assistance” to his and other secret, high-level investigations.
Underscoring the level of cooperation, the filing in the federal court in Washington spelled out that Flynn had been interviewed 19 times over the past year — during which his sentencing for one charge of lying to investigators had been postponed four times.
“Given the defendant’s substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, a sentence at the low end of the guideline range — including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration — is appropriate and warranted,” Mueller said in a memorandum to the court.
That came on the heels of Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen admitting in a court filing last week that he had been in contact with a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin well into the 2016 presidential campaign about obtaining a green light to develop a 100-story Trump Tower in Moscow.
Cohen made clear that, contrary to the president’s previous denials, he had informed Trump and members of his family about the project throughout the first half of 2016, even after Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination.
Taken together, the two cases added to the evidence that Mueller is building a case that there were frequent and possibly systematic communications between Trump’s inner circle and Moscow ahead of the November 2016 presidential election that could bolster charges of perjury or even conspiracy to collude with the Russians.
After having condemned Cohen as a liar and saying he deserved a “full and complete” jail sentence, Trump was notably silent about the implications of what Flynn might have told investigators.
Flynn was a top-level insider in the 2016 campaign, accompanying Trump to key events and making a keynote speech at the Republican National Convention.
He then took hold of national security policy in the White House in Trump’s first weeks in office.
The sentencing memorandum from Mueller gave no hint of what the former US Defense Intelligence Agency director has said.
It said that he cooperated on questions regarding Mueller’s examination of actions by senior officials of Trump’s transition team between the election and the inauguration on Jan. 20 last year.
That was the period in which Flynn repeatedly had secret telephone discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that he later lied about, which led to his early expulsion from the White House and then to charges he lied to Mueller’s investigators.
However, in a heavily redacted addendum to Tuesday’s memorandum, Mueller said that Flynn was helping on two other investigations, at least one not in his hands.
That could be an ominous signal for Trump, said US Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“That most of the details are redacted signals he has given far more than we or the President may know,” Schiff wrote on Twitter.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS